Press Business Blogging

“On the Internet, a Web site without visitors is akin to the proverbial tree that falls without anyone to hear it.” In this profile piece by the Wisconsin State Journal, reporter Jason Stein investigates how web agency Netconcepts uses search engine optimization to supercharge the websites of online retailers. Stein talks with Steve Spangler, CEO of Steve Spangler Science and Gene A. Wright, Netconcepts’ VP of Sales and Marketing, on the success of SEO and the latest techniques used to get search engines’ attention.

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“When done well, a blog can help establish a reputation for thought leadership and provides a human face for your customers,” said Netconcepts president Stephan Spencer in an interview with the Dominion Post. “People like doing business with people, not companies.”

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I love Google as much as the next person, but their official blog just doesn’t do it for me. The “voice” just does not seem real, or anything I can relate to. It feels scrubbed by the PR department; I might even go so far as to say it comes off as a mouthpiece of the PR department. I don’t get that feeling from Google engineer Matt Cutts’ blog. The official blog, however, has its face to the company, and consequently its butt to the reader. That’s just a gut feeling I get reading their blog, but the specifics of what bother me I found harder to put my finger on… until now.

I’m not telling you anything new when I say that business bloggers who are overly self congratulatory or self promotional are anathema to the blogosphere. But where do you draw the line? When is it too much? In trying to quantify what bothers me about the Google blog, I came up with what I believe is a quantifiable “sniff test” to ascertain if a blog is too narcissistic or inward-facing: it involves “keyword density.” Keyword density is simply the ratio of a particular word to the the total number of words in a page (or in this case, in a post). Read on, to learn how you can apply this test to your or others’ blogs.

As an SEO (search engine optimizer), I scoff when I hear the words
“keyword density”. Calculating and fine-tuning a page’s keyword density
in order to appear higher in the search results is a fool’s errand.
Yet, I think I’ve finally found a valid application for a keyword
density calculator, and it has nothing to do with SEO. Here’s what you do…

Add up the number of occurrences of “we”, “us”, “our”, and your company name in the blog post. Do the same with “you” and “your”. Calculate the
ratio of these two numbers. And calculate the keyword density for both.

What about “I” and “me”, and “my”? I’ve intentionally not counted them, because I recognize that the blogger needs to claim their thoughts and opinions as their own. It’s the faceless self-important corporate voice that really bugs me the most. And that’s what this sniff test ferrets out.

Let’s work through an example. Take for instance this post from the Official Google Blog:

• 17 occurrences of “we”, “us”, “our”, “Google” or “Googlers”
• 3 occurrences of “you” or “your”
• 6:1 ratio of us-speak to you-speak
• 422 total words in the post
• 4% “it’s all about us” density
• 0.7% “it’s all about you, the reader” density

Compare that with this randomly-selected post from the Yahoo! Search Blog:

• 7 occurrences of “we”, “us”, “our” or “Yahoo” (in the context of the company not part of a product name)
• 8 occurrences of “you” or “your”
• 1:1 ratio of us-speak to you-speak
• 214 total words in the post
• 3% “it’s all about us” density
• 4% “it’s all about you, the reader” density

In this very small sample set, Yahoo’s blog seems to talk to the reader
much more effectively. Not to mention their blog supports reader
comments, unlike the Google blog.

Now to make this more scientifically valid, we just need an automated
tool that analyzes all of the posts from both Y!’s and Goog’s blogs to
compare. That’d be a nifty little tool if it existed. Perhaps I’ll get
someone here at Netconcepts to code it…

– Stephan

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Ann Meyer, author for Multichannel Merchant, discusses the power of natural search over paid search listings. This article goes on to mention the importance of proper keyword usage and the need for scaleable optimization techniques.

Included in this article are quotes from Netconcepts’ VP of Client Services, Jody Hartwig. Jody shares her views on natural search and the best practices needed to succeed in today’s market.

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You may already be familiar with the concept of character blogging, where the blog is actually a fictitious charcter, such as a cartoon character from a cereal box, or a doll perhaps.

I think an interesting twist to this concept would be to have an historical character blogging from the past, as if it were the present day. I think American Girl, with their dolls from various historical periods would make for excellent character bloggers.

As a step in that direction, American Girl has recently launched a Felicity Blog. Felicity is a doll set in the time of the American Revolution. I think it would be a great idea for Felicity and the other dolls to be speaking to girls from the past.

American Girl is done a little bit differently though than a character blog. One of their editors poses questions Felicity faces, and also deals with themes/issues that are relevant to girls today, and asks girls to say what they think Felicity should do.

This Felicity blog doesn’t really give the impression of a character blog, but it is certainly very successful in soliciting comments from readers, with over 250 comments for their first blog post. That is really impressive!

Maybe there are some lessons here to be learned for business bloggers in how to engage with their community of consumers as successfully as American Girl seems to do.

(DISCLOSURE: American Girl is a client of ours.)

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See the results of actual trials and implementations of alternative marketing techniques used to drive online sales. Learn how online retailers eHobbies.com, Ice.com, and Steve Spangler Science have utilized alternative marketing tactics such as blogs and RSS feeds to expand their marketing reach and build customer loyalty. Panelists will share tips on executing a successful campaign, implementation costs, and how to measure the impact of these new marketing tactics. A must-attend session for retailers looking for alternatives to increasingly expensive online marketing tactics such as SEM. Retailers looking for alternatives to increasingly expensive online marketing tactics such as SEM must attend this session.

Moderator:
Stephan Spencer, President, Netconcepts

Speakers:
Pinny Gniwisch, EVP Marketing, Ice.com
Seth Greenberg, CEO, eHobbies
Steve Spangler, SteveSpanglerScience.com

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Russell Brown, Auckland author for Unlimited, conveys the message of marketing change. (as foretold in The Cluetrain Manifesto) Today’s consumers do not have the same shopping trends as they did 5 years ago. If companies want to compete and capture a piece of the market share, they need to seriously focus on the consumer’s needs and wants.

Blogging is a vital part of the marketing mix needed to accomplish this.

Brown references how modern day marketers are making the Web a better place. One of these marketers is Netconcepts, Founder and President, Stephan Spencer.

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This session explores how search engines are dealing with blog and webfeed (RSS/Atom) content and why providing such syndicated content can drive new search-related traffic.

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Any search engine optimization consultant will tell you that links are the currency of the Web. They’re also the currency of the blogosphere. Without any inbound links, you’re just blogging to yourself. In Mike Grehan’s seminal piece “Filthy Linking Rich“, he explains how those rich with links just keep getting richer.

So how can new business bloggers get a jump start in the search engines? Simple: just whip out your wallet. The business of text link ad buying has matured, and it’s on the up-and-up. We’re not talking about “buying PageRank”… what we’re talking about is a totally legitimate business practice of buying text ads where you choose your hyperlinked words carefully based on keyword research and your advertisement appears on a reputable, relevant website. And of course, it links directly to your website, sans click tracking, so the ’search engine juice’ flows unhindered. If the practice weren’t legit, would you see such well-respected link-building pundits as Eric Ward on the board of the link broker Text-Link-Ads.com?

Buying links is not quite as simple as I make it out. Yes, you can use a broker and they’ll happily take your money. Caveat emptor! In order to make an informed purchase, you’ll need to evaluate the quality of the links using a number of criteria. Here’s such a list of criteria, courtesy of the ABAKUS SEO Blog:

1. Inbound site traffic and page traffic.
2. Inbound dot gov and dot edu links.
3. Click though traffic you get from the page.
4. Site in DMOZ and Yahoo directory.
5. Age of domain and time of domain being used (longer the better).
6. Inbound links shown to that page on Yahoo (link:http:www.domain.ext/page/).
7. Ranking of page for the keywords it is optimized for.
8. Relevance of theme of site and page to your site and page.
9. Alexa ranking (lower is better).
10. Deep link compared to home page links.
11. Location of link.
12. Length of allowed description text.
13. PR of page (still matters a bit).

Personally, I’d also add to the list:

1. Appearance of any link advertisers on the page that would attract the attention (negatively) of the search engines (e.g.: casinos, Texas Hold’em, Viagra, pharmaceuticals, insurance, Rolex, etc.)
2. Quality of the landing pages of the existing link advertisers (if you find any are spammy-looking, turn and run!)
3. Placement of the link. (i.e.: being relegated to the bottom of the page as footer links is not ideal)

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