Content Is King!

It’s been said many times, but it’s worth saying again, content is the key to success on the web. With more and more untrained citizen journalists responsible for website content, many businesses are not ready for business on the web. There’s no shortage of professional writers and journalists, it’s just that most small businesses who represent the engine of growth in our society don’t bother to engage them for financial or other reasons. Derek Gordon’s post entitled, “Mourning The State Of Content“, points out this ever present problem.

If you’re a small business or a big business and you don’t have professional writers to develop compelling content for your website, take a look at Jon Wuebben’s latest book, Content Rich. It’s a must read for every marketing director with website responsibility. If you follow his guidelines, you’ll get results!

Google Knows More About You Than You Might Suspect

This video gives you an idea of just how much they might know…

If You Have Something Important To Say, Say It With Online Public Relations

There is more to issuing a press release than simply firing it off via an online distribution service. There are 3,000 new releases distributed everyday… that’s about one every 10 seconds. So you’ve got to do it right, or you’ll get lost in the shuffle. Here are a few simple guidelines to follow:

Make the release simple and straightforward. Use clear and concise language.

Do some keyword research to find out what people are searching for.

Use relevant keywords in the headline and don’t exceed 80 characters. Also, use the H1 heading tag!

Limit body text to 300 to 500 words.

Use links in the text:

First link should appear near the beginning.

Link to internal pages, not just the home page.

Include no more than five links.

Use both anchor text and page URLs.

Include one instance of anchor text that is identical to the page title.

Don’t repeat links.

Follow this and you’ll be off to a good start!!!

There is more to issuing a press release than simply firing it off via an online distribution service. There are 3,000 new releases distributed everyday… that’s about one every 10 seconds. So you’ve got to do it right, or you’ll get lost in the shuffle. Here are a few simple guidelines to follow:

1. Make the release simple and straightforward. Use clear and concise language.
2. Do some keyword research to find out what people are searching for.
3. Use relevant keywords in the headline and don’t exceed 80 characters. Also, use the H1 heading tag!
4. Limit body text to 300 to 500 words.
5. Use links in the text:

• First link should appear near the beginning.
• Link to internal pages, not just the home page.
• Include no more than five links.
• Use both anchor text and page URLs.
• Include one instance of anchor text that is identical to the page title.
• Don’t repeat links.

Follow this and you’ll be off to a good start!!!

Search Engine Market Shares

comScore released its qSearch Query Analysis for June (U.S. searches). Results: Google stays constant at 65%, and Microsoft enjoys a small gain with the introduction of Bing [at the expense of Yahoo!]…

• Google 65%
• Yahoo! 19.6%
• Microsoft Bing 8.4%
• Ask 3.9%
• AOL 3.1%

My guess is that Microsoft’s share increase won’t be sustained if they don’t continue their advertising push. Speculation continues about a Yahoo!/Microsoft deal. It may be much easier to buy market share than build it at this stage of the game.

Writing Great Web Content

If you’re in the West Los Angeles area on Saturday (April 18), stop by Barnes and Noble, 3rd Street Promenade, in Santa Monica at 3pm to meet Jon Wuebben. He’s signing copies of his new book, “Content Rich: Writing your Way to Wealth on the Web”. I’ve worked with Jon, and he’s a real pro that knows how to get results.

Clear Disclosure of Sponsorship Is Critical

There seems to be some ambiguity among marketers and webmasters concerning paid links and whether or not they should affect search engine rankings. If you care about Google, and you should since in almost all cases Google is your largest target audience, you should know Google’s policy on paid links as outlined by Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s webspam team…

Clear disclosure of sponsorship is critical, and that includes disclosure for search engines. If a link in a paid post would affect search engines, that link should not pass PageRank (e.g. by using the nofollow attribute). Google — and other search engines — do take action which can include demoting sites that sell links that pass PageRank, for example.

Being familiar with Google’s user guidelines and policies is important for marketers and search professionals who follow best practices and are helping to contribute to the quality and growth of search as a marketing and information tool. It can also keep you out of trouble!

50 Reasons Why Marketers Should Embrace Online Video

According Forrester Research, “On the keywords for which Google offers video results, any given video in the index stands about a 50 times better chance of appearing on the first page of results than any given text page in the index”. That’s pretty compelling evidence to support the use of online video for your product or service.

Lots of marketers are starting to post videos, but they most don’t pay attention to the factors that will get them included in the search results for their important keywords. Nate Elliot of Forrester says, “Less than 20% of marketers tell us they insert keywords into the filenames of the videos on their site, and even fewer use more advanced tactics like writing keyword-rich captions and annotations, or creating online video libraries.”

There’s a big opportunity for those willing to learn a little bit about search engine optimization (SEO) and more specifically, SEO for video. As more people get smarter about video SEO, it won’t be as easy to get results.

Reducing “Noise” on the Web

The big three search engines will embrace a new web standard to reduce duplicate content on the web (more details in today’s New York Times). Google has been a leader in this effort for years, evidenced by their very helpful Webmaster Central Tools. Google’s goal has been and continues to be providing their users with a better search experience… helping people what they are looking for in a minimum amount of time. Now that Microsoft and Yahoo are following their lead, searchers will have fewer pages to sift through and more relevant results! This is good news for search.

The Rationale for Search!

Gord Hotchkiss is someone I follow regularly because I think he’s really smart. Not only is he a very smart marketing professional, but he’s an expert in Search and is constantly researching the how’s and why’s of consumer behavior. And, he’s a very good writer to boot!

Yesterday, he wrote a piece describing the seven habits unique to search that make it as close to recession proof as possible. The article is entitled, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Advertising“. He gives a good explanation of why there has been minimal contraction in search spending during the current economic downturn. After reading it, I felt it was one of the best explanations of why every business should make search a key part of their marketing arsenal.

If you haven’t started a search program at your business, now’s the perfect time to do it. Don’t wait!

The Power of Twitter

If anyone has doubts about the power of Twitter, read Todd Friesen’s SearchInsider blog post this morning, “The Tweet Life“. A lot of people have trouble understanding why Twitter is so important. To understand it, you need to see how people use it. Todd gives a great explanation and provides some nice examples.