smo

robwatts — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 11:53:09 +0000

Anyone who’s been paying attention to anything worth paying attention to recently will no doubt be aware of the many social media resources out there today. Facebook, Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit, Del.ici.us, Myspace etc blah blah blah. I’m sure you don’t need an exhaustive list (thats’ for another blogpost perhaps)

Anything that’s frequented by large numbers of people in an area that you have an interest in should be something worthy of your consideration. If it isn’t then you are missing a huge trick. The opportunities for connecting with real people are just waiting to be snapped up. People want to connect with like minded people with like minded ideas. They’ll enjoy becoming familiar with the guy who stumbles stuff they like, the guy whose icon is always on a story somewhere.

Getting out and being sociable

The guy who is Stumbling or Digging or Sphinning or Bumping blog stories will at somepoint make it to the top of a list somewhere, his ‘brand’ will become increasingly associated with the ‘products’ that he is pushing. As time progresses he may even be seen as some maven, the opinion former, that guy who spots ‘good’ things and brings them to the attention of others.

Lets look at my friend Lyndon a Cornwall SEO. Lyndon also writes great linkbait articles . Lyndon is a top Stumbler, Digger, and Sphinner. He doesn’t Sphinn or Digg or Stumble just any old tosh – no, he pushes items that are interesting and have something to say. It is one of the reasons why he has a good little network going on in all 3 places. Unsurprisingly enough, a knock on effect of this promotional love is that his friends invariably talk about him.

Interesting SEO Expert Video Interviews from SES

The Full Monty for a $4000 blog anniversary prize draw – Hot Stuff

6 Reasons to Love StumbleUpon

Link Policy 2.0

Search Marketing Blogs Band Together to Give Charities Link Love

Making the most of the social media tools

Good social media sites like Sphinn have the added bonus of helping your brand, or in this case Lyndon’s by getting his face on to the pages of Sphinn that are frequented the most.

Sphinn’s home page shows their ‘Hot Topics’ these are the stories that are currently receiving the most ‘Sphinns’ from people reading blogs that are Sphinn enabled.

Practically every day this week I’ve seen Lyndons face on the front page. In other words myself and practically everybody else with a finger anywhere near the carotid artery of search marketing may at somepoint have noticed that guy with the red boat race peering out at them.

Sphinn wise, Lyndon has made a number of noteworthy inroads. He is already a top Sphinner on their ‘Greatest Hits’ page. By being a top Sphinner, he also gets a little kudos from his peers, the page linking to his profile also gets a dofollow link just one page deep from the Sphinn homepage. The Sphinn homepage is a well connected site that gets a lot of link love. By getting his link on to the their greatest hits page, Lyndons own site benefits from the resultant link love.

A look at Lyndons profile is also revealing. It shows that he is an active Sphinner. 80 comments 585 Sphinns, 48 Submissions with of these 35 going ‘hot’. Topics that go hot are usually promoted to the homepage. A direct benefit of getting Sphunn by Lyndon is that your story, whatever it is, will end up before the eyes of all manner of knowledgeable and connected people in search. What price a home page ad on Sphinn today I ask?

A combined look at his submissions and latest activity shows that he averages around 2 submissions a day. He joined the site mid July and has averaged around 9 Sphinns a day. Each little Sphinn helps bump that story up in the Sphinn attention hierachy. Those that benefit, remember such things and will usually act accordingly.

Lyndon is in good company too, he certainly isn’t alone. People like Andy, Maki , Chris, Sebastian, Loren to name but a few all actively sphinn and submit stories. They do so simply because they understand and recogniose the value and importance of the social side of this kind of stuff. They all write good stuff that receives lots of attention too. A net effect is that in all cases without exception, their brand awareness is increased. By associating with good stuff their reputation is enhanced.

What are you doing to build your brand and enhance your social media reputation?

smo

robwatts — Sat, 05 May 2007 14:36:09 +0000

My friend Lyndon was talking about SMO (Social Media Optimisation) and directories the other day and pissed a couple of people off. He was damn right too.

Most directories are useless rubbish

Bog standard web directories are not worth a cold cup of ****. A directory that sells on the basis of PR is asking for its link-pop-pass on ability to be stripped away.
See, for me, the whole get links from lots of directories on different IP’s thing is so frickin 2003 its not even funny any more! Most can be knocked up in two seconds flat and then populated with a dmoz script or Y! scrape. Most if not 99.9% of them offer very little value at all othe than the ability for joe bloggs to be able to drill down and find or add a site in an area they want to. Usually they are plastered with ~~adsense~~ adverts in the head of the document, designed to attract the users eye and take them away from the people who have paid to list. Funny.

Some try and capitalise on the little green PR bar, that’s pagerank to those who haven’t been awake for the past 7 years. They run around forums and blogs talking their sites up or getting some non informed person somewhere or over to extol the virtues of this ‘great new’ resource. People look and for those still hooked into that whole green PR tool bar thing, some think ooh lovely I think I’ll buy me one of those too.

People forget that search engine sharks patrol the seo seas . Sites or individuals that brag about PR usually end up worse off as a result. Don’t take my word for it though, go have a read yourself. Who is the demon here though? The search engine for killing their ability to pass juice, or the site owner for their cynical exploitation of their naive users?

Some directories don’t even get that far though and are strangled at birth never to recover. The case cited a classical victims of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Keeping ones mouth shut can keep you out of bother

See, the moment, the very moment, a directory starts to brag about its pagerank or its pages indexed, or its anticipated PR, then that’s the moment when they effectively say to all their directory participants, sorry but your link is now worthless for ranking purposes. We got greedy, we saw a PR6 + and decided to try and capitalise on it, this is capitalism after all.

Surely they aren’t all bad?

Noooo absolutely not, some directories offer great value for money.Those who actively promote themselves and add real value to the space and do things differently and so called niche directories for example, really are worth the participation. I know of some great niche directories ( I wont list them here) that are absolutely brilliant. They are full of laser targetted relevant stuff, they take the time to contact their submitters and offer new services, they prune old listings, they take feedback from site users and ask them to come back and write reports on sites they’ve used. They give people options to talk and discuss their experience using the companies that advertise, they allow for a conversation to take place. In short, they add value. Most directories out there today do not do any of this.

But a link is a link is a link, its all about links right?

No it isn’t, some links really are better than others. Ok, so initially you’ll gain a link with some anchor text and overtime even, you may well get some genuine visitors in buy mode, you may well even get a small ROI. Yet its only a may at best, and hardly the best way of spending your money. Most of the time it will be a complete waste of your time effort and money. You may as well, just spend it on some PPC scheme somewhere, guarantted traffic, or better still pay yourself and go write 2 or 3 kick arse responses to blog posts in your theme using technorati to classify authority for your niche – seriously, I kid you not.

But directories are permanent never go away links

Sure they are, but the value they convey is always subject to the traffic they receive and the importantance placed upon them. Directories are like all manner of other web properties, if they are just offering same ol same ol without adding anything new to the mix, then really, from both a user POV AND a search engine looking to output quality sites POV where oh where is the value?

I don’t blame people for trying to sell an idea or promote and collate a business. Some like Bruce really are passionate about what they do and agonise over giving a good service and adding value to the options provided for their visitors. BOTW and one or 2 others that escape me also try to do it all a little differently, yet few if any these days at least rank in Google for anything half worth ranking for. Like it or not I have to say they just aren’t doing enough and could do a whole lot better. Sure too, they may well have traction in other spaces and verticals and rank elsewhere which is great for now, but I wouldn’t trust it long term for something that’s gonna keep its place or juice. The engines move on, algos change, they are consistently looking out for new signals and indicators. A site that ranks well today can just as quickly plummet tomorrow, especially if it isn’t getting that SMO buzz.

There are a zillion and one directories out there offering that same broad topic and region structure. Dmoz and Y! were the 1st and quite frankly have been copied to death to the point of why even. Who really needs another directory that does the same as one that exists already. One person – the owner who spots what he thinks is a gravy train and a chance for an easy pound note, and for those that would protest and spit, just wake up and smell the coffee, please. No one denies your right to build it, but you should’nt expect it to do well in search, not in a bog-standard-seen-it-all-before-what-the-heck-is-so-good -about-this-one form.

Good directories are good directories you should use them.

Just in case I gave the wrong impression, there really is nothing wrong with a directory.

Blogcatalog.com – Bumpzee.com – mybloglog.com are 3 that spring to mind. Spicypage.com is another. What I hear you say, these aren’t directories! These are different, these offer something else, whatever are you talking about Rob you big fat idiot!

Well, no just go take a look. Everyone of them is a directory of sorts, a variation on a theme, that theme being the directory theme with a little SMO, you know that SMO stuff that creates buzz and interest.Whilst they are indeed very different types of directory, they are directories nonetheless in that they offer categorised sections of links to themed content and sites. They are different though and hold one simple similarity between them that their predecessors are severley lacking.

They Actively Engage With the People Who Use Them.

They are an alive community of real people talking about real things. They are not some static dead bunch of links that antiquate with age, ran by some little hierarchical fiedom who talk to you like you are some piece of errant scum. They are ran by people who truly want to provide something useful and different. They stay fresh and on topic. They utilise new tools and technologies to help the people who use them. RSS to give user visitors sample content, they get real traffic for their users illustrated in server logs and SERPs up and down the lists of those who participate. They provide voting systems, messaging systems, widgets and stats, they lead the way in enabling people to use the web as the amazing communication tool it is.

If you are a directory owner today, and aren’t trying to engage ALL of your users in ALL manner of ways that take account of web 2.0 and all the various other interaction options that people want, then you really could be doing a whole lot better.

If you are a site owner of any description, then you really need to wake up to the fact that the days of just build it and they will come are fast fast diminishing. You really need to get out there and enage, just like you would in the real bricks and mortar world. You can catch up, its not too late, get on it today.