There has been so much buzz in the SEO community lately around the word “dofollow” - as in anchor text links that pass value to the links targeted site in search engine results. The “dofollow” tag actually doesn’t exist. But, the removal of the “nofollow” tag is the equivalent of a “dofollow” tag. A “nofollow” tag is defined as:
“An HTML attribute value used to instruct some search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target’s ranking in the search engine’s index.
Most blogs, forums and social media sites use the nofollow tag to prevent comment spam. Google says that comment spammers “try to raise their own websites’ search engine rankings by submitting linked blog comments like “Visit my discount pharmaceuticals site.” Which is the last thing you want to see on your SpongeBob Tribute Blog.
But what if you leave a legitimate comment on the SpongeBob blog with a signature link to your “Dora The Explorer” tribute blog (I have a two year old…). Don’t you deserve a little link love? Some blog owners are rejecting the “nofollow” tag with hopes of encouraging more comments and building a social community on their blog.
There are two popular software tools that you can use to find blogs in your niche keyword area: Fast Blog Finder and Comment Kahuna. Both tools claim that they are 100% legitimate SEO tools for link building… if your intent is legitimate to build non-spammy content links. Both tools allow you to segregate dofollow blogs from nofollow blogs. Both offer free versions that do produce ample keyword specific blog posts that you can comment on. The reality is that the overwhelming majority of the blogs they find are old blog posts with nofollow comments, and many of the blogs they claim are dofollow blogs actually aren’t. You could spend hours submitting comments, especially legitimate comments which take more time, to these blogs and the likelihood that you build a significant number of dofollow links is slim.
An alternative to these software tools, that gives more timely blog postings, is to combine keyword specific Google Blog Alerts that you can have sent to you every day and verify the blog isn’t using nofollow tags with a great Firefox Extension for SEO that highlights all the nofollow links on a webpage. Having this extension is also valuable for nofollow verification in using the comment link building tools discussed above.
In experimenting to see if these kinds of link opportunities actually exist, I can say that they do, but they are about as rare as the Goose that laid the Golden Egg.
My personal opinion is that if you are set on using comment link building to improve your SEO rankings and site traffic from those improved rankings, you need to shift your point of view about blog commenting. You should instead think of it as a way to build targeted traffic to your website or blog with some limited SEO link building potential.
Commenting on relevant blogs discussing your interests or business niche can establish you as a trusted authority, if you have something worthwhile to say. Getting referral traffic from those blog communities whether from a signature link or a link you pass along in your comment is targeted and valuable traffic.
I think the best use of Fast Blog Finder, Comment Kahuna and Google Alerts for Blogs is as tools to find blog discussions that you can contribute to, regardless of any nofollow tags. If you get any improved rankings from commenting consider it an additional bonus.
There are many auto brands under the General Motors umbrella: Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GMC, Oldsmobile, Pontiac and even Saab among others. Search for any of those brands and you will find a website for each brand.
But if you search for small cars, mid size sedans or crossover vehicles and click on GM.com’s PPC ad you will get a landing page with all of those brands vehicles represented. You will not find those GM brands competing against GM’s ad on any of those automotive segment terms in PPC advertising.
I think it’s an interesting strategy. But probably not a decision I would have made. It was recently announced that GM was going to be spending more on online advertising than the Gross Domestic Product of half the worlds countries (my exaggeration but it’s in the billions). With this kind of money they should have an unbelievable daily budget and could probably bid to be number one on all these keywords - regardless of return on investment.
I think the smarter strategy, if they are determined to spend that kind of money, would have been to coordinate the bidding between all those brands and dominate most of top ten ad spaces and force out the competition for those keywords.
Another problem is that the “small cars” and “mid size sedan” landing pages have 36 different cars to choose from. I think that is too much choice, and one of my favorite books The Paradox of Choice would agree with me. The page also presents the cheapest and most expensive vehicles front and center on the page which could be an $11,000 Chevy hatchback or a $100,000 Cadillac convertible. The more logical choice would be to sort the results according to sales improve the odds of conversion by putting the best converting vehicles out front instead of giving the extremes.
These kind of keywords typically have low conversion rates, especially in comparison to brand terms. I advertise on these kind of terms every day for a competitor to GM and I know that return on investment on advertising on these kind of terms is low and cost per click to be in top positions is high. It looks like they are bidding very aggressively to be number one on these terms, which is real estate I’m perfectly willing to let them have. I think they are wasting their money.
“…that suggest that that high-converting branded (alternatively, highly specific term searches) searches are often recently preceded by non-brand searches (alternatively, very broad search terms) from the same user, and so these brand searches (broad) should be considered as incremental.
My daughter recently had Pacemaker surgery, and has been “recovering” very nicely at home. Big thanks to everyone at Children’s National Medical Center for a successful surgery. When I say recovery that essentially amounted to two and a half hours lying down on a couch watching TV and then suddenly “alive” playing basketball and running around like 2 year olds tend to do. She is just as much of a handful now as before the surgery – but now with more endurance!
My wife and I have been splitting the day between watching after our daughter and work for the last week, but the other day schedules collided and it necessitated me taking the whole day off work to watch my daughter.
I decided to spend what little computer time I had in the day between playing with Barbie Princess Dolls and snack time to really see what it takes to be involved with Twitter for a whole day. Twitter is a micro-blogging sensation that allows users to send updates or “Tweets” up to 140 characters long. Updates are automatically sent to people who are “following” you. My weapon of choice to do this experiment is desktop client for Twitter called Twhirl that pops up all the Tweets of the people you follow on Twitter as they happen.
I started out the day trying to be interactive and responding to interesting posts, but potty training got in the way. Then an accident with the potty training kind of sunk that. So I then tried to keep up with the links people were sharing about their blog posts or interesting finds. I was learning new things about the happenings of the day in search engine marketing and interesting individual tidbits about the people I follow in real time.
Sugarrae is a fan of watching Ultimate Fighting. Jill Whalen likes American Idol; Michael Gray’s youngest daughter dented her braces at band practice, etc. I was really getting into it as the morning wore on, I went to make lunch for my daughter and turned away from her for only two minutes and the next thing I know she’s naked – completely jaybird naked and running around laughing and screaming in the house. The chase began! Eventually I caught her, found all her clothes and got her dressed. Danny Sullivan then Tweets that it’s time for today’s Webmaster radio. Then it was time for lunch.
As the early afternoon comes the tweets become much more rapid fire. Information is flying and spreading very fast. Twitter recently was credited with helping to free a student journalist arrested in Egypt after followers immediately came to the aid of the journalist after he Tweeted “Arrested”. I was catching up on the Tweets during my daughter’s early afternoon nap. People that I follow are soliciting votes on Digg and other social media websites and apparently getting good results doing so.
As the afternoon wore on the Tweets came faster, became much more conversational, like instant messaging, and my 2 year old became a little more demanding. I stopped to read stories with my daughter. We read “Go Dog Go” twice. As she later becomes engrossed watching Snow Buddies on DVD, I try to keep up with Twitter. Twhirl is dinging constantly. In the end it is actually easier to keep up with the two year old than all of the Tweets, and the two year old has a super bionic heart!
Twitter takes social media real time and really looks like a great way to get to know the people you follow and vice versa. It’s useful for advertising your blog posts or social media content to a very targeted audience of peers. I can see how it can be a little addicting, but I can honestly say that I don’t have time to follow even half of my Tweets when I’m at work. That being said, I’m planning on leaving Twhirl on at work and clicking on the Tweets that instantly interest me.
We hear a lot these days about the latest social networking tool to become the next biggest trend. Now, I like to read and respond to posts on my favorite blogs as much as the next person. I have also been keeping up with friends and searching for contact information on Facebook since it first came out over five years ago.
Things are evolving in social media, as are the marketing implications which go hand in hand with it. Sometimes, though, I find myself doubting whether the public will ultimately accept the ubiquity of their personal activities and personas in the online social environment. How much personal information is just too much? Is there a line beyond which people just won’t be interested anymore?
Enter Spokeo. Spokeo.com is a social networking aggregator site which allows you to register with an email account, automatically upload all your contacts, and track those contacts’ actions online across a number of other networks.
And there are quite a lot of networks tracked by Spokeo- currently 39 to be exact. There are all the big names- Facebook, Blogger, Digg, MySpace, Twitter, etc. However, things get interesting when you can track what pictures people viewed in Flickr or Picasa, what songs they gave a thumbs up on Pandora, what movie they placed in their online movie rental queue.
When I heard about Spokeo in an email from my friend, my curiosity was piqued. I registered at spokeo.com, and all my Gmail contacts were automatically imported. I was also able to search very easily (by email address) for a few other friends not in my contact book. The results were pretty interesting, and I actually ended up downloading one friend’s Pandora playlist to my own account because I liked it so much.
But I have to admit, the whole experience felt a little too much like snooping around someone’s desk or rummaging through their closet, reading letters, going through their music collections, and looking at their pictures. For the first time on a social networking site, I really felt like I was spying. It’s enough to make you feel anti-social.
To be fair, Spokeo makes it a point to mention that all the information presented on their site is publicly available through each individual social network. If I wanted to, I could visit each participating social network and find this information about my friends. Spokeo just gathers it all in one place.
Perhaps sites like Spokeo will bring people together based on common interests. And they might give marketers more information on which to base their targeting efforts. But one thing is for sure- the next time I add something like Gigli to my movie queue, I’ll be looking over my shoulder, hoping no one will bear witness to my cheesiness. And I am sure aggregator sites like this one will keep many people mindful of the personal content they put out there everyday.
In 2008, online sales are expected to increase by about 17%. And that’s in the midst of a slowing economy in which many households are expecting to have to tighten their belts.
According to the Ecommerce Times, online sales will rise to $204 billion in 2008. Although many consumers expect to shop less often this year, they also expect to do a larger portion of their shopping online. While some consumers find online shopping to be a good way to find bargains, others simply enjoy the convenience of home delivery.
Along with increased online sales, the article also forecasts an increased interest in SEM as retailers new to online distribution also become active in search. Forrester Research reports in “The State of Retailing Online 2008” that 90% of retailers already take advantage of PPC advertising, and 79% say they will invest more heavily in PPC this coming year.
Now, I think the general consensus lately is that the SEM industry is not likely to suffer in the worsening economic landscape. Last month, Search Engine Watch reported on the SEMPO 2007 State of the Market Survey. According to the survey, marketers expect to continue increasing their levels of spend on SEM, often at the expense of other offline media like TV, newspapers, and direct mail. Besides the fact that marketers are finding search effective, another reason for increased spending is likely that with thicker competition in general, keyword costs will naturally increase across the board.
However, merchants completely new to PPC may further drive up bids in part due to novice strategy, such as bidding very high for the top ad position from the start. Although it might be a short-term tactic, Neil Kugelman, CEO of online jewelry retailer Goldspeed.com, notes in this month’s Internet Retailer that he is already seeing evidence of this in his own PPC account. He says, “Usually we see that kind of competition for keywords at Christmas, but we’ve seen some terms go up 20% since Christmas.”
So what alternatives might there be for merchants to cope with an increasingly competitive PPC advertising environment? For one, Kugelman is investing in affiliate networks as well as turning back to offline media like airline magazines and geo-targeted TV and radio spots.
But in addition, a high level of optimization for efficiency of PPC campaigns will be key:
• Look for less expensive, more specific keywords which might not garner as much traffic but which convert better- if you have them, invest more heavily in those.
• Regularly run search query reports to keep an eye on the terms that your broad match keywords are getting you clicks on.
• Maintain a good Quality Score to keep your minimum bid as low as possible. Keep landing page content relevant, and maintain decent click-through rates.
• If your company has limited distribution, experiment with the different targeting options available in your PPC platform to make targeting more precise.
Knowing all the PPC features at your disposal will help you remain competitive as new entrants accumulate.
