Today’s post isn’t a very long one. It’s more one to hopefully start a conversation and get your creative juices flowing. I want to know what you think technology will look like in the future. I had ideas of my own, but those ideas were blown away when I saw this video of some of the current things Google is working on.
Are You Over Optimizing Your Website?
While search engine optimization plays such a crucial role in how well your business does online, one of the ever increasing issues I see from various SEO companies is the over optimization on customers websites. While there is great importance in having the SEO information done properly on your website, it is even more important that things do not go overboard. Going overboard can result in a website being either penalized greatly or possibly even banned from search results.
Also, search engine optimization is not a quick fix for any website. If your results come that quick, more than likely you are doing something in a way you shouldn’t, and that will catch up to you in just a matter of time. So, be careful in who you hire to do your SEO work. Don’t trust those that promise the world for just some dollars. Get involved and be a part of making your website effective. Ask specific questions as to what they are going to do to make your rank better. Don’t let them just decide on some random keywords, but ask what type of traffic those keywords get each month.
Whenever I do SEO work for a client, I provide them with a spreadsheet showing them the monthly search of many of the keywords related to their business. Not only is this helpful for the initial setup, but this list is also very handy when you are trying to find topics to blog about or just know what keyword phrase to use in the post. I once had a client that by changing one word in the keyword phrase increased the popularity of searches from 180/month to 8,800/month.
Google Doesn’t Like Over Optimization
When I hear someone say a site is over optimized, I immediately think either someone doesn’t know what they are doing, or they are trying to use some less than honorable black/grey SEO tricks to push a site up the search engines. While this might do what they are looking for and push that website to page 1 of Google quickly, the site will inevitably be found by Google and penalized. If you remember back a few months ago, I shared about the JC Penney debacle and how when they were caught by Google, the penalties took them from #1 in the results to not even being found on the first 5+ pages.
Whenever I build a custom WordPress Site for a client, I make sure to try and follow all of these guidelines as close as possible to keep my clients from danger. Does it make the process of reaching page one results take longer? Yes, but I’d rather it take more time of them writing good quality blog posts and sharing valuable content that lasts for years than get instant results that end up being banned in just a few months. Post that I wrote over four years ago on an old blog of mine still bring business to me today.
My main site 210 Consulting ranks well in the search engines for several keywords and I’ve never once paid for SEO work. Instead, I’ve simply taken the time to write blog posts that are search engine friendly, and done the work on my own of building good quality backlinks through guest blogging, commenting on other sites, and other good SEO tactics.
If you would like more information on how to write blogs for search engines feel free to contact me and we can schedule a coaching session to get your site started in the direction of page one of the search engines to stay.
How Major League Baseball Stacks up on Social Media [INFOGRAPHIC]
via mashable.com
For those of you who have known me for a while, you probably are well aware of my deep love for the Philadelphia Phillies and baseball in general.
Today is opening day of the 2012 season and just like any other year, the day is filled with great anticipation as my team embarks again on what will hopefully be a run to another World Series!
Baseball Opening Day 2012
Today marks opening day for the 2012 Major League Baseball season. For those of you who know me, you are aware that I am a huge Phillies fan, and a fan of baseball in general. This morning I shared a post on Twitter with some friends regarding Social Media & Baseball with some of my other good social media friends, Brad Nix, David Marine, & Matthew Shadbolt.
Upon sharing this infographic which I found entertaining & informative, the regular good old smack talking began across the Twitter Universe. See, Matthew is a Yankees fan, David is a Mets fan (poor guy) and well Brad, he’s from Atlanta, so you guessed it, he has his beloved Braves.
While the smack talk continued, I decided it was time for us to put up or shut up so I asked them all if they are interested in rewarding the winner of the season by writing a blog post on their site talking about how wonderful the other team is, how great their fans are, and how that person is such a great person for being a fan of that team… IF they win the World Series. So far, Matthew has agreed to the challenge.
David on the other hand, well, he already bowed out knowing that his Mets are terrible and he has zero chance. He was though rather proud of the stadium food at Citi Field. We still wait to see if Brad will join in on the fun.
So would you like to join in with Matthew & I? If so, leave a comment below with who your favorite team is.
The Importance Of Subscribers
Building a list of subscribers to your blog is one of the best ways to increase the overall traffic to your site. While there are several ways you could do this, one of my preferred methods is by giving my readers the ability to subscribe to my content either via email or an RSS feed.
Thanks to Google, there is a wonderful tool to do this called Feedburner. I’ve actually done tutorials before on how to install Feedburner on your WordPress site. It’s pretty easy to set up and can prove to be rather rewarding as you can see by Feedburner showing up twice in my top 10 sources of traffic to my website according to Google Analytics.
Also, what I have noticed is a steady climb in overall traffic to my site on a daily basis. I truly believe that one of the main reasons for this increase is attributed to the increase in numbers of subscribers to my website via email or RSS.
Tips To Build Your Subscriber List
Getting a large group of subscribers is not always the easiest thing to do. It definitely isn’t something that can happen overnight. Here are a few simple tips to building your subscriber list.
1. Make it simple to subscribe. Feedburner does this very well by making the opt-in form as simple as can be. Readers simply add their email address to the Feedburner widget on the right side of my page. Feedburner will then send an email to confirm and they are now subscribed via email. From that point forward, whenever I write a new blog post, readers will receive it directly in your inbox.
If the subscription process asks for their name, email, phone number, and name of their first child, the chances of someone filling out the form will go down exponentially. Remember, this isn’t gathering contacts for your database, this is simply growing the readership of your blog by giving readers an easier way to get your content.
2. Ask people more than once without being annoying. When I first added Feedburner to my site, I only had it on the sidebar of my site in the widget section. I’d get a few people who would sign up for it each month, but it never seemed to pick up that many.
Then, one day I added a simple link into the footer of my blog posts that gives readers the ability to subscribe again. The moment I did that, my subscribers started increasing at a much more rapid pace. So, offering the ability to subscribe more than once can be rather beneficial.
What you do not want to do though is become spammy with it and turn into a total annoyance. Skip the pop-ups, and don’t put the link every other paragraph of your post.
3. Say it in a way that makes sense. When I first set up subscriptions to my blog, I had it simply set as an RSS feed and posted it as such. It said “subscribe via RSS.” Then one day as I was thinking about ways to make my site more user friendly I realized that probably 80% of consumers have no clue what an RSS feed is or what it does. So, I changed the text & option over to something that would make more sense. Once I changed everything to say, “subscribe via email” more readers began subscribing to my blog.
So, if you do not have a simple way for readers to subscribe to your blog, you may want to set up Feedburner now. The benefits of having a large group of subscribers to your blog is tremendous.
RETSO 2012- Will You Be There?
Every year I am asked to come present at various conferences around the country as a social media speaker. Some of the events I accept the invitation while others I RETSO is one event that holds a very special place to me. It was the first real estate technology conference I ever attended. I simply went as an attendee representing the company I was community building for at that time. My first year opened my eyes to things I never realized I was missing. As someone who worked for a tech company, I thought I knew a great deal already and was on the cutting edge of everything social media. I quickly learned that I was far from it. I was blown away by the amount of knowledge that was openly shared by all of the speakers from around the country.
Then next year I was asked to join the list of esteemed speakers and present. Since then I have presented every year including being asked to do so at this year’s event. So, if you have not done so, order your ticket now & come join me at RETSO 2012!