Is it a business directory? Is it a business networking site? Is it an overzealous hybrid destined to over-extend itself and die on the vine? For our purposes today we’ll refer to them as “biz sites” and it can’t hurt to familiarize yourself with the wide range that are available. They’re free to use, easy to sign up for and potentially helpful to your company or agency in a wide variety of ways you may not have realized.

Although LinkedIn and Plaxo have an imposing headlock on the B2B and B2C business networking space, there are a lot of others jockeying for position whom you likely haven’t even heard of - let alone begun to utilize. Although taking the time to register your own company or that of a client on these “2nd-tier” networks probably won’t result in the flood of direct traffic, leads or new contacts that the major players may have driven - there are still very tangible and numerous benefits to taking the time to build yourself a presence on each. These are listed in no particular order as I recommend them all as part of any comprehensive ORM or SEO effort:

Social Networking Sites for Business

1. My Cubicle Space: Their stated mission is to provide a search engine platform where any business can promote their product or service in a creative way to the fore front for millions of people. Free to use and includes press release submission, blog and keyword targeting capabilities. HQ: Watertown, MA.
2. Ryze: Members get a free networking-oriented home page and can send messages to other members. They can also join special networks related to their industry, interests or location. The local features are particularly impressive and should be perfect for businesses with physical store locations or service areas. Both free and paid options exist. HQ: San Francisco, CA.
3. Ziggs: A definite fore-runner of the emerging LinkedIn competition, Ziggs allows you to build a profile, network, post jobs and other classifieds and is strongly marketed as an online brand management resource. HQ: Boston, MA.
4. Naymz: Naymz’s solid tagline “Empowering Reputable Professionals” relays their understanding of ORM’s massive importance. If you maintain a decent “rep score”, based in large on how many people you get to vouch for you and therefore refer to the site, they will create a Google ad for you with a budget of $10. HQ: Chicago, IL.
5. FastPitch: Billed as a “professional social network”, Fast Pitch has added an impressive amount of useful features during their short existence including a press release submission option, blogs, event calendars a helpful tour, some early integration with other social networks and the ability to see a list of other online members. HQ: Sarasota, FL
6. Spoke: I like the fact that Spoke features rotating member profiles on their home page. They heavily tout the lead-generation potential of their network as a strength, possibly making it more apt to attract those with B2C lead generation as opposed to networking priorities. HQ: San Mateo, CA
7. Zoom Info: One of the more established sites on this list, Zoom Info has been around since 1999 and according to the home page has over 42 million people and 3 million companies as part of their database. The site is clearly defined for three specific purposes: searching for people, searching for companies and searching for a job. Personal profiles are free to create and company profiles are apparently coming soon. HQ: Waltham, MA.
8. Konnects: No identity crisis here. Konnects is a B2B networking site with a very human-oriented feel. Lots of headshots, rotating newest member list on the homepage and a big focus placed on physical events. Free to sign up and you can request via email a “group” for your organization which I am assuming means an eventual quote on a branded community. HQ: Tacoma, WA.
9. Upperz: The “social network site for professional use” has a long way to go before nipping away at anyone else’s market share, but the latest member blog postings and media gallery featured on the front page are a bit of differentiation. A serious lack of company (I can’t tell for the life of me where they are head quartered) or feature information puts Upperz on my “maybe someday when I have a lot more free time” list.
10. Direct Matches: It sounds and frankly looks a lot like a dating site, but Direct Matches is aimed at business people. Their mission states that they are the first site to “deploy a multi-matchmaking system that helps people locate everything from business contacts to finding friendship and dates online”. I spoke too soon. Perhaps they are over-reaching but the dating angle is certainly unique - and potentially the basis for an equally unique sexual harassment suit. HQ:
11. Xing: The “first Web 2.0 site to go public” definintely looks the part. The clean design, mobile capabilities and numerous mentions in top trade publications make it 2.0 all the way. Purporting to transcend all countries, languages and industries - Xing is definitely a must for professionals who do a lot of business internationally. HQ: Hamburg, GER.

Business Networking Sites for Direct Traffic
How many of today’s most successful web entities started in a dorm room? What is small time today might be huge tomorrow and even if you don’t start immediately having your door beaten down by contacts and customers who find you via Zing - you never know. It’s also important to take into consideration where some of the new or lesser business networking sites may have a strong foothold internationally. Even if a given biz site is only big in Asia it’s still going to provide you with a brand new link. Considering the supplemental benefits we’re discussing today I believe they are worthwhile if well designed and well intentioned - regardless of a site’s current popularity.

Business Sites for Search Engine Optimization
Unless you’ve been exiled to Siberia for the last two years you know that building one-way, incoming links to your website is an enormously important facet of SEO. All of the aforementioned sites allow you various levels of link inclusion. Some limit you to a URL, some automatically link the URL with the company name you input and others allow for the embedding of links in HTML-friendly summary sections allowing you to craft the hyperlink text to your target keyword specifications. A few hours spent creating presences on all of the aforementioned sites is going to be of better SEO value than a week of submissions to crummy “directories”.

Business Sites for Online Reputation Management
On many of the sites I list below you can get your company or personal name into the URL, header tag, title tag or a combination. As these three elements are held in very high regard by search engine algorithms, biz sites can be tremendously helpful for online brand reputation management. If someone Googles the name of your company, for example, and finds your dedicated page on Spoke - that could mean a negative blog post from a critical customer being pushed down to the second page of the search results for a potential one.

Do you use a similar biz site that hasn’t made our list? Am I using terminology or descriptions that can be tightened up (one of the things that perplexes me about this space is how to properly categorize the different sites)? Do you represent one of the sites listed and want to provide a little more info? Please let me know and we’ll keep this post evolving. Get networking/SEOing/Reputation defending and I look forward to your additions and comments.

3 Comments »

Arranging reciprocal link partnerships with other websites used to be an extremely effective tool for bolstering your organic search engine rankings. As webmasters figure out how to manipulate algorithms, however, those algorithms will inevitably be updated by the powers that be. Currently, search engine algorithms give far more credence to one-way incoming links, and the art of facilitating these is commonly referred to as link building. Link building methods are extremely diverse, and the term should only be considered as an umbrella over a variety of specific strategies, including:

1. Paid links: Links can be purchased through link brokers or manually sought out one at a time by webmasters or web marketers. Brokers will provide you with a network of sites to choose from whereby you can customize the ever-important anchor text and select publishers relevant to your subject matter for a monthly fee. Doing it the old fashioned way is a long process, involving many emails or phone calls to prospective publishers, but may ultimately lead to the best value.
2. Link baiting: Writing original, catchy content and submitting it to news sites and social media sites has become a popular way of garnering one way incoming links, and is commonly referred to as “link baiting”. Particularly effective are “how-to” articles, top 10 lists and video clip collections. The catchier the title, the better. Should you strike gold by becoming the next viral marketing darling, the huge number of links you’ll receive from other sites, blogs and news sites will be priceless.
3. Topic and content networks: Sites like Squidoo, HubPages and WetPaint can be categorized in a number of ways – content site, social media, etc. – but one thing is for sure – they are free and easy ways to create links pointing back to your website. If, for example, your website sells cell phones, you can build a resource lens about your company or a relevant topic and link using your choice of anchor text. The more your lens, hub or canvas is perceived as being an objective resource, the more traffic and incoming links it will get from other members of the network and people who stumble across it via search engines, passing the “link juice” on to your main site.

These points are a high-level starting point, but specific examples help paint a good link building picture for the uninitiated. Simply put, high quality and original content, coupled with a base knowledge of the emerging social media and voting sites that have been rushing onto the scene, can do wonders encouraging the outside world to link to you. Build it, and they will not come. Build it and make it helpful or entertaining enough to the right person - and they will gladly link to you in a heartbeat.

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Google absolutely adores Squidoo, and I have discussed several times how the network can be used for the purposes of search engine optimization. But Squidoo has a few younger siblings that shouldn’t be overlooked in a comprehensive link building effort, the most advanced and spidered of which seems to be HubPages. But what is HP, and how exactly can it complement your online marketing efforts?

After you register and open an account, pick a topic and create a new hub. The process is pretty self explanatory, but make sure you choose an objective topic and name for your lens so that it doesn’t appear like a blatant marketing ploy. Also, as you are allowed to select your URL, get some keywords or your brand name in there. If your first choice is taken, try a few different variations or use hyphens between words (pinkrhinocerousbattery can be pink-rhinocerous-battery).

Back to the subject matter of your lens - people are more likely to visit or link to your hub if it is perceived as an objective resource. If your company sells mixing bowls, create a hub with free recipes. Do you offer gym apparel? Build a lens which focuses on workout tips. Somewhere within your hub, likely one of their text modules, hyperlink to your company site using the word mixing bowls. Make sense?

But where else can you get content for your new hub? HubPages can pull in RSS very well. Build a custom RSS feed filtered to your key term or subject matter. Or visit a relevant site or blog and see if they offer a feed for syndication. You can also utilize photo, link, news and Amazon modules - with more being introduced all the time. You can get a decent, content filled Hub off the ground in under an hour. Once it is spidered by Google and Yahoo that’s another prominent incoming link working in your favor. Give it a shot, use your imagination and add HubPages to your SEO arsenal and best practices.

3 Comments »

My sister sent me this video - presumably because she’s secretly mocking my profession of choice. This clip doesn’t make me want to navigate over to this handsome bastard’s site as much as maybe… take a shower. Based on the comments on the post-specific YT page, I am not alone.

If we, the public, were called upon to perform a service to this gentleman by offering constructive criticism to his efforts, I think it would likely go something like this:

• Spell your ultra-long URL properly on your splash screen. Unless of course a bluerpint is actually some kind of Belgian beer that I don’t know about.
• There is a tuxedo rental shop somewhere in Minnesota that is missing a men’s jacket size 14.
• Remember back in the late 1990’s when LLCool J would wear one leg of his sweat pants rolled up? It never really caught on, and someone should tell Gary here that the ‘one lapel flip’ won’t fare much better.
• Rodney Dangerfield called. He wants his tie knot back.
• I have seen hostage videos in which the subjects looked more comfortable. Is there a rabid grizzly bear on a chain just off camera? “Right, who’s doesn’t?” Strasberg is turning in his grave.
• The Shakespeare beard should be limited to sex offenders and poet laureates. Oh eye of newt and tongue of frog and link of Digg! Hast thou forsaken me?
• The dual eyebrow raise-head jerk move might be a precursor to a more serious neurological disorder. I kept waiting for him to yell “cock farts frigging slut monkeys!” at the end of every sentence.

Ladies, please form a line to the left. This guy should really be teaching a class in social heartbreaking, being Valentine’s Day and all.

4 Comments »

Arranging reciprocal link partnerships with other websites used to be an extremely effective tool for bolstering your organic search engine rankings. As webmasters figure out how to manipulate algorithms, however, those algorithms will inevitably be updated by the powers that be. Currently, search engine algorithms give far more credence to one-way incoming links, and the art of facilitating these is commonly referred to as link building. Link building methods are extremely diverse and the term should only be considered as an umbrella over a variety of specific strategies, including:

1. Paid links: Links can be purchased through link brokers or manually sought out one at a time by webmasters or web marketers. Brokers will provide you with a network of sites to choose from whereby you can customize the ever-important anchor text and select publishers relevant to your subject matter for a monthly fee. If you’re more traditional, don’t send out the wedding invitations just yet - doing it the old fashioned way is a long process, involving many emails or phone calls to prospective publishers, but may ultimately lead to the best value.
2. Link baiting: Writing original, catchy content and submitting it to news sites and social media sites has become a popular way of garnering one way incoming links, and is commonly referred to as “link baiting”. Particularly effective are “how-to” articles, top 10 lists and video clip collections. The catchier the title, the better. Should you strike gold by becoming the next viral marketing darling, the huge number of links you’ll receive from other sites, blogs and networks will be priceless.
3. Topic and content networks: Sites like Squidoo, HubPages and WetPaint can be categorized in a number of ways – content site, social media, etc. – but one thing is for sure – they are free and easy ways to create links pointing back to your website. If, for example, your website sells Slap Shot merchandise, you can build a resource lens about your company or a relevant topic and link using your choice of anchor text. The more your lens, hub or canvas is perceived as being an objective resource, the more traffic and incoming links it will get from other members of the network and people who stumble across it via search engines, passing the “link juice” on to your main site.

These points are a high-level starting point, but specific examples help paint a good link building picture for the uninitiated. Simply put, high quality and original content, coupled with a base knowledge of the emerging social media and voting sites that have been rushing onto the scene, can do wonders towards encouraging the outside world to link to you. Build it, and they will not come. Build it and make it helpful or entertaining to the right person and they will link to you in a heartbeat.

No Comments »