Social Media Marketing Blog

7 Free Brand Reputation Management Tips

by Dave Pye on February 9, 2007

What exactly is online brand reputation management (BRM)? Basically, negative or malicious press in SERPS (search engine results pages) can be combated by creating positive content or and knowing where to post or submit it. If the positive content is deemed by the search engines to appear on more integral websites, the negative rankings will be pushed farther and farther down the SERPs until that post by a disgruntled blogger is on page three and your good name has been restored.

Brand reputation management and search marketing were once very separate entities but with the emergence of blogs, forums, social media and other user-driven content sites, they now must be performed in tandem. You don’t have to be a skilled programmer, or even know how to build a website, to get your opinions online anymore – This can be a very scary prospect for any company. If you’re not scared, you should be. Boo.

How do you combat a high-ranking negative reference to your name or company? Luckily, it is far easier to attain good rankings for a business or domain name because there is far less competition for these words than for the goods or services they provide. It is also reasonable to push down negative rankings for individual people’s names. But not always, obviously. If your client’s name is Gavin Wunderschnitzen, you’re laughing. If your BRM services have just been retained by John Smith, just give him his money back now.

The same blogs, forums and social media sites which can be used to negate or slur a brand, can be used to defend it. Here are some of my methods, and I look forward to your feedback and tips on the subject. Lots of folks are selling BRM as a service nowadays, but before you cannibalize a considerable part of your marketing budget because some 12 year old with a Bebo account and a crap in their diaper didn’t like one of their Christmas presents, consider the following Free BRM tips.

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Customized RSS Feeds: Search Marketing Godsend

by Dave Pye on February 8, 2007

I am a small fish in the Search Marketing Blogosphere, and I make no mistake about it. Let’s get that out of the way right now. SEM is a snowball, the Wild West, an unidentified organic lifeform frigging with colonists on LV-426 (nerd alert). One of the only ways to stay on the cutting edge of this strange new beast is to read a staggering amount of related blogs every day. It’s hard to get through them all, and taking a few days off leaves you with a backlog that makes it tough to try and put a dent in all the posts at all. My point is, I have to choose the personalities I spend my time with very carefully.

There are my trusted favorites, and my new fancies – all of whom have proven themselves to be sources of hard information and advice, and not just links to other people’s information and advice. Many SEO blogs point to other SEO blogs with little original content. There’s nothing wrong with that if you’re looking for high-level industry happenings. But I have to concern myself with straight poopy poop dope, and little else. Practical tips and strategies that go into painful detail are what I need, and aren’t just general blabber about ‘social media’ and how important it is right now. I have a housepet that could tell you that.

So as I make my bones as an SEM blogger, speaking largely at the moment into a vacuum, it’s time to decide what side of the road I want to stand on. I’d like to eventually be considered as some sort of twisted marketing resource, so my new SEO Tips category is thus born unto the Pony. I’m no knowledge hoarder, people. And with no further ado, here is the first:

The Yahoo! News RSS feed usually looks great when aggregated, as opposed to Google News which can look absolutely terrible. The Y! articles don’t usually double up from multiple sources, and the 100 word excerpts look like you painstakingly wrote them yourself. The best part is yet to come – the feeds are completely customizable. You can create an RSS feed, which is fully compatible with Squidoo, HubPages, Google Reader, BlogLines, etc. simply by typing in your desired keywords. Be sure to visit the feed customization page and bookmark it immediately (scroll down to get to the form). Here now are some practical applications:

You can employ exact search criteria with quotes to pinpoint and filter content.
Build a feed for your company or website name to monitor brand reputation around the web. Read it every morning.
Use feeds on any number of social media sites where RSS is enabled for great updated content.
Build Squidoo Lenses, HubPages, etc. about your company and filter in new Press Releases mentioning you automatically.
Hook up easily locatable RSS feeds near the tops of your pages for easy syndication. This is a core best practice of social media marketing: make your original content easy to bookmark, vote, syndicate etc.

And, I’m spent. I sincerely hope that this – or some of my future battleground tips – set off a spark in your head that wasn’t there before you started reading. Although if you literally have sparks in your head, you probably have more important things to worry about.

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The Lifespan of an SEO Professional

by Dave Pye on January 29, 2007

Like many of my peers (whom I am making a renewed effort to get to know since beginning to appreciate the wealth of cool people in the Search industry) my SEO/SEM inception began when I started a retail website. That first foray has long since gone the way of the Dodo, but I remember it fondly – as my resulting interest and education has kept me in cat food for the last 7 years. But how long will this all last? Here are a couple of snippets from my increasingly frequent self Q&As, which are starting to sound more and more like an exchange between Jack Torrance and Lloyd the bartender.

Should I get out of this racket because it’s becoming so flooded?
No – the deluge of half-cocked, irresponsibly guaranteeing, myna bird “SEOs” will actually make it easier for the people who relish it, have talent and stay at the forefront to stand out in a crowd. I might as well write you a <a href=”http://www.startupbusinessschool.com”>free business plan</a> while I’m at it. Use said deluge to your advantage, and as a daily motivating factor.

Has SEO really become ‘easy’ like so many people now claim?
No – There is no free tool that can take the place of experienced keyword and volume research. The creation of engaging original content takes patience and skill. Manual link-building never ceases to be monotonous. Social media is only relevant or applicable to some clients, and even then requires startling creativity in order to make any difference. Link baiting is second only to chaos theory in terms of unpredictability and luck.

I’ve had my doubts about the credibility and longevity of this career path I find myself on. And new questions pop up everyday when I’m doing my daily SEM blog reading. But my mind becomes settled quicker than an algorithm that’s realized it’s being manipulated when I remember where I can go if I don’t like it – back to the cubicle. This industry is undeniably exciting for a reason. It’s the wild, wild west out here, and I’m going to need another scotch.

“I’m the kinda guy… likes to know who’s buying his links, Lloyd.”

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WordPress 2.1 Released! Meet “Ella”

by Dave Pye on January 22, 2007

The latest version of the best open source blogging/content for SEO management system in the known universe was introduced less than nine minutes ago – and boy am I excited. A full list of new features can be viewed here, but I’ll quickly rattle off the ones I’m particularly pumped about:

Autosave makes sure you never lose a post again: The benefits of this are obvious – there is nothing worse than spending an hour writing up the best entry in human history and then having it erased during a publishing error.
Our new tabbed editor allows you to switch between WYSIWYG and code editing instantly while writing a post: It’s embarassing that the now-prehistoric Blogger actually had a “one up” on WordPress in this regard for a long time. Well not no more.
Our completely redone visual editor also now includes spell checking: Again, an overdue and welcome addition.
You can set any page to be the front page of your site, and put the latest posts somewhere else, making it much easier to use WordPress as a content management system: Many people have been predicting the evolution of WordPress into a much more versatile CMS, and this enhancement makes that an easy reality. I can’t wait to find an excuse to build a new site and try this out. I should have a half-cocked idea popping into my head in T-minus five seconds.
Links in your blogroll now support sub-categories and you can add categories on the fly: There were a series of clunky, difficult plugins that accomplished this feature that had me pulling my hair out on more than one occasion. About time it became standard.
A new version of the Akismet plugin is bundled: As the first thing I used to do when kicking off a site with a new WordPress installation was install Akismet (the Queen Mother of SPAM blockers,) this nearly made me do a cartwheel. In a pink thong.

If you’re a webmaster, SEO or small business owner looking for a cost-effective site solution – Head immediately to WordPress.org and do yourself a favor. Download it, install it, cuddle it, feed it and watch it work for you. Learning curves be dammned – this is the way of the future, grasshoppers.

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Blog Memes: Viral Like a Bad Cough

by Dave Pye on January 4, 2007

Dan just tagged me with some silly meme that’s going around like a nasty flu, but I’m a good sport (and complete narcissist) so I’ll play along. I am also in full agreement with Darren Rowse – namely that transparency lends to a better site visitor experience. So with no further ado, Toto – please pull back the curtain for a minute.

5 Things you Didn’t Know About Thirsty Pony (Dave Pye)

Dave is Canadian and was born in Ottawa, Ontario in 1973. I will be moving back to Toronto in early 2007 and am anxious to get in contact with any SEO enthusiasts that may exist in the T-Dot.
Dave has jumped out of an airplane attached to a tall German. The girl who jumped out of the plane right after me hit the side of a house and nearly died. I take this as a sign that I got off easy and am better suited for land travel.
Dave maintains over 35 websites, in varying degrees of incompletion and disarray. The one which makes the most AdSense revenue is a silly dog sweater site he made for his sister 4 years ago and rarely touches.
Dave loves movies and maintains several lenses devoted to his favorites, including: SlapShot, Blade Runner, Blazing Saddles, Rocky and Goodfellas. Believe it or not, Squidoo affiliate revenue actually pays my internet bill every month. Ladies, form a line to the left.
Dave and his friend Chris maintain a hockey fights blog that has been mentioned in the New York Times and too many related sport blogs to mention. We write regularly, interact with readers at every opportunity and introduced hockey podcasts this year which we try very hard to make funny.

And this is all providing, of course, that you give a rat’s behind. If not, enjoy some Tiny Prints Coupons. I have chosen to tag Jennie Smash as she links to me in her sidebar and I know she’ll come up with some worthy answers.

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Competitive Analysis is Crucial to SEO

by Dave Pye on December 27, 2006

How can you possibly hope to challenge your business rivals in terms of search engine rankings without an intimate knowledge of the reasons behind their successes? To perform SEO in a vacuum is to declaw your ultimate organic visibility potential. Don’t just focus on your own website and whether or not you can prevail for your most valuable keywords. Look specifically at what the competitors you can’t eclipse are doing, and then formulate a plan for supplementing your efforts based on that analysis.

Here is the good news: The reasons behind the enviable rankings of your foes are always readily visible. Save for the intricate inner-workings of search engine algorithms, there are very few secrets in the wild world of search engine optimization. Here is what to look for first and why:

Title Tags: View source of the competition’s pages and dissect their Title tags.
Why?: Title tags are weighed heavily by all search engines and should be among your first optimization targets. Are your MVKs in your title tags? Are your title tags unique to every page? Is your domain name taking up half of the valuable character limit in your tag? Treat your Title tags with the respect they deserve, and you can start by learning from those of your nemesis. >> Title Tag Tips.

Meta Tags: View source of your competition’s pages and dissect their keyword and description metas.
Why?: Chances are, if they have an intelligent SEO effort underway, you’ll be able to snatch a few keywords or ideas you hadn’t thought of. Allow their tags to influence your own, but do not blatantly copy them. Search engines (and corporate lawyers) will appreciate unique copy. >> Meta Tag Analyzer.

Back/Incoming Links: Who is linking to your competitor’s site?Why?: Simply put – the more indexed incoming links a site has, the better they will do in natural search. An incoming link counts as a ‘vote’ for your site. How prominent are the linking sites and how many of them are using mission-critical keywords in the anchor text? >> Backlink & Anchor Text Tool.

These starting points are the tip of the iceberg, but among the most important to any comprehensive SEO competitive analysis. Keep your eye on the surrounding landscape, and not just your own domain. Don’t do it to keep the wolves at bay, but rather to learn from the very easily figured strategies of others.

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The Click Fraud Boogeyman

by Dave Pye on December 11, 2006

I love Saturday Night Live, and I always hang in there during the (frequent) rebuilding years. There was a skit last weekend about a Monster in a little girl’s closet. Long story short, not only did her parents believe her and immediately become hysterical – eventually the suave monster came out of her closet and began singing “Here Comes Santa Claus”. It was twisted, the best skit of the night and also kinda timely given this recent report.

Every time I discuss SEM in open company, or meet a new PPC client for the first time, the discussion invariably turns to the horrors of click fraud. You’ve no doubt heard the ghost stories about the insipid teams of people in Prague and India who are paid by your competitors to do nothing except click your PPC ads all day and kill puppies. This poppycock has dangerously passed into the realm of truth for most peripheral online marketers, and it’s time to put this Boogeyman to bed.

Andy Beal’s scoop from Search Engine Strategies is straight from the Googleplex, so have a read and learn about the impressive security measures in place within AdWords. 4 levels of security, to be exact. Simply put, actual click fraud within AdWords totals less than 2%:

“This is an amazing revelation and clearly shows that Google is getting tired of speculation and rumor filling the void left by the lack of transparency Google has with regards to their click fraud numbers… The biggest reason Google has for being hesitant about revealing the exact numbers, is fear that Yahoo and Microsoft will be able to leverage the numbers to deduce more information about AdWords.”

I am putting a lot of my faith in these numbers – admittedly mainly because they reinforce what I’ve always believed. At the least this level of security should appease some of the skeptics. PPC, when done correctly, can be such an effective traffic and revenue generator that it should never be discounted because of what equates now to little more than an urban myth. Boo!

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Corporate Bloggin’ Ain’t Easy

by Dave Pye on November 30, 2006

By now there are Amish people who can tell you blog marketing can work wonders driving traffic and leads to your business. But after you take the time to build one on your site, don’t expect Shoeless Joe Jackson to immediately show up and start hitting runs for the home team. Blogging is hard work, and the internet is littered with the bones of thousands of abandoned ideas, usually with “ramblings” or “musings” somewhere in the title.

Momentum is a tough thing to perpetuate. For every day you don’t post on your blog, you can almost devise a mathematical formula that will exponentially measure the traffic you’re going to lose forever. If you aren’t naturally prolific, and you’re not paying someone else to keep your company blog oven fresh, there’s some easy rules of thumb that will help you through.

Write what you know: Start a blog on a topic on which you’re passionate and that you’ll be able to maintain without losing momentum. Your business is a darn good start, obviously. If you can’t write passionately about your own business, you should probably be collecting shopping carts in your local mall parking lot.
Find your niche: Focus on one topic, and don’t blur your subject matter. Use a sniper rifle, not a shotgun, and you’re more likely to attract and keep an interested audience. If your website sells a wide range of electronics, for example, pick one related facet of what you do and focus on that. Product reviews, free digital photography tips, etc. Maybe start a new domain that’s just a branded blog which links back to your retail site.
Make time to write: Not every entry needs to be the Winds of War. Link to an interesting article you’ve read and write a sentence or two summarizing or sharing your thoughts about it. You can even quote part of the original article Ask for some reader feedback on a topic relating to your business. Talk about a recent happening within the company or repost a press release. But, for the love of Bo Jackson, just do it!

Maintaining a company blog is a lot like having a puppy. If you don’t give it water it will die. Don’t adopt a blog until you realize the responsibility attached to keeping it alive. And if you’re still interested afterwards, remember my three simple tips. Housetraining WordPress is up to you.

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