I spend no less than 45 minutes per day on Google Reader and have done this for almost 5 years now. Over time, I have become so comfortable with the user experience of Google Reader that it was almost impossible for me to consider another Reader. Like so many others, Google Reader is my personal newspaper.  Google Reader allows me to subscribe to content that I personally want to read. Google Reader acts as a content filter to weed out the content I don’t want to read and bubble up the content that is important to me. When Google announced that Google Reader will be shutting down effective July 1, 2013, my initial reaction to the news was that of frustration. I can happily say that Newsblur is the best Google Reader Alternative on the market.  This post will explain why I love Newsblur as a Google Reader Alternative and why you will love Newsblur too.

User Experience (UX) of Newsblur – Google Reader Similarities

Newsblur user experience is very similar to Google Reader.  I can quickly organize my feed by unread articles and sort by newest to oldest.  Newsblur is fast!  The User experience of Newsblur is the same across different web browsers (Firefox and Safari) and devices (Mac, iPhone 5, iPad 2). The Newsblur subscriptions and folder options are set up similarly to Google Reader.  When you login to the web version of Newsblur the subscriptions and folder options align on the left hand screen (see pic below).

You have 3 category options to select from:

• Global Shared Stories – All stories that have been shard by a Newsblur User (you do not have to be following these users)
• All Shared Stories – All stories shared by a Newsblur user that you are following
• All Site Stories – All stories that you subscribe to (blogs, RSS that you subscribe to)

Once you select a category, the subscriptions will populate under the category in a traditional file folder (parent to child) relationship.  Content will be presented on a large viewing pane and organized from most recent to oldest from top to bottom.  Here is a screenshot of the content viewing pane (below).

Within the content viewing pane, there are 4 options to view your content:

• Original – The original page that this content appeared on
• Feed – This is the default
• Text- More focused on presenting the text of the content
• Story – More image focused

Within the content viewing pane, there is an easy way to easily move on to the next unread item, allowing for efficient browsing.  This is huge. I personally wanted the ability to quickly scan, mark content as read and read content that was interesting to me quickly.  I felt like Feedly, FeedlerPro, Gwhizz and Zite don’t do an excellent job at that. 

Newsblur for Mobile Devices (Apple iPhone 5)

The Newsblur app on the iphone 5 mobile user experience is identical to the web browser user experience.  I wanted the ability to quickly scan my unread stories, read the interesting stories and have the ability to share content with one click to social media networks (Twitter, specifically).  Here is what the Newsblur iPhone 5 App looks like (below).

Simply Migrate from Google Reader To Newsblur

When you create a new user account on Newsblur, simply walk through the “Getting Started” guide to 1) Automatically transfer all Google Reader Subscriptions to Newsblur, 2) Connect via Twitter to identify people you follow on Twitter that have a Newsblur account (discover new stories) 3) Launch!  There are three payment options for Newsblur, $12/year, $24/year, and $36/year.  I chose to pay $24/year and It’s worth every penny.  You can always give the free version of Newsblur a try, but if you have been subscribed to many – tens or hundreds of news feeds in google reader, then you will want to go premium.

Newsblur was built to focus on what the individual wants to read first, then content discovery as a secondary option.  In other words, Newsblur realizes that I, as a user,already know what websites, blogs, feeds, content I want to consume, while other readers emphasize content discovery first.  Go download the Newsblur App today!

What are your thoughts on Newsblur?

Businesses and consumers seek answers to questions many times each day.  The internet provides a simple way to do research and seek out answers to those questions instantaneously.  Typically, those questions are typed into a search engine, leveraging by and large, Google’s search engine.  Most B2B marketers understand that concept and leverage internet marketing to get found when their target audience is asking questions on Google.

Google updates their search engine algorithm hundreds of times per year.  Practitioners of search engine optimization are constantly studying, learning, and testing strategies to get found in Google’s search engine results pages.  There are On-Page and Off-Page factors that help search engine algorithms determine the content that exists on each web page and how valuable/relevant that content is for the end user: The business or consumer performing the search query on Google.

Google Panda Updates

In February 2011, Google launched their first “Panda” algorithm update, which was intended to combat “content farms” and spammy websites that would simply scrape other websites and monetize that duplicate content with Google AdSense Ads.  The business model of the “content farm” is to produce as much content as possible using keywords, and semantic variations of those keywords that were continuously searched on Google.  Each article would be well optimized from an “on-page” seo perspective but the quality of the content was lacking.  Since these “content farms” produced so much content on a daily basis and were “well optimized” from an SEO perspective, Google’s algorithm rewarded that low quality content.

In theory, the goal of the Panda update was to algorithmically identify websites with “low quality” content and reduce the value of those web pages from search engine results pages and ultimately present the most relevant, original, “high quality” web pages in their search engine results pages.  Many websites lost search engine results rankings and subsequently web traffic and revenue.  Some of those websites included: HubPages.com, Ezinearticles.com, Associatedcontent.com and Mahalo.com.

A detailed history of the Panda Updates was written by a trusted source,  Neil Patel, co-founder of two web analytics start-ups, Crazy Egg and KissMetrics.  Please read that post before moving on.

SEO Advice After The Original Google Panda Update, But Prior To Google Panda 2.5

Some tips SEO practitioners gave to those websites hit hard by the original Panda Updates include but are not limited to:

• Produce original, high quality content (i know, really vague).  Read: Don’t scrape other web pages and reproduce that content and present it to Google as if that content is your own
• Delete or de-index those pages of low quality.  By low quality, I am referring to those pages that do not get much web traffic and do not have many inbound links (these are typically pages that are unoriginal)
• Optimize your website for Page Speed. If your server loads your pages slowly, studies have shown there is correlation between rankings and page load speeds.  How do you optimize your web page for speed?  Well, you can contact Willie Jackson, or if you are a web developer, make sure you are optimizing your html/css/php/etc code, use content delivery networks and use a reliable web host (NOT GO-Daddy).
• High Advertisement to Content Ratio. If you have a ton of advertisements on your web pages and not much content, Google understands the goal of your web page is to get Ad impressions and clicks.
• Pages with low views or high bounce rates. Dig into your google analytics or any web marketing analyitcs pages to understand why there are low page views or high bounce rates.  Maybe there are not many inbound links or maybe the content on that particular page is not up to par with other pages on the web.  Perhaps, re-write the content on that page to better reflect the search query you are targeting or add more original, detailed content on the page topic.

B2B Marketers in a Post-Google Panda 2.5 Web

I’ve written in the past how YouTube can help B2B Marketers, which got some interesting comments.  Sure enough, the Google Panda 2.5 Update rewards YouTube.  Danny Sullivan, Founder of SearchEngineLand.com takes a deep look into who the winners and losers are for the Google Panda 2.4 update are.  Look at the Top SEOs and see how Video is always a part of their arsenal.  For Example, Aaron Wall of SEObook.com has Youtube Videos with keyword heavy anchor text in the sidebar of every blog article on SEObook.com.  Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz.com has been running Whiteboard Friday for years, offering free SEO tips.

Build Your Brand with Video in a Post-Google Panda 2.5 Web

Want to win in a post-google panda 2.5 web?  Start producing original B2B Video Content. Optimize the Video Title, description, then upload to your brands Youtube channel.  Embed your B2B video content within blog articles and share that content on social media networks.  As you know, having a successful b2b marketing brand presence requires an SEO strategy along with a Social Media plan.  Consider adding Video and a branded YouTube channel to your B2B marketing arsenal.

About one year ago, I purchased a Droid X. It was a struggle deciding between an iPhone and Android as a I work for a marketing software company with a bunch of opinionated co-workers with compelling reasons to purchase either. Some close friends and co-workers own iPhones and they are partial to the iPhone.  Why?  To quote my brother, “the iPhone is super easy to use, even my 2 year old son can navigate it.”  In fact, the iPhone has a camera, iTunes, and applications which can save you time.  However, I spoke with some engineers at my company and they told me Android is the future.  Why?  One engineer said Android OS is a completely open platform for developers to build applications and submit, versus iPhone which has a protected App Store that Apple monitors and there are more strict terms of service which limits the ability to publish certain applications.  Frankly, I am a sales rep, not an engineer.  As much as I would love the ability to develop applications for either Andriod or iPhone, that statement didnt mean much to me.  I asked the engineer more simply, why would I want to buy an Android over an iPhone.  He said, “since our company uses Gmail, Android has a tighter integration into Gmail and calendar than the iPhone for obvious reasons: Google purchased Android in 2005.  Another reason, Android comes with a GPS Navigation out of the box which is FREE (no need to purchase a Garmin).

In the end, I chose the Android. Over the last year, I’ve learned a lot about the benefits of the Android OS and found some essential android apps that every android user should have.  Specifically, if you are a non-web developer, here are some applications you should download if you have not done so already.

Android App Security

Lookout Mobile Security App - FREE – There are hundreds of thousands of Applications to download from the Android App Marketplace.  How do you know there isn’t any Malware that will corrupt your Android smartphone?  Lookout will scan each application as you download to ensure there is no Malware or anything that may potentially corrupt your phone or leak private information to a 3rd party.  Please do yourself a favor and download Lookout Mobile Security.

Android Battery Life Saver

Advanced Task Killer - FREE – Many non-techies, like myself, don’t realize that android applications are running in the background even though you may not be “using” them.  When applications are running the background, that can kill your battery life.  Advanced Task Killer to the rescue.  Download the Free Version of the Advanced Task Killer and you will be able to easily shut down those applications that you do not want running to save battery life.

Android Web Browser

Dolphin Browser HD - FREE – The Google search bar comes as a default, out of the box search.  In fact, you can use the audio-version and talk into the browser and find search results.  The Dolphin Browser allows for a similar browsing experience that you have with your desktop or lap top computer as it has a “tabbed” interface.  You can run multiple tabs within the same browser and toggle back and forth between web pages without opening multiple browsers.  Another reason I really like Dolphin is that you can share blog articles or web pages with one-click to twitter.

Android Music

Spotify  PRO – $10.00/month for unlimited streaming music.  Remember back in the late 90s and early 2000s when we all used to leverage NapSter to download and share music files online illegally?  Well, Spotify is a legal service where you can stream music from your android at any time.  Just about every song is available on Spotify and you will never have to purchase a song from the iTunes store ever again or worry about losing that music if your computer breaks or if you lose your iphone/ipod/nano.  Personally, I love music.  Walking to work, I listen to music.  At work, when i am not on the phone, I will listen to music while typing emails or doing research.  In my car, I plug in my phone into an adapter and listen to any song I want on the road.  Spotify doesn’t suck.

Shazam - FREE – Have you ever been at a bar/club/party/in a car and heard a song that you like, but you don’t know the name of the song?  Yeah, I’ve been there too.  Shazam is an android application that will automatically identify what the song is and you can instantly either purchase that song, share it to a social media profile or simply identify the song, then add it to your Spotify Playlist.

Pandora - FREE – Want to listen to a radio station of streaming music of your choice?   If you like listening to a genre of music without having control of hearing an exact song, then Pandora is for you.  I personally have not used Pandora since I purchased Spotify.

Android Social Media

Facebook - FREE – No need to explain what facebook is.  If you found your way to this blog article, you certainly know about facebook.  I’m not a big user of facebook, but it is nice to see what your friends are up to.  I do enjoy facebook for finding out what is happening in my friends lives that I haven’t seen in a while.  Maybe it’s someones’ birthday, someone maybe had a child.  It’s good to check out once in a while to stay in touch with people.  Or maybe you just want to use facebook to creep out your friends.  Don’t pretend like you don’t spy on others.

Twitter – FREE – Twitter as become a big part of my life.  I’m not afraid to say it either.  Twitter is a real-time information network that allows the average Joe to connect with people that they may not have access to, share opinions, articles and make connections that otherwise was not possible prior to Twitter launching.  I enjoy learning what’s happening in the world from a news, business and sports perspective.  It’s really incredible the people you can meet on twitter by simply sharing an opinion or article you found interesting.

Linkedin - Free – Slick App.  Linkedin helps with professional connections online.  This is probably widely used by Recruiters and HR departments. I don’t use this app that much, but I really like the User Interface compared to Facebook and Google Plus.

Google + - FREE – The Google Plus App is Google’s response to Facebook and Twitter Social Media Networks.  I’m adding the Google Plus App to the Essential List because I think I will be using it much more in the coming months.

FourSquare - FREE – I used this app for about 3 months, but no local retailers picked it up and leveraged it with special offers.  I felt there was no value-add, therefore i dropped it.

Android Business Apps

Evernote – FREE – Evernote is an application to take notes, organize, store and share them across mobile, laptop, desktop and tablet.  Every day I take notes on my computer.  Over the last few years, I realized I can type faster than I can write, not to mention, I can barely read my own chicken-scratch handwriting.  With Evernote, I will now be able to take notes on my computer, or on my Android if I am in a meeting without my laptop and not skip a beat.  Evernote allows for saving, tagging and organizing webpages and pictures to associate wit notes, as well.  Blogging for business ideas come to mind on a daily basis and if I don;t write those ideas down, I wont remember them.

QuickOffice - FREE – We all receive emails with Word Documents, PDF documents and Excel Spreadsheets as attachments.  Wouldn’t it be cool to actually view the word document, PDF document or excel spreadsheet and have the ability to edit the document and email it back to someone?  With QuickOffice, you can do just that, all from your Android smartphone.

Bank of America - FREE – Check your Account on the fly whenever you want.  Pay Bills, Transfer money, you name it, it can happen with the Android Bank of America App.

Gmail - FREE – Gmail’s Android App is awesome.  Threaded conversations for easy scrolling, replying, and forwarding of messages.  My company uses Gmail as our Email Service Provider so all of my email is easily synced to my phone.

Calendar – FREE – Google Calendar automatically syncs with the Android Calendar Application.  I use my company Gmail Calendar to schedule everything in my life.  All of those events scheduled from my desktop are automatically synced to my Android and vice-versa.  Every morning, I can plan my day around my meetings on the Calendar.

Navigation - FREE – GPS Navigation – this is a turn-by-turn navigation with audio, someone telling you exactly where to turn and when.  You actually get distances, estimated time until arrival, pockets of traffic, and the option to choose alternative routes to your desitnation.

Android News / Leisure Apps

Google Reader -  FREE – Instead of purchasing the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe or any other newspaper on a daily basis, all of that news is automatically send to my Google Reader on a daily basis, instantaneously.  My Google Reader Android App is my newspaper.

Weather.com – FREE – Find out the forecaset every day.  What’s the weather going to be in your local area?  If you are travelling, you can properly pack and prepare for those road trips.

Android Sports Apps

ScoreCenter - FREE – ESPN’s Scorecenter Application is like having a travelling version of ESPN’s flagship TV show, “SportsCenter” on your phone at all times.  You can easily customize your ScoreCenter Application to track your favorite teams, based on Sport, City, Country, you name it.  Easily get real-time updates on games.  If you are at dinner with your family and the redsox game is on, easily spin up the scorecenter app underneath the dinner table and get the live updated score.

ESPN Fantasy Football 2011 App – FREE – If you play fantasy football and use ESPN for your fantasy league, then you are in luck!  There is a killer ESPn Fantasy Football App that provides real time updates on your teams score and sends you notifications when you either take the lead against your competition.  Easily Add/Drop players, change your line up, or check football scores in general.

NFL Mobile - FREE – You need to have an Android and need to have a Verizon contract in order to take advantage of this insane application.  Why am I calling this application insane, you ask?  The NFL Mobile App has LIVE FOOTBALL GAMES STREAMING FROM YOUR PHONE.  YES, THAT INCLUDES THE NFL REDZONE CHANNEL.  Hypotheically speaking, (this didn’t happen yesterday, i swear) if the 4:15pm EST football games come on TV and your fiance wants to watch re-runs of Keeping Up with the Khardashians, then you can simply, dowload the NFL MObile App, press play on the NFL Red Zone Channel and watch the best parts of every single game.  FTW!

GolfShotGPS – $30 – one time fee – If you are a golfer, suck it up.  Buy the app.  Why?  Golfshot GPS was introduced to me by Brian Fenwick, a competitive golfer.  GolfShot GPS allows you to see the exact distance to the front, middle and back of every green.  You can see distances to land marks on each fairway – how far is it to a a bunker or how far is it to carry the water?  Golfshot GPS answers those questions AND tracks your scores on each hole, fairways hit, greens in regulation, penalties, sandies, etc.

BONUS Android APP – Social Fun

HeyTell - FREE – Remember those people that had the Nextel cell phones which doubled as a walkie-talkie?  If you don’t remember those phones, think about a walkie-talkie.  With the HeyTell Android App, you simply press a button on your phone and talk to someone on your contact list.  Let’s say you are watching a Red Sox versus Yankees baseball game and your friend really likes the yankees.  If the Red Sox take a big lead, maybe you want to send a “HeyTell” message to your yankee-loving friend how you wish the yankees well moving forward, but tonight is not their night.

What are your essential android applications?  Did I miss anything?

In the past, I’ve written about Linkedin Spam and the potential decline of Google AdSense revenue due to Google’s Panda Algorithm update.  Social Media Spam certain doesn’t stop with LinkedIn.  When a new social media platform builds up a large user base, spammers take notice.  Unfortunately, I stumbled upon a new Social Media Scam that involves spamming Twitter and driving traffic to websites loaded with Google AdSense.

Twitter Social Media Scam

Twitter has exploded with users over the last 2 years.  According to Twitter, 140 Million twitter user accounts have been set up.  When there is a new social media platform that millions of people spend time on, opportunities arise for spammers.

Try a keyword search on Twitter and see what results show up.

Try this keyword search on Twitter – “Chicago Lasik”

Identify Twitter Spam Profiles

Let’s examine the first result show, clearly an actual human being and definitely not a fake/spam profile:

1. Use a female picture
2. Use a fake location
3. Claim you are a real professional – In this case “new york lasik eye surgery”
4. Use a Bitly link in your profile to track clicks

Google AdSense Spam

Then Click on the Chicago Lasik Link.  I will not link to the spammers website because the website is wrapped in Google AdSense.  The goal of the spammer is to build a keyword heavy domain name, stuff keywords into the URL, Title Tags, Meta Keywords (which dont work anymore ), meta description, Headers, and body content.  Oh, and the spammer is using Bitly to track click metrics on his spammy links.

Google has a Search Quality Team, headed up by @MattCutts.  The goal of the Google Search Quality Team is to increase the quality of search engine results pages.  I wonder if Twitter has a Search Quality Team.  A search on Google for Twitter Search Quality Team only brings up Google’s Search Quality Team results.

Twitter has raised $200 Million in Funding.  Does Twitter have a Search Quality Team?  If not, do you think Twitter Should have a Search Quality Team?

In the 4th Quarter of 2010, 30% of Google’s revenue ($2.5 Billion) came from “Network Revenue” or Google AdSense, according to Google’s 4th Quarter Revenue Press Release.  Google AdSense is an ad serving platform, where website owners can enable text, image, and video advertisements powered by Google.  Website owners are paid out a commission either on a per-click basis or on a per-impression basis for those advertisements.  Google provides an incentive for website owners to publish quality content and share in the commissions earned from either ad impressions or ad clicks.  The result of such content creation incentive has given rise to businesses such as Demand Media, a portfolio of websites including eHow.com and LiveStrong.com.  Both websites produce thousands of web pages every day to be indexed on search engines with Google AdSense enabled on each page.

Mass-producing content has been lucrative for companies like Demand Media, who recently had an initial public offering valuing the company at $1 Billion.  It sure seemed like Google was happy with all of the new content created on a daily basis, because Google can profit from advertisements served on those new web pages.  Well, respected Search Engine Optimization companies have noticed that the quality of content produced by certain websites has decreased significantly even as early as 2008. These websites mass producing content do research on long tail keyword phrases, pick many keyword variations and produce tons of low quality content to be indexed in search engines.

It took Google years to act on this information.  Nonetheless, Google recently announced another update to their search engine algorithm for United States searchers which effectively bans “content farms,” websites that mass produce low-quality content. Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land reported on the latest search engine algorithm update and labeled it the “farmer update.” Danny also provides a list of websites that had the biggest drop in terms of online visibility and keyword rankings in the days after the farmer update launched in the US.  Some of the websites or “content farms” that got hit the hardest from the algorithm are: ezinearticles.com, hubpages.com, associatedcontent.com, mahalo.com, amongst others.

With the farmer update launched in the US, I wonder how this will affect Google’s AdSense Revenue in 2011.  These content farms produce thousands of new web pages every day, in some cases tens-of-thousands of web pages every day to be indexed in search engines with AdSense enabled on each page.  Yes, there are Trillions of web pages indexed on Google, but will Google’s AdSense Revenue take a dive in 2011?  I am certainly NOT worried about the health of Google’s overall business.  How will Google pivot to produce the same AdSense Revenue in 2011? Maybe they don’t have to pivot or think about AdSense Revenue moving forward.

Do You Think Google AdSense Revenue will be impacted in 2011 with the Farmer Update?

You are a Small Business Owner and you own your small business website.  You may own multiple domain names that are keyword-rich, product-specific, service-specific, geo-specific or are thinking about purchasing those types of domain names.  Why?  Well, you think that if you own a keyword-rich domain name, you will be able to rank on search engines more easily and get more qualified website traffic.

One Domain Is Better Than Multiple Domains for Small Business SEO

Why is one domain better than multiple domains for small business SEO?  As a small business owner, time is money.  You have limited time and presumably want to get the most return on your marketing spend.  It is extremely difficult to rank on search engines for relevant keyword phrases for ONE domain, rather than to rank on search engines for relevant keyword phrases for multiple domains.  A short, non-detailed explanation on how to rank online for relevant keyword phrases is:

• Identify relevant keyword phrases by performing keyword research
• Build a content creation strategy for your company website, using those keyword phrases in the content you produce
• Link Building Strategy – Acquiring quality and relevant inbound links from unique domains is how you build trust and equity in the eyes of search engines
• Promotion Strategy – Promote the well optimized content that you create on your company site and engage others doing research on your products/services in social media networks

Build Your Company Brand Domain and Get Found Online

Brand related keyword phrases tend to yield the most website traffic, leads and customers for small business owners.  The easiest way to build your brand online is to start a business blog on your primary domain.  For example, if you own http://www.YOURCOMPANY.com, you will want to set up a blog in a sub-directory of your website (http://www.YOURCOMPANY.com/BLOG) or create a sub-domain on your website for your blog (http://BLOG.YOURCOMPANY.com).

From a technical perspective, each blog article you create will be another web page that google can index.  The frequency with which you publish blog articles is directly correlated to the number of times search engine robots come back to crawl your website.  There is a content freshness component to Google’s search engine algorithm, which essentially means: the more often you publish content on your website, the better your company website will look in the eyes of Google.  It’s important to note that the more pages you have associated with your website in search engine indices, the more opportunities you have to get found online by your target audience.

From a Human being perspective, a blog helps you to build your thought leadership by giving educational information to your target audience.  There is a direct relationship between educating and building trust.  If you teach someone how to do something on their own, you ad value and build trust.  Building trust with your target audience will positively impact your brand.

Commit to Creating Content On Your Domain To Get Found Online

It takes time and effort to perform keyword research, use those keywords in the blog content you create and share that content on social media networks on an ongoing basis to get found online organically.

Do You Have The Time and Money To Perform All of the Above Tips for Multiple Domains?

Bing and BigThink hosted a 4 hour event in San Fransisco today on the Future of Search, titled “Farsight 2011: Beyond the Search Box.”  Much has been said recently on the quality of search engine results pages (SERPS) recently and many have speculated on how to reduce spam in the SERPS. Google recently took action to increase the quality and relevance of search engine results, by reducing spam.

Panelists at the event included Harry Shum, Corporate VP of Search at Bing, Matt Cutts, Google’s Czar of Search Quality, and Rich Skrenta, Founder of start-up search engine Blekko.

Editor of Search Engine Land, Danny Sullivan was Liveblogging the event.  I was able to watch about 20 minutes of the event and thought it was funny how Harry Shum of Bing called out Danny Sullivan by referencing an article he wrote on how search engines need better metrics to improve relevancy.

After the panel, Founder of SEOMoz Rand Fishkin published a series of tweets with his thoughts on an issue debated by Harry Shum and Matt Cutts of Bing using Google Searches and Click Data.  See below [Please Read The Tweets From BOTTOM to TOP]:

Seems as though Rand didn’t agree with/like Google’s representation at the panel, which is pretty clear.  It will be interesting to read a recap from him on the SEOMoz blog.

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If you are a small business owner and you would like to grow your business in 2011, you MUST understand that the world has changed.  The yellow pages are dead. Newspaper advertising has become less effective over the last 10 years.  TV, radio and billboard advertising are extremely expensive and marketing results are very difficult to measure.  Purchasing leads is also expensive and becoming less effective (ie: Service Magic for the Service Industry) because those leads that you purchase are typically sent to 4 or 5 other business owners. What is a small business owner to do?

Pushing your marketing message out to people is not the most cost-effective way to acquire new customers.  When consumers have questions, they go to Google and other search engines to find immediate answers. Most consumers subscribe to their favorite industry blogs and favorite newspaper columnists via email or RSS (Really Simple Syndication – pushes new blog articles directly to consumers via a feed reader like Google Reader).   The advent of the internet, search engines and social media has given power to consumers to seek out exactly what they are trying to find.  If you want to grow your business in 2011, you must have an online presence and understand how taking control of your SEO and Social Media efforts will yield great ROI.

Director of SEO and Social Media at Zeta Interactive, Hugo Guzman wrote a blog post targeting enterprise businesses on how SEO and Social Media success is nearly impossible if no one owns it.  Hugo talks about how many enterprise-level companies do not have one person responsible for their SEO and/or Social Media Strategies.  He has found most companies divide the SEO/Social Media responsibilities between a marketing manager and an IT department, neither of which may be SEO-savvy.  Without someone primarily dedicated to these marketing channels, many issues arise as a result, including:

-Haggling over whose budget is going to be tapped into

-IT folks that think SEO begins and ends with outdated concepts like code-to-content ratio (yeah, I’m serious)

-Traditional marketers that wouldn’t know a title tag if punched them in the face

-Little to no actual site and page-level implementation because nobody’s neck is truly on the line in terms of the ROI gained from SEO

-Link building? What the heck is link building? (yeah, I’m serious about that too)

For a small business owner with typically less than 10 employees, no on-site IT person and perhaps no marketing manager, taking control of SEO and Social Media is an even bigger challenge.

So How Can I Take Control Of My SEO AND Social Media Efforts?

1. You must have the ability to edit and add new pages to your website.  I am not saying to go out and purchase a book on “web development for dummies.”  There are plenty of content management systems that are easy to use without having any web development (html, css, php) knowledge.  Content Management Systems to consider are: WordPress, Blogger, Squarespace or HubSpot (my employer).

2. Once you have the ability to edit your website, you need to understand the language that your target audience is using online to ask questions about your industry/products/services.  You can use Google’s Keyword Tool or (other keyword tools) to give you ideas on the most effective words to use on your website.  Keyword tools give you the ability to scrape your competition’s website for keywords that they are trying to rank for, which will also give you ideas on which words may or may not be relevant for your business.

3.  Once you identify keyword phrases that you would like to rank for, start adding new pages to your website and try to optimize each page for a unique keyword phrase and perhaps a variation of that particular keyword.  Here is an SEO Guide from SEO Moz to help advance your SEO education.  In a recent article on SEO tips for recruiters, I make note of some very basic, on-page SEO tips that every small business owner should be aware of.

4. You MUST have a blog that resides on your website.  Your Business Blog should be set up either like this: http://www.YOURWEBSITE.com/BLOG or http://BLOG.YOURWEBSITE.com.  A big mistake would be to set up your blog like this:  http://YOURWEBSITE.Wordpress.com or http://YOURWEBSITE.blogspot.com or http://YOURWEBSITE.typepad.com.  If you have your blog set up correctly on your own website, every blog article becomes new web page that will be indexed on search engines creating a NEW opportunity to rank in search engine results pages.  At bare minimum, you should write one new blog article per week if you want to have any level of success.  Not sure you understand the value of business blogging? Here are some key take-aways for setting up a business blog:

• Get found on search engines – SEO
• Build thought leadership and trust with your readers
• Blogs are your Social Media Hub or Home Base for all of your remarkable content
• Educate your prospects on how they can achieve success in your industry

5. If you have Linkedin, Twitter, and Facebook accounts for your business, you should share your blog content on those social media networks.  Most Small Business Owners are commonly confused about the use of social media.  If there is any advice I can give to them, it is this:  DO NOT JOIN SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORKS UNTIL YOU FIRST HAVE A BLOG AND BLOG CONTENT STRATEGY.

How Much Time Will It Take Each Week for SEO and Social Media?

You must commit a minimum of 1 hour per day to be successful with your SEO and Social Media Strategy.  Being successful with SEO and Social Media is much like a gym membership.  The more times you go to the gym, the more weight you lose.  If you go to the gym 4 times per week, you will see better results than if you go once a week.  Similarly, blogging 4 times per week will result in more traffic and leads than if you blog only once a week or less.

Please understand that there is a lot to learn in order to be successful with SEO and Social Media in 2011 and this article only scratches the surface.

What is your SEO and social media strategy?

Feel free to Contact Me with any questions on how to achieve SEO and Social Media success this year.

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There is nothing better than Free Software that helps professionals solve real problems. One major problem for PR professionals is finding relevant influencers including: journalists, websites, businesses, news sources and others to contact “pitch” a product or service.

Free SEO Research Tool Review: WhereToPitch

Cision, a PR company recently released a Free SEO Research Tool called WhereToPitch. WhereToPitch is meant to help PR professionals find trusted websites to pitch their product/services.  According to Cision:

Every good story has a beginning. And yours starts with researching the right outlets and contacts to pitch it to. Cision’s WhereToPitch SEO research tool delivers a quick list of media outlets that cover specific topics and boosts SEO. Results are based on analyses of billions of Internet searches each month so you can pitch those sites that are at the top of search results pages. Not coincidentally, they also happen to get the most traffic. And isn’t that exactly where you want to be? For more robust listings, check out CisionPoint. CisionPoint delivers access to over 1 million media contacts and outlets around the globe, including in-depth profiles on publications, websites and individuals. You gain invaluable insight into how, when and where to pitch that helps you create custom lists, plan the perfect campaign and make stronger pitches.

I decided to take the tool for a test drive and share some early thoughts on the tool.

I started with a simple search for “SEO” as you can see above.  Below are the WhereToPitch search results:

A simple search for “SEO” on the WhereToPitch Free SEO Tool resulted with some highly relevant SEO websites.  Search Engine Round Table, Graywolf’s SEO Blog, and SEOBook.com are all excellent SEO Blogs.  One thing that concerns me is that journalist websites like SearchEngineLand.com, SearchEngineWatch.com, SearchEngineJournal.com are not mentioned.  Those three websites are really where most of the highest quality, and most recent SEO content is published.  In fact, SearchEngineLand had approximately 202,000 unique visitors in October 2010, SearchEngineWatch.com had roughly 161,000 unique visitors in October 2010, and SearchEngineJournal.com had approximately 337,000 unique visitors in October 2010.  See the graph below for the unique visitor data from compete.com:

How about a very trusted and authoritative company called SEOmoz?  They only got about 12,000 unique visitors in October 2010, according to complete, but SEOmoz is on the cutting edge of everything related to SEO and is the industry leader in SEO knowledge.

Please don’t misunderstand my point.  Free SEO Tools are great and can add some value.  Very much like HubSpot’s Free websitegrader where anyone that has a website can get free feedback on the marketing effectiveness of their website.  But, we all must understand that free tools can add incremental value, will get tons of press, inbound links (i fell for it), and probably generate leads and eventually sales.

Why use the word “Pitch?” The Concept of “Pitching” Is DEAD

In a recent company meeting, HubSpot’s co-founder Dharmesh Shah made it abundantly clear that “Marketing is broken.” Dharmesh continued on to say that  HubSpot’s value is derived from helping helping business owners and marketers transition from traditional broken marketing techniques and help them grow their business through new marketing techniques called inbound marketing.

When I see the word “pitch” in a free SEO tool, I think that the decision makers at Cision who named the free SEO tool is confused and perhaps struggling with the concept of traditional marketing methods being broken.  “Pitching” companies in 2010, soon to be 2011, is inefficient.  Identifying quality and relevant influencers including: journalists, bloggers, companies, etc online is very helpful.  In my opinion, after you identify these influencers, the next step should NOT be to “pitch” them.  The next step should be to connect with them in social media networks, blog about them and link to them, comment on their blogs and add some value to conversations related to your business, and really start an engaging online dialogue in a non-pitchy way.  The result of your inbound marketing and “non-pitchy” efforts will be unparallelled from a thought leadership perspective, communications, inbound links (SEO!!) and ultimately yield quality results. For this reason, I think Cision’s marketing message with their free seo tool is not optimal.

If you disagree with me, I would love to hear your thoughts.  Before you comment, please ask yourself a few questions:

1. When was the last time you retured a call from a voicemail left by a sales rep/PR professional “pitching” you something?
2. When was the last time you replied to an email from a sales rep/PR professional “pitching” you something?

Today was a normal day. I worked all morning, grabbed a quick lunch and brought it back to my desk in Cambridge, MA at 12:45pm EST today, when my phone rang. I quickly drank some water to wash down the food and answered the phone. To my surprise, it was a recruiter. This is pretty much how the conversation went:

ME: “HubSpot, This is Ryan.”
Recruiter: Hi Ryan, This is XXX From XYZ company.
ME: (Confused as to who the lead is) Hi XXX, are you looking to generate leads from your website?
Recruiter: No. Have you heard of XYZ before?
ME: NO.
Recruiter: XYZ is a recruiting company in (town, state). I found you on LinkedIn and your profile looks like a great fit for a few projects I am working on.
ME: Ok.
Recruiter: How are things at HubSpot?
ME: EXCELLENT!
Recruiter: Ok. Do know any sales reps looking for jobs?
ME: No. In fact, if you got my work phone number, I am sure you can figure out how to cold call other sales reps at HubSpot if you really want to do that.
Recruiter: Well, do you know any other sales reps outside of HubSpot looking for a job?
ME: Not at this time. Feel free to connect with me on Linkedin and see if any of my connections would be a good fit for your projects.
Recruter: Thank you.

Sales Tips for Recruiters

This certainly was not the first cold call from recruiters since I started working at HubSpot over 1 year ago. Like this gentleman, all recruiters that have cold called me had the exact same pitch! “I found you on LinkedIn and based on your profile, you are a good match for a project I am working on.” Want to catch my attention or any seasoned sales representative’s attention, then consider the following:

1)  Research your prospects so you can have some commonality and separate yourself from every other cold-calling recruiter. Do they blog? What do they blog about? If you found someone on LinkedIn, what does their summary/expertise say? Throwing out a broad statement like “you are a good fit based on a LinkedIn profile” tells me you don’t know anything about me.

2)  Once you have established commonality, explain why you think that sales rep would be a good fit for the particular job you are working on.  For Example, this recruiter could have said, “Based on your background, it looks like you have been in sales for many years but you also have great knowledge on Internet Marketing.  I found out that you really understand concepts of internet marketing and how businesses can grow by leveraging the web because I read a few of your blog articles.  It turns out, the company I am working with needs a sales rep with knowledge of internet marketing and someone who can help them grow their business more cost-effectively.”  That would have been much more compelling.

3) Since you cold-called me AT WORK, you know that I am employed.  If you really looked at my LinkedIn profile, then you know I have been doing sales for many years and should likely have a good understanding of what a senior sales rep would command from a compensation stand point.  HubSpot’s VP of Marketing once said, “sales reps are coin operated.” To an extent, Mike Volpe is correct.  That said, recruiters trying to place sales reps need to present compensation numbers to either qualify or disqualify a prospect immediately.  Assuming that recruiters get paid when they place a sales rep at a new job, qualifying a new sales rep on the first call should be a priority.

Recruiters are sales reps themselves.  Would a recruiter rather have qualified leads that found their company website online and self-selected by filling out a form and downloading some valuable material on local jobs?  I bet recruiters would love to get more leads through their website.  Here are some simple SEO tips for Recruiters and marketing managers at recruiting companies.

SEO Tips for Recruiters

This particular recruiting company for sales reps has horrible online visibility.  I did a google search for the recruiting company’s brand name and they didn’t rank on the first page of google.  Typically, the URL for the company will match the brand name and therefore will rank on the first page of google fairly easily.   Here are some On-Page SEO tips for This Recruiting Company.

On Page SEO

In order to rank in search engine results pages,websites must identify which keyword phrases (or search queries) best represent their value proposition.  Coming up with a foundation of keywords that you would like to rank online for is fundamental in getting quality and relevant website visitors.  You can identify quality keywords by using Google’s Keyword suggestion Tool, amongst others.  Let’s use the keywords I found on google’s keyword tool for your business.

Once you identify keywords that best describe your value proposition, you want to place those keywords into a few major areas of your website that search engine robot’s crawl.  Each page of your website is a new opportunity to rank for a new keyword phrase and semantic variations of that keyword phrase.

Title Tag - 70 characters that describe what the content on the webpage is about. Currently Reads: “welcome to sales start.”  Perhaps edit the title tag to read “Boston Sales Jobs | Boston Sales Training | Sales Start.”

URL-Page Slug or Permalink (http://www.salesstartnow.com/)  When you add a new page, you should have the target keyword phrase in the page slug.  For Example, the new page will have “TARGET KEYWORD” (http://www.salesstartnow.com/target-keyword/).

META Description – This is one sentence describing the individual page.  You have 150 characters that should have one keyword that describes the keywords within the content of the web page and be consistent with the Title Tag, H1,H2, H3, H4, content, and meta keywords.

META Keywords – This is becoming less effective over time, but it is still a best practice to include 5 keywords that describe the web page.  No More than 10 keywords should be placed in the META keywords tag.

H1, H2, H3, H4, H5 – These are headers.  Notice the Font is different from the title of this blog article to the paragraphs to the sub headlines.  I am leveraging the H2 tag for “SEO Tips for Recruiters.”

Content – This is where the text resides.

If I was consulting with Sales Start, I would tell them that if they want to generate more quality web traffic and convert that traffic into leads, they need to start blogging.  Today.  It’s important that business owners understand the value of Business Blogging.

Here is a WebSiteGrader Report which will give you free tips on how to improve the marketing effectiveness of your website: http://websitegrader.com/site/www.salestartnow.com/

If the owner of Sales Start is reading, feel free to contact me for a free website assessment and learn how you can generate more qualified leads for your sales team today.  I’m sure your sales rep still has my direct dial at work.