Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Sunday, 23 of September , 2007 at 7:22 am
What kind of font should you use for your blog or website? That’s a question that pops up from time to time. I’ve got to say that I don’t give it a whole lot of thought. That’s primarily because I stick to conservative fonts - ones that have been used over and over again - and don’t really experiment much. But if you’re the experimenting kind, be careful. It could be dangerous to experiment too much with fonts.
I’m not just being melodramatic. Some fonts just plain turn people off. They’ll leave your blog or website and not do business with you. It will be business lost forever. They may never come back. That’s a pretty costly mistake so you want to be sure to use the right font.
I recommend a sans serif font. Those are the fonts that don’t have the little lines protruding from the t’s, p’s, a r’s. They are sans (without) the serif.
Fonts That Are Easy To Read
Why do these fonts do better online? Well, because they’re easier to read. Much cleaner. You certainly don’t want to use a font that is too fance - like Boulevard - which looks more like handwriting. Those types of fonts are too “creative,” and difficult to read. The fonts without the serifs are best and here’s a short list for you to try. Use these for both body copy and headlines, as well as subheads:
Verdana
Arial
Helvetica
Geneva
Georgia
Univers
Futura
Franklin Gothic
Optima
Avant Garde
Fonts Not So Easy To Read
Fonts I do not recommend for online reading, because they are serif fonts, include:
Times Roman
Palatino
Courier
New Century Schoolbook
OK, you get the idea. Do your research on fonts and choose one that is easy to read.
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Saturday, 22 of September , 2007 at 4:07 pm
Online publicity is a bit different than publicity off line. In the old days, you’d hire a publicist or public relations firm and let them handle everything. They’d interview you, send out press releases to various media, and seek to have journalists contact you for interviews, photo ops, etc.
Today, you can do it all yourself.
I like PRWeb. For just a few hundred dollars, as opposed to several thousand, you can write a press release, upload it yourself, include some video footage and pull quotes, add your contact information, and put together a complete publicity web page that makes you look like a million dollars. You can do this all yourself. Or, you can hire an online publicity guy to do it for you for a little bit more. But it doesn’t cost anywhere near the traditional publicity the way it used to be.
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Saturday, 22 of September , 2007 at 7:37 am
(Source) At least BlogRush has emailed its users acknowledging their concerns and also admitting that ”bozos have come out of the woodwork and are trying to cheat the BlogRush system.” No, really?
lol
This is hilarious. It doesn’t take long for bozos to come out and play when the snake oil salesmen enter town square. Anyone who didn’t think this would happen has been living with their head in a sandbox - or somewhere dark. I haven’t tried BlogRush, but I’m not sure that I want to. To me, building traffic is a natural process, not a synthetic one. This just seems like a more modern version of web rings and traffic exchange networks. If you do get more traffic it will likely be other users of the system who are curious enough to click on their own links while checking out their stats. Frankly, I’ve got better things to do.
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Friday, 21 of September , 2007 at 4:48 pm
(Source) Google’s plans to build its own data network are now rumored to include communications cable under the Pacific Ocean.
The project to lay cable, called “Unity,” would involve several other telecommunications companies who would aim to have it operational by 2009.
What are the implications of Google’s desire to build trans-Pacific cable? Let’s count ‘em:
Could be the first major communications company to deliver high-speed cable access to the Internet
Google would then be classified as a communications company and could branch out into other services - cable-delivered TV, telecommunications, etc.
Google could charge premium services to transnational corporations for faster speed Internet access - this effectively would end the debate over net neutrality
The gap between the search engines would widen
Google could very well be the company that draws nations together in peace, and to shun war
Such a move would give Google a leg up in Asian markets and leverage to beat out competition on other shores
The search giant would have greater flexibility in choosing strategic partners, and more to offer them
This no doubt is not the full list to Google and Google is likely not the only winner should this happen. Geopolitically, it could mean some Asian companies such as China and India could rise higher in economic (and military) prominence. It would also mean that Asian countries could be more competitive in the international marketplace and have more to offer potential customers all over the world. For the first time in history, there might actually be free markets - they would just exist online.
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Friday, 21 of September , 2007 at 8:19 am
If you are a local business then you will need to geo-target your search engine optimization efforts. Do you know how to do that?
It’s not hard to build a geo-targeted website. All you really need to do is make sure that your search engine listing ranks highly for your important keywords plus your local area. It may be easier for you to do that if you live in a large metropolitan area, but it isn’t impossible if your business is in a rural area either.
Here are a few tips to help you geo-target your website:
Make sure your physical address is on every page of your website - the footer is a good place, but you can also put it near the top of your page; that way, you have it on each page twice
If your mailing address is different than your physical address, include your mailing address on every page of your website
Somewhere on your website, have a page that talks about the different areas you serve; if you are in a metro area then that might be individual neighborhoods, or it could be small towns, counties, and townships if you live in a rural area
Write your website copy to target specific niches within your geo-targeted area; for instance, if there is a unique need for people living in one neighborhood versus another then write a separate web page that addresses each neighborhood and its need
Include some history, interesting news, and features of local people and businesses in your local area - that will get you geo-targeted content on your website
Subscribe to RSS feeds of other geo-targeted websites in your area
Join the local chamber and other local organizations then place a membership notice on your website to notify your site visitors that you are a member of those organizations
There are more ways to geo-target a website. You’ll have to get creative. Your type of business might have some unique ways of presenting content that is specific to your industry. If so, try to think of ways that you can present that content in a geo-targeted way. Finally, when you start your link building campaign, be sure to list your local business in directories that allow you to geo-target your links. For instance, if you can include your URL and an anchor text phrase in your directory listing then make your anchor text say something like, “The Only Miami Beach Swordfishing Association On The Planet.” Work in your keyword and your geo-targeted phrase to get the benefit of relevance with each phrase for every link you can.
Social Marketing Journal is all about sharing the best ways to use social media to market your business online. We’ll be discussing social bookmarking, social networking, reputation management, video marketing, viral marketing, and a host of other online methods of marketing yourself and your business through social media. So far we’ve posted six entries to the blog and we’ll continue our commitment to blog on marketing issues of relevance and interest to the small business owner as well as the corporate marketer.
When you want the latest and the greatest information, news, and know-how on social marketing, drop by the Social Marketing Journal and leave a comment. Stick around and read the blog posts. Bookmark your favorite ones and share them with your friends. Check out these posts from the Social Marketing Journal:
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Thursday, 20 of September , 2007 at 9:47 am
According to Nielsen Netratings (a PDF will open), Google still holds the No. 1 search engine spot with more than 50% of the share of the market. Surprised? You’re the only one.
The Nielsen survey also gave no new surprises in announcing the top 5 search engines: Google, Yahoo, MSN Live, AOL, and Ask.com. Same as it’s been for two years running. Care to know what the bottom 5 of the top 10 are?
My Web Search
BellSouth Search
Comcast Search
My Way Search
SBC Yellow Pages Search
The margin is so narrow between these five, however, (all are below 1% market share) that one could say they are tied for sixth place. Three of them are so new (the top 3) that they don’t even have any measure year over year growth. I’ve recently learned of a new search engine just rolling out it’s public face that looks promising. Powerset is based on semantic search and claims to be the only search engine that gets deep into semantic technology, not relying on keywords at all. It’s an idea whose time has come, but whether the market is ready for it or now remains to be seen. I don’t see it overtaking any of the top 10 in the first couple of years and if it manages to move out of year two of the business cycle it may become a bottom 5 competitor. Any new search engines trying to market share right now will have a long way to go before earning any respect.
All of that said, Yahoo! is still the most trafficked website online and many people still like using them. 19.9% market share and 8.9% growth over last year is nothing to sneeze at. I think search technology, for the most part, has reached a plateau. One set of statistics I’d like to see is local search - how many of those happen every month and who is capturing the market?
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Wednesday, 19 of September , 2007 at 1:57 pm
Search Engine Optimization Journal is proud to sponsor a new blog directory and blog host: Today.com.
Today.com offers free hosting for blogs and allows bloggers who currently have a blog hosted elsewhere to submit their blog to this new directory. They have an interesting set up in all its simplicity:
Three tabs - Home, Blogs, Videos. That’s it.
On the Home tab you can create a new blog and start writing in minutes. You can click on the Read Blogs icon and start reading immediately. Or you can view and upload videos. Today.com also allows you to search their site using keywords (the search box is in the top right corner of the web page). Scroll down and you can see the tag cloud and a list of popular searches.
Click on the Blogs tab and you can browse blogs, create a blog, or submit your blog for inclusion in their directory. Today.com even allows you to vote on blogs so you can influence which blogs are most popular. You can browse all the blogs in their system or just those hosted by Today.com.
The Videos tab is perhaps the best of all. Browse videos by popularity according to most views or most votes or you can browse by length of video. Just like with blogs, users can vote on their favorite videos and influence which ones rise to the top of the pile. Just below the tabs in the top left of the screen you choose to see videos by most popular or most viewed or you can select New Videos or upload your own (you know how much I recommend viral video marketing!).
Today.com is just getting started and has a lot to offer. Take a look at this video from the Today.com site and see for yourself:
I might have been a little too harsh in my criticisms of Jason Lee Miller, but I still believe in the gravity of my message. What I didn’t realize at the time, because I didn’t follow Clark’s link to the original source, was that the discussion was related to newsletter links, not website links. Now, the obvious question: Why does that matter?
It matters because Clark had positioned his argument as “Click here” versus anchor text, which is a logical argument when dealing with websites. But few people start and manage newsletters because they want to improve their Google juice. Newsletters are for communicating with customers or potential customers, which makes the relationship between you and your prospects more important than any SEO points to be gained.
Of course, some people argue that’s the way it should be with your website as well. But I see legitimate reasons for focusing on SEO more than the customer-relationship benefits on certain types of websites. But newsletters are almost always about the relationship, hardly ever about the SEO.
Keeping that in mind, Marketing Sherpa’s study about wording in your call to action links makes a lot more sense. When you write your newsletter, you really want people to go back to your website, so anything you can do to improve click-throughs from the newsletter to your website is a good thing. I believe that newsletters are best used as lead generation tools and that websites are better closers. That’s why I use my newsletter to promote my website and it gives me the opportunity to communicate with my potential customers on a regular basis. If I can prove my trustworthiness, those “click heres” will have a lot more value.
I’m just going to jump right to the middle of the cheese:
So – not to sound too condescending or anything – instead of expecting whichever visiting human’s synapses to fire in the right way to interpret that an article about bears highlighted in link-format is a link to that article, said synaptic misfiring human may actually need a “Click here to read about bears.”
To make his point, Miller uses “article about bears” and “click here” as the anchor text for two links that point to www.bears.org. He is clearly setting us up for his disagreement with blogger Brian Clark, who said this in a recent blog post at Copyblogger:
Another reader once chastised me for wasting anchor text with the words “click here,” even though my primary goal for the link was to get people to click (shocking, I know). This is when I first realized that Google is truly making people retarded. Somehow, this person no longer saw links as navigation for actual people to use; they only exist to pass on “juice” according to an algorithm that no one fully understands.
I’d already read Clark’s blog post and I agree with him. Anchor text is certainly a value I place highly on copy writing for blogs and websites. But your website and blog should sell as well. You want people to click on the links buy what you are selling. If it can be proven that people will click more often when the text says “click here” versus “mumbo jumbo” then it just makes good sense to use the phrase “click here.” Seems reasonable enough, doesn’t it?
Well, not for Miller. He continues:
From an SEO standpoint, this is terrible. You’ve just optimized “click here,” which is useless in search, instead of “bears,” which is not.
Well, obviously, SEO isn’t everything. Sure, you lose the SEO benefit of the anchor text, but if more people click on the “click here” link then you’d be a fool to go for the anchor text. It is imperative to keep in mind the purpose for any technique that you use. Anchor text is necessary to get that extra Google juice, but all that does for you is increase your chances of moving up in search engine positioning. Perhaps you’ll get more traffic from that. But traffic is unconverted until you close the sale. If “click here” closes the sell then that’s a higher value than being No. 5 on page 1 versus being No. 6.
I haven’t done a test to see if people click more on “click here” text versus other wording. I can’t vouch for that. But according to Brian Clark, Marketing Sherpa has done a study and found out some rather interesting data (I haven’t seen the study either). Here are the results, according to hearsay from Clark:
“Click to continue”: 8.53%
“Continue to article”: 3.3%
“Read more”: (-)1.8%
It does make sense when he explains it. I would say that SEO is good and you should always keep it in mind, but don’t focus on SEO so much that you lose the sale. After all, your bottom line is always much more important than some mere ranking according to a faceless algorithm.
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Tuesday, 18 of September , 2007 at 7:23 am
Do you really need SEO?
Talk to some webmasters and they will tell you that SEO is a crock. Others swear by it.
You’d think that I, being an SEO, would fall into the latter camp. I don’t. I believe you can do well online without SEO. After all, there are a variety of Internet marketing strategies that are valid and effective. You’ve pay-per-click advertising, banner advertising, affiliate marketing, social media marketing, directory listings, article marketing, blogging, and that’s not all. So is SEO really necessary?
Well, let’s be honest. You can succeed online without SEO. You could just buy a sponsored ad listing on every search engine and your website will appear at the top of every SERP for the keywords you choose. Some people do that. But why would you pass up an opportunity for free advertising?
That’s right. Free advertising. That’s what SEO is. You don’t pay to be listed in the search engines for organic searches. So any ranking you get is free. Whether you appear at No. 1 on Google and No. 5,491, it costs you the same amount of money - unless you pay a professional to do it for you. Even then, is it worth it to you to spend, say, $250 to ensure at least one of your web pages appears on Page 1 for your keywords? If you’re paying for those sponsored ads and PPC then it should.
Studies show that 80% of all Internet traffic comes from organic searches. That’s a big margin. And it’s free. Unpaid. Why pass that up?
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Monday, 17 of September , 2007 at 1:35 pm
(Source) The development of multi-channel marketing is one of the most impactful things happening in internet retail these days. As I have written about before, the idea that customers want to order online but pick up their merchandise in a physical store seems counter intuitive. However, there is growing evidence that they want to do exactly that. This gives a tremendous advantage to multi-channel merchants because not only do they see an increase of online sales but they also see significant upsell revenue once they get their online customers into their stores.
Multi-channel marketing is in its infancy, but I believe it’s here to stay. The verdict is out on Internet shopping. People don’t want to buy online. They want to shop online and pick up products in the store. Why? They still don’t trust the medium. Not completely.
Consumers Respect Their Money
Let’s face it. People are picky about their money. They have credit cards, but they don’t want to risk identity theft even though all assurances are in place to protect their private data. That’s why companies doing business online will have to consider how they will take customer orders and process them in the store for pick up. I think retailers will end up borrowing a page from the restaurant play book. Future online retail transactions could look like this:
Consumers will go online to shop for a product
They will compare two or three merchants for prices and service options
Once they make a choice, the consumer will order the item they want online but won’t pay for it
They will get in their automobile and drive over to the store to pick up their item (at their convenience, of course)
They will head straight to a special counter designed specifically to process Internet orders; their item will already be waiting for them
The clerk at the Internet window will ring up the customer’s order and attempt to up sell a few related items while they have the customers’ attention
After the up sell is closed (or not), the item will be paid for and the customer will take their product and go
The Electronic Version Of Online Retail
Another version of this method is less human and more electronic. Retailers could have a check out window where Internet customers can walk up to and pay for their item (just like at your local supermarket). Once the item is paid for, a store employee will bring the pre-ordered item to the customer and the customer will walk out of the store with a smile.
I hope that doesn’t sound far-fetched. It seems to me to be quite likely that local retailers will move in that direction. To get there, they will have to optimize their websites for local search and to close the sale for every specific item in their online catalog.
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Monday, 17 of September , 2007 at 7:45 am
Over at Entrepreneur’s Journey, Yaro Starak relays the 8 most important SEO elements from another SEO guru. I don’t dispute the 8 techniques as important. I do dispute their order. This is the Big 8 in order of most important, as relayed by Yaro Starak:
Title Tags
Keyword Density
Site Structure
Internal Links
Inbound Links and PageRank
Page Reputation
Anchor Text
Link Popularity
If you look at this list, it is broken down into two parts. The first four SEO techniques are on-page SEO elements; the last four are off-page factors. Strange that this is done this way. As far as on-page and off-page SEO go, neither is more important than the other. Both are equally important and should be used to compliment each other. Of course, you don’t always have any control over off-page factors, but you do have unlimited control over on-page factors, which determine, in part, the success of some of your off-page factors.
How I Would Order The Top 8 SEO Techniques
If I were to place an order of importance on these 8 techniques (and I don’t recommend it because they are all important), then here’s how I would order them:
Title Tags
Anchor Text
Keyword Density
Page Reputation
Internal Links
Inbound Links
Site Structure
Link Popularity
PageRank
Every SEO would rank these criteria differently, and there are others that I would add. But these are some very basic SEO factors that everyone should consider. I agree that title tags are very important. But I don’t know that they are necessarily more important than anchor text. The two are probably equally important, but title tags might have a slight edge. Both are very important.
Keyword density is over rated and often misunderstood. It’s important, but not the most important thing, and I’d put more emphasis on anchor text than keyword density. The page reputation of sites linking to yours (and to sites linking to them) is very important and becoming more important. It might soon surpass keyword density in its level of importance. I could conceivably see this as being the most important SEO factor at some point in the future.
Internal links are important, but not as important as reputation. They really go hand in hand with anchor text. You want your internal links to contain anchor text. That’s kind of a no-brainer. Site structure is important and becoming more important, but you can have an ugly site that does well in the search engines. I understand that structure is separate from design, but design considerations are necessary for the proper structure. It’s more important to focus on content.
I separated inbound links and PageRank because they aren’t the same thing. PageRank is based on inbound links, but it’s more important to have those inbound links than to have the PageRank. But not just any inbound links. They have to be based on page reputation and site relevance.
Link popularity and PageRank are somewhat important. PageRank, I believe, will soon fall of the list. It may already have. There are a ton of websites that rank well with low PageRank. At one time, this was a big factor, but because so many people have learned to game the system, it has become much less so. Next year, it might not be factor at all.
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Sunday, 16 of September , 2007 at 3:50 pm
I love getting comments. Comments mean three things for me:
People are reading my stuff. Thanks!
I’m at least making an impact, be it positive or negative, and that’s always a good thing for a blogger
My blog stays active in the search engines
Comments are good for a blog. Even if the majority of comments received are negative, they’re good because it means that the search engines have more content to crawl. More content means more ways I can rank. If I write a blog post on dancing, for instance, and highly optimize it for the keyword “rhumba,” even if none of my commentators use the keyword that I use in my blog post, I could still rank well in the search engines for that keyword. I could also do well for related keywords.
For instance, if I get 15 comments and eight of the commentators mention the polka when I primarily concerned myself with the rhumba then I could rank for “rhumba,” “polka,” and “dancing.”
Of course, all of this is contingent upon what my competition is doing as well as some off page factors, but comments help bloggers with their SEO. Since all of that is true, why do some bloggers insist on making their site visitors sign in before commenting? I rarely will sign in to leave a comment. If I have to sign in to help you with your SEO then I’ve got better things I could be doing. Like nursing my Uma Thurman fetish.
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Sunday, 16 of September , 2007 at 7:03 am
(Source) But while we try to be open minded about new sites, the BlogRush idea does hark back to “Web 1.0″ traffic exchanges. In these systems, you would earn exposure for your site by browsing other sites. However, these services eventually flamed out when they failed to deliver on their promises. Our take: don’t get your hopes up, because this one may not last forever.
Yeah, that was my thought too. If you’ve been a member of a banner ring or link ring then you know you don’t get a lot of traffic from them. People join hoping that new traffic will flood into their websites and blogs and that the dynamite sales copy on their web pages will close the sale. Most of them are dreaming.
First, the only people likely viewing your ad are the people in the ring. They joined the ring for the same reason you did - easy traffic. They have no intentions of skipping over to the websites of other members in the ring. And if you were honest, you’d admit that you don’t either. Why then be taken in by the myth that this might be different?
Search Engine Optimization Journal is an SEO Blog that discusses Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Ranking and Positioning for the new and advanced reader. Written daily by expert Nick Stamoulis, SEOJ is owned and operated by the website marketing firm Brick Marketing. Questions about this blog, please call 877-295-0620.
