INTERESTING BLOG POSTS
SEO Guide -
Interesting Blog Posts
Brian Ussery tested how Google is indexing Flash.
David Naylor saw Google’s intense advice on “no requirement to writing your URLs” in action, when a competing locate reverted their URLs to uglier versions and promptly saw their rankings tank.
Kentucky seized a clump of online gambling domains.
“”””The suite recognizes that as to some of the 141 defendants domain obloquy that identify websites as informational only, the getting visit staleness be rescinded.””
However the suite found that “Internet gambling operators and their domain obloquy are inform in Kentucky.” So if you have a parking tender the Commonwealth has no jurisdiction but if your operative a site, then your doing activity in the state and your subject to its jurisdiction.
While on the topic of gambling domains, Google is allowing gaming ads in the UK.
Neil Patel is looking to help fund some start ups.
Google blocked the use of their Chrome browser in Syria and Iran.
Source: www.seobook.com
Is Social Media Marketing A Waste Of Time?

Social media is the incoming bounteous thing! No, it’s the bounteous thing! It is here, now, and it is big! Let’s face it, if you’re not aboard the cluetrain to social media marketing city, you’re movement on that station alone!
A pity, then, that social media traffic is so ofttimes worthless.
Worthless?
Let’s look at the market signals. Why is it that you country dollars per utter on Google Adwords for financial keywords, still the aforementioned keywords on social networks are priced at five cents?
This suggests to me digit of two things. Either the social networks are earnestly underestimating the value of their possess traffic, or most of the grouping on social networks aren’t interested in advertizement messages. If they were, then the effort values would intimately match those of Google Adwords.
I think the latter is the most likely scenario. Social media traffic isn’t priced higher, because it isn’t translating into income for the advertisers. This isn’t happening because the intent of the users when engaged with social media is not contributive to commerce stuff.
Of course, social media traffic isn’t every bad. We’ll look at some ways you crapper goodness from it. But firstly, let’s study and oppositeness some aspects of social media marketing and see marketing, in visit to help explain the value proposition.
1. Traffic Is Not An Asset, Traffic Is A Cost
Traffic exclusive becomes an quality when it translates into something else. When it becomes a bookmark, a sign-up, a link, or helps establish a genuine relationship. It staleness also termination in an increase in revenue. If it doesn’t, then traffic relic an expense.
What is the value of 10,000 Diggers hitting your locate to look at, say, a represent of a monkey sport a bicycle? Zero. The trouble is that a lot of marketers are watching the web aggregation - that spike in the visitor stats that shows the sort of visits - and using that as a marketing metric. “Hey, I’m popular!”.
Sure, with 10,000 teenagers pleased by a represent of a monkey sport a bicycle. But how is that helping increase revenue?
There isn’t a lot of meaning to such a relationship. It is low value.
“This is a truth of the Internet: When traffic comes to your locate without focused intent, it bounces. 75% of every unfocused visitors leave within three seconds.Any site, anywhere, anytime. 75% snap evaluate within three seconds. By unfocused, I mean grouping who visit via Digg or Stumbleupon or even a typical Google search…..”I’m just looking,” is no fun for most retailers. Yet they move to country high lease for high-traffic locations, and invest time and money in window displays. Very few retailers lament every the traffic that walks by the front door without ever walking in. A long time ago, they realized that the shoppers with focused intent are far more valuable. Smart retailers impact hard to get focused grouping to walk in the door and to keep the riff raff walking on down the sidewalk.”.
2. Uncontrolled Message
It is difficult to curb the message. Released into the wild of social networks, the message crapper just as easily termination in perverse effects as constructive ones.
Check discover this sad experience of existence dugg, from Kim at Cre8Pc:
“Since I logged soured last period around midnight, 12 hours later, over 23,000 grouping have been to this blog. The think is that someone dugg about the locate I wrote, where I mutual a inventiveness I found useful. That locate was “dugg” and the incoming traffic this journal is receiving is to that specific journal locate I wrote….Diggers complained about everything from the locate design of the locate I wrote about, to how stupid I was to indite about it at all…..Which conception of this Digg state am I supposed to be happy about, today that something I wrote has officially been slaughtered there?”
Kim wasn’t trying to get on Digg as conception of a marketing strategy, but it shows how unpredictable the “benefits” of social media exposure crapper be.
Perhaps this might explain why Digg has been left at the table a few times? It suggests to me that it might be difficult to extract actual advertizement value from such environments. Part of the difficulty is structural. Digg is “free” and “open” and “anonymous”, which leads to a tragedy of the commons.
At the venture of blowing our possess horn, conception of the think our SEO accord is valuable is because grouping have to country for it. People have provided a communication of interest lacking on most panoptic social networks. There are no questions from a member titled MakeEasyMoneyOnlineTodayRightNow asking how to get his adsense earnings up to $1 a day. The toll of entering helps protect the accord from the tragedy of the commons.
3. Branding Is Often An Excuse For Failed Marketing Campaigns
“It’s a sort spend!”. Marketers feature that a lot.
What they ofttimes mean is “we crapper find no no measurable return”.
Return on sort spend is very difficult to measure, and even more difficult to isolate in a steer such as online social media marketing. Did visitors advert our brand? Did it change their future purchase decisions? Was the sort connexion constructive or negative?
Who knows?
If you’re thinking of engaging a social media marketer, and they use sort antiquity as a metric, communicate them to explain how they will demonstrate an increased, favorable level of sort awareness. If they mention traffic numbers, communicate them how that squares with my first saucer “Traffic Is Not An Asset, It Is A Cost”.
To my mind, some advertizement endeavor staleness ultimately become backwards to revenue.
4. Level Of Interaction
What are grouping doing on social networks?
On the likes of Facebook, they are engaged in social activities. They are getting up with their friends. They are activity games. Marketing messages in this environment are about as welcome as an Amway salesperson at a knight party.
Consider the environment of the message. Search marketing entireness well because the person has already signaled their intent, and that intent may well be commercial. It’s like walking into a shop, and asking to acquire a watch. The relation and interaction is direct and obvious. The environment of social media is more like a cocktail party. People are there to socialize, not enter into advertizement interactions. They may do so, but the relation is fuzzy and indirect.
To overcome this obstacle, look for social networks, or meshwork groups, where the users demonstrate clear, advertizement intent. Alternatively, have a country idea of how you’re going to advancement “fuzzy indirect” visitors to desired action.
5. Time
Social media marketing is time consuming.
Building your social networks. Responding to “friends”. Is there are measurable convey for the time spent? What is the possibleness outlay of that time?
For example, study the time you requirement to get a advertizement message on the front tender of Digg, with getting a advertizement message on the front tender of Google. With Adwords, I crapper do it in seconds.
With Digg, I’d be unlikely to get a marketing message to the top, unless I’d previously developed relationships with every the correct grouping and/or gamed the system, which, in itself, takes a lot of time. Even then, the marketing message, unless heavily disguised, will likely be despised by a accord rabidly anti to some message with an manifest advertizement imperative.
Is this time well spent on either channel? Once again, a cost/benefit analysis, where the benefits are country and measurable, will wage the answer.
6. Rampant Stupidity & Useless Distractions
I guess no-one ever went poor underestimating human stupidity, but digit rattling has to discourse the marketing value of these types of approaches:
“The Coca-Cola Company will feature its Sprite sort on a newborn Facebook Page and will invite users to add an covering to their account titled “Sprite Sips.” People will be able to create, configure and interact with an enlivened Sprite Sips character. For consumers in the United States, the experience crapper be enhanced by entering a PIN cipher found under the container of every 20 oz. bottleful of Sprite to unlock special features and accessories. The Sprite Sips case provides a means for interacting with friends on Facebook”
Facebook, which distinguished itself by existence the anti-MySpace, is today determined to out-MySpace MySpace. It’s a nifty system: First you get your users to entrust their individualized data to you, and then you not exclusive delude that data to advertisers but you get the users to be the vector for the ads. And what do the users get in return? An enlivened Sprite Sips case to interact with.
Are grouping going to then talk about Sprite in a way that would increase the income of Sprite? Really?
I crapper just imagine this would impact for a teen audience. Such an move has no quantity with an grown audience. Keep in mind that most grouping who are heavily astir on generalist social meshwork sites are likely to fit in the 15-25 assemblage older range, though there is evidence to suggest this geezerhood arrange might be changing. Look at it this way - how many stories about hip-replacements ever make it top the top of Reddit?
There are a lot of messages that just aren’t going to impact on social media. Wrong time, criminal place.
“Media buyers — the authority grouping who aggregation campaigns — inform that the college social meshwork is a truly terrible target. They’re mainly students, with low disposable income, of course; but, beyond that, the users materialize to be too laboring leaving messages for each another to exhibit much interest in advertising. Facebook’s members materialize indifferent even to movie business aimed at their demographic. Clickthrough rates, the proportionality of time users utter on an ad, cipher 0.04% — just 400 clicks in every 1m views — according to digit report seen by Valleywag.”
7. Difficult To Scale
It is easy to taste up a television campaign. Buy more airtime. It is easy to taste up an Adwords campaign. Increase the sort of keyword terms and/or bids. How do you taste up a social media campaign? You can’t re-create viral. Viral is hit and miss. All word of mouth is hit and miss. How many grouping crapper you cost-effectively follow on Twitter?
Social media tends to country dividends in the long-term. Social media, generally speaking, The Tipping Point, they will spread your message for you.
Forging such meaningful relationships won’t happen overnight.
Where Social Media Pays Off
Ok, I adjudge it. This locate has been a taste of a rave
It’s not every intense news.
Whilst not a equal for a marketing strategy, social media crapper be a viable factor of a wider marketing strategy. It crapper be used to generate buzz. It crapper be used to draw links. One well settled article crapper achieve both these ends. If that buzz, and those links, crapper then be translated into a valuable relationship, and perhaps meliorate Google rankings for advertizement keywords, then the social media move may well country dividends.
In visit to do this, social media staleness be back-ended with noesis geared towards establishing a valuable relationship, kinda than one-off visits.
Marketing exists for digit purpose: to delude stuff. If it doesn’t do that, then it isn’t marketing.
The key to evaluating social media marketing, like with with every media spends, lies in tracking and cost/benefit analysis. If traffic provides you with a measurable convey on investment, then the marketing spend is justified. The exclusive traffic worth anything is that which ultimately results in income producing interaction.
The difficulty I find with social media traffic is that so little of it ever does.
Your mileage may vary.
Source: www.seobook.com
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