Notes from the Search World

Sometimes we write things we regret

The Amateur Gourmet felt bad about overly flaming some poor food joint because we all make posts we are not proud of. Just check out some of mine. Some are good, some are steaming piles of... Anyway Cornwallseo who it apparently some big shot copywriter/linkbaiter gave his entries for a headline writing contest. The contest is in Ad Words or at least requires Ad Words formats. But mister Cornwallseo apparently had not ever written AdWords copy.

Don't feel bad, I made that mistake all the time when I was a noob.

Obsession with Battle Star

Check out this Twitter.

dannysullivan frak! hulu takes down old battlestar episodes? because then i'll buy them on itunes? no, i can't do that either. hate old media dinosaurs 23 minutes ago from web

Makes we wonder if the obsession for BSG in Internet geek types is nature or nurture.

Blogging 101: Where To Start

Ever thought of starting a blog but don't know how? This is a crash course designed to get you up and running; fast.

Get A Domain Name:
Pick whatever you want, like I did with Anzel Online or pick a name that will give you an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) edge. Try to think of a name that is relevant to what you are going to be doing. If you are making a website about yourself, your domain name should be www.[yourname].com. If you are talking about the best colors to paint your house, you should choose www.besthousecolors.com.

When searching for the name, do not search on the domain name registration sites or WHOIS. If you do, and you decide that you just don't want to buy it today, there might be a chance that a prospector will snatch it away from you. Instead, just type for prospective names into the nav bar of your browser or do a Google search.

Generally I go to Go Daddy. You could pay sticker, or you could do a search for Go Daddy promo codes and see if you can get a few dollars off.

Get E-Mail With Your Domain:
It's nice to have an e-mail address that is associated with your domain. You can do this for free by using Google Applications. Go to www.google.com/a/ and follow the directions. If you already use Gmail, you can just link the accounts.

Get a blog:
Who wants to pay for web hosting or try to install word press? Use blogger. It's part of the Google family so it will play nice with your Google Applications account. All you will have to do is follow the directions given by Blogger, creating a CNAME file. You will have learned how to do this when you got your Google Apps account. I suggest that you create a sub-domain (example: blog.anzelonline.com) and redirect www to that sub-domain. This way when your blog takes off and you want to create a real website with your domain name, you will not have mispointed links all over the Internet. You should also get a FeedBurner account. This will help you syndicate your blog. They also have a ton of cool features like FeedFlare, Site Stats, and most importantly, Subscriber Count.

Customize Your Blog:
Choose a layout that is simple. Then do your creative thing. Remember, this is not a MySpace profile, your blog pages should still look nice, be user friendly and load quickly. There are tons of CSS tutorials out there, and I am a proponent user of Franken-coding. Meaning you take functioning code (with permission) and edit it to work for your uses. If you use Firefox, and I suggest you do, get the Web Developers tool bar, its got lots of handy tools to help you understand what DIVs are doing what.

Set Up Analytics:
Now is a good time to set up Google Analytics. Just go to analytics.google.com and follow the directions. They still give you an option of old Urchin tag or new analytics tag, use the new tag. Put it on your layout in blogger, so it appears on every page.

Produce Content:
This is either the hard part or the easy part. If you are like me, creating the content is the hard part because I mostly like playing with the pages, various features and dabbling in the social media. If you have something to say, I guess learning how to edit CSS and keeping your DIVs straight will be the hard part.

Promote Your Content:
This is the fun part, or the part that will get you in trouble. I suggest that you submit your own content to social bookmarking sites (like Digg). That way you have control over the title and description. You should submit your site to any social bookmarking site where its content is relevant (if it's not relevant, it's what we call spam). Additionally, you should tell all your friends on MySpace and Facebook.

Network, Network, Network:
The more people you tell, the more people will visit. Just remember, you are trying to be helpful, not a spammer. If you are writing about Beer and Wine, you should not be posting links in AA's forums.

Monetize:
So, you want to make money off your site? Easy, because you are using a Blogger account just add Ad Sense boxes. If you are not a Blogger user go to: adsense.google.com (or click on the link in my sidebar) and follow the directions. If you take my advice, you can also use FeedBurner to place ads in your feed and on your site. The ads will appear above or below your FeedFlare.

Required Reading For Those New To Social Media

My friends continuously ask me what they need to do to get their website/blog up and running. In my next post I am going to give step by step instructions. Before you can jump into the online world it help if you have context. The following is my required reading/doing list so you are in touch with today's Internet.

Be familiar with these sites/Have an account with these sites:

Myspace: Myspace is the wild west of the Internet. Its where teen and the pedophiles that stock them, come together. Myspace has become a news entertainment industry favorite. I believe that the stores about kids getting in trouble on Myspace are more a product of lack of education that people out to do harm. Someone entering the SEO world need to be familiar with Myspace and its history. It is important to note that you can use code to edit your Myspace profile, while that is not allowed on may other social networking sites. Google seems to sporadically crawl Myspace.

Facebook: Facebook is Myspace's biggest competitor. The users of Facebook should feel more secure in knowing that they are not being watched by pedophiles, but Facebook itself. Facebook has gotten itself in trouble for tracking it users a little to far. While some of their features have beencontriversial, they seem to be the social networking technology leader. If you have been watching the changes to Myspace's UI, you will know they have been taking pages from Facebook's book. It is important to note that Google does not crawl Facebook in a way that would be useful to a SEO.

Linked In: Facebook for professionals. Linked In much like Digg and Sphinn seems to have a special relationship with Google. Your public profile will get crawled and when your name is Googled, you will get greatSERP (search engine results page) rankings.

Digg: This is the most popular social bookmarking site on the web. Digg's categories cover a broad range of topics but mostly the stories appealing to geeky boys get Dugg (if that is the right way of spelling it). Digg is very important to SEO. Google seems to index its content continiously. When I submitted the first Anzel Online posting to Digg, Anzel Online was in Google's index in under an hour. There are tons of sites like this StumbleUpon is another. Flicker is like Digg but for photos.

Sphinn: This is a nitche social bookmarking site. They are mostly focused on search marketing. If you need to learn a lot about search marketing fast, this is the place. Try not to get bogged down in the endless discussions on SEO celebrity and [insert number here] [insert SEO task here] lists.

Be subscribed to these podcasts:

Diggnation: This is two guys who sit on a couch, getting wasted and talking about stories on Digg. This podcast is incredibly popular. This is a great example of how a home grown podcast can get big. In addition this podcast is seriously entertaining. It took me a while to get into it but now I am hooked.

Wine Library TV: Guess what this podcast is about. Try not to turn him off in the first thirty seconds. This guy took his family business from a $5 million to a $45 million business and the podcast is a large part of that. Obviously the guy is a great business man.Insted of attempting to use the podcast to (as Diggnation does) to sell products for other people, Gary is out selling his own business. Another good item to note: I watch WLTV through iTunes , Gary prefers that people watch the podcast on his website and does a great job of encouraging that behavior (watch is and you will see what I mean). He also does a truly stellar job of community building. Gary is you ever read this: what percentage of you community members purchase from your online store? I would bet that that number is a lot higher than other online retailers.

Start Using these online tools:

Blogger: You want a blog? Start here. So easy and with a little work can be integrated into any website. If you must host your own service check out WordPress. Blogger is owned by Google.
Feedburner: FeedBurner is another Google property. Feedburner is packed with tons of cool features that help promote and analyze you posts.
Google Analytics: Google Analytics is one kick ass analytics program. By placing tags on all your pages (or just one on your template, if you are using Blogger) you can see exactly where people are going and what they are doing.
Google Reader: Start using a RSS reader and subscribe to blogs. This blog might be a good start. At work I read over a hundred posts a day that relate to my industry.
iTunes: iTunes is a great tool for watching podcasts.

Search Engines:

Google: The search giant. If you don't already use Google you probably live is a cave. Where Google goes, the search industry follows. If you are thinking of doing business with Google it is worth while to understand their culture, it truly effects everything they do.
Yahoo: Yahoo is the only player still standing on its own (although that could change as Yahoo is acquisition bait) from the PG (pre-Google) world. They are number two and there are differences between Yahoo and Google. It would be a good idea to try to understand the history.

Google Analytics VS FeedBurner Stats

For anyone serious about understanding their website, blog and its visitors/readers, a tracking piece of some sort must be in place. For those new to analytics, there are two major types of tracking: server logs or tag based tracking. Server logs are big ugly documents generated every time a request is made of the server. If you are serious about looking at your server logs (and you should be) get Aw Stats. Aw Stats parses the logs and makes them manageable by mere mortals. For those looking for trending and not necessarily the accuracy required by an accountant or you do not have access to your servers logs, tags are for you. Google Analytics is the 800 pound gorilla in the tag market. There are others out there that are very good, if not better than Google Analytics, but those are not free. For those publishing a feed through FeedBurner also have access to FeedBurner Stats. FeedBurner Stats is a nifty tool that might make a blogger wonder if they need Google Analytics.

How They Work

Google Analytics utilized a java script tag placed before the close body tag. Every time a tagged web pages is loaded, the tag goes and checks in with the mother ship. If you are using a service like Blogger, or you have a engine running your website, you are luck and only need to put the tag in once. If your site is old school, you will have to manually put the tag on every page. As a minor tangent: I have attempted to place these tags onMySpace, but they seem to get blocked. It might also have something to do with the fact the MySpace is using Google Analytics.

Feedburner works in several different ways. First, your feed exists on their site, so they already have that traffic when a subscriber requests updates. When you addFeedFlair to your posts you are essentially doing the same thing as adding a Google Analytics Tag. FeedBurners Headline Animator is another cool feature, works a bit like a tagged URL.

What They Record

The Google Analytics tag sends back a variety of information. When asked what Google Analytics can see, I like to tell people that when you visit my site the only thing I don't know is what your wearing but I could probably figure that out. The downside, if this is a downside, is every page that you want to track must have a tag. You will not get the all important navigation data if you leave one out (See my article "What Google Sees Referring URLs"). Google records all the traffic information you could want from search engines and referring websites. Direct traffic by its nature is harder to track. If you are sending the links, you can tag the URLs, this will give you some trackability.

Feedburner appears to tell you all the same basic data the Analytics would, however, in nowhere near the detail. Feedburner provides just the basics: visitors, pages, incoming and outgoing. The power of FeedBurner is its ability to tell you the number of subscribers (estimated based on the number of feed hits) and the reach (basically the number of unique visitors). The cool thing is these stats can be derived even when your blog is being read through a reader. This would be near impossible for Google Analytics as you would have to figure a way to get the tag in your post and all readers would have to allow posts to run java. Even then your data would be super strange, each reader would look like a page in your site.

What is sacrificed by using these services

Both FeedBurner and Google Analytics are Free (and owned by Google). When you use these services, you are paying with your data. If you don't like the idea of someone having access to our site's analytics, I suggest you stick with server logs and go live in a cave*.

What You Should Use

Feedburner would never record enough data to give you a clear picture of navigation on your site, nor would you expect it to. But Analytics would never give you the usage blog information needed by a serious blogger. So my answer is both. If you are serious about getting a clear picture of what your readers/visitors are doing, you use both. In addition,Feedburner is a veritable treasure trove of cool features, if you are publishing a blog, you should check FeedBurner out. If you are not already using some analytics program on your website, you are seriously behind. Google Analytics is a great application that is friendly for all experience levels**.



* Depending on your paranoia level, this still might not help you. You would definitely want to avoid an Internet connection and possibly never look up, for fear of being caught by a spy satellite.
** Ok, so it leaves something to be desired when trying to geographically segment Ad Words stats.