Search Marketing Insomniac…The Blog of Adam Henige

I’ve made my bones with Twitter in the past, but truth be told I’ve warmed to it over time and certainly understand it’s value as a marketing and customer relationship management tool.  But when I see videos like this, I can’t help but roll my eyes a bit.

There are some clearly fundamental issues with what’s said here.  Now, I don’t think there’s anything necessarily malicious, but this definitely provides some false hope for how effective you can be with Twitter, and belittles another truly valuable marketing channel.

• Mr. Voss has cultivated a massive following, but doesn’t state how long it’s taken to acquire this following - and a targeted following at that.  Additionally, what type of staff manages his Twitter campaign(s)?  You don’t just start an account, Tweet and get thousands of visitors to your website.
• From an SEO standpoint, his example was pretty sad.  There will always be a limited audience for branded keywords, especially for non-essential items (how often do YOU search for an internet show?) .  However, ranking out well for targeted high volume terms can equal serious revenue.  What type of money making clicks does he expect to get from the keyword search “chrisvoss show” used in the video?  Further, just by looking at the dynamic URLs of his blog, it’s no surprise there’s no organic traffic - his site isn’t SEO’d very well.
• The bit.ly examples aren’t exactly accurate either.  Sure you can generate a lot of clicks through a massive audience…especially when it’s to someone else’s content.  Lost in this example is that if you want to sell something, you need to attract them to YOUR site.  To have something take off through ReTweets and truly go viral to your benefit, you have to make the content.  Oddly enough, when you consistently make good content, if you get your ducks in a row, you can also climb the SERPs and consistently generate highly targeted search traffic.

Again, I don’t think this guy’s terribly off base in that you can really do some great marketing with Twitter, I just think it’s irresponsible to tell people to not worry about search marketing.  People won’t always be on Twitter, some people just don’t use it, and others may not find the majority of your Tweets relevant.  Search can help these audiences find your site…or you could just ignore them and leave that money on the table.  Personally, I like making money.

I’m sure this last could be a whole lot longer, but since I find myself doling out a lot of advice to SEOas and budding SEOs these days and while a lot of times people are on the right track, they tend to overlook little details that can make a big difference.  Here’s a short list I find myself saying often -

1. Don’t waste time getting links from bad pages.  Check to see if the page you’re linking to has some value.  Is it indexed?  Check by doing a Google search - info:siteyouwanttocheck.com and you’ll see if you get a result, and if it’s been cached.  Does the page have PageRank?  If it passes these tests, that’s a good start.  If there are too many outbound links on a page, you’re sharing juice and your links aren’t going to be worth much.  You also might want to do a quick search for the page title, or the website’s page title to see if it’s experienced any Google penalties (hint: if you can’t find the pages anywhere in the rankings for their exact titles, it’s probably worth staying away from)
2. Don’t overdo the anchor text, especially on deep pages.  If you own a site that doesn’t get many links, Google will probably notice if you get 50 consecutive links to a seemingly obscure subpage with a very specific anchor text.  You’ll also want to get links to a variety of pages.  For better or worse, Google wants you to make your links look like they’re occurring naturally…even though they sure know you’re out there building links.  See no evil, hear no evil I guess…
3. Don’t focus on numbers.  Quantity might not get you to the top.  You can spend a ton of time getting massive amounts of low quality links, or that same amount of time getting a few great links.  The latter will often win.
4. Don’t get reciprocal links from less authoritative domains.  If they don’t have any PageRank or links pointing in, why do you want to share a link.  If your glass is half full and someone else’s is a quarter full, what’s the point in sharing?
   

   You might want to compare before you share.

5. Don’t be myopic.  Try different tactics.  Too many of one type of link stops the creative juices from inspiring you to find new ways to get links.  Plus, depending on your tactics, you might also be tipping Google off to your “evil” activities.  Don’t put Google in a corner!

Any other mistakes to avoid?  Please feel free to email me or add a comment.

I don’t like when things don’t work.  A month ago Comcast decided to create a firewall to block our office from using a service we use every day.  It took three days of emails and phone calls before I finally got it fixed.  We didn’t do anything wrong, Comcast’s firewall just went haywire and decided to ruin our day.  The fact that it took several days to clear up was just ridiculous…

So while I’m no fan of Comcast, I just got flat out annoyed by their most recent addition for customers - the Comcast search redirect!  If you navigate to a down page with no 404 or a dead site you get:

Comcast's latest attempt to annoy me.

Now, I understand the practical nature of this for the average user, but as an SEO I actually like getting the dead page.  I can quickly grab the URL without getting redirected and research it for any number of useful search marketing tasks.  Fortunately, there’s a link in the upper right hand corner to disable this error message - which can be easy or difficult depending on the availability of your myComcast username (good luck with that), and then you’ll get to deal with Comcast customer service!  Have fun with that…