Start an Alternative Blog for Reputation Management

February 7th, 2012 No Comments

Blogs naturally attract a lot of links and external references, which is why so many reputation management SEOs recommend registering firstlastname.com or brandnameblog.com and using it as a professional or personal blog. What I don’t often see, but have observed working brilliantly, is alternative blogs on separate topics using a similar system.

For example, imagine I want to control my name “Jack Smith.” I’d not only run a blog at randfishkin.com, but I’d also strongly consider starting a cooking blog or a sports blog or a travel blog at randfishkincooks.com or the like. Yes, it will take work to set it up, author some real content and build up a web profile for the new domain, but if I can tie it to something I already do and love sharing, the references will come fast and furious.

Be sure, when doing this, to leverage your existing network for blogroll links and share via Twitter/Facebook/etc. You’ll be surprised how friends, family and business contacts will come out the woodwork to link to your new property.

 

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Cultivate the Right Social Profiles in the Right Ways

February 7th, 2012 No Comments

A big mistake many in the reputation management field make is to register social profiles at dozens or hundreds of sites and point links to as many as possible, hoping that some will take over those top rankings. This actually dilutes the effectiveness of the strategy, as those links could be consolidated across a few powerful profiles instead, often with much greater effect. The general sites I recommend include (in order of profile effectiveness):

  1. Twitter
  2. LinkedIn
  3. YouTube
  4. Flickr
  5. Facebook

That said, another big mistake is presuming that just registering a profile is enough to take over the rankings. My experience has been that participating heavily in the sites (for example, on Flickr, uploading lots of photos and sets, making lots of friends, getting others to comment on your photos, etc) can be more valuable to help those profiles rank than just earning external links. This is why if you’re passionate and active on a community like DeviantArt, Quora, Armor Games or another niche social site, those can outrank even the big guns of the social world. Regular, authentic partcipation is key.

Some additional rules to remember with social profiles include:

  • Name your profiles correctly. If possible, don’t use pseudonyms, but rather your full first and last name (or brand name) either as a single word or with hyphens
  • Fill out the profiles completely – photos, bio, videos, links, topics, tags – whatever the platfrom offers, take advantage of it fully.
  • Leverage your address book or a list of your social media active contacts – friend/follow/connect with them on each of the platforms.
  • Make new connections on each platform, too. Use OSE’s top pages tab to find the most linked-to URLs on the social platforms and see if you can comment, connect or otherwise get your profile linked-to from those pages.
  • Don’t forget about relevance – if the page looks unnatural or keyword-stuffed, you risk having the profile banned by the admins of the site and jeopardize your ability to authentically participate and make connections with other people, brands and content.

Like everything else in life – nothing worth having comes easy. Invest in your social profiles and they’ll reward you with controllable front-page real estate in the rankings.

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Install WordPress on Local Apache Web Server

December 21st, 2011 No Comments

Beginner’s Guide: Install WordPress on Local Apache Web Server

 Imagine installing a new, untested WordPress plugin directly inside your hosted, live web server, just to find out that it screw the whole blog? Imagine another situation – switching to a new WordPress theme just to find out that it doesn’t work nicely with your favorite WordPress plugins? There is a way to solve all of this problem – by doing all of the above in a test environment, accomplished by having a nice WordPress setup mimicking your live server, inside your own local PC .

 

install wordpress on local apache webserver beginners guide

 

Steps to Install WordPress on a Local Apache Web server

 

1- Make sure you have installed Apache web server with PHP and MySQL support. If you have not yet done so, you can follow my Windows guides regarding Apache and PHP Installation. Rest assured that my guides passed the basic requirements needed to run WordPress (PHP 4.2 or greater + MySQL 4.0 or greater).

 

 

2- Download the latest WordPress zip package from here.

 

 

3- Start your Apache and MySQL service. Make sure you can access your locally setup homepage.

 

 

4- You need to create a MySQL database for WordPress. In this guide, I use PhpMyAdmin (find out how to install PhpMyAdmin). Login to your PhpMyAdmin (or any software that you use) and create a MySQL database with a name of your choice (I choose “wp”).

create-new-wordpress-database-with-phpmyadmin

 

 

5- Make sure your “wp” database was successfully created. Example:

wordpress-mysql-database-wp-created

 

 

7- Extract the downloaded WordPress zip package to your Apache root directory. If you follow my guide, the path is C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\htdocs\ . This will create a “wordpress” folder inside the “htdocs” directory.

 

 

8- (optional) You can rename the “wordpress” folder to anything. Some people changed it to “wp” or “blog” so their blog address will be “http://<hostname>/blog” or “http://<hostname>/wp” instead of http://<hostname>/wordpress .

 

 

9- Open your WordPress folder (wordpress / wp / blog ), copy wp-config-sample.php to a new file called wp-config.php. I changed mine to “blog”.

 

 

10- Edit wp-config.php with any text editor e.g. Notepad. Change the things that I have marked out in bold. Don’t forget to save the file afterwards.

define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘your-wordpress-database-name‘); // The name of the database
define(‘DB_USER’, ‘root‘); // Your MySQL admin username used to manage the database above
define(‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘root-user-password‘); // …and password
define(‘DB_HOST’, ‘localhost’); // 99% chance you won’t need to change this value
define(‘DB_CHARSET’, ‘utf8′);
define(‘DB_COLLATE’, ”);

 

11- Fire-up your web browser. Type in your web server name plus your WordPress setup path (http://<your-webserver-name/blog/wp-admin/install.php), for example:

 

http://www.syahid.com/blog/wp-admin/install.php

 

Remember! “blog” can be “wordpress” or “wp” depending on what you put on step 8. Default is “wordpress”.

 

 

12- If the previous step was successful, you will be shown a WordPress initial start page. Click “First Step“.

wordpress-initial-first-step-setup

 

 

13- Insert your Weblog title and your email account. Don’t worry, both are changeable after setup. Click the big, bold “Continue to Second Step” button.

wordpress-second-step-enter-blog-title

 

 

14- You will be given an initial password to access your blog account. Copy it somewhere safe. You will need it later. Click the “wp-login” link to access your WordPress login page.

wordpress-second-step-take-password-and-login

 

 

15- Enter “admin” as Username and the “password given to you before” as Password. Obviously, click the “Login” button afterwards.

wordpress-login-enter-admin-password

 

 

16- You had successfully installed WordPress if you get a page similar to the picture shown below.

wordpress-initial-start-page

 

 

17- You can view your initial blog with the not-so-wonderful default theme by clicking on the “View Site” link.

initial-homepage-of-a-newly-setup-wordpress-blog

 

 

18- Don’t forget to change your password! To do so, click “Users” –> “Authors and Users”. Then select “admin” by ticking the box under “ID” and click the “Edit” button.

change-wordpress-admin-password

 

 

19- Enter the new password of your choice TWICE and click “Update User“. Test your password by logging out of WordPress and log in again with the new password.

change-wordpress-admin-password-confirmation

 

 

You have successfully installed and run WordPress on Apache web server locally! Now you can mimic your live WordPress site by installing a similar WordPress theme, plugins and more. The next time a wonderful themes or plugins seems relevant to your blog, safely test it on your local WordPress server before applying it live on the Internet. Better be safe than sorry!

 

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PHP Vs. Ruby Comparison

December 12th, 2011 No Comments

Below is a great answer to my PHP vs. Ruby question from Geo.  Just had to share!

I asked:

Are PHP and Ruby developers ever the same animal?
Most of my clients are developing massive scale eCommerce or communication networks and only want PHP.
Where does Ruby come in – for lighter weight, rapid web development?
Does a PHP developer have deeper – or just different – coding ability?

Geo answered:

Val,

There are actually 3 points here.

  • Ruby
  • Rails
  • PHP

The issue that happens with rails is that most people introduced to Ruby have been introduced via Rails.
Rails is a framework that utilizes Ruby as language of implementation.

Now Ruby vs PHP. Not that one is better than the other, but PHP has a much more extensive library of extensions and modules, and it’s object oriented model has been implemented over time. Ruby on the other hand has been designed from the ground up as an object oriented language, and definitely has a very modern well thought out syntax. Ruby’s community and as well as libraries are growing, but it is no where near the number of PHP’s. As a language Ruby is slower than PHP, but this is a bottleneck that can be worked around. The real issue is with Rails and its tightly coupled architecture.

Rails, like I said is a framework – a contract on how an applications architecture’s base will be implemented. 9 times out of 10 Rubiest think framework first ( Rails ) vs Language first; THEY WERE INTRODUCED TO RUBY VIA RAILS. 9.9 times out of 10 perl,php, and python people think language first. The success of Rails has brought about an implementation of it MVC structure to perl, php, and python which has enabled perl,php, and python use to ADOPT BEST PRACTICES via Frameworks like symfony,zend,cakephp, django, joomla framework ( not the cms ). Now because Rails is such a “turn keyish” type of framework, issues start to occur when sites start to grow, and what happens is that because so much was done for you at the framework level, meaning “Oh, look in Rails you don’t have to worry about X, it is handled automatically”, that when issues start to occur you are not familiar thoroughly with the architecture ( internals of RAILS) that is becomes extra work to handle high loads. Some, bottle necks in Rails are, ( RAILS FANBOYS, notice how I said SOME):

  • Application startup and bootstrapping
  • Active record and database implementation layer
  • Caching without having the application bootstrap

These issues are also in CakePHP which is the closest implementation of Rails in PHP, they even copied the mistakes! Symfony, Zend, and Joomla Framework are much more loosely coupled, with Zend coming out as the loosest. To deal with very high traffic, TWITTER had to start scrapping away RAILS in certain parts and start developing with scala and even c++. Many Rails fanboys started crying when this happened.

In all, there are very competent Ruby programmers out there that aren’t tied to Rails, but nowhere near the amount of PHP.

Geo

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Huge Increase of Permanent Quality Traffic

November 11th, 2011 No Comments

How do you achieve huge increase of Permanent Quality Traffic with Link Popularity ?

As a website owner, you may or may not realize the value of a campaign designed to increase link popularity. A good link popularity campaign will serve to increase the amount of traffic not only because of the increased visibility of your website due to larger amounts of links. But also because of the higher number of relevant one way links coming into your site. T he more one way links you get, the more you build link popularity.

How do you find out which sites on the internet have the highest link popularity? You need to go to a search engine and enter a word or phrase. Understand that the first sites to appear on your screen will be those that have invested resources to build link popularity. The method necessary to increase link popularity may seem easy at first glance, but here are some reasons to hire a specialist to help you increase link popularity:

The search engine algorithms consider multiple items when assigning link popularity to particular sites. Internet marketing pros know how to build link popularity for your site.

It does matter where your site is listed. Free directory listings and reciprocal link programs seem like a great idea to increase link popularity, although if used incorrectly these services may actually detract from your link popularity.

An SEO specialist hired to increase link popularity will understand the interrelations of the major search engines. For example, they already know that Yahoo! rankings are tied directly to Google rankings. And more than that, they know how to get your site noticed.

A professional SEO specialist will already know the strategy to networking. They have experience with contacting the owners of sites containing similar content or themes in order to request link exchanges. They know the best way to get you the external links to your site in order to increase link popularity and site traffic.

It should by now seem fairly obvious that almost without a doubt if you want to build link popularity successfully, you are going to require outside help. Since your priorities need to be focused in other areas than SEO, hiring a link popularity SEO specialist is a fantastic way to save your time and increase your site traffic with a minor financial investment.

Of course, by hiring someone to build link popularity for your site you are going to have a better return on your investment than if you spent your own time trying to increase link popularity.

In closing, be aware that link popularity is perhaps the most vital measure applied to a website with today’s search engine technologies. It is time comsuming to build link popularity for a newly launched site and to increase the link popularity of an existing site. Hiring an SEO specialist to perform this task on your behalf is a good investment to make. Remember an increase in link popularity means an increase in traffic and with traffic comes profits.

Good Luck

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6 Best Practices for Modern SEO

November 9th, 2011 No Comments

6 Best Practices for Modern SEO

Erin Everhart 

Google’s search results aren’t what they used to be. Need proof? Just look at its results page. No longer solely comprised of traditional, organic site matches, Google now lists local maps, images, videos and social cues as well — and it’s affecting more than just what you see.

If you rely heavily on search engines for pageviews and sales, as many businesses do, Google search results will drastically affect how your customers find you. If your business needs to be seen and clicked, take into account the following six search engine tips.

1. Local SEO Is Taking Over

There’s a good probability that a large chunk of the Google searches you perform will display Google Places listings – and consumers are taking notice. SEO software firm SEOmoz did some eye-tracking case studies on Google’s SERP (search engine results page). The results show that users heavily gravitate toward any of Places’ listings, whether they’re mixed into organic lists, concentrated in a group of seven or even listed in the middle of the results page. The heat map above shows the activity around a Google search for “pizza.”

If your business relies on local listings, concentrate on scoring a seat at Google Places. You can do this by using:

  • Citations: Ensure that your correct business information is listed in as many (reputable) sources as possible around the Internet. As always, consistency is king. If you write “Blvd.” instead of Boulevard on your Google Places page, make sure your other listings reflect the same.
  • Google Places page optimization: Just like your website, make sure your Places page is properly optimized. Include categories that match exactly, and point your Places page back to a city-specific landing page if applicable.
  • Reviews: Google will only display reviews from Google, but getting reviews from aggregators like Yelp, Superpages or Trip Advisor will help increase your presence.

2. You Can’t Have Search Without Social

The separation of search and social has officially ended. Social cues such as Twitter shares, Facebook likes and social bookmarking heavily influence search rankings. Essentially, search results are personalized for each person. With any SEO campaign you put into motion, include a social aspect to it to facilitate information sharing.

3. Think of People, not Robots, When Optimizing Keywords

People search in Google because they have a question. Anticipate those questions — whether about the best style of yoga pants or where to get the lowest mortgage rate. Your keywords and the content on your pages should reflect the answers to those questions. Keyword research is tedious, but it’s arguably the most important aspect of SEO. Transition away from thinking of keywords like data, and put more of an emphasis on the person who will be typing in that keyword.

4. Content Links Are King — Good Writers Are Sorcerers

Google is not stupid — it can spot paid and spam links. For the most effective long-term SEO strategy, move the focus back to great content, both on your website and across other sites. Guest blogging is great, for instance, but to get a leg up on your competition, target blogs that aren’t direct matches to your industry.

For example, a client of my company sells golf carts, so we wrote a blog post about the most tricked-out golf carts for tailgates, and the link we got back was one their competitors didn’t already have.

5. Check your Backend: Schema.org, Microformats and Rich Snippets

The Big Three (Google, Yahoo and Bing) have worked together to develop Schema.org, a set of website standards that will tell search engines what your site is about, making it easier for those engines to read the site’s data and index accordingly.

By using rich snippets, for example, you’re able to tell Google what information to feature in SERPs: product reviews and prices, upcoming events, recipe cooking times, etc. The added data will increase your click-through rate because users are able to preview more about the link before they commit to the click.

6. It Doesn’t Mean Anything Without Data

Whether you’re a one-man SEO show for your company or working in an agency with several clients, your site needs to see results. While ranking reports of keywords is still a great indicator of progress, personalized searches make it difficult to get the most accurate readings. Plus, when Google defaulted to private searches for users signed into their Google accounts, the company made it harder to track how people arrive at your site.

Start relying more on simple key performance indicators (KPIs) to show results, for instance, the number of landing pages you have, the bounce rate of those pages, and the number of keywords driving traffic to each of those landing pages. Google Analytics displays all of this data.

What are some other things you see that are affecting searches, and what are you doing to improve your rankings in these areas?

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Where Is Yahoo Headed?

November 3rd, 2011 No Comments
Where Is Yahoo Headed? Its Product Chief Has a Clue [INTERVIEW] 

Yahoo Chief Product Officer Blake Irving says that he’s not interested in the vacant Yahoo CEO job, but is instead focused on a big pipeline of mobile products and beating Nielsen at its own game.

In an interview with Mashable, the charismatic Yahoo executive claims he’s not vying to replace Carol Bartz, who was unceremoniously bounced from the company in September.

“No. I’m a great product guy,” Irving emphatically responded when asked whether he’d make a good CEO for Yahoo. “Even if I did make a good CEO for any company, I’m a product guy first and foremost.”

Irving admits that the turmoil with Yahoo’s leadership has made it tough to recruit talent, though he says new recruits are convinced once they meet with the team and see the products they’re working on. “When your CEO exits your company in a quick fashion, people notice,” he says. “People read what they read.”

However, Irving claims the turmoil hasn’t affected the company’s product pipeline. He says Yahoo can’t prevent what the media is saying and what his friends are reading, but his team is still working on “incredibly cool stuff.” Yahoo released four products Wednesday, including Livestand, a social newsstand app for the iPad that competes with Flipboard.

“We all know what we’re trying to build here,” Irving said. “Not just for Yahoo, but for the web. We’re steadfast in that, and everyone in the product organization knows that.”

IntoNow and the Yahoo Vision

Irving showed excitement about IntoNow for iPad, another product that Yahoo released Wednesday. The app can “listen” to a TV show and figure out what show and episode the clip comes from, but it now comes with tweets and information related to the show. This makes it an ideal TV-watching companion. “It allows you to have a personal experience for television when your’e in a shared environment,” Irving stated.

Perhaps the most important thing about the app, however, is its ability to track user behavior as they watch. Irving says Yahoo knows if someone is “in front of the TV or at the fridge” based on their behavior with the app. Activity on the app can reveal whether somebody is interested in an on-screen character or presenter, or has tuned out and is doing something else.

Irving even made a bold claim about how much information Yahoo can gather through the app: “We will know more about what’s happening on TV than Nielsen,” he said.

This information opens up a huge opportunity for brands. Irving explained the app may know somebody is watching a Coke commercial during a TV show. “Couldn’t you advertise Pepsi?” Irving said. He believes the app provides a better place to advertise, since viewers’ attention moves away from the TV and towards the tablet during commercial breaks. In fact, Pepsi and IntoNow have already partnered on one promotion; users that tagged a Pepsi MAX commercial received a free soda.

How does IntoNow and Livestand fit into Yahoo’s overall strategy and future? We’ve heard Yahoo say over and over that it considers itself the premiere digital media company. Irving fleshed out that description by saying today’s web is good at relevance, but isn’t good at “providing real meaning” to the things we watch and interact with.

“The vision and mission of the company,” Irving said, “is bringing personal meaning to the web.”

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Google Tweaks Search Ranking Algorithm

November 3rd, 2011 No Comments
 Google Tweaks Search Ranking Algorithm
By Todd Wasserman

Google’s search algorithm underwent another little upgrade today. This time, the search giant tweaked its ranking algorithm to help more recent information zoom to the top of search results.

The change, which will affect about 35% of searches, is designed for queries about recurring events, recent activity in the news and frequent updates. Writing in The Official Google Blog, Google fellow Amit Singhal outlined how each of those categories would be affected by the change.

A recurring event, for example, might be the Olympics. “If I search for [olympics], I probably want information about next summer’s upcoming Olympics, not the 1900 Summer Olympics,” Singhal writes. A “freshness algorithm” will ensure that Summer 2012 Olympics results float to the top. As for recent events, a search for “Occupy Oakland Protest” would yield the latest news. “You’ll see more high-quality pages that might only be minutes old,” he writes. Frequent updates refers to things that aren’t a hot topic or a recurring event, but nevertheless change often. For instance, a search for “slr cameras” should produce only the most-recent models.

The latest tweak builds on a Google initiative called Caffeine that provided 50% fresher results for searches than Google’s previous index. The reason? As Carrie Grimes, a Google software engineer, outlined in a December 2010 blog post about the completion of Caffeine, “People’s expectations for search are higher than they used to be. Searchers want to find the latest relevant content and publishers expect to be found the instant they publish.”

Given Google’s dominance in search, any change to its algorithm will be closely watched. The company’s last major change, Panda back in February, diminished the impact of content farms and gave Google’s YouTube higher visibility. Google, however, updates its algorithm 500 to 600 times a year, according to SEOMoz, and tends to announce major tweaks every few months or so.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Kontrec

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SEO Beats PPC & Social Media For Generating Leads, New Industry Report Says

November 2nd, 2011 No Comments

SEO Beats PPC & Social Media For Generating Leads, New Industry Report Says
By Matt McGee

SEO is the number one source of leads for both B2C and B2B marketers, beating out both PPC and social media marketingin a recent survey of online marketers. But more of those surveyed say they plan to increase their social media marketing budgets in 2012, ahead of SEO and PPC.

The numbers come from the 2011 State of Digital Marketing Report, which was compiled by Webmarketing123, a California-based online marketing agency. The company surveyed more than 500 U.S. online marketers in August and September; about two-thirds of all respondents identified themselves as B2B marketers.

Whether B2B or B2C, both groups of marketers agree that SEO has the biggest impact on lead generation. 57 percent of B2B marketers credit SEO as their primary source of generating leads, while 41 percent of B2C marketers said the same thing.

wm123-1

Both types of marketers say that website traffic is the primary way they measure the success of online marketing efforts. Brand awareness was at the bottom of the list for measuring success by both B2B and B2C respondents.

The survey asked a number of budget-related questions, including one about which channels get the majority of the marketers’ budgets. On the B2B side, one-third indicated that SEO gets the majority of their budget. But on the B2C side, more than 42 percent say that PPC gets the majority of their budget — about double the number of B2C marketers who said SEO is their top budget allocation.

wm123-2

Overall, 60 percent of respondents said they plan to increase their budget for social media marketing in 2012; 53 percent plan to increase their budget for SEO and 40 percent will increase their PPC budget.

Those increases in social media spending are likely field by another couple statistics from the survey: 68 percent say they’ve generated leads from either Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, while 55 percent have closed deals from social media leads.

The 2011 State of Digital Marketing Report can be downloaded from Webmarketing123′s website. You’ll need to provide name and contact information. There’s also an associated infographic with many statistic, which we’ve posted separately here: Infographic: Digital Marketer Views On SEO, PPC & Social Media.

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Google Now Indexing Facebook Comments

November 2nd, 2011 No Comments

Google Now Indexing Facebook Comments

By Alicia Eler

google logo 150.pngGoogle is now indexing Facebook comments on websites, reports labnol.org. The only Facebook comments indexed by Google are the ones from the add-on commenting system. These comments are being crawled (and ranked) in Google’s SERPs.

This is good news (read: added Google juice) for sites that are using the Facebook commenting platform.

Previously, Googlebot was not able to read JavaScript within an iframe, which meant it did not find Facebook comments on websites. Now it has the ability to index some dynamic comments, but not all.

Here’s how Facebook commenting will look in Google Search, courtesy of SearchEngineLand.

Techcrunch-Commens-600x249.jpeg

Now that Google indexes Facebook comments, websites have more incentive to install the add-on. Here’s another example of a comment thread, plus the subsequent Google search for that thread.

scobleizer_comment.png

google_comment.png

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