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Tweet Nothings: Twitter, TWhirl and the Violent Demise of Productivity

I begrudgingly began using Twitter over a year ago as it had emerged as a social media juggernaut and it behooved me to get myself up to speed, as that’s kinda what I sorta do for a living. My adoption was slow at best and up until last week I was probably logging in and pretending to “get it” about once a week. Well, a couple of days ago I truly “got it” and I really wish more of my personal friends and colleagues were using it – hence this post.

twhirl

If you have a Twitter account, even one that is gathering dust, please feel free to add, follow and interact with me. We didn’t have to go to high school together – you can just be a fan of the blog, a creepy ex-girlfriend, a creditor, etc: Pyeman73. My Narcissism is rampant but not fussy.

The other reason I have warmed up is my discovery (via a friend’s tweet, no less) of a great application called TWhirl, which makes using Twitter about 3 times as fast and easy as it used to be. It runs quietly in your taskbar, alerts you to new tweets via a subtle pop-up and opens with a click any time you wish to contribute. You can also cross-populate Pownce and Jaiku (two other popular Twitter-esque sites) automatically. If you currently have no clue as to what I’m talking about please be patient and read on. If I’d had Twitter laid out for me like this a year ago I might have taken it to heart straight away.

What Twitter Isn’t

  • An instant messenger.
  • An RSS feed.
  • A blog.

What Twitter Is

  • A social media messenger: You are sending a “tweet” to a large group of people all at once in real time, as opposed to just one other person.
  • An RSS feed “on steroids“: as I’ve seen it described. A traditional RSS feed keeps you updated whenever the blog of a friend, foe, peer or other person of note is updated without you having to visit 72 blogs via your bookmarks every hour on the hour. It could be said that Twitter updates you on the “thoughts” of those same people in real time.
  • A micro-blog: Watch as people update you throughout the day as the mood strikes them as opposed to a traditional blog that might creak into action 3 times a week. The 140 character-limit per tweet keeps the lines from becoming blurred on this point.
  • A micro-distribution list: Instead of spending a half hour setting up and sending a mass email linking to your latest baby pictures on Flickr, send a tweet and all your best buddies will see it right away. Twitter automatically shortens URLs so that they don’t take up too much of your 140 character limit. On second thought, just don’t send me the baby pictures, full stop.

Practical Twitter Uses

  • Groveling: Ask a question of your professional peers, who are also Twitter addicts, and get thousands of dollars of consulting advice for free and almost instantaneously. Obviously this does not apply to every single industry. I haven’t seen to many ball-scratching construction foremen wearing “I’m Tweeting” t-shirts, for example.
  • News: Information spreads like wildfire on Twitter, and if you’re following industry peers or thought leaders – you’re often getting it from the horse’s mouth.
  • Whoring: Encouraging acquaintances to vote for or “Digg” your blog posts, articles, press releases, etc. Don’t send out annoying pop-up IMs one at a time to 30 people – send out one tweet. If they want to ignore it, they can. Entirely unoffensive.
  • The Liquor: Where are you and your co-workers or friends going for drinks tonight? It’s Thirsty Thursday, after all. This use isn’t quite as important as the first three examples, but most of the social media mavens I know are also pissheads. Hyperlinks respectfully forgone.

Are You Gonna Tweet All Day Little Birdie?

Twitter is the water cooler of 2008. I forget where I saw it, but I’m sure I didn’t coin that phrase. To help you visualize that statement here are a collection of real tweets I have received this week:

  • “Is anyone else excited for the new episode of The Office tonight?” – From a friend of mine who wants to have John Krasinski’s baby, or at least some of his DNA on her chin. It was accompanied by a link to a plot summary she had found.
  • “New blog post on how to start and spread rumors.” – From an industry peer of mine who likes to send out a tweet to all of his friends whenever he posts a new article on his blog. Many of them would eventually read the article anyway, but Twitter allows you to self promote and get info in front of eyeballs instantaneously.
  • “Best Damn Tech Show, Period. films tonight, DM if you are in the Philly area and want to hang out!” – DM stands for “direct message” and this podcaster is using members of his audience following him on Twitter to announce an episode taping. In the process, he is likely going to strengthen his brand, attract some new followers and eventually gain listeners.
  • “There’s a giant lake monster attacking the Ottawa suburbs and everyone must evacuate immediately!” – As Twitter officially launched in October 2006 I don’t think anyone’s had the opportunity to utilize it as a distant early warning system… yet. Why is my glass of water rippling? OH JESUS NO…. (flatline).
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Press Release Schizophrenia

“We have 12 vacancies. 12 cabins, 12 vacancies.” – Norman Bates

Folks will never tire of telling you how beneficial press releases are to search engine optimization, but can rarely recite the minutiae as to exactly why. It’s also important to understand the double-duty press releases can play in supplementing your online marketing efforts as a whole – SEO being only one facet of a comprehensive strategy. I thought about the potential confusion earlier this morning as I wrote some material for our sales monkeys. I’ve edited it a bit, and now – perhaps – it will give you a leg up. PRs are indeed great for boosting SERP rankings if you know what you’re doing, but that’s not the only traffic benefit they can provide on the interwebnets.

Press releases have two major benefits in regards to SEM (Search Engine Marketing). The first is direct traffic generated upon publishing. This traffic is a considerable spike which trails off after a while. All of the best PR networks allow you to target your release to some degree be it geographically or topic/industry specific. It is possible to tailor submissions to these networks carefully and with the site’s target audience in mind. These releases can also be also tagged, re-purposed on the website (in a blog or news section) and submitted to dozens of social media outlets depending on obvious variables like topic, mass appeal, etc. A press release about a new vacuum cleaner attachment isn’t going to attract as much direct attention as say a release about a corporate merger.

The second benefit is long-term and ongoing. Most PR networks allow you to tailor at least one link back to your site. The text contained in an HTML hyperlink is a major factor which search engine algorithms consider when associating a site with a specific keyword or phrase. For example, if a site wished to rank well for the term discount DVDs, you would link that phrase back in a subtle manner within the body of the press release. As the release is picked up by major networks like PR.com you will generally see a large boost in the SERPs (search engine results pages) for the targeted term. Over time, this press release will very likely be syndicated across a wide variety of websites, all with unique IP addresses, and usually with the hyperlink intact. So, although you pay $200 to submit the release to PR.com, in reality the value has the potential to eventually quadruple depending on the same variables I mentioned earlier.

Mental illness is nothing to poke fun at and that’s not what I’m here for. Press releases can, however, be likened to a split personality in the way they can provide so much visibility value when used effectively and by companies that know what they’re doing. One personality is loud and brash and wants to get picked up by Google news for a quick traffic fix and followed by obscurity. The other wants to quietly lurk in the background and percolate over time. Is this a good or responsible analogy? It’s accurate at any rate. Now if you’ll excuse me, my mother is calling.

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Fisher Price: My First Link

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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Potential Revenue Streams for Parked Domain Names

Update 6/03/07:

WhyPark works. I moved all of my unused or poorly developed domain names under their roof a couple of months ago. Then I did about an hour’s work of en masse linkbuilding to get them all re-spidered and left it all to simmer. My “WhyPark” AdSense channel is now my second most profitable, averaging about $5 and growing. If you’re like me – a compulsive domain hoarder – put some of the little buggers to work and see what happens.

“What shall we do with a parked domain name?
What shall we do with a parked domain name?
What shall we do with a parked domain name – ear-lye in the mor-ning…”

Jeepers, I think I had a little too much rum while swabbing the decks today. But it’s a heck of a good question, and one I’ve asked myself a lot lately. If you’re like me, and you’ve registered what you think is the best domain name ever thought up by humankind on a weekly basis since 1999 – you’ve probably amassed quite a collection by now. And I bet more than half of them aren’t being used at the moment, but you just can’t seem to let go because you’ll get around to building that amazing website someday. Listen, nobody likes a squatter – but those domain names were an investment and this is business.

2 Revenue Streams for Parked Domain Names

GoDaddy’s Cash Parking: A few months ago, I took a large number of dusty domains, all with some amount of existing organic traffic, that have been percolating for 2-4 years and moved them all over to GoDaddy’s Cash Parking section. In terms of ease, if you have your domains hosted with them, it’s as simple as checking a box and hitting submit. You can choose the template of the page and the specific keywords that will trigger the Yahoo ads generated there. I’ve made a few bucks, but nothing to write home about. This may be a great option for an older, established domain but would be like useless for something you’ve just registered.

WhyPark’s Content Domain Parking: This is the sort of service I am most interested in experimenting with. The service is similar to traditional parking in that they will host a page for you after you point your DNS in their direction and then host ads relevant to your domain. The major differentiator here is that you keep 100% of the Adsense revenue and can use your own code. You can host up to 100 domains for a one time fee of $100, and they generate all of the content automatically based on your custom parameters (presumably via RSS feeds, etc.). They also give you the ability to sell text links and even let you choose your own title tags (unlike GoDaddy). In theory this could work for domains which are established and those which are embryonic. A great model which will be loved by some and absolutely reviled by others, but the bottom line is – will it make more money than traditional parking services? I think… yes.

The way I see it, it can’t hurt to kick the tires on a few of these services. I am a firm believer that if something sounds too good to be true, it usually is – but I also believe that an objective resource with good content (even if that content isn’t super-original) will attract relevant search engine traffic. I’ll get back to you after I have some personal success or failure to share with you, and I welcome your comments and advice in the meantime. What sites am I missing here? Admittedly, I am a rookie parker, and perhaps even a drunken one.

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SEO with HubPages

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.

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Customized RSS Feeds: Search Marketing Godsend

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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Competitive Analysis is Crucial to SEO

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:

  1. 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.
  1. 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.
  1. 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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Optimizing PDFs for Search Engines

Although PDFs shouldn’t take the place of HTML in terms of spider bait, you may have salespeople on the road or prospective clients who need quick access to your catalog by way of the Portable Document Format. So we don’t want to convert PDFs to HTML and then deep six them they do not have to be mutually exclusive. Rather, we want to convert them to HTML and optimize the PDFs so they are organically searchable. If we want to keep them live for easy download, we may as well follow the simple steps that will render them indexable by Google while we’re at the squaredance.

So the million dollar question becomes how does one optimize a PDF for search? It’s actually quite simple – for every document you publish online, you should clearly define both the title and description in the document’s properties. To do this, right click on the PDF in question and select ‘Properties’ at the very bottom of the navigation menu. The following window should pop-up (These are two tabs of the properties window placed side-by-side to save space):

How to SEO a PDF

The top form allows you to change the document’s file name. I would recommend including keywords, separated by hyphens and not underscores. So, online-catalog.pdf could become specific-discount-stuff-we-sell-catalog.pdf or some variation. I have used a fictional camping store for the graphic example, in which case an ideal filename might be “discount-camping-equipment.pdf”. Don’t feed the bears, do feed the search engines.

The next step is to click on the ‘Summary’ tab. The possibilities here are pretty self explanatory – Titles, Subjects, Authors and even a selection of related keywords can be populated from this tab. Use this capability to its full potential and fill in your business or file-specific information. By default, this will be blank, so stuff it full of juicy data for the search engines. And voila, you’re just drastically increased the likelihood of your document showing up in natural search.

A few other notable points – Once Google has indexed your PDF relevantly thanks to your taking the time to fill out the properties information, it can index the text contained within. It may have already done this for some of your documents but take the time to optimize the tags regardless. Titles, Subjects and Company Names will help intuitiveness when humans see at your PDF on search engine results pages. URLs in PDFs are often counted by spiders as precious backlinks so proper hyperlinks should be included in all documents before they are converted to PDFs. Finally, Google also seems to hold PDFs in a positive light because they are completely impervious to comment spam. Read more from the horse’s mouth here.

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