maine web development, web design, internet marketing

We have spent the last 50 years moving away from personal interaction, starting with the age of TV and Radio.

Marketing focused on selling to target audiences with little concern for the people in that audience. From TV and Radio, to Print, Direct Mail and Telemarketing, sales and marketing digressed to a numbers game obsessed with creating campaigns and measuring return.

Thanks to changes in the social and geographic make-up of our country since the early days of the technological revolution, generalized message driven marketing did not seem out-of-place as we all grew apart.

We moved to cul-de-sacs in the ‘burbs, chose to watch TV, play video games and surf the web rather than personally interact. We built fences, closed drapes and ordered in. We created our own interactive worlds within our physical communities – only to become punch drunk by the never ending value added messaging we received as people tried to reach us through every channel imaginable.

Businesses marketed to reach a demographic, playing the numbers game – reach many, convert a few, dial to style. Individuals were being removed from the equation.

Now advancements in technology have allowed us all to come full circle. We have rejected the mass marketing game. We are headed back to a time when we chose vendors based on personal integrity and not on marketing prowess. Back when who said it was more important than what was said.

Business is becoming human again and I welcome it. The world class, best of breed, new paradigm, next generation solution is being replaced by the experienced qualified person with a name and face and an easily research-able, valid, professional online profile.

The very technology that, in its infancy separated us from each other, has now matured enough to connect us all back together again. In the age of research-buying, people are again doing business with people.

As developers bulldoze entire unoccupied cul-de-sac developments in Las Vegas, I can’t help but wonder if a sense of real community will come back – developing offline as it has online. After all, we have seen some trickle over with Tweet Ups, Linkedin meetings and breakfast events. Time will tell.

Everyone in SEO-land understands the most basic elements that are key to any optimization campaign, but Danny Dover at SEOmoz has some new insights on the old standards. Based on their own field research and the rankings correlation report developed by their team, he’s offered up some juicy nuggets that should be of interest to anyone in the search marketing field.

Title Tag Format

SEOmoz Best Practice:

Primary Keyword – Secondary Keywords | Brand
Or
Brand Name | Primary Keyword and Secondary Keywords

Reasoning:

According to their first round of intensive search engine ranking factors correlation testing, it was clear to SEOmoz that if you are trying to rank for a very competitive term, it is best to include the keyword at the beginning of the title tag. If your brand can make a difference in CTR and your terms are less competitive, it is best to put the brand name first.

My Stance:

I agree with the above formats and implement them on an individual client basis. If my client’s company has a well-known name that people would search for, then the second format works best. However, the majority of my clients are searched for by targeted keywords, in which case I use the first format.

H1 Tags

SEOmoz Best Practice:

H1s are important for users but now less so for Search Engines.

Reasoning:

SEOmoz correlation data shows that H1 tags do not carry the same ranking weight that had been originally presumed. The importance of this tag seems to be in establishing information hierarchy and helping with algorithmically determined semantics, not in search engine optimization.

In August 2008, Michael Martin had a conversation with Google’s Matt Cutts at SMX Advanced and he indicated that Google doesn’t weigh the H1 tag any heavier than an H2 or H4, but it shouldn’t be used more than once.

My Stance:

It is (and currently continues to be) my practice to use a variation of the primary and secondary keywords in the H1. This SEOmoz finding has piqued my interest, however, and I’ll be doing my own internal testing on the H1’s ranking weight.

Meta Keywords Tag

SEOmoz Best Practice:

Contrary to what SEOMoz recommended in the past, they now find this tag useful in ranking for Yahoo.

Reasoning:

Initially SEOmoz did not recommend using a meta keywords tag at all due to the abuse it suffered in the early days of the internet; they thought these tags were not used by the modern search engines. After running some very preliminary tests at the prompting of DJ Paisley it was noted that Yahoo does indeed use this tag for ranking although it is a minor factor. However, it is their stance that Google and Bing ignore this tag and it doesn’t affect their rankings.

My Stance:

I always include the keywords tag as part of my client’s overall organic search strategy. I use roughly 3-5 targeted and appropriate keywords from my keyword research that are page-specific. While it may only be providing a positive effect with Yahoo, the tag has never shown me to work against a page’s rank in any of the search engines.

Takeaways:

The landscape of SEO is ever-changing and it’s always crucial to look out for new research, even on the old standbys. Staying on top of search engine news and constantly tweaking and reworking my organic search strategies is the name of the game for me. It’s absolutely beneficial for everyone with a website to test theories, see what’s working for you (or against you) in the rankings, and most importantly, keep trying.

The first thing I do every morning is check our Google Analytics and Feedburner stats. I like to see what things are working for us and what things are not working. I am proud to say that our blog has been doing quite well and gaining subscribers at a steady pace.

Then, one mid week day last week… CABLAMO! Our Feedburners subscribers TRIPLED in one day.

What happened? Did the Jonas Brothers say they read our blog? Did an influential blogger link to our blog for something witty and amazing that I had written?

I searched the Interwebs and no one else was chatting about it so I chalked it up to a glitch. Later that afternoon there was finally some chatter and Friendfeed made a statement about it.

What does it mean?

If you’re already using Feedburner, you’re familiar with how it tracks the number of your RSS subscribers.  In the past, Feedburner counted a subscriber as someone who subscribed to your blog through iTunes, Google Feedcatcher (like Google Reader), Windows RSS, Firefox Bookmarks, RSS to email (Outlook, Thunderbird), etc.  Now they’ve added FriendFeed.

What is FriendFeed? Friendfeed is a social networking aggregator that shows you in real time all entries, tweets, status updates and more of the people you choose to ’subscribe to’. It is a super handy way to stay up to date on all updates from the people you want to hear the most from on all the social networks they participate in. You can even create separate feeds for professional, personal, favorites and home feed. It’s handy but I have to admit I don’t use it that often.

What does it do to my blog subscribers? Well with most people I have talked to it blows your numbers through the roof. Your subscriber chart now looks like Pac Man or Ms. Pac Man. With FriendFeed being the largest slice of the pie.

So is this good?

This is good if:

• You personally and your company blog are one – People subscribe to people on Friendfeed. Real live people. You subscribe to everything Amanda puts on the internet, everything Matt puts on Facebook, everytime Kyle updates his Twitter status etc. If your blog is personal to you then this could be good for you.
• Big numbers make your life easier – Your form of validation is bigger numbers to show the guys in the corner office.  So tripling your blog subscribers without tripling engagement is A-OK with you!
• There is an opportunity for growth – When your content is on Friendfeed someone who is subscribed to you can ‘Like” your post and then the post will show up in that person’s stream so anyone who is subscribed to them will now see your post.

I know FriendFeed can drive some good traffic to the blog, but returning a subscriber count for the blog does not seem quite right. FriendFeed is an aggregator, so my subscribers are really subscribing to me, not my blog. – Rob Diana

So is this bad?

It could be bad, or it could be inaccurate, or it could be senseless padding or you could just need to find a new tool other than Feedburner…

Some issues I have:

• You write for a company blog with multiple authors – Like Rob Diana’s quote above says, people subscribe to YOU. You could be one of multiple contributors to a blog. I personally have over 200 people subscribed to my Friendfeed. Of this two hundred people… sure, a few of them read our blog.  But some are my Facebook friends who want to see photos and status updates, some are Twitter followers, some are LinkedIn connections. The point is they subscribed to me, not our company blog. If they wanted to subscribe to our company blog, they probably would have by now.
• Not a captive audience – When someone sees our blog in Google reader they see the whole blog entry and pictures. When they see a blog entry in FriendFeed they only see the title.  So yes, the feed was pulled, but did any of those people actually click to open the blog and read it? We don’t know.
• It could get worse – Where do we go from here? Do we start counting aggregators as subscribers?  Are all Twitter followers and Facebook friends next to be counted? Louis Grey has more concerns about this.

So now what?

To give the age old answer – It depends. It depends on your audience, your personal branding, your company branding and many other factors. Do you need to pay more attention to Friendfeed and get more subscribers? Maybe. Do you need to rethink how you measure your blog subscribers? Maybe. It is up to you.

Audience versus Subscribers

photo credit: pfctdayelise

This whole thing has sparked an interesting conversation on the blogoshere. Is ’subscriber’ a washed up term? Have we moved passed that? Perhaps we should be measuring our Audience instead.

If so, then the Feedburner/Friendfeed combo is perfect. Maybe we should be measuring each person our messages touches even if it is just a brief encounter. Before, subscribers were easy to measure – it was the amount of people that actively chose to subscribe to your blog. Now with Twitter, Facebook, Social aggregators (like Feedburner) things get a bit more complicated.  People are not stopping the use of RSS but they do seem to be adopting other methods to view the content that is important to them.

I am curious to see what you think of the change.  Has it helped you? Frustrated you? Does it not even matter? I know what it has done to my little world. What has it done to yours?

For the last two weeks, we’ve talked about how to get the gear to make a video and how to turn an idea into reality. Later today I’ll finally be presenting our webinar on using web video to tell your story, and today’s post is about how to get your video to do something once you’ve created it.

How you market your video is a unique representing of the type of video you choose to create. For example, there’s not much point in Christopher Penn marketing his welcome to my website video. Certain kinds of videos are meant to be shared and spread, others are intended to be more utilitarian.

So what are some of the types of videos you can make, and what’s the appropriate way to market them?

• Success Stories – Success story videos are excellent. They tell about your company in the words of your customer, helping prospects relate and building a trust relationship that is hard to tell in words alone. But are they going to get 1,000,000 hits in YouTube? Probably not. Put a success story video on your website, absolutely, and get the word out to people who will care about it. Put it in your company newsletter or highlight it on your blog. Make links to it prominent so that your website visitors will get to it. Maybe even burn a DVD to send to prospects who aren’t as web-savvy… it’s worth it!
• President’s Message – This kind of message should be prominently featured on your website, easy to find and concise. Sure, you can put it on YouTube, but without being on your site and being interested in your story, who is likely to care? Again, this kind of video is best suited to permission-based communications with people who are already interested in you.
• Viral Videos – What makes a viral video a hit is a combination of art, science, and good old-fashioned luck (okay, maybe timing has more to do with it). Unlike videos that are intended to go out to customers who are pre-qualified to enjoy your message, the very intent of a viral video means it has broad appeal. Instead of trying to influence the opinions of a chosen few, a viral video is meant to amuse the masses. NOW you can post it on YouTube, tell all your friends, tweet it, StumbleIt, Digg it… Start with the network of people who care about what you say, and then try to get that network to share it with their network, and soon you’ll truly have a viral hit. If your viral video doesn’t resonate well enough with people to get shared — well, take a coffee break, shrug, and get back to the drawing board.

As is the nature of online media, the way you get the word out about your video is a unique outcropping of what you have to say. Measuring success by hundreds of thousands of views doesn’t make sense for a product demonstration. More important is engagement. Whether people care.

We’ll revisit this topic soon and discuss some of the hard stuff — how you actually measure engagement and interest, and how you use that to modify your strategy. In the meantime, don’t miss Show Don’t Tell, Using Video to Tell Your Story!