Greg Hartnett

It’s not what a candidate stands for that gets him/her elected. The issues rarely come into play. Politicians have been trained to say nothing while spouting the party approved talking points. History has proven that getting into office is less about where you stand and more about how you play the media (think Nixon vs Kennedy or the surrealistic rise of Arnold Schwarzenegger).

This next election should prove to be the candidates’ most prolific use of the web to attract those all-important swing voters. Never before have so many candidates embraced so many elements of the web to reach formative minds. With the meteoric rise of social media sites, the candidates have an abundance of real estate to tackle.

In the first of a four part series, the search marketing blog at 10e20 examines how each of the most popular of the Presidential candidates embraces search and what how they are faring at search marketing. You can check out the full post here.

Keep your eyes on what each of these candidates does online - it may prove to be pivotal in determining who resides at 1600 Pennsylvania through 2012.

Is there an archive of SERPs from Yahoo, Google, and MSN?

Our travel stuff has owned some pretty competitive keyword phrases for years, and I need to be able to show somebody that I have a long history of having top positions across the big three. Is there anywhere that I can point somebody to check on search queries from present and past?

For instance, I would want to tell them to look at a query on “widgets” in Google from six months ago, 12 months ago, 24 months ago, 36, etc…

I’d hate to have to dispel the impression that we are some Johnny-come-lately that recently got lucky.

Yes? No? Sometimes?

If you pay attention to the online world at all, then you’re familiar with contextual advertising. It’s a huge business, generating billions of dollars for website owners and the companies serving the ads. It’s the primary revenue stream of Wall St darling Google Inc, and online behemoths Yahoo and Microsoft, while late to the game, are making strides in parlaying their real estate into cash cows.

It’s a fantastic platform in which readers see relevant ads, website owners are able to monetize their traffic, advertisers can reach targetted visitors, and the server of the advertisement collects revenues. The primary flaw in the system appears to be click fraud, in which a user clicks on the ad without any real interest in the underlying product or service.

While most talk concerning click fraud centers on companies clicking ads to cost their competition money or the website owner clicking ads to generate income, I have yet to hear anybody speak of clicking for friends. Is it common practice, or am I alone in my ways?

When I go to a blog or site owned by a friend and I see some contextual advertising, a lot of times I’ll click on an ad or two to help my buddy out. No, I am not really interested in purchasing some new chopsticks, but if I can click on an ad and generate some revenues for him/her, why not? Likewise for a site that I come across that I enjoyed. Great new page on Digg? I check it out, read the article, and if I enjoy it, I’ll throw the site owner a bone by clicking on an ad. Hey, he made my day better with a great post, why shouldn’t I reciprocate in kind with a little clickity-click??

It should be noted that I have never had somebody ask me to click on their ads - that would be a violation of most TOS, and a bit tacky to boot. Fortunately, I seem to have friends that hold themselves to a higher standard. This is just something I have taken upon myself to help boost their revenues.

So, do you click for friends, or am I the lone miscreant?

If you haven’t yet figured out a plan to tap into the traffic at StumbleUpon, I would suggest you do so - pronto. I think I read recently that their userbase is approximately 2.5 million people. That’s a lot of eyeballs, and some of them could be yours.

I have been a fan of StumbleUpon for awhile now. As a user, I like how they feed me sites that are of interest to me - and should a site pop up that I don’t like, I can voice my opinion about it with a simple thumbs down. As an online marketer, I love the traffic they send me. In my presentation at PubCon Vegas in November, I recommended that users try the advertising option at StumbleUpon. It’s a great way to send cheap traffic to your site. One of the audience members took my advice, and seems to have had a very positive experience - read all about it here (great job Everett!).

Yesterday, the folks at StumbleUpon rocked my world, sending me almost 6000 unique visitors. For free! That’s right, I didn’t add an extra zero in there - six thousand visitors from StumbleUpon in one day. And today is shaping up to be another banner day - as of this writing, they have sent me over a thousand uniques, and the day is just starting. I have included a snapshot of my top referrers from yesterday for all of you Doubting Thomases:

So head on over to StumbleUpon, download the toolbar, and get started. Start by stumbling around a bit to get a feel for it. Once you are feeling comfortable, recommend your own site, and let your fellow stumblers know that you did. Once you receive a handful of thumbs up votes, your site will get thrown into rotation. If you get more positive feedback, they’ll display you more often. Then the fun begins…

Now that I am finally home from my conference tour, I’m getting back into my groove. Two nights of real sleep, and some time with my family were just what the doctor ordered. After a few days in New York, and almost a full week in Vegas, these old bones needed some down time.

Once again, I depart from a conference a bit torn. While it is nice to return to the homestead, I immediately long for the next conference. We are a very fortunate group, for ours is a close-knit community, unique with knowledge share, friendship, and collaboration. White hats and black hats, side by side. Newbies and old-timers mixing it up. Programmers and designers sharing notes. You can feel the energy as some of the sharpest minds in the industry wheel and deal.

And yet I’m left feeling as if I am doing it all wrong. Maybe I should start doing a little more business at these things and stop viewing them as a social function. For me, these things serve as a vacation where maybe I can do some business. I use these times to catch up and hang out with old friends, and as an opportunity to make new friends. And PubCon provided many opportunities for both.

So, much love to friends new and old:

Brett - a big shout out. Awesome conference - the best yet. Thank you for putting it together, and making it all happen. Without your efforts, we’d all be more isolated, and less the wiser.

The Shoemoney Crew, Jeremy and Dillsmack - great times boys. I was very happy to be able to spend so much time with you two.

Shandyking - awesome to meet the Mrs., I definitely wish we could have all spent even more time together. Thanks for giving me the poker bug.

Todd “Oilman” Friesen - it was great to finally be able to hang out a bit, and I was happy to learn what a down to earth guy you are.

Greg Boser - thanks for throwing such a great party and sharing some of your personal life with us yabos. I feel very priviliged to have been there.

Markus - dude, I’m going to send you a list of all conferences I am going to be at, in hopes that you will attend each one as well. You ROCK!

Shawn Hogan - one of the peeps I have wanted to hang with for awhile.

Chris Boggs - one of the funniest guys in search (and genuine to boot). Love hanging out with you.

Neil and Cameron - thanks for helping us with the booth. You guys are princes among men - I apologize for missing you afterwards. Damn alcohol induced flakiness…

Chris Sherman - it’s the quiet ones you have to look out for.

Jenn Slegg - what a sweetheart. Sorry I wasn’t a very good teacher - luckily it was a free game

Brent Csutoras - an up and comer. I love meeting future stars, though you and Annie are never allowed to play Hold ‘Em with me again!

Brandy and Daron - the hardest working couple in search. Always a blast to spend time with.

Marc Levin - thanks for the invite to the awesome party. Definitely the best conference party I have ever been to. You guys know how to do it right.

I’m sure that there are others, but in an effort to get some work done today, I’m going to cut it off there. So for all my homies, much love - I look forward to spending time with you guys again. And to the people I met for the first time, let’s make sure that it’s not the last. See you all at the next show.

I haven’t heard any chatter, and a few searches don’t bring up anything relevant, so this may be out of left field.  But…

Is the WordPress platform no longer displaying incoming links using Technorati?  Used to be that when I logged into my dashboard, in the right column there was an area displaying most recent links, with a “more links” that did a link: query on Technorati.  I think it was even there earlier this morning.  I noticed an error while trying to hit the link this afternoon, and the next time I logged in, it was gone.

This blog is using WP 2.0  I verified that it is not just this version by checking the BOTW Blog, which is still running on WP 1.5.2 (I don’t know why??)  So is it just a hiccup, or has there been a change?  Is it still there on any other versions?

I thought it was a great feature, and probably good for both companies - I’d be bummed to see it go.

I submitted this blog to the Open Directory Project (DMOZ) about 10 days ago. I was surprised to see the following referrer this morning - http://editors.dmoz.org/editors/editunrev.cgi?site=235204&cat=Computers/…

So it looks like an editor was taking a peek at the blog. I stroll over the the applicable category, and booya. There’s my listing three quarters of the way down. Pretty responsive review for a free submission.

I am going to take a pretty unpopular stance here - I like DMOZ. I think they’re great, and not just because they accpeted my blog. I think they almost embody the best of what the web can be. I know they have some flaws, and that there are a few bad apples (maybe a bushel). Overall though, I still feel they are the best directory online, though I do know of another directory biting at their heels.

As expected, the SES conference in San Jose passed with much fanfare - check out all of my pics here. There was much networking to be done, many people to speak with at the booth, a handful of drinks to knock back, and some great dinners. It was awesome to see my boys from BOTW, as well as hang out with some of the familiar faces. I was also able to meet a lot of new people - in particular, the impromptu hang-session with Loren Baker.

I feel really fortunate to be in an industry where the people I work with have become friends. As I have aged, I have noticed that I don’t have nearly as many friends as I once did, and I find myself appreciating the friends that I do have even more. Guys like Adam Sussman, Jeremy Schoemaker, Jim Boykin, Darron Babin, Roger Monti. People that I have grown to respect as associates, and value as friends.

I wasn’t able to attend any of the sessions, so I don’t have any feedback to provide on that front, but below I present a list of 10 things I took away from San Jose:

1. People shouldn’t start a conversation by saying, “Do you remember my name?”. It’s not a good idea to put the other person on the spot.
2. I am not going to mix any alcohol on the first night - no beer and wine, or wine and vodka. And definitely not beer, wine, and vodka.
3. There are a lot of people in this industry that are a lot smarter, and/or younger, than I am.
4. Rubber band propelled foam rockets fly approximately 100 ft given the proper trajectory.
5. I am unable to throw a ball and dunk the guy in the booth when I have a handful of beers in me, though it doesn’t seem to effect BOTW Dragonslayer, Rob Schmid.
6. Girls’ tank tops are the best booth schwag ever.
7. Dave Naylor will punch you in the balls. Not mine. Hopefully.
8. Shoemoney has officially reached rock star status.
9. Blackhats and whitehats can mutually coexist - in the pub at least.
10. Companies don’t need any more analytics services.

Less than 24 hours since the show is over, and already I look forward to seeing all of you again in just a few months. Now that the show is over, it’s back to business, and following up on some contacts made at the conference. It’s not all fun and games there you know. We do some business too…

A couple of months ago, I stumbled across some funny photos in Flickr. Some people had taken some “I crush your head” photos, and created a group - a tribute to an old Kids in the Hall skit. I got a kick out of it, saw some traffic opportunities, and took some pictures of my own (these pics have brought me over a thousand visitors, BTW).

Somebody in the group had pointed out that last week, Yahoo’s The 9 had run a spot about the Flickr group. Too funny - unfortunately none of my pics made the video spot. Aside from the fact that the name seems like a rip off of Scoble’s Channel 9, I am impressed with the offering. Though the product seems a little cheesy now (that girl reminds me too much of the ever-annoying Jillian Barberie), I admire the effort, and I think they’ll improve upon it over the months to come.

I have become more and more impressed with Yahoo over the last six months. Their bold 2.0 strategy seems to be making significant strides, and I would venture to guess they will use their recent successes as launching pads for future endeavors.

Until M$FT gets their act together (they will), it appears to be a two pony race. Yahoo and Google battling for the user experience. I find myself becoming more of a Yahoo person that a Googler. Though I believe Google’s search to be superior to Yahoo’s, I think Yahoo beats Google in almost every other contest.

So hypothetically, if you HAD TO choose one site, which would it be - Google or Yahoo?

For those of you in the SEO industry, Shoemoney has become a pretty popular name. For those of you in the real world, Shoemoney is the pseudonym of affiliate marketer extraordinaire, Jeremy Schoemaker. I met Jeremy at SES San Jose 2005, and we really hit it off. I remember that he had brought his mother-in-law with him to the show, and I thought that was pretty cool. We had a bunch of drinks, talked some shop, and have stayed in contact ever since. I now count Jeremy as not only one of my work acquantainces, but one of my friends as well, and always look forward to seeing him at the conferences.

Jeremy now hosts the NetIncome show on WebmasterRadio.fm, and was kind enough to invite me to be his guest this evening. We’ll be talking about what’s new in the search industry, million dollar ideas, conferences, BOTW, and much more. The show airs tonight, 6PM EST. If you haven’t tuned in to WebmasterRadio before, you should. Tonight

If there is anything you’d like me to cover, let me know, and I’ll try to squeeze it in. Feel free to call in to the show, or hop into the chat room during the show. I know from previous shows that it can get pretty busy, so get there early.

It would appear that Sifry and company have completed the anticipated redesign of the popular blog search engine Technorati. Though they are a competitor of our blog search engine, I must admit that Technorati is definitely the market leader in technology, quality of product, and market share. They definitely know their shit, and continue to make advances in their offering.

I like the overall layout of the new site, and am digging on the new bells and whistles. While the core functionality remains the same, there are significant upgrades to services, as well as some new features. Instead of trying to go over everything here, simply take a look at the screencast they put together.

Kudos to the entire Technorati team. I look forward to trying to catch you.

I have decided to remove the rel=”nofollow” tags from the comments section of my blog. Having them in place does nothing to discourage spammers, and they only seem to punish the people who actually do participate in the conversation. If I have a user that reads my blog on a daily basis, and the user takes the time to participate in the conversation, why shouldn’t s/he be awarded with a link? I know that people have other things they could be doing with their time. I am fully aware that participating in the commenting on this blog is not a high priority on anybody’s list. So, if somebody spares a few moments to contribute, I view it as a professional courtesy to give them some love in return.

Wordpress blogs insert the rel=”nofollow” tag into all comments by default. Luckily, there are a handful of plugins available, and in a matter of minutes, I was able to get rid of the nofollow tags. The plugin I chose, the Dofollow plugin, simply replaces the “nofollow” tag with a tag reading “external” - which I assume is garbage, and ignored by the engines.

For more information on nofollow, and whether it is for you, see:

WP Codex - Nofollow
Wikimedia - Nofollow
The yesfollow Project
Nofollow No Good?
Support for Nofollow Crumbling?

If you happened to catch my presentation at PubCon, hopefully you were able to walk away with some useful information. For those of you that didn’t attend, or were in another session, I have provided the accompanying text below. Is is a pretty long post, so I’ll end the preface here.

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So the Big Question - How can I get the most out of the blogosphere?

My short answer to you - the more you put in, the more you’ll get out. The more active you are, and the more you contribute to the Whole, you more you will flourish. You will find a direct correlation between what you put in and what you get out.

Now, it’s not an easy undertaking, and any successful blogger will tell you that it takes a LOT of work. Probably more than they had expected.

So assuming that you have the fortitude, let’s discuss the first step in the journey - Laying Your Foundation.

Your readers are going to judge you by the quality of your writing. So… brush up on your writing skills. You don’t need to be William Shakespeare, but if you want to be taken seriously, you should have a pretty firm grasp of the language. Pay attention to grammar and spelling and don’t be afraid to use the dictionary and thesaurus. You are bound to lose credibility with consistent misspellings and other grammatical errors. Two books on writing that I have recently read, and would recommend, The Book on Writing and The Dictionary of Concise Writing.

Now for step two of laying your foundation - Optimizing for Performance

As is the case with managing any online marketing campaign, you need to optimize your blog for peak performance. Pay attention to proper title and descriptions for the blog, making sure that they will help you pull for the terms you are targeting. I would recommend that you do a URL rewrite to remove the script, and replace it with title of the post - all things being equal, it will help. Categories and archives should be created - the more the better. Both from a usability standpoint, as well as for the engines. Bill Hartzer wrote an article for Search Engine Guide last month covering blog SEO tactics - some useful nuggets in there. Mare sure that you set up your pings - Setting up your ping services is a quick and easy way to mass distribute your blog.

The Corporate Website Marketing Blog has a nice list of ping services for WP blogs, and Elliott Back has a pretty comprehensive list as well.

Now that you have your blog optimized, and ready for action, it’s time to Get on the Map.

Start by submitting to Blog directories and search engines. Yahoo and DMOZ both have blog specific categories where you can submit for free (those links will take you to the appropriate categories). BOTW has an entire directory for blogs, and there are other smaller and niche directories that you should consider as well. Top Rank Results has a great list of places to submit your blog. Make sure to head over to Technorati to claim your blog, and set up your blog to ping them each time you update. Getting your blog into Technorati is a great way to drive some initial inertia, and get on the radar - there is a good read at Technology Evangelist of some “lesser known tips” on how to optimize for Technorati.

Don’t forget to submit your RSS feeds - it is becoming more and more adopted by the general public, and will only continue to do so. There is a pretty comprehensive list of places to submit your RSS feeds at RSS Specifications.

Now that you are on the map, and you have good content that others would surely enjoy, it’s time to spread the word.

Immerse yourself in your area and read voraciously - get your feed on. Subscribe to as many feeds as you can manage. Find out what other bloggers in your area are saying. When you come across good resources blogroll them - the benefits are twofold. First, your users will benefit from, and appreciate exposure to other valuable resources. And secondly, it helps to get you in front of those bloggers. Bloggers tend to be a vain group - frequently performing ego searches, and checking their backlinks. Blogrolling them, or posting about them, is a sure way to get them to check you out. It is a nice, unobtrusive way, to show up on their radar.

I know of one instance in particular, where this strategy worked wonders. Shimon Sandler posted about a bunch of high profile bloggers, who in turn came to check out what he had said. Shimon provides some good SEO related content on his blog, so these readers tuned back in. Shimon followed up with a killer post a couple of days later on the latest Google app, got mentioned by a handful of said A-listers, and his traffic has skyrocketed. Without the quality content though, the post would have been for naught.

Another important aspect of being social is Participating in the Conversation.

Comment on other people’s blogs - that’s what the comment section is there for. By commenting on other’s people’s blogs, you are able to piggyback on their distribution. Commenting on some quality, high traffic blogs, will expose you to thousands of potential visitors daily. Now I am sure that some would disagree with this, but I will assert that nowhere else is what you say more important than in other people’s comments. A comment is typically a sentence or two, so you have a small window to grab the reader’s attention. Additionally, your comment is bound to be one of many, so you need to say something that not only contributes to the conversation, but is insightful, witty, or compelling enough to grab the reader’s interest, and prompt her to see what else you have to say. By participating in the conversation in a productive manner, you are, in essence, beckoning the reader to come to your blog.

I am not inferring that you need to agree with what the author has to say. Feel free to present a dissenting point of view - they are often the most interesting. However, keep your insults to yourself, and ensure that what you have to say propels the conversation in a constructive manner. If you don’t have something smart to say, keep your thought to yourself.

Now that you are part of the community, it’s time to tap into the power of the Community Sites.

Unless you have been living under a rock, you have undoubtedly heard of these community-driven sites. Tapping into the power of these community sites will bring your blog to the next level. Social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us are a great way for you to share your blog with others that have similar interests.

If you haven’t yet developed a strategy to exploit the traffic available at MySpace, I would highly recommend it. They are currently doing 1.5 billion pages views daily. That’s a lot of traffic - some of it could be yours. For free. Roger Monti, Martinibuster, recently wrote an excellent article on the MySpace land grab.

I had never really bought into the power of Digg, until I got dugg. It drove thousands of visitors to my blog in a matter of hours, and I didn’t even make it to the front page. While Digg tends to favor geeky, tech, or science related news, you don’t need to have a masters from MIT to write for the Digg crowd. The Wolf Howl blog has two very interesting posts on Digg - one about the Digg userbase representing the perfect storm of mavens and connectors, and another with some tips on how to write to help get your non-tech blog dugg. Another tip for Digg - there is a feature that let’s you “blog this story” onto your blog. Doing so places a link to your blog in the right hand column of the Digg story. Doing this alone will help to bring hundreds of visitors to your blog. As long as you are providing valuable content, some of those visitors will grab your feed, bookmark your blog, or make a mental note to return. Incremental steps like this over a period of time equate to thousands of visitors daily.

Next let’s discuss some multimedia - The Power of Pictures

The beauty of pictures is that they appeal to a user’s emotions. An emotion that you are trying to convey make take paragraphs of text to transmit, but can be easily captured with a snapshot. Additionally, pictures cross cultural and language barriers, exposing your content to users that may be otherwise inaccessible. Flickr is a fantastic social tool. Huh - you may be asking yourself. How can uploading some pics of my kids bring be traffic?? Flickr allows you to insert hotspots, notes, and links within your picture and descriptions of the picture. So by joining a couple of groups within Flickr that you are interested in, and making sure that you place your links into the picture or description (I recommend a note in the pic with a link, and a link in the desc) you will drive additional visitors to your site. Once you get involved with the community, you will learn how to tell which types of pictures drive eyeballs.

YouTube and Google Video take it to the next level. Nothing will attract eyeballs more than some video. With the proliferation of digital video, and the advances in technology and broadband, the current climate is a multimedia marketers dream. With some creativity, and a little bit of time you can reach tens, or hundreds of thousands of visitors. While neither of them allow for hyperlinks within the video, with a basic multimedia editor, you can enter your url or any other credits you’d like to add, directly into the video. Also, of course, include your blog url in the description. Once again, this should provide some incremental traffic, and will help to grow your userbase.

I recently had a great experience with my video camera, one that has brought me tens of thousands of visitors. I was able to take my son to hockey parctice, and capture some hilarious video of him brawling with some of the other four year olds. I brought it home, threw in some System of a Down fight music, added my url and credits at the end, and submitted the clip JR Hockey Brawl to YouTube and Google Video. Since doing so, I have attracted tens of thousands of visitors via those channels.

In closing, follow the steps I prescribed here, mix in some time and persistence, and you are bound to get heavy volume to your blog. Ensure that you are providing valuable content, and now you are not only poised to get a ton of traffic, but you have positioned yourself to retain those visitors once you reel ‘em in. And that’s really what it’s all about.

So hopefully, you have seen that if you give to the blogosphere, she will repay you, tenfold.

However….be careful what you wish for. With all that traffic comes a ton of comment spam. But that’s another conversation…

I returned from Boston yesterday afternoon, after attending PubCon Boston. As a presenter, this conference was a bit different for me, and I learned some different things. I typically try to sit in on as many of the sessions as I can, picking up tidbits of info here and there. This time, I spent the first day preparing, and the second day recovering, so my session attendance was minimal. Each opportunity presents different chances for learning. Some of what I brought home this time:

Additionally, I met a lot of interesting people, most of whom operate blogs. I added a bunch of new feeds to my reader, so I look forward to seeing what all these people have to say. In the days to come, I will be uploading the contents of my presentation for anybody that wasn’t able to attend my session. It turned out to be a very cool session, with Matt Cutts and Jeremy Zawodny hopping up on the panel at the end to participate in some Q&A.

I am definitely happy to be home - these conferences are tough on the body and mind. It’s nice to sleep in my own bed, wake up to the sound of my kids playing, and spend time with the family. I’m looking forward to being off the conference junket for a few months - next stop, SES San Jose in August.

After arriving at the Sheraton (not too bad of a trip, even accounting for marathon traffic), we successfully deposited all our shirts, and assorted materials at the booth. Brian and I spent a couple of hours unwinding, and talking shop.

Earlier, I was lucky enough to be able to go through my presentation a couple of times in front of a small, and hospitable audience. Brian and Rob were able to give me some very good feedback, and I feel even more comfortable about my speaking engagement tomorrow. Maybe that is the magnum of Jordan cabernet that we drank during dinner at Morton’s.

Regardless, I am confident that my preparation, and knowledge of the subject mater will be enough to keep me from getting booed off the stage. At a minimum, I have been able to learn a lot about public speaking, and I am happy to have the opportunity to expand my personal achievements.

I am really looking forward to meeting some new people at this conference - expand my horizons a bit. If you happen to see me here, and we have never met before, please take the opportunity to introduce yourself. I am anxious to meet as many new people at this conference as I can, so please don’t be shy.

If you happen to sit in on my session tomorrow, please let me know what you thought. I’d love to hear some feedback to make future engagements better. I’ll do a follow up post with more of what I have learned through this experience. Maybe better suited after less vino.