The term has become so common that most people don’t know that “blog” is a condensed version of “weblog.” It is not a new form of communication, by any means. People have been blogging since man began painting on cave walls, really; it’s just that the tools have changed and the definitions of writing styles have evolved a bit (but just a bit). When the Internet was still without its graphic interface, the World Wide Web, there were the bulletin boards and file-sharing services that allowed the distribution of text files.
Even though the Internet traces its roots way back past Al Gore to the DARPANet (Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration) in 1969, not every article in that era was a description of biological weapons or a flight-simulator log. People would rant, discuss, argue and hold forth on any number of topics. The term weblog seems to have started, some folks say, with one Jorn Barger, who would “surf the net” (not his phrase) and keep a log of what he found interesting, then comment on some of it. As words have a way of doing, “weblog” became “blog” and now they’re everywhere, and everyone has one.
Why don’t you have a blog?
The fact that there are so many blogs is perhaps the most compelling reason that your company should have one. It is no longer noteworthy to have a blog; today people will wonder why you don’t have one. You probably know a lot of reasons why you should have one for your firm, whether your business is plastic extrusion, audio engineering, IT consulting, or anything really. What you need to focus on are all the benefits you are forgoing by not having a blog that represents your product, service or organization.
One immediate benefit is that you are validated as being up to date, a 21st century cybercitizen. If no one knows a thing about your firm except that you have a blog, there is a lot that can be surmised from that one fact. It signifies being computer literate, technology savvy, thorough, and communicative. As mentioned before, it seems odd now when companies don’t have a blog. It was well over a decade ago that having a Web site became an absolute must for businesses, and for a time it was de rigueur for individuals, as well. Now, folks can have a blog instead of a Web site and maintain just about the same level of “cool factor”—but you, as a businessperson, need both.
Quick connections, extended reach
Up-to-the-minute information is no longer good enough. Things change by the second, which is why texting and Twitter have become parts of the communications toolkit, too. A sense of immediacy, the need for updates on a continuous basis, has driven the development of these technologies. However, these are bandwidth-limited and one-dimensional. A blog, on the other hand, has most of the benefits of your Web site—it can carry text, display images, stream media and link to other destinations—but is easier to manage and update. You can make changes at any time without calling the IT department or waiting on your webmaster. This business benefit is immediacy—of contact, information delivery and feedback, all crucially important to any business.
Extending Your Network
Another big benefit is the same thing realtors talk about all the time—location, location, location. You’ve got another location that will be indexed, spidered, cataloged and listed in special blog directories. It can become a side door to your main Web site, or a completely separate site altogether. In any case, the network of links, in both directions, will both differ and grow independent from your business site’s links, too, so you’re capturing more (and more varied) visitors—a business benefit we’ll call “extended reach.” A blog increases the range for your corporate message: it allows greater flexibility of presentation, and has a “personal touch” that makes it friendlier, thus making your message more accessible and absorbable than a business site.
Dialogue with customers (and fans)
Regular, consistent and consistently high-quality blogs will attract a readership that will learn to trust you. As trust is established, your visitors will give you more than just brief feedback. They will engage you in discussions that could result in both of you (as well as your other readers) learning something quite valuable. There is no telling what might happen when you are out there in cyberspace meeting and greeting new people. A blog gives you the opportunity to teach and learn, another broad and valuable benefit.
Finally, because of the less formal look, feel and operation of a blog, you can take chances you might not take with your business and/or e-commerce site. You can try focused promotions, test new marketing ideas, gauge the effect of a new advertisement—and you can be right up-front about the fact you are doing these things. It’s a blog, after all, so you can ask things of visitors that you would not ask a Web site visitor that you’re trying to convert into a buyer. You can be more casual than you could at your business site.
Use common sense and go for it
None of the foregoing should be interpreted to mean that you can just cut loose and rant about politics, religion or your in-laws in any offhanded manner that you choose. If your business name is on that blog, you are still representing the firm and its interests. Yes, you can post personal photos and take the occasional tangent, just as you can commend an employee for a job well done or offer discount coupons for a spur-of-the-moment sale. If it’s a business blog, however, there is a reasonable standard of decorum expected of you and everything that carries the company name.
That said, remember what the benefits are—validation, immediacy, extended reach, flexibility, accessibility, dialogue, teaching and learning, experimentation and test marketing—and use your blog to benefit your business, its Web site and its future. Go forward with the desire to offer as much as possible, and you may be surprised at how much you receive in return.
Filed under Technology by on Oct 19th, 2010. 
The significance of longtail keywords can be exemplified by thinking about the following two people:
Bill is a cafeteria worker who spends his spare time fishing and has heard that his favorite TV shows will look even better on on this new-fangled technology called “HDTV”. He might as well upgrade from his 20” to something a little larger while he’s at it his friends tell him (though they don’t know much more about it than he does). He sits at his computer and enters “hdtv” into the Google search box.
Steve also works in a cafeteria but is a bit more tech-savy. He has and uses a Facebook account, watches videos on YouTube and looks up information on Google when he’s looking for an answer to one of his questions. He too is interested in HDTV but decides to check out a few review sites first before making the leap. He reads a great review on CNET and likes the specs of the “Panasonic Viera TC-P50G10” and decides to look around for pricing. He heads back to Google and searches for “panasonic viera tc-p50g10” or perhaps even “buy panasonic viera tc-p50g10 online”.
The difference between these two? Other than the fact that one has a dismal likelihood of conversion and the other a high likelihood – the difficulty in attaining top rankings for the two phrases is very different as well. Now, I’m not saying there isn’t a place for going after the generic, high-traffic phrases but ignoring the higher converting, less-work-per-conversion phrases that are easier to attain rankings for – well – that just doesn’t make good business sense does it?
So – how do you rank for the longtail?
We all understand that the factors of SEO are the factors of SEO. Just like any other phrases – your ability to rank is quite simply based on a combination of page strength and relevancy (yes there are tons of signals Google uses but they essentially break down to these two points). To affect these areas we use a combination of onsite optimization and link building. Sounds easy so far? Perfect. So let’s take a look first at onsite optimization.
Optimizing your site for the longtail
I can’t possibly cover the different technologies and how to make sure your site is crawlable. Let’s just say – the first step is to make sure that the crawlers can get to your internal pages and that strength passes down. If the crawlers can’t get through to the internal pages then you’ve got bigger problems than tweaking your content and building some links. Contact a developer immediately and get that sorted out first – then continue reading.
Once you know that the crawlers are getting through and strength is passing we move on to the actual optimization. The first thing one wants to look at it how to push the items with the highest ROI potential up in the hierarchy of your site. Let’s use Amazon as an example of how that should be done (they know a thing or two about ranking for products).
Amazon uses one of my personal favorite tactics in that they automate the process but it’s not necessary. You probably don’t have the same number of products so you can likely do manually what they have to automate but let’s look at what they’re doing and you can apply the strategy as you see fit.
If I was Amazon and I wanted to rank my site for longtail phrases I’d want to rank for the phrases that had the highest search volume and highest chances of conversions. I’d have to apply global rules to a massive site (you don’t have to – you can likely do things on a case-by-case basis but I’m sure we can all agree – Amazon cannot). So to keep the most profitable phrases high in the hierarchy but still not ignore the other longtail phrases they have created a hierarchy that puts the top product categories one hop from the homepage (Laptops & Netbooks For Example) and on that page they have links to all the major brands and uses but my favorite tactic is that they have the bestsellers. This information is easily created from their database and insures that the more popular products are two hops from the homepage and linked to with the brand and model number. At the time of this writing they have a link to the “ASUS Eee PC Seashell 1005PE-MU17-BK 10.1-Inch…”. If I search “asus eee pc 1005pe-m” who do you think shows up first? Amazon.
So step one – make sure you’re linking to the product pages with the brand and model number of the item and also put the more important items higher in the hierarchy of your site. Now this doesn’t mean cram all your products on the page. You have to apply the same principles to links with onsite as you do with offsite optimization. A page has a vote. It you have a page with 10 products listed on it – each product gets 1/10 of the weight passed to it. If the page has 500 products listed on it – well, you get my point. Figure out what matters and focus there.
Of course – you don’t want to ignore the other potential phrases. You’ll notice that as well as linking to the top products in each category they link to sub pages with brands, specs, etc. This is why they rank so well for so many phrases. Well – that’s part one.
Once you’ve got the internal linking sorted out you need to follow that up with some onsite relevancy. Here we’re referring to optimized titles, descriptions, H1 tags, content, etc. I’m going to have to leave a full breakdown of onsite optimization for another article but I can discuss some of the differences you’ll encounter with longtail optimization with ecommerce sites.
With “traditional” optimization we visit a page and adjust the relevant aspects (titles, content, etc.) manually. With large ecommerce sites we need to come up with rules that apply site wide. Developing titles, descriptions and content for each and every page one-by-one is likely not an option. If you look at Amazon again you’ll see that they automate the process by using the brand, model and categories in the title, description, keywords and H1 tag. Easily automated. Through their use of automated elements (“Customers bought with …”, specs, descriptions, reviews, etc.) they are also able to insure that that the brand and model number appear on the page.
Now that works well for Amazon. They have millions of links and huge site strength. But what if you don’t have that behind you. They can build a page, put it on their site and rank. You may need to invest some of your time in link building.
Link building for longtail optimization
There are two primary aspects of link building that one needs to address when we’re looking at longtail optimization. The first is to the homepage for site strength and the other is to specific internal pages. The reason that we’ll want to link to specific internal pages is that like it or not, you’re not as strong as Amazon and so you need to build links to compete where they do not.
I’ll leave the discussion of how to build links to other articles (you know – one of the 800,000 written on the subject) however we will discuss the purpose of the links and thus you’ll understand the pattern of the link building.
The homepage links are in place to simply build overall site strength and should be geared to your generic, homepage phrases – it’s the internal links that are specifically geared to brands and models. So we’ll focus on those links in this article.
How to build links to internal pages
Building links to internal pages is virtually identical to homepage. True you can’t use directories but that’s about the only link building tactic that doesn’t apply. There are two points that you’re going to want to direct links to:
1 – the category/brand main page.
The first point you’re going to want to direct links at is the main category page and the main sub-category points of the ecommerce site. You’ll want to direct these links in with anchor text that suits the brand and/or category subject. Let’s use Amazon as an example again.
For the purpose of longtail optimization – the links we’d direct to http://www.amazon.com/Netbooks-Computers/b?ie=UTF8&node=679517011 would primarily be geared to strengthening the page. Oh I’d use anchor text geared at “netbooks” and the link but the main point is to make that page stronger and in turn – the pages it links to. These links will also get the page spidered more.
What this will do is make the links to the brands stronger but most important – the links to the top sellers stronger and more quickly picked up. This is why they rank for new products in a matter of hours.
The individual brand and usage pages are the same from this perspective./ You’ll want to optimize the pages and you’ll want to focus the links for long term gain but the short term purpose is to pass strength to the product pages.
2 – the product pages.
On top of building links to pages one level up (as we’ve just discussed) you’ll also want to build links to the individual product pages. Amazon can build a page, link to it and have it rank – you probably cannot. For products and models you know will stand the test of time – building links can be a long term strategy but not my favorite (due mainly to the fact that it’s not exciting). Personally I like building links to “Coming soon” product pages and getting them spidered before there’s any competition and then adding in the product the day it launches giving you a one-up over your competitors in both timing and strength. Heck, you might even win out over Amazon for a while. 
Don’t overdo it in the link building. You’ve got a lot of products. Unless you know a specific product is going to be HUGE you’ll want to just build a few links and move on. You’ve got a lot of products to cover.
Moving forward
Obviously I can’t cover all the various aspects of ranking for the longtail in a single1800 word article and in fact, if I turned this into a 180 page book I’d still not be able to cover all the variables but my hope is that I’ve given you food for thought in the tactics and timing you’ll find helpful in moving forward and ranking your website for the longtail phrases that convert so well and for which you can rank so quickly if you do it right.
Filed under Technology by on Oct 18th, 2010.
Nanotechnology, sometimes shortened to nanotech, refers to a field of applied science whose theme is the control of matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Generally nanotechnology deals with structures 100 nanometers or smaller, and involves developing materials or devices within that size. Nanotechnology is an extremely diverse and multidisciplinary field, ranging from novel extensions of conventional device physics, to completely new approaches based upon molecular self-assembly, to developing new materials with dimensions on the nanoscale, or the scale of nothing, even to speculation on whether we can directly control matter on the atomic scale. There has been much debate on the future implications of nanotechnology. Nanotechnology has the potential to create many new materials and devices with wide-ranging applications, such as in medicine, electronics, and energy production. On the other hand, nanotechnology raises many of the same issues as with any introduction of new technology, including concerns about the toxicity and environmental impact of nanomaterials, and their potential effects on global economics, as well as speculation about various doomsday scenarios. These concerns have lead to a debate among advocacy groups and governments on whether special regulation of nanotechnology is warranted.
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Filed under Technology by on Oct 15th, 2010. 25 Comments.
This week, I was speaking with a client who wanted to be able to go on vacation with the knowledge that his business was still moving in the right direction. He wanted to be able to go away and be away without checking in (and stressing out) throughout the day. That conversation inspired this post.
As a small business owner or self-employed professional, you place a high value on your time. It’s easy to get caught up in reinventing the wheel over and over again. As you grow and bring on help (a virtual assistant, customer service, etc.) it can be hard to let go and feel confident that your business is moving in the right direction without you being in the office and following up on every detail yourself.
In order to work less, get more done and make sure your staff is doing things they way you want them to be done, you need to create systems.
Business systems are really powerful. They can help you:
- Manage growth
- Delegate
- Bring on assistance
- Focus on the big picture while still knowing the day-to-day tasks are being handled in the manner in which you WANT them to be handled
- Standardize your processes
- Be assured your clients will have a solid and consistent experience with your company
- Provide for top-notch client service
- Stop reinventing the wheel
I always recommend my clients create an Operations Manual. In it you will list all the tasks that must be done in your business with step-by-step directions for each task. It should be regularly updated.
The goal of your Operations Manual is to allow anyone to walk into your business and quickly get up to speed. It allows you, the business owner, to know your business is moving forward in the direction YOU want, even when you are not there. Plus, it gives you direction for processes you do over and over but which aren’t part of your daily routine.
Your Operations Manual should be easy to read, use simple language and have practical information. It’s a good idea to have an easy-to-use table of contents.
There are many software options for your operations manual. You can use something as simple as Microsoft Word, although there are many “fancier” options out there. Another route to take would be to use a web-based collaborative tool such as Google Docs or SharePoint so everyone on your team/staff can update the document.
Since your Operations Manual is a living, breathing document, it’s important that you put a quarterly review of it on your calendar.
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Filed under Technology by on Oct 14th, 2010.
Most potential clients need to be touched between 7 and 9 times before they make a purchase. Many need to be touched again and again—warmed slowly until they are ready to buy. The easiest way to do this is to have a newsletter or ezine. However, in today’s fast-paced bloated-inbox world, potential clients are wary about handing out their email addresses.
To get clients to sign up for your newsletter or ezine, which should be the entrance to your marketing and sales funnel, you will need to offer them something of VALUE in exchange for their contact information and the privilege of staying in touch with them.
Your valuable giveaway must be short and sweet. It must address a mini-problem and give a quick solution. It should be easily and quickly consumable.
Coming up with a giveaway that compels potential clients to take action and sign up for your newsletter or ezine can be tough! Below is a list of 17 types of giveaways that you can offer to attract clients into your marketing and sales funnel.
1. A 2- or 3- page report
2. Any kind of easy-to-use “kit” that achieves a mini-result
3. “To-Do” list
4. A checklist
5. A task list
6. A video
7. A template
8. A list of the “10 Best” (a resource list relevant to your topic)
9. A workbook
10. A short audio recording
11. A tip sheet
12. A webinar
13. A teleseminar
14. A quiz
15. An assessment
16. An e-course
17. A discount on a product that will soon be released
Amazing Technology and trust on that….
Filed under Technology by on Oct 11th, 2010.
