Thinks I find along the way
Getting conflicting information about whether the mobile-first indexing change will impact your rankings? Brush up on the different processes behind search results: Mobile-first indexing: Will it change your rankings on desktop? – Search Engine Land
To get the most out of your content writers, you need to set them on the right track from the start. How to develop guidelines and reduce the required editing time: How to create a style guide for your SEO content writers – Search Engine Land
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The title belongs to writer Tony Bradley, not me, but I like the conclusion of his article in Forbes:
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that privacy is “dead”. Suffice it to say, our relationship with privacy has changed as a function of the benefits we can receive in exchange for that privacy. The reality is that you’re not completely giving up your privacy. Your neighbors, or the stranger you pass on the street won’t know anything about you. You’re choosing to enter into a mutually beneficial arrangement that exchanges personal information for services. You’re surrendering some of your privacy to Google, and you’re putting some trust in Google that it will both guard your personal information so your privacy isn’t truly violated, and that it will not do anything shady or unethical with your data itself.
That’s a lot of faith to put in Google–or any company for that matter. But, if you’re willing to take that leap of faith your technology can do amazing things and make your life simpler and more efficient. The more integrated you are in the Google ecosystem–the more Google services you use, and the more extensively you use them–the more value you will get from the relevant, context-aware features Google has put in place.
Source: Google Is Very Creepy, And That’s What Makes It So Awesome – Forbes
Me? I sold my soul to Google a long time ago. You, however, should think about the implications…
:-D
My buddy Ronnie Bincer brought this Hangout on Air [HoA] to my attention…
Ronnie’s already done a thorough analysis that I’ll share here:
Why it is different, how to maximize it for your business be it small or large. +Google+ Your Business with +Caroline McCarthy as the HOA host guides the Featured Panel Members: +Chris Brogan, +Mike Elgan, +Chad Wiebesick, & +Justin Williams in a great discussion on how G+ works for business.
Very, VERY Insightful Stuff here…
Chris has some great points and states them very eliquently… Mike at 23:42 speaks about how you can Use Google+ Search to enter into a conversation about a topic with thought leaders or enthusiasts, it really struck a chord with me, Fantastic Business Strategy +Mike Elgan
The main challenge with Mike’s point/strategy is if you are working G+ as a Page, you can’t necessarily join in the conversation, you need to do that as a Profile… one thing I still find troubling about Google+… a point +Chris Brogan speaks to at 34:12 and talks about how a business should have a solid ‘bench’ ready to interact as Profiles before engaging as a Brand Page.
Plenty of useful tips and a little encouragement to get Chris’s Book http://goo.gl/LEno8 Google+ for Business. This is one of the best videos put out by Google+ Your Business to date IMO… check it out… it is just shy of 1 hour long… the real content starts at 2:00
52:13 Not wise to use G+ to drive traffic to your blog…. hmmmm. I like that idea, but there are plenty of folks that say that is Exactly why there are here! Love to hear +Chris Brogan or +Mike Elgan’s perspective on why they dropped that little ‘bomb’ at the end! Wouldn’t you? (“leave them wanting more”, eh?).
Google Earth Tour of Irish Heritage Sites
This morning I had to travel 225 miles from Warrenville, IL to Algoma, WI at 5 in the morning. Needless to say it cut into my blogging time. I thought I’d use it as an opportunity to test SoundCloud for audio blogging. This was dictated to SoundCloud on my Google Nexus S while driving in the Chicago suburbs. Let me know what you think about the content and the format…
Let me count the ways…
“When technologists of the future look back in time, they’ll remember 2009 as the year Google got serious about an internet operating system, speeding up the web, and indexing EVERYTHING in sight. Take a look at the year 2009 in Google.” Source: This Year in Google: The 2009 Edition – Google – Lifehacker
No company produces more good, empowers me more, or innovates more. Go to the source for a reminder of what Google delivered this year…
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The folks at Lifehacker took a poll on the top calendaring applications. Here are the results…
“Nothing’s more important to your productivity arsenal than a solid scheduling tool, and considering so much of what we do happens at the computer, a good calendar application is just the thing to bring order to your agenda. On Tuesday we asked you to share your favorite calendar application, and today we’re back with the five most popular answers. Keep reading for a detailed look at the top five and to cast your vote for the calendar tool you like best.” Source: Hive Five: Five Best Calendar Applications
Me? I use Google calendars — the free one associated with my Google account as well as my business calendar in Google Apps. Go to the source to read the whole article — it’s worth it!
In December of last year, I embarked upon an experiment to see if I could leverage a website with a blog combined with social media tools to increase traffic to a site. In that month, my sandbox site had a grand total of 670 pageviews. In the month that ended yesterday, I had a total of 15,985 — an approximate 25 fold increase in traffic! This morning I got 670 pageviews by 10:00. Here are some other statistics… Continue reading “Is your website a ‘billboard in the desert’?”
I’m going to do another Google Reader Rockstar event. This time, it will be a hybrid event. Thos of you who want to attend in person can do so in the Jag, Inc. conference room at 1508 Sunset Avenue in Algoma, WI. Those of you who don’t want to make the trip can attend online via GoToMeeting. We can only accommodate 25 people in all, so be sure to register today!
Don’t attend, however, if you don’t want to learn about a competitive advantage that will fundamentally shift the way you look at information and make you smarter than your competition…
Yesterday, I passed the 400 post mark. 400 posts over 18 months. Wow! Roughly a post a day for a year and a half. Is that a lot? Is that too little? I really don’t know. What I do know is this — when I use my ‘pass or play’ methodology, traffic to my site increases and my ‘pipeline’ fills…
My good friend [and brother in law] Jim Gilligan has a blog that he’s starting for his life coaching business at EffectiveLiving, LLC. Jim asked me how many posts he should create before he goes ‘live’. I told him a dozen or so is enough to get started but recently I did an experiment and I believe the number at which you start to see good results is closer to 100 over a 3 month period. Here’s a real world case study… Continue reading “400 posts”
At least two people in the Googleverse are underwhelmed with Buzz; me and internet maven Richard Scoble. Scoble bats first…
“Together with a lot of web workers, I depend on being able to skim through information sources quickly. Services like Google Reader are well-optimized for doing this, especially in List mode. (To turn on List mode, from the “All Items” view, click on “Show: List” in the blue bar at the top right of the screen.)
The List views in Gmail and Google Reader make it easy to look at the subjects of posts, and scroll through them quickly. Google Buzz, unfortunately, uses the threaded conversation approach of Google Wave, but without the tools for controlling what appears on the screen that Wave has.
I hope that the limitations of Google Buzz’s interface are just growing pains. Maybe the designers of Buzz didn’t anticipate that some posts would generate hundreds of comments. So let’s hope that they’ll give us the tools to use the service efficiently, or, as one commenter suggests, Google Buzz users might give up on it before it’s a week old.” Source: Google Buzz: Not Efficient? – WebWorkerDaily
On his own blog, Scoble goes on to say…
“OK, now I’ve had a bit of time to play with Google Buzz and everywhere I look I see a badly-executed copy of FriendFeed.
With two important exceptions:
1. Google Buzz actually has a lot of users and much better information flowing through its veins. There’s a reason that FriendFeed doesn’t have many users: it has some very anti-user features that retard user adoption (back when I was excited about FriendFeed I kept hoping that FriendFeed was going to fix some of their issues).
2. It has pretty nice location features built in, especially if you use Google Maps on Android.” Source: Google Buzz copied FriendFeed’s worst features, why?
If you want to read the rest of his rant, go to the source. Here’s my random list of pet peeves…
What do you think?
Lately there’s been renewed interest in building links via social media monitoring. To build links this way, a link builder creates a monitoring search in their favorite social media tool and waits for it to find news stories, blog posts, tweets, comments, and other social content. Each new post is an opportunity to find a relevant influencer and build a relationship.
Unfortunately, in some niches or with some very narrowly-targeted searches, the amount of new content being posted may be one or two items per week, which wouldn’t exactly fill the link builder’s schedule. It’s important to start your social media link building with a thorough review of the amassed social content that already exists. So here are a few tips to find bloggers faster with highly-targeted, relevant searches.
I use Gist + Google Reader for social media monitoring; the first tracks the important Thought Leaders in my world, the second tracks my trusted news sources. Together they help me monitor the important people and sites in my area of expertise and give ample ideas for creating or curating posts for this blog…
This is why they say that a picture is worth a thousand words. The Oatmeal has communicated volumes about how the world perceives your email with one image:
You can move to the top with one simple tool: Google Apps! Google Apps allows you to attach Gmail and other powerful business apps to your internet domain in about 10 minutes…
Use it if you don’t want the world to think you’re a Yahoo!
Small business owners should pay heed to the opportunities presented by mobile social media as the number of smartphone users climbs…
“Small businesses stand to increase their local audience and further their market reach through geolocation platforms, which attach real-world locations to mobile phones. Here are a few ways companies can become part of the location tagging world of social media.” Source: HOW TO: Make Your Small Business Geolocation-Ready
The place to start, however, is with Google Maps which is fast becoming the ‘Yellow Pages’ of the internet. Watch this…
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lviDz8fUMTE&feature=player_embedded
One thing to be aware of. Google has a STOOPID process for adding you to the map…
“First you’ll need your PIN, which should arrive in the mail within two weeks after you submit your business listing. If you have your PIN, enter it beside the appropriate listing below, then click ‘Go.'” Source: Google Local Business Center
You have to receive a pin via SNAIL MAIL. It’s the dumbest process in the entire Googlesphere but the benefits are worth the pain in the butt. imho, it’s one of the simplest and most effective ways a company can advertise their business. The information you enter about your business goes directly into the Google search engine and is immediately available to all those geeks who use Google Maps on their desktops or better yet, on their smartphones as they travel through your town…
…could be just the help you’re looking for! Over 18 months ago, Seth Godin wrote this on his blog:
“Here are three things that are true: 1. Digital technology, especially computers and cell phones, can dramatically increase productivity. 2. More and more users of digital technology are small firms or individuals. 3. The vast majority of users of digital technology are totally lame in getting the most out of the investment of their time and money. “Oh, I didn’t know I could do that.” “You mean I don’t have to manually type my address book in by hand?” “There are graphs in Excel?” “Gmail is free?” Here’s what I haven’t found: people who charge $100 an hour to hear what you do and how you do it and then show you how to do it better. People who organize data and put it in the right place. People who overhaul the way small groups use technology so they can use it dramatically better. People who use copilot to take over a PC and actually rearrange it so that it works better.More examples: Teach people to back up. Show them how to check their email on the road. Help them understand how to use online networking when it’s appropriate (and warn them when it’s not). Show a restaurant how to use OpenTable to keep the place full, or to use a blog (with an RSS feed) to easily communicate with loyal customers. Teach a company to keep tabs on itself with Technorati.” Source: Seth’s Blog: A shortage of digital coaches
If you do a Google Search on the topic, note who is at the top of the list — your humble digital coach Todd Lohenry @ e1evation, llc! Once I securely log on to your computer [after you grant permission] using the technology described, I can help you with just about anything! See a quick demo here… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJlASMkot34 Oh, and btw? I only charge $50 per hour… [btw, note the date on the post! The cost is now $99 per hour!]
I got this from Seth Godin who got it from the Google dictionary…
“A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another. If the consumer (whether it’s a business, a buyer, a voter or a donor) doesn’t pay a premium, make a selection or spread the word, then no brand value exists for that consumer.
A brand’s value is merely the sum total of how much extra people will pay, or how often they choose, the expectations, memories, stories and relationships of one brand over the alternatives.
A brand used to be something else. It used to be a logo or a design or a wrapper. Today, that’s a shadow of the brand, something that might mark the brand’s existence. But just as it takes more than a hat to be a cowboy, it takes more than a designer prattling on about texture to make a brand. If you’ve never heard of it, if you wouldn’t choose it, if you don’t recommend it, then there is no brand, at least not for you.
If you hear a designer say this, “A TCHO Chocolate bar, with its algorithmic guilloche patterns, looks like a modern form of currency. “Modern” was always part of the brand brief — no faux traditionalism, but resolutely forward-looking for a new generation of chocolate enthusiasts…” then I wonder if there’s a vocabulary disconnect.
Design is essential but design is not brand.
(Believe it or not, I didn’t make that quote up).
PS a Google tip: you can find the definition of any word by typing “define:” followed by the word into your search box.” Source: Seth’s Blog: define: Brand
This goes hand in hand with the earlier post I did about Facebook pages…
Oxymoron or? Digg users voted on the top ten questions to ask Marissa Mayer, Google VP of Search and User Experience. Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, has the interview. Long, but worthwhile — especially if you’re a fan of Google…
This is the article I wish I had written about how Google Apps, Remember the Milk and Firefox work together to make you more productive in email…
“If I have more than 30 unread messages at any one time, I break into a cold sweat. So as a result, until recently I couldn’t imagine maintaining my maniacal level of control over my inboxes without a desktop email client’s notifications, rules & plug-ins.”
Inbox Zero is an important discipline in this day and age that few have mastered — click here to read more…
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Today I’m announcing a new feature on the site; the ‘Five Minute University’. What’s that about? Well, the tool I use for screencasts, Jing, limits me to a five minute screencast. Todd, you say! Wake up — use Camtasia, use Flashback Express, use something that allows you to record longer. No, I say. I have a tendency to bloviate on topic that I’m passionate about and five minutes forces me to get my thoughts together!
The ‘Five Minute University’ is also an homage to one of the funniest bits I ever saw on Saturday Night Live [back in the days when it was actually funny]; Don Novello as Father Guido Sarducci outlines the concept here:
Now, here’s my first 5 minute course on using Google Reader as your inbox for the internet…
Questions? Feedback? Leave a comment or use the contact page to reach me…
Bright, shiny objects! 
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