StumbleUpon
Posted by admin
I’ve finally got around to checking out StumbleUpon, in a few spare moments before catching a plane back to Barcelona. It’s an interesting concept, and a novel way to browse the web. Using this social networking site, or “stumbling”, takes you from person to person - either randomnly, or according to your interests. You can see what sites are popular with users, or visit profiles to find like-minded friends or contacts. Only downside is that you need to download a plug-in/add-on in order to vote for the sites you like, but it’s a painless sign up process.
How useful it will be as a means to generate quality traffic to your site remains to be seen, but some people have found it useful to get user feedback!
Writing quality original content
Posted by admin
We all know “content is king”, but how good are we at producing that content? Here’s some good links:
A cheap web hosting deal is not a good one even if it is offering free web design templates. Instead pay a bit more but go for names like ipowerweb or easycgi only.
Why do I do consulting, when I have my own projects?
Posted by admin
Like many Web Marketing consultants, I divide my time between my own projects and consulting. Keeping the right balance is essential, and sometimes I ask myself the above question. There are several honest answers, in no particular order:
- I’m a nice guy, and I like helping people out. If I can help you succeed, I feel good - and even better if you pay me!
- Consulting cash today is sometimes better than potential cash returns tomorrow.
- I go insane staying at home constantly - I like to have the occasional client to get me out of the house and have new topics to talk about!
- Looking at a new business makes me think of new things - and new things often leads to new projects which lead to new cash
- Other people’s projects have other challenges, learning from them improves my own capabilities.
I learnt the need to diversify the hard way - I relied to heavily a passive revenue stream (well, more of a river) that suddenly dried up. Diversification means more work (surely the anti-thesis of old-school SEO?!?), but the rewards are more stable.
Social Networks - your new friends
Posted by admin
Looks like 2007 is the year of Social Networks, everybody’s talking about them and everybody’s joining them…well, anybody who’s anybody anyway, looks like I’m a little late to the party. But hey, I’m here now, and I brought bubbles!
So, the question is HOW do you get involved? ClickZ wrote a good introductory post on this, summarising the steps to get involved. My even shorter summary would be “Get Involved”!
The basics of search engine optimization exact that everything from the web design to the plans like ppc should be optimized. Only then can one do optimized advertising.
Barcelona Internet Marketing
Posted by admin
Yes, I’ve finally got round to setting up something remotely resembling a “proper” site. Ok, it needs work, but it’s better than a holding page! Now, the next step is of course to make sure that we rank for “Barcelona Internet Marketing“, nothing like being number 1 for your own name…game on!
Is SEO dead?
Posted by admin
I don’t believe that SEO is dead, but SEO in a vaccum will be dead at some point in the not too distant future. Smart SEOs have already begun moving towards a more holistic web marketing approach. One facet of this is the whole notion of Social Media Optimization, but there are other aspects including old fashioned PR and media relations.
This will be increasingly viewed as part of a bigger picture, that includes developing a matching content strategy. Your web marketing strategy will match up with a content plan with the needs of your prospective customers and your web promotional plan by necessity. It will be the best way to build your web business for the future. And I bet more and more SEOs will be calling themselves Web Marketers in the near future.
A word from Matt Cutts
Posted by admin
There’s a fork in the road, and people can think hard about whether they’re optimizing for users or whether they’re optimizing primarily for search engines. And the sort of people who have been doing “new” SEO, or whatever you want to call it — that’s social media optimization, link bait, things that are interesting to people and attract word of mouth and buzz — those sorts of sites naturally attract visitors, attract repeat visitors, attract backlinks, attract lots of discussion. Those sorts of sites are going to benefit as the world goes forward.
From an interview with Gord Hotchkiss published at Search Engine Land.
Online Marketing Europe 2007 - Summary
Posted by admin
The first thing that struck me was how over-subscribed some of the presentations were - people were sitting in the aisles. So, SEM has gained a higher profile here in Spain, and the audience has become better educated.
One presentation, by a company that shall remain nameless, was basically nothing more than a pitch for link buying/selling. They were grilled by the audience, and I imagine the presence of a Google rep will lead shortly to their business being pulled out from under them.
There was a lot of interest in SEO and PPC tactics, both from competitors looking for new tips and prospective clients looking to learn how to choose an SEO.
Movement in the exhibitors area was painfully slow. SEMPO were there, although they didn’t seem to really know why - they’re attempting to become a point of reference for SEM professionals, not realising that WebMasterWorld etc do it so much better. Still, a suit-and-tie front to the SEM world could be useful for prestige…
There were other analytics-based companies, struggling to explain why their products were better than Google’s freebie. And failing.
Then there were the media-buying companies, mobile marketing companies, and the email marketing companies. Difficult sectors to push, as results are difficult to judge and the associated costs are high - an area to watch, but I’m not ready to jump in yet.
The most movement seemed to circulate around the JuegaTuSuerte stand, and not just because of the free food and drink! Marketed by Fortuna Media, they are online entertainment company (think Bingo) providing white-label branding onto their hugely succesful platform - a great way to monetise traffic if you have the right audience.
Conclusions?
Clearly the SEM world in Spain is moving forward, there’s a lot of interest, and finally I got to grips with the Spanish SEO terminology!
Google Webmaster Central out of BETA
Posted by admin
As a Valentines treat Google Webmaster Central is now out of Beta.
You have to verify that you are the site owner, this process is simple if you have access to the site - all you need to do is add a temporary META tag (or upload a file). Of course, if you don’t have direct control over the site then this verification process may take a little time.
Tools available include:
- Crawl errors - useful to see if Google is having any problems crawling your site
- Crawl rate - information on how much and how often your site is crawled, plus an option to speed up/slow down the crawl rate
- Statistics - Your site’s PageRank, top search queries you feature in, analysis of your page content and incoming link text
- Links - this is best feature! You can view, download, and analyse information on all external links and internal links.
It’s a good example of Google reaching out to the webmaster community, and there are some useful tools in there, and nice to have all the information in one control panel.
You can also associate multiple sites with the same account, so if you have multiple clients you can use the one control panel to look at information across all your clients’ sites.
Go only for trusted names in hosting services like godaddy. Not only do they offer free web design templates, but their backup features save your computers as well.
Online Marketing Europe 2007 - Madrid
Posted by admin
OME 2007 starts tomorrow, and promises to be an interesting event. Looking at the line-up, the emphasis is less on search engine strategies and more on buying/selling advertising. Does this mean that companies are looking for other traffic streams than Google? Or does it mean that they are more comfortable paying other companies for ad space rather than relying on good old SEO? More on this theme when I get back!