This screencast, presented by Netconcepts’ president Stephan Spencer, explains how to install and use the free Firefox extension SEO-Links to gauge the succesfulness of text link advertisers.
First Stephan installs the extension. Then he jumps to the Seacoastonline.com home page, which is selling links over in the right column half-way down the page. By simply hovering the cursor over each of the text link ads, he obtains backlink counts for each advertiser and their rankings across Google, Yahoo, and MSN Search for the phrase in the anchor text. This provides an indication as to how effective that advertiser is at SEO. The assumption is that an SEO-savvy and successful text link advertiser will make better advertising decisions than an unsuccessful one. If a bunch of successful ones flock to a particular site selling text link ads, then that’s an indication that the site is a good one to advertise on (assuming other things check out like the advertisers aren’t using spam tactics).
Turns out the site is not a good site for link advertisers. Find out why by downloading the 4 minute video as either a 2 megabyte WMV file or a 5 megabyte MPEG-4 file (iPod video compatible)
Filed under: Link Building Screencasts SEO
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I heard at the Search Engine Strategies conference earlier this month in Chicago that the Ask Jeeves spider doesn’t cope well with websites that don’t have robots.txt. So if you don’t have a robots.txt file hosted on your blog’s document root, create a blank one.
Another detail often missed by bloggers is to create your own custom favicon.ico file. The favicon is a little 16 pixel by 16 pixel image that appears in the location bar on people’s web browsers; many of the RSS readers use it as well. Peter Brady at Performancing has some interesting things to say about whether or not bloggers need to have a favicon. My take on it is this: with a custom favicon, you look cooler and more with it, plus it differentiates you from the rest of the pack in your subscribers’ RSS subscription lists. If you don’t have time to mess around creating one in Photoshop, you can do a quick and dirty one pretty easily using the free web-based tool Favicon Generator. It took me all of two minutes to create my favicon for my blog using this tool.
Filed under: Blogs Business Blogging Tools
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Search Engine Strategies — Chicago, IL
This session explores how search engines are dealing with blog and feed (RSS/Atom) content and why providing such syndicated content can drive new search-related traffic.
Moderator:
Danny Sullivan, Editor, SearchEngineWatch.com
Speakers:
Dick Costolo, CEO, FeedBurner
Nan Dawkins, Partner, RedBoots Consulting
Greg Jarboe, President and Co-Founder, SEO-PR
Stephan Spencer, Founder and President, Netconcepts, LLC
Amanda Watlington, Ph.D., APR, Searching for Profit
Filed under: Business Blogging RSS Marketing Seminars SEO
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Blogs and RSS feeds may sound like a lot of nerdy buzzwords, but President of Netconcepts Stephan Spencer wades in with his thoughts for webpronews.com, particularly when it comes to driving search engines to one’s site. It’s all about personalizing the content they receive he says.
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Filed under: Business Blogging Press RSS Marketing SEO
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University of Wisconsin Executive Education - Integrated Customer Communications — Madison, WI
Technology continues to revolutionize the sales and marketing efforts of firms worldwide. Businesses must either adapt or put themselves at risk. Companies and customers communicate and interact with each other in substantially different ways than 10 or even 5 years ago. Direct and interactive marketing are converging, financial metrics are increasingly mainstream, and customers expect channel “silos” to be broken down. Learn how to benefit from the new tools and thinking in managing customer relations to increase sales, improve strategies, and reach online and offline markets.
Search engine marketing
- Make your site “search engine friendly”
- Explore “Pay-per-click” search advertising
- Analyze benchmarking, competitive intelligence and ROI
- Identify trends in contextual, behavioral and local advertising
Create a buzz - viral marketing
- Explore blogs, RSS feeds, forums, wikis and more
- Harness “word of mouse” to enhance your brand
- Discover the “sneezers” who will spread your viral message
Filed under: Business Blogging RSS Marketing Seminars Web Marketing
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MarketingProfs virtual seminar series — online (webcast)
Links are the currency of the search engines. Without good inbound links to your web site, your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts will be in vain.
Link building is arguably the most difficult, most misunderstood, and most poorly executed aspect to SEO. Join SEO and link-building expert Stephan Spencer as he guides us through the quagmire and shows us the way to great search engine rankings.
You will learn:
- Google’s PageRank scores: red herring or useful metric?
- What makes a link valuable or not
- Creative strategies for building link-worthy content
- What works when approaching webmasters with link requests
- Pitfalls to avoid if buying or bartering links
- The phenomenon of Google bombing and making it work in your favor
- The role of authorities, hubs, and topical relevance
- How to leverage blogs and the blogosphere for link building
- To get your content successfully syndicated onto other web sites with RSS
- How to capture the link gain (PageRank) of your affiliates and your advertising
The 90-minute seminar will include an extended Q&A.
Filed under: Link Building Seminars SEO Webinars
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Links are the currency of the Web, so it is important to have a plan in place to improve the number and quality of the links to your site from the outside.
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Filed under: Articles Link Building SEO
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Blogging is one of the hottest trends on the net. A blog (short for “web log”) is a web-based diary where the author can ruminate on whatever strikes his or her fancy. The blogger may share photos, poetry, political views, gossip, industry trends, business advice, or the latest on their personal life. By definition, blogs are organized in reverse chronological order. Many are updated daily. They can have one or multiple authors, such as a community blog.
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Filed under: Articles Blogs Business Blogging SEO
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DMA Annual Conference — Atlanta, GA
Is something missing in your marketing mix? New channels are opening doors to the increasingly, tech-savvy consumer. RSS feeds and alerts, blogging, mobile communications and “mapping and monitoring” online conversations are among the newest marketing tools available.
- Understanding these new channels
- Leveraging them for customer retention and acquisition
- Building rapport with bloggers, and promote your products and company in the blogosphere
- Personalizing the content in the RSS Feed to each subscriber
- Tracking readership and response
- Advertising on blogs and within RSS feeds
- Podcasting (think: on-demand Internet pirate radio)
- Distribution channels (RSS search engines, directories, Web-based aggregators, RSS news reader software)
- Not just for bloggers and news sites — e-tailers embrace RSS as a channel
Moderators:
Stephan Spencer, Founder & President, Netconcepts
Marc Tramonte, Director of Integrated Marketing, Microsoft Corporation
Panelists:
Royal Farros, Chairman and CEO, MessageCast
Gard Gibson, Account Group Director,VML Inc.
Mark Goldstein, CEO, Loyalty Lab Inc.
Mark Grindeland, Co-founder, m-Qube
Dana Vandenheuvel, Director of Business Development, Pheedo
Debbie Weil, President, WordBiz
Filed under: Business Blogging RSS Marketing Seminars Web Marketing
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