My coworker and I just finished a new website that indexes over 12,000 webcams. Well, I use the term "finished" but in reality it is going to be an eternal work-in-progress. One of my favorite things on the site is the random button in the navigation bar.
I hope you will check it out and share it with your friends if you enjoy it!
Here are the free tools I've been using lately to keep track of various aspects of site SEO. If you really want to track dozens of keywords and track changes/trends, you'll need to spend $100 on Link Tracker or something similar.
If you're really serious about SEO, there are also monthly services like SEOMoz and Raven Software that start at $99/month.
Don't just Google yourself, it won't be accurate.
Google SERPS - Google results only.
SEO Centro - Checks Google, Yahoo, Bing but you have to enter captcha each time.
Get your link juice.
Yahoo - Go to Yahoo and do a search for Link:www.yourdomain.com . Voila.
Open Site Explorer - A free piece of SEOMoz, can only be used 3x per day.
Have your house in order.
Various Site Graders - Free tools from HubSpot.
Website Grader - HubSpot grader specific to your site, take with grain of salt.
SEO Browser - See your site how search engines do (use "simple").
Schema - Add html5 to help search engines know what they're reading.
Site speed test - Only use to benchmark vs other sites. Ignore the upsell.
W3C Markup Validation - Find errors in your dirty html code.
W3C CSS Validation - Find errors in your dirty css code. May give errors for css3 (ignore).
W3C Link Checker - Don't have broken links on your site.
Subset of OnPage; build content for humans but be aware of word choice.
SEO Centro Keyword suggestion tool - Google/Yahoo suggestions. Or just use Adwords.
SEO Centro Page Keyword Analyzer - Pretty good analyzing tool
SEO Centro Keyword density tool - Don't overdo it, people.
Know what your competition has going for it.
Google Ad Planner - used by advertisers to see any site's traffic and pick where to place ads. Hmm... :)
Alexa - Lots of info. Traffic, ranking, ad budgets, keywords, etc. estimates for any site.
Compete - See unique visitor counts.
Please let me know if I've missed any of your favorite SEO tools!
Special thanks to Phil Buckley, Erik Fadiman, countless others.
657 frustrated customers commenting on a blog post between 2009 and yesterday.....Panasonic is just leaving them hanging? I was just Googling about my parents' tv and came across this:http://panasonicplasmafail.blogspot.com/2009/07/welcome-to-panasonic-plasma-fail.htmlWouldn't you expect a company response? Wouldn't you (as a customer) go to bat for them if they went out of their way to make it right? I really don't know the answer - what do you think?
I ran into an article this morning that detailed the following lies, regarding social media marketing.
MYTHS (quoting article)
I disagree, somewhat. I hear these "busted myths" all the time, and this is just the final straw that convinced me to respond:
TRUTH
Now, I mean no disrespect to the author and so I decided not to call him out by name. But here are my explanations.
Size Does Matter
First came the myth that size mattered. Then came the myth that size doesn't matter.
Size matters, but you cannot count anyone in the audience who is a spammer, bot, inactive profile, or is highly disinterested. In other words, if you have 10,000 followers who all fit into these categories - you actually have 0 followers. So yes, a large fan/follower count doesn't necessarily mean anything. But size does matter. Why? Lets say you have 200 dedicated and loyal fans to your Facebook page. After they "like" your page, maybe 20 of them will ever come back to it. But that's ok, because you can still post into their newsfeed. Oh, but they have to be online at the right time in order to see your post. And if your post doesn't get enough interaction, Facebook's algorithm will hide it. Especially if they have a lot of friends. Oh, they might like a bunch of other pages, too. But that's ok because they are loyal to you, so surely they will wade through all the noise to find your posts in their newstream right? And the average lifespan of a tweet is what...5 seconds?
My point is - you're always playing the percentages. What percent of your fans will see X? What percent will share it? What percent will eventually buy or evangelize? You need some mass in order to be continually reaching and growing. If your numbers are small, I am not suggesting that you quit. Just recognize that you are going to spend a lot of time reaching a very small number, for now. You have to grow. Size does matter.
Social Media Experts Exist
Social Media experts do not call themselves social media experts, gurus, or ninjas. If you see one of these, you are almost certainly looking at someone who is new to the arena. However, there are a lot of people that I would consider experts. If an expert is someone who has all the answers, then no - there are no social media experts. Nor financial experts. Nor art experts. Nor any marketing experts. But most elements of social media marketing are not new. The creative art, the science of human behavior, the data analysis, etc. are not new concepts. The tools are new.
We are still learning more and more about social media every day. There are new studies and new charts and figures flying left and right. But this will not stop until the internet stops evolving. In other words, never. There are professionals who can diagnose your business needs and create working solutions. Why can't we call them experts?
Social Media Is New, Just Like The Internet
Some would argue that social media has been around for decades. I myself consider the true birth of social media to be when Myspace entered the scene, but if you want to consider earlier networks like Friendster, I certainly won't argue with you. So let's go with the latest case - Myspace - in 2004. That was 7 years ago. The internet started truly gaining in popularity around the time of Windows 95. But guess what? It wasn't until 2000 that half of the U.S. had internet access. So if the popular internet is 11-16 years old, and social media is at least 7 years old...why are we so stuck on the fresh car smell of social media? It is all new.
The article claims that social media is just another step from traditional media, and to an extent I agree. But there are huge differences in the interactivity of the web, verses TV, print, radio, etc. To say it is just another step is really missing the point. I dare not cover all of that in this post, as many others have already been harping on this for a few years.
Social Media Can Be Outsourced
Sometimes.
This is another old debate. Can social media really be outsourced? There are two elements that most social media managers need: access to information and decision making capability. The real myth here is that internal community managers have any better access to these than someone who is outsourced.
The company must be dedicated to giving proper information to whomever is running the social channels, but the community managers must also have the ability to respond and act. If you can trust an agency to do this, and can make the flow of information efficient, then perhaps you can outsource. Of course, if you don't believe in social media experts or the value of experience, then by all means go ahead and do it all yourself.
That's the end of my rant. I do not claim to be an expert myself - I surely have a long way to go. But please don't be fooled by these simple ear-pleasing statements. The truth is almost always, "it depends."
I posted the same thing to both Twitter and Google+. It was this image:
Discuss amongst yourselves.
It would be misleading if I didn't note that this image was picked up and shared by Chris Pirillo on Google+, nevertheless it was being shared and commented on much more even before this.
Just another goofy image from my archives, that I shared a while back on the old blog. This is the webpage I see everywhere:
Short answer: The potential disconnect between how I filter where my content goes (through my circles) and how you label it when you receive it (through your circles).
Google+ is still brand spanking new, and it is tough to critique for a couple of reasons. First, we don't really know how things are going to play out when the masses sign up. Everyone is playland right now and the norms and unspoken rules have yet to be written. Second, they are essentially in beta and many things could change quickly.
That being said, I have one major complaint about their circles model. It's almost like Google assumes that everyone posts about one subject, but has interests in multiple subjects. I can sort all the people I follow into categories (circles) and then view my stream based on these categories. So I could potentially have one stream for artists, one stream for basketball news, and one for financial insights. I lump a bunch of people into these neat little circles and expect this to manage my information flow.
You can see how this would work, if people only post about one thing all the time. But even the most focused experts have multiple interests. So now my artist stream suddenly has discussion about automobiles, my basketball stream has discussion about video games, and my financial stream has discussion about sailing. Wait, that's not what I wanted!
The problem is, the people posting have to filter what they send out. And in most cases, the sender doesn't know what you want to hear about! Sure, I know what my family wants to hear about. If I'm Chris Brogan, I probably know that most people want to hear about social media. But we want to talk about multiple things.
If you follow art, basketball, and finances - you probably want to SHARE about art, basketball, and finances. But you can't because you don't know what your audience wants. This is why we see people on Google+ saying "If you want to hear about X, let me know and I will put you in my X circle." That is ridiculous.
Ideally, each user could set their own circles that they will be posting about (they can). Other people could choose to follow any combination of those circles (they can't). It should take no effort on the part of the person POSTING to add people to categories, only to choose where each individual post gets sent to (i.e. filter their own posts to the appropriate subjects).
This means Chris Brogan can blast to the masses through his social media circle, but he can finally build conversations about his other hobbies/interests. This means that I can talk about art, basketball, and finances to different groups without causing unwanted noise to everyone 2/3 of the time.
Google+ needs the ability for us to create public circles, or circles that anyone can subscribe themselves to. It is not possible or desirable for me to have to find and place my audience into these categories.
This would open the doors to connecting better with complete strangers - when I find someone I will know be able to join their conversation around one particular subject, instead of guessing what they will be talking about.
Blogging has long had categories and tags, it seems a natural evolution that social media be able to evolve this in a simple way.
I am glad we have sites like Rotten Tomatoes. Before I spend my money, I want to know that I'm picking a good movie. The same applies to video games. I love reading someone's opinion so I know what to expect.
Not only that, but the more we spend our money based upon the reviews, the more consumers are demanding quality. If less people go to films with bad reviews, then there is more incentive for Hollywood to make great films. Right? I hope?
Unfortunately...I also think I ENJOY films/games less if I have any expectation. If I know something is supposed to be great, then I have high expectations. It's easy to let me down if my expectations are high. On the flip side, it is also easy to spot the problems with a film/game if I have already read about them.
I prefer NOT to have expectations. I prefer NOT to know whether something is good or bad. I prefer NOT to know anything about the plot. But reviews are almost unavoidable and the movie trailers usually give half the movie away.
I'm still a sucker and the temptation is too great. I visit review sites constantly. And they aren't going away, I know.
But when something truly exciting comes along, I try to avoid all trailers and reviews. I am usually glad I did.
You are dead wrong. I am dead wrong. Everyone is dead wrong.
At least...about SOMETHING. And you don't know what it is.
If every person could write a list of every belief they hold (impossible), you probably wouldn't find two lists alike on the planet. So either 1 out of 6+ billion people has everything figured out...or no one does. I tend to think the latter.
So try extra hard not to dismiss people so quickly. You could be dead wrong. On the flip side, we tend to treat certain trusted sources as if they are always right. Guess what? At any moment they may be dead wrong.
Image via http://xkcd.com/386/
