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KickRSS BlogLessons I’ve Learned About Birthdays
Some things I’ve learned and was reminded of in the past few days… Generally, people love birthdays, and rightfully so. There are few things better than being able to give well wishes to someone you appreciate, love, admire, share friendship with, or whatever. Ever notice in restaurants that when someone has a birthday, even strangers at neighboring tables want to participate? Think about it, it’s really very cool that we direct positive energy to apparently total strangers in celebrating their date of birth. Earlier this week I had an opportunity to wish an influential individual in my life, Danny Sullivan, a happy birthday. I had been thinking about his birthday for a couple of weeks simply because I recently discovered we were born about a month apart (I bet Danny watched Gilligan’s Island too). After exploring several ideas, last week I created this birthday card, which included avatar images of many people that know Danny, and participate in a community, I’ve greatly been benefiting from being a part of. Party of ONE Was this a marketing effort? Was this some method I came up with to get a popular post on Sphinn? No, can’t say I had any brilliant strategy planned. When I first arrived at Sphinn, I had my “ME” hat on, and nobody appeared to care. Turns out that was a good thing. Glue can be damn sticky: Stubborn as I am, I hung around and began reading posts submitted by community members such as Lee Odden, Andy Beard, and Tamar Weinberg (there were many others). Well, as the saying goes, stick your hand in a pot of glue, and the glue tends to stick. Stick your head in a website featuring content from some of the worlds top SEOs, and the ideas stick. Wanna Party? As the weeks went on I became more active in the community and found myself commenting on posts, submitting posts, authoring Sphinn related posts, linking to authors, commenting on other blogs, and having a significantly enjoyable time. Others noticed this and as a result began commenting back, visiting my websites, emailing, messaging, and linking to topics I authored on various websites. Imagine that?! Friends make parties fun! I submitted the birthday card on a Sunday (Dannys birthday was later that week) in hopes that it may make the homepage by Monday. Sphinn had recently upped the trigger on getting posts popular and I honestly didn’t think it would go far. The Sphinn community took over from there and taught me a thing or two (thank you). Lesson 1: Community is a powerful thing, the web is more fun when shared with friends Lesson 2: Breath, stop trying so hard, participate with your head & heart Lesson 3: The answers are often already there… Holy Moly, I’ve been wishing people happy birthday (in my brick & morter world) nearly everyday for the past decade. Turns out the same principles apply online. The practice of birthday boards and birthday cards have been successful in small businesses for decades, but can any of these ideas apply to the world of blogging? Maybe not in the same way but I did get some ideas that can be useful if you are an SEO and want to contribute positively in your community. Now, some people want to keep info private, so if there are no public profiles of birthday information, it may not be a good idea to out them on your blog. I mean, I’m not going to seek out FaceBook info on Lisa Barone and risk her writing a pudding like article about me. That being said, I noticed some other influential people in my web life had birthdays in September. How difficult would it be for me to use my blog and say Happy Birthday to Vanessa Fox sometime this month? Vanessa has the best “About Page” I’ve seen in a blog and she’s taught me a few things about improving my sites. To that I say thank you and… Happy Birthday Vanessa! The day before I joined Sphinn I authored an article about Yellow Page Directories and I mentioned that a company called Marchex was doing an incredible job in the area of SEO. Only today I discovered that Matt McGee was the SEO Manager at Marchex (what a coincidence). Matt has been incredibly helpful to me in the Sphinn community and guess what else? Matt’s birthday is in September! Does not take much effort for me to say thank you and… Happy Birthday Matt! Many Thanks: I have a number of people to say thank you to for helping in various ways. I’ll be finding an avenue to show my appreciation but thanks for being a part of this all. Some people I had wanted to give props to include: Rhea Drysdale: who gave me the willies when I saw her “over the cliff photo.”
September 26th, 2007 ,
1 Comment »
Happy 42nd Birthday Danny Sullivan
Monday, September 24, 2007 Many of the gang from Sphinn are here to celebrate your 42nd birthday. We are all wishing you the very best on this day. Check out all the familiar faces and avatars on the card below. Some of us have been stalking you!  Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Danny, happy birthday to you! I tried to get everyone I could on the card, apologies for those I may have missed.
September 23rd, 2007 ,
6 Comments »
Sphinn Head to Head Battle Rages on!
If you went to bed early Friday night, the night of September 21, you missed out on what was likely the first Sphinn-To-Sphinn, Head-To-Head, Post-To-Post event of the year. I know you’re probably bummed out because you either went out partying with friends, went to bed, spent time with family, or did some other non-Sphinn related activity. Not to worry, because I’ve got your back with play-by-play action of what had to have been the biggest Sphinn event of the evening! The Playing Field: The Submit Section on the Sphinn web site. The Players: AndyBeard & dsemmler From the .EU, the Big A, Sphinns one and only Andy Beard. The Niche Marketing master holds a strong position with a current Topics Submitted score of: 24. Not only that, AndyBeard is a Top 10 ranked SphinnMaster who commands an early adopter Joined Date of: 2007-07-19. From somewhere in the U. S., the proud daddy, the newcomer underdog, Derek Semmler, Sphinn aka dsemmler, with a Joined Date of: 2007-09-04. The newcomer had a Topics Submitted score of: 1, making him truly the unfavored contender. The Target: a post authored by Marty Weintraub on his aimClear Blog titled: The Enduring Power of Good Manners Both players were visiting Marty’s blog the evening of September 21. In what was likely the scenario, both Andy and Derek had virtual light bulbs go off in their heads, thinking this was Sphinn Worthy content. The race was on! They both hit the Sphinn submit page at approximately the same time, even though they were each physically on different continents. Each were unaware of the other’s actions, making the event even more exciting. AndyBeard, the seasoned veteran went straight for the submit button, and made no deviations from Marty’s original headlines. His description was typed out with lightning speed, and it read… It seems like Marty is a gentleman No need for spellcheck, Andy went straight for the submit button, SPHUNN! Andy was on the “What’s New” board with a score of one. As fate would have it, I was on that very page in search of something fresh, and there was Andy’s post. The familiar “A” had me instantly, I was certain this would be a topic worthy of a vote. My index finger poised, I moved in to read the post. But wait, who is that man in the dark sunglasses? It was a post appearing just above Andy’s with a “Jump to” on the same story URL. I just had to check it out. Turns out it was the same post, by the same author, Marty! The newcomer wanted to make a splash with his first submission to Sphinn. In doing so, he got creative and summarized the entire post in a single sentence, which became his title. He followed that with a few descriptive sentences and double checked to make sure “Marty Weintraub” was spelled properly. Imagine making your first post, and dissing a top 50 Sphinner? Had he misspelled it, the result could have been disastrous (the thrill of victory - the agony of defeat). Semmler carefully checked his title and description in the spellchecker, and when he was fully confident, clicked on the submit button. SPHUNN! Like AndyBeard, Semmler now had a score of one. You were likely asleep, but it was a Sphinntastic moment! In Los Angeles, it was nearly 2 minutes to midnight (rain was pouring down for the first time in months), there were 2 Sphinners, 2 Submissions, and the posts hit the “What’s New” page only 2 Minutes Apart! Wow, was anyone else aware of this? This was truly a Sphinn Live event. In WWE smackdown fashion, I decided to comment and call the newcomer out. Andy had sphunn the Sphinn button first! The sunglass wearing dsemmler wielded his mouse and was quick to respond in a truly gentleman fashion, claiming he was checking to ensure Marty’s name was spelled correctly, hence the two minute gap. I thought it might end there, but in from Texas came flyingrose, the goddess of PPC, taking a referee stance, and showing interest on the event continuing. And continue it did! Throughout the night and all across the globe, at least two dozen fellow sphinners came on the scenes and got clicking. Morning came, and I awoke to a Sphinn homepage on my screen. I quickly hit the F5 key on my keyboard. It was Sphinnalicious! Both submissions had gone hot and Marty was getting double barrel Sphinn juice!  Three Hidden Treasures of Social Media - Thank You, Please and Congratulations The Enduring Power of Good Manners While its winding down, the race is still on, and there is no winner yet. The moral of the story here is that some topics are not only Sphinn worthy, they are double barrel, double bandwidth, Sphinn worthy!
September 22nd, 2007 ,
4 Comments »
Why Local SEO Beats Print Yellow Pages
Early this morning I was commenting on a post appearing on Sphinn related to local business searches and yellow page advertising. Moments after I finished my comment I received a phone call I’d like to believe came as a result of optimized local SEO. In hopes of us all learning from it, I thought I’d share that information with you today. Case Study on Local Search for September 17, 2007 Health-Care Office: A phone call was received from a female in her late 20s or early 30s. She had been doing some online research and was seeking a specific health care practitioner in the local area. She was calling on behalf of her husband, who works in the tech industry. The couple recently moved to the area from out-of-state. The caller reported having a good experience with this particular approach to her husband’s health care, but since they were new to the area, they did not have a direct referral. During the call, the following information was gathered (as relates to our study). The city the individual was calling from, her name, her husband’s name, and a phone number where she could be reached for follow-up. Appointment for her husband was scheduled and she was thanked for choosing the office. She was assured her husband would be well cared for. In this particular kind of situation (for this type of local business), the goal is to schedule the individual for an appointment. I’d chalk that up as a successful effort. Lets break down what went on and see what we can learn from it. Analysis
Observations In this case, the phone call came from the homepage of the local business web site. We know that because the office uses tracked phone numbers, which provides specific data on where the lead was generated. Why no Yellow Pages? The individual calling was already familiar with the industry and knew what to look for, so once her questions were answered properly, the situation was satisfied. SEO Tips It’s truly amazing how much information you can gather from a single phone call as long as you’re prepared to ask questions. Perhaps, I’ll do a follow up on what methods were used by the caller during her search for a local business. If so, I’ll post that information here.
September 17th, 2007 ,
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Impossibly Great Linkbait Article TipsEarlier today, SEO Michael Gray posted a Britney Spears Career Choices article to his blog. In his post, he mentioned that one of the keys to being good at social media and linkbaiting was to keep in tune with the trends, and have people on hand to create posts when an opportunity presents itself. Michael feels that if you are a player in the job or employment space, you missed an opportunity to ride this week’s Britney Spears MTV video music awards wave. If you’re a player in any space, you missed an opportunity this week, as the Britney story has been getting all sorts of attention. You don’t need me to rehash the Britney drama, there’s thousands of others doing that. However, the ever-changing story is nowhere near dead, and I’m betting Britney will continue being a great source for linkbait for some time to come. As Michael said, “the girl is a never ending fountain of material” so get prepared to ride the next wave. The point of Gray’s post was to “be diligent and monitor trends and current events.” Michael suggested linkbaiters look for creative ways to bridge those gaps between the real world, pop culture, and your site. By the time I checked Michaels post there were several comments, and I found the conversation interesting. While the concept is a great idea, a reader reported that interest in pop culture events like this one spike and disappear too fast for most people. They go on to suggest that what Michael Gray describes seems impossible to plan for. Others making comments appeared to feel the same way. Make the impossible possible by following these tips… Load up Your Linkbait Tackle Box Bio Images How I’ve developed my approach over the years is I’ve kept a bundle of images on my web server, so I can access them from anywhere. I’ll keep a text file copy of all the things I mentioned above on my laptop, with everything already formatted in proper HTML tags. Using this approach, if you were sitting in an airport waiting for your flight, and a fresh topic broke, you’d have your entire tackle box available, and you could potentially get a story posted before take off. Scan Know Tomorrow, Today If you are interested in examples, take a look at 5 completely unrelated topics (from this summer) that all tied into one websites mission. All produced new inbound links. Google Introducing 10 Second Advertising Grab your best bait, and get ready to party! About the author: Michael Dorausch lives in Venice Beach, CA.
September 14th, 2007 ,
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2008 Presidential Candidates Web Site RSS FeedsHere is a list of some of the RSS feeds for United States 2008 presidential candidates. You’d think all of the candidate web sites would feature big orange glowing RSS feed buttons, but none of the websites that I visited had a clear and concise way to locate RSS subscription information.
OK, here are some feeds for the 2008 presidential candidates. Barack Obama has two RSS feeds available for subscription directly from the homepage of his campaign web site. Obama 08 Blog and Obama 08 News. Both feeds are handled by FeedBurner. John Edwards had one RSS feed that I could locate. Hillary Clinton has an RSS feed on her blog. I almost left the web site of Mitt Romney since I couldn’t find any RSS feed subscription buttons. I believe I found the RSS feed while looking around the site map. RSS feeds for Senator John McCain were difficult to find as well. The John Mccain RSS feed that I could locate includes a horrendous URL and string of numerical characters. Sadly, I could not locate any RSS feeds for Rudy Giuliani or Ron Paul. Someone had seriously be working on those web sites, and get them up to speed. There is also a user list of 2008-Election-Feeds on the KickRSS web site.
September 9th, 2007 ,
2 Comments »
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by Michael Dorausch
Let’s get some RSS feed buttons on those presidential web sites so people can subscribe to your feeds and keep up-to-date with what you’re talking about.