Archived Search Marketing Blog for KoMarketing Associates

Alexa Data - Additional Support Skewing It's Accuracy

We frequently talk about the inaccuracies of Alexa data when looking at their reports and information presented.  While Alexa can be a reasonable benchmark for establishing some form of search visibility, it should not be maintained as an authoritative source of information, because the data is heavily skewed towards toolbar users and their demographics and preferences, etc.

Here are two recent posts supporting this statement from well known (and respected) folks at our favorite little search engine.  The original is on Peter Norvig's website and further expanded on by Matt Cutts on his blog last night.

WordPress 2.1 Released

From the WordPress Blog, the latest version of WordPress (2.1) has just been released.  Here are some of the features that I am excited about seeing in the new version:

• Autosave makes sure you never lose a post again.
• The new tabbed editor allowing authors to switch between WYSIWYG and code editing instantly while writing a post.
• The lossless XML import and export makes it easy for you to move your content between WordPress blogs.
• New search engine privacy option allows you take you to indicate your blog shouldn’t ping or be indexed by search engines like Google.
• You can set any “page” to be the front page of your site, and put the latest posts somewhere else, making it much easier to use WordPress as a content management system.
• Links in your blogroll now support sub-categories and you can add categories on the fly.
• More AJAX to make custom fields, moderation, deletions, and more all faster. My favorite is the comments page, which new lets you approve or unapprove things instantly.
• Pages can now be drafts, or private.
• Our admin has been refreshed to load faster and be more visually consistent.
• The dashboard now instantly and brings RSS feeds asynchronously in the background.
• The upload manager lets you easily manage all your uploads pictures, video, and audio.

Some of the features are things that I had wished were there before, and am glad to hear they will be available and look forward to working with the new software.  If anyone has any reviews or initial opinions, please comment here.  I'll also try to track reviews as they appear as well.

Splogging Turns To New Methods of Spam Tactics

The "State of the Splogosphere Part IV" gives us some hope that the continued problem of spam generation of blogs may be getting solved by the big blog search engines such as Google Blog Search and Technorati.  While it is far from complete, at the least, the engineers of these search tools are recognizing the issues and addressing them as best as they can (as echoed by Matt Cutts on Saturday).

Of course, that only means that the spammers use alternative methods to driving artificial links - comment spam has taken on a whole new meaning.  Even in our blog, which received little traffic, we end up filtering out comment spam on a regular basis.  I can't imagine authoring a blog with thousands of subscribers and manually filtering out the junk they receive.  What does this mean for the future of the social network?

My opinion is that social networks need to look at better filtering technology to get rid of the junk.  WordPress TOS clearly defines their intolerance to spam on their hosted servers and it can only be a matter of time before plugins are created to filter self-hosted blogs using the open source technology as well.  But the WordPress team eliminates blogs on their network that do not conform to guidelines as well - this is not just an empty statement.  The other blog software providers should be doing the same as well as the social network providers and "enablers" such as Technorati, Digg and YouTube.  If they do not, the greater danger is that they become useless or untrustworthy.  Think about how many web directories there are on the Internet that have so little value to the user.  The same may just as likely be said about Article Directories and Press Release syndication services. 

There is a reason that Google remains at the top of search technology today - because they care about the search results that they show and continue to find ways to update their algorithm to eliminate the misuse of web technology tactics designed to "game" their results.  But more importantly, perhaps they realized the fickleness of the web user, and the fact that by not doing this, the world of Internet technology easily allows their competitor to provide a better user experience and ultimately a better website.  The same needs to happen in the environment of the social network, and probably much sooner than later.

Adding "Digg This" Links to Your Blog Posts

Have you seen "Digg This", "Digg It" and other various Digg-related hyperlinks at the bottom of blog posts recently (including this one)?  PR Squared recently had a good post answering some basic questions on the Social Media News Release (SMNR), especially when dealing with the subject of SMNR's and Technorati tagging to establish thematic relationships with your news releases. 

One portion of the post dealt specifically with adding "Digg It/Digg This" capability to the bottom or your SMNR or Blog Posts in order to allow users to easily submit your releases to the popular article community site, Digg.  This blog post provides examples of more advanced ways to enable users to automatically submit your article (with title and URL) to Digg, without manually entering in the information.  Specific Digg material on integrating Digg into your site and SMNR's can be found here.

A Couple Initial Notes on Digg

• You still need to have a registered account to submit information.
• Make sure to adhere to the Digg TOS for quality guidelines and read their FAQ ahead of time.

General Social Media News Releases
The additional code for your hyperlink to "Digg This" is very simple and requires only a slight bit of coding on the author's part.  Simply hyperlink the "Digg" text as follows using standard HTML:

• <A HREF="http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=DOMAIN.COM&title=STORY TITLE">DIGG</A>
• In this case, substitute DOMAIN.COM with the web address of your SMNR and "STORY TITLE" with your specific Title.
• You can add more information to this hyperlink (such as description and topic), but I find that this can get a bit cumbersome for code purposes and offers more potential for error in coding.

Adding "Digg This" to TypePad Blogs
Because blog posts are dynamic in nature, it is slightly difficult to manually enter you code in each individual post.  Rather, your blog administrator can adjust the template of the posts to incorporate the functionality automatically. 

Instead of static parameters, TypePad users need to implement the code associated with appropriate tags in order to implement "Digg This" functionality.  That means that:

• url=<$MTEntryPermalink$>
• title=<$MTEntryTitle$>

The code that needs to be placed in the template will look like this:

• <A HREF="http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=<$MTEntry
  Permalink$>&title=<$MTEntryTitle$>">DIGG</A>

WordPress Functionality
Bloggers using WordPress need to follow these guidelines for proper coding:

• url=<?php the_permalink() ?>
• title=<?php the_title(); ?>

And your code for the WordPress template:

• <A HREF="http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=<?php the_permalink() ?>&title=<?php the_title(); ?>">DIGG</A>

Using Digg with Blogger
I'm not a fan of adding a lot to Blogger in general, because if you don't save your files, then decide you want to use a new template, anything you do from a customization standpoint is lost.  That being said, here is the code for Blogger as well:

• url=<$BlogItemPermalinkUrl$>
• title=<$BlogItemTitle$>

The final product:

• <A HREF="http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=<$BlogItemPerm
  alinkUrl$>&title=<$BlogItemTitle$>">DIGG</A>

The only thing left to do in any of these instances is locating the exact place where you want this link to appear.  I suggest having it at the very end of your post(s), somewhere in the footer section.  If you have any difficulty, or need assistance, feel free to comment back and I'll see if I can assist with placement and specific locations.  Enjoy!

Considering Business Blogging?

Are you considering adding a blog as a component of your website presence.  Blogging has evolved into a major component of many company's online marketing strategies.  Blogs represent a way to communicate with customers, prospects and partners quickly and easily, while also providing fresh content, new ideas and new ways for businesses to collaborate online.

SiteProNews recently posted a nice article on business blogging, which wraps together some of the benefits of blogging, blog resources and the idea of merging the world of blogging into your business environment.  A while back, KoMarketing posted some thoughts on the Blog Software we have been using. In addition, here is another SiteProNews article which provides more comparative analysis on Blog Software tools, the differences between them, and some of the advantages around each.

Tools We Use for Blogging

As we've entered the "blogosphere", here are some thoughts on the three main software tools we have used for Blogging.

TypePad
Of course, this is our tool of choice and what we are using for the KoMarketing Business Blog. We chose TypePad for a variety of reasons including:

• Support - TypePad is a commercial product from Six Apart.  There seems to be more readily available support documentation, customer service and accessible information than many other blog tools.
• Multiple pricing options.  Depending on your level of sophistication and dedication to blogging, TypePad offers three pricing plans to get you started.  For simple startup, bloggers can get online for as little as $50/year. 
• Advanced (TypePad Pro) users can not only choose to use the fully customizable pricing package offered (what we are using), but can also bring the software to their own web servers with  Moveable Type, capturing all of the technological advantages and having complete control of the technology.

Overall, TypePad fits well with our desire to have control over design and layout, be able to incorporate company specific information, and add/remove categories, add-ons etc.  We also chose the pro version of TypePad because we wanted the ability to include multiple authors and guest authors on our blog.  It's easy enough to get started without too much investment in time and has an easy to use support center for finding help with almost any topic related to blogging, TypePad, and development of the Blog Software.

Blogger
For users who want to just get up and running, and are not too concerned with advanced features or control, and don't necessarily have technological knowledge, Blogger is the best tool to get started with.  In a matter of minutes you can register for a free account, input your information, and have a blog going. Blogger has a suite of templates to choose from for design, and I've found many other free resources that distribute additional templates (skins) as well.  In addition, the interface does allow you to customize your own look and feel, but it does require some coding experience and technical knowledge.  Possibly best of all, the "Get Listed" features allow you to get quick exposure in the Blogger environment once you get up and running and start posting.

The downside to Blogger is that there is no ability to add categories (there is a workaround, but it is not exactly like the category feature of other blog tools) or guest authors and there is some limitation to what you can and can't do with your designs.  That being said, there are enough resources online to assist even novice users on how to add more robust functionality, and the Blogger community is (IMO) much more friendly to those just starting out in blogging.  There is a large amount of user-friendly support out there as well. 

Overall, Blogger is great for starting out, but if you intend on doing anything with your blog that is more advanced than just personal blogging, you may want to consider another piece of software.  But if you are new to the technology and want to try out blogging, or want a quick and easy tool to get started, Blogger is for you.

WordPress
I personally just started using WordPress on the recommendation of a handful of other bloggers that have been using it and I have had a positive experience thus far.  WordPress, similar to TypePad and Blogger, offers a quick way to get started through one of their free accounts.  The best part of WordPress is that it is completely free for use - either through a hosted account, or as a software package that you download and install to your own web server.  I chose the latter and it took me no more than 10 minutes to get the software installed.  The administrative functionality allows the user to customize almost everything once implemented.  So for no charge whatsoever, you can have a fully customizable and controllable piece of blog software right on your own web server or web hosting service.

The downside to WordPress is that there is a little more technical understanding required to really play with the complete software package, and support, while available, is not as robust as TypePad or Blogger.  If you're serious about blogging, and don't mind investing the time to learn and develop your blog's features, look and feel etc, than WordPress may be the best way to go.

Summary
No matter what type of blogging software you choose, there are upsides and downsides to all three.  Beginners should look at Blogger, the base version of TypePad, or the free hosted account in WordPress to get started out.  Once you've spent a few months blogging and like what you're doing, you may want to consider upgrading your blog package, looking at customizable templates, or investing time to learn more advanced features of your blog software.  One thing I have noticed as I've looked through tutorials and help guides is that all three services offer a way, and detailed documentation, for you to import data from another blogging tool.  So if six months from now you decide that you want to move your blog for one platform to another, all three of these resources provide a way for you to import your data, so you're not starting completely from scratch again. 

Best of luck choosing your software and happy blogging!

About Technorati Weblog Search Engine

Technorati is one of the leaders, if not the leader in Blog Search.  It's about page claims that it is currently tacking 34 million websites and over 2 billion links.  As blogging becomes more and more powerful, predominate and a source for both traffic and information, search engines specializing in finding relevant weblogs for specific interests and knowledge will become equally important.  It's no wonder that the leaders in search are also focusing on these blog-specific search components as well.

Technorati Profile

The Google Love/Hate Relationship

For those avid Search Engine fans, fanatics, lovers and haters, here's two interesting blog posts from Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineWatch.com.

• 25 Things I Love About Google
  which was preceded by:
• 25 Things I Hate About Google

You may or may not agree, but it's a nice critique on the leader in the Search Engine industry - don't think they haven't noticed!

Yahoo Publisher Network

Interested in learning more about RSS? 

The Yahoo Publisher network gives you a comprehensive guide to RSS (Really Simple Syndication), what it is, why use it, and resources and information.  Most importantly (at least for Yahoo) it gives you information on how to add your RSS feed to the Yahoo Publisher Network itself.  Please note that it usually takes a few weeks for the feed to get picked up and listed in the Yahoo results. 

Here's a link to submit your feed directly: http://publisher.yahoo.com/rss_guide/submit.php

The Yahoo Publisher Network is currently a beta project being driven by Yahoo to allow content relevant advertisments through providers.  It is very similar to Google Adsense.