Lorna Li | Green Marketing 2.0

This video seriously cracked my shit up!

Technorati Tags: hitler, burning man, bman

There’s a lot of resources that list all the on-page and off-page ranking factors that are important to search engine optimization. There’s only one list out there that is worth paying attention to: SEOmoz’s Search Ranking Factors V2.

Google’s ranking algorithm takes into account approximately 200+ attributes when determining the position of websites in search engine results pages (SERPs). In April 2007, SEOmoz published Search Ranking Factors V2, a survey of 37 leaders in organic search engine optimization on the most important factors in Google rankings. Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz CEO maintains that 90-95% of what you need to know about the Google algorithm is contained in the study. While a year old, most of this information is still valid.

Search Ranking Factors evaluates both positive and negative search engine ranking attributes on a scale of 1-5 (5 is “Exceptional Importance), and also indicates the degree of consensus between SEO respondents. Comments from the respondents also yield nuggets of juicy information that can help you refine your SEO and help you avoid landing in Google’s supplemental hell (index).

If you have a limited amount of time for SEO, be sure to focus on the factors that are given the greatest weight by Google’s algorithm. Below is a summary of the top 10 factors that influence Google search engine rankings:

Google’s Top 10 Search Engine Ranking Factors

1. Keyword Use in Title Tag (4.9)
Exceptional Importance and High Consensus

Placing the targeted search term or phrase in the title tag of the web page’s HTML header.

If you only have time one SEO action on your site, make sure to create a good, description title tag that starts with your target keyword.

2. Anchor Text of Inbound Link (4.4)
Exceptional Importance and High Consensus

Inbound links that contain your target keyword in the anchor text will give you a strong boost in ranking for that keyword. While keyword rich anchor text is hugely important, the text adjacent to the link plays a role, as well. A wide array of naturally occurring inbound anchor text is the best scenario - inbound links that are close to identical could invite penalties. So if you’re dropping links…be sure to mix up your anchor text a little!

3. Global Link Popularity of Site (4.4)
Exceptional Importance and Average Agreement

This refers to the overall link weight/authority as measured by links from any and all sites across the web (both link quality and quantity). I like Lucas Ng’s description, because it refers to Amazon tribes!

“Think of a web page as a town. If a city has freeways, airports, train stations, bus shelters and a port, that’s a good indicator that it is an important hub. That orphaned web page with no links pointing to it? It may as well be a hidden tribe of Amazons that no one has discovered.”

4. Age of Site (4.1)
Exceptional Importance and Average Agreement

Age refers to the date indexable content was first seen by the search engines (note that this can change if a domain switches ownership), NOT the date of original registration of the domain.

Age is a huge factor, which is the reason why a lot of crappy, old, barely relevant sites are hard to knock out of SERPs. According to Todd Malicoat, “The older the berry the sweeter the link juice.”

5. Link Popularity within the Site’s Internal Link Structure (4)
Exceptional Importance and Average Agreement

Refers to the number and importance of internal links pointing to the target page. While somewhat masturbatory, internal link juice is a strongly weighted factor and, most importantly, one that you can control, especially with regards to the choice of anchor text.

According to Scott Smith, a.k.a Caveman, “Factors considered by Google include: Number of inbound links, importance (placement) of the inbound links within the linking pages, anchor text patterns, nav versus text links, and the content of linking pages.”

6. Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site (3.9)
High Importance and Average Agreement

This refers to the subject-specific relationship between the sites/pages linking to the target page and the target keyword. Highly relevant links, from trusted, topically related sites carry more weight.

7. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community (3.9)
High Importance and Average Agreement

Refers to link weight/authority of the target website amongst its topical peers in the online world. Link love from the popular kids in the hood helps. A few links from authority sites can help a niche site rank above the authorities for niche-related keywords.

8. Keyword Use in Body Text (3.7)
High Importance and Average Agreement

Using the targeted search term in the visible, HTML text of the page.

Target keywords in the title need to be included in the page, especially in starting and ending paragraphs. Focus more on semantic variations than keyword density - repeating the same keywords over and over again, can result in ranking suppression.

9. Global Link Popularity of Linking Site (3.6)
High Importance, But Highly Disputed

In general, a links from popular sites are better, but it’s hard to get an accurate read on how valuable this is.

10. Topical Relationship of Linking Page (3.5)
High Importance and Average Agreement

While all links help, links from topically related sites help more, though it’s hard to measure exactly by how much.

Other Important Search Engine Ranking Factors

11. Quality/Relevance of Links to External Sites/Pages (3.5)
High Importance and Average Agreement

Do links on the page point to high quality, topically-related pages? According to Aaron Wall http://seobook.com, “Your outbound links help define what community your site belongs in.”

Benefit can be derived through anchor text tunneling, that is, when Site A links to site B with the keyword “widgets”, and site B links to site C the keyword “widgets”.

12. Age of Document (3.4)
High Importance and Average Agreement

Older pages may be perceived as more authoritative while newer pages may be more temporally relevant. An older document on an older, more trusted site will rank better than one on a newer site.

Says Aaron Wall, “Older documents may be trusted more, especially if they are well cited and do not have many broken links in them. For blogs and news sites new documents may tend to have high PageRank values due to internal site structure. New documents may also be given a freshness boost.”

13. Keyword Use in H1 Tag (3.3)
High Importance and Average Agreement

Creating an H1 tag with the targeted search term/phrase

14. Amount of Indexable Text Content (3.2)
High Importance and Average Agreement

Refers to the literal quantity of visible HTML text on a page. Sheer volume of content isn’t that important, but it is good to have some indexable content as opposed to all flash and images. Chris Boggs http://chrisboggs.blogspot.com thinks that content of 75-100 words can be effective in scoring points with Google. However, absence of indexable content can be mitigated by other factors, such as quality inbound links, quality outbound links, and intelligent keyword deployment across title, meta, hx, etc.

15. Age of In-Bound Link (3.2)
High Importance and Average Agreement

Age matters

16. Topical Relationship of Linking Site (3.1)
High Importance and Average Agreement

It helps

17. Relevance of Site’s Primary Subject Matter to Query (3.1)
High Importance, But Highly Disputed

The topical relationships between the full content of a website and a user’s given query. References to the Google’s neutering of the Google bomb effect, caused by complaints from miserable failures in high places, indicate a belief that this factor is more important now than before. However, the dominance of Wikipedia in SERPs is a powerful counter-example.

18. Keyword Use in Domain Name (3)
Moderate Importance and Average Agreement

Including the targeted term/phrase in the registered domain name, i.e. keyword.com. Having your keyword in your domain name has little bearing on its own. The benefit comes from its propensity to attract inbound links with your keyword in the anchor text. You can use hyphens to separate works, but your url will look yucky, and it kills your branding.

Technorati Tags: search engine ranking factors, google, seo, search engine optimization, search marketing, serp, lorna li

Lately I’ve taken to using Flock, the Social Web Browser, because it consolidates and simplifies my social web lifestyle. Today, Flock just got better.

For Earth Day 2008, Flock launched the Eco-Edition of the Flock browser that delivers the latest environmental and sustainable living content to eco-minded social media and web users. The Eco-Edition comes prepopulated with the best news, photos, videos, and feeds from leading eco-content partners on the Web,delivering fresh content from Grist, GroovyGreen, Treehugger, PlanetGreen, Sprig, Current and other top eco brands daily. Furthermore, Flock will donate 10% of the proceeds of the Eco-Edition browser at the end of 2008, and as a recognition of the power of community to create change, will allow users of the Eco-Edition to select the recipient of this donation.

The Flock Eco-Edition Browser, is available as a free software download for Mac, PC and Linux at www.flock.com/eco.

Why Use Flock?

If you are a social media news hound, blogger, Twitterer, are active on multiple social networks, and depend heavily social bookmarking to manage your favorite links, Flock will help you consolidate all your social web activities into a single dashboard.

• You can see updates from friend on Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter in the Flock people sidebar
• You can simultaneously favorite your urls to the Flock browser and to del.icio.us.
• You can post to multiple blogs from the same interface
• It does Technorati tags for you
• You can drag and drop Flickr images & YouTube videos into your blog
• Manage your favorite news feeds

Technorati Tags: flock eco-edition, flock social web browser, social media, web 2.0, blogging, microblogging, social bookmarking, lorna li

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Last week’s Net Tuesday in San Francisco featured Maryrose Dunton, the Head of User Experience at YouTube,, who spoke about YouTube’s Nonprofit Program.The YouTube Nonprofit Program, is an in-kind donation by YouTube to the nonprofit sector that’s worth about $20 million. Currently available to established 501(c)(3)s, YouTube offers participating nonprofits:

• A premium branded channel - some environmental nonprofits that have done a good job with this include Friends of the Earth and Defenders of Wildlife. The ability to upload videos of any length. Currently the limit on video length is 10 minutes.

• Rotation into the “Promoted Videos” section on YouTube’s homepage.
• Listing in the Nonprofit Channels and Nonprofit Video areas
• The ability to collect donations using Google Checkout (with no processing fee).
• The option to participate in the user partner program, which allows you to show partner ads on video - and share the ad revenue. However, there is currently no way to filter ads, which may not work for some organizations.

YouTube has 30 million visitors daily and over 100 million videos are viewed each day. By connecting nonprofits to the world’s largest online video community, the YouTube Nonprofit program will allow these organizations tap into a significant pool of potential small donors. While large nonprofits are able to receive 10-15% of donations from online fundraising, smaller organizations have the most difficulty establishing a web presence. By offering a dedicated channel on YouTube, YouTube’s Nonprofit Program hopes to empower smaller organizations to significantly expand their reach. Now its just the matter of these, often, short-staffed nonprofits finding the manpower to manage their YouTube presence.

YouTube Best Practices for Nonprofits

Maryrose recommended these tips to help nonprofits engage successfully with the YouTube community:

1. Keep it fresh, keep it short. Best not longer than 10 minutes

2. Be genuine, no public service announcements (PSAs)

3. Engage and interact with the community - have a dialogue, allow people to post video comments, be sure to respond to comments
4. Create a call to action

5. Invest in your channel - update content, make sure links and videos work

7. Do not fear comments, ratings, related videos - while you can moderate user engagement, do not disable the commenting or rating features as this tends to upset the community

New Plans for Nonprofits on YouTube

New developments coming down the pipeline include:

1. Extending the program to include international nonprofits.

2. Incorporating more calls to action that are important to nonprofits, petitions, signup forms.

3. Improving nonprofit discovery on YouTube’s website.

Technorati Tags: maryrose dunton, net tuesday, net2, youtube nonprofit program, youtube nonprofit channel, lorna li

by Lorna Li

Search engine marketers, bloggers, and social media fanatics wore their favorite hats at Search Marketing Salon’s “Wear Your Favorite Hat” Launch party at the chic and intimate Otis Lounge in San Francisco. Tips were swapped, secrets were traded, and product ideas were bounced around that would take search marketing to the next level.

Forest Kolb, Sharon Lin, and Julie Blaustein.

“We need a Google Adwords Editor that also includes Yahoo and MSN on a single UI,” stated Clay Schulenburg, Interactive Marketing Manager for Healthline. “This will take search to a whole new level.”

F*ck the Yahoo bulk upload, is what I say to that!

Hear that, web entrepreneurs? That’s big bucks for you!

Jacob Morgan, Search Marketing Alchemist and Nicolette Toussaint

Search-obsessed bloggers that dropped by included Michael Brito, who writes a fantastic blog about Social Media & Conversation Marketing, Lisa Whelan social media queen on Vox, Jim Yu on how to be a Search Marketing and SEO Maven, and Andy Kaufman, the real estate blogger and Twitter king.

William Gauthier, Alicia Lin, Damon White, and Lorna Li.

e-Storm’s William Gauthier, Lisa McGuire, and Daniel Riveong

Leon Krishayana and lovely lady in black beret

Leon Krishnayana of iSpionage, offers a technology platform that helps search engine marketers track competitors’ PPC ads on Google, Yahoo, and MSN ads daily. It allows you to see the ad copy, keywords, and average rank on the major search engines side by side. Very handy indeed.

Vera Belenky and Alex Gamburg

Other attendees included Mark Fiske, Senior Online Marketing Manager at Gap, Pete Park of web advertising agency Vectorhaus, Yan Rozovsky VP of LeadClick Media, Jason Hart of the search-focused Online Marketing agency Domain Methods, Jeff Rohrs, VP of search marketing agency ExactTarget, Leo Haryono, Head of Natural Search of Shopping.com, Josh Pierry and Clay Shulenburg of Healthline, Biren Talati, of Sandalstore.com, Peter Koontz, Founder and CTO of Sprenzy, Vera Belenky of Walmart.com, Alex Gamburg Search Marketing Director of Trulia, specializing in real estate search, Gabriel Carrejo, the original sinner, Forest Kolb of BizzFlip who has cracked the secret of the Digg first page, Sharon Lin, Online Marketer for Web 2.0 companies, Irina Greenman, and Danny Cheung, who is about to revolutionize the world of WordPress publishing the Good Magazine way.

More pictures can be viewed on the Search Marketing Salon Flickr album.

Join Search Marketing Salon on Facebook!

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: searchmarketing salon, e-Storm, iSpionage, Domain Methods, Good Magazine, Sandalstore.com, Michael Brito, Andy Kaufman, Jim Yu, Lisa Whelan, Sharon Lin, Josh Pierry, Clay Shulenburg, Peter Koontz, Jeff Rohrs, Biren Talati, Jason Hart, Gabriel Carrejo, Pete Park, Mark Fiske, Yan Rozovsky, Leo Haryono, Leon Krishnayana, Vera Belenky, Nicolette Toussaint, Lorna Li, Jacob Morgan

Starbucks Ideas has been live for about 2 weeks and already customers have had plenty to say about what they expect from the world’s largest chain of coffee shops.

The move to launch a website that allows anyone to post ideas about how Starbucks can improve its service offering is part of an increasing trend by companies to use social networking applications to better improve communication with their customers. This move may be the best way for the struggling coffee maker to quickly turn its business around.

Starbucks Ideas is not a true social network play, rather is an an interactive forum where people can vet their best ideas in a manner much like Digg. Starbucks Ideas is powered by Salesforce.com and is the same social platform that powers Dell’s Ideastorm which won PR Innovation of the Year 2008.

Already, Starbucks has moved to implement the top two customer requests: free coffee for frequent buyers and universal free wi-fi, which is finally (woot, woot!) coming soon in Spring 2008. The thought that a multinational global corporation like Starbucks would be so responsive to the voice of its customers is encouraging indeed.

Can Customers Make Starbucks Become More Environmentally Responsible?

As I surfed through several pages of Starbucks Ideas I was struck by the number of requests for a Greener Starbucks. Below is a list of suggestions and comments that would Starbucks make a better environmental citizen, all of which I voted on:

Stop Trashing Empty Cards

We don’t need any more plastic in the trash. Rather than suggesting trashing an empty starbucks card, give people a 25 cent credit…for refilling it. To make it affordable, how about….

Re-fill your card…at $20 level…get $20.25 on the card.

Re fill at the $50 level…get $51.00 on the card.

Re fill at the $100 level…get $103.oo on the card, or get the $100…and your current single drink order free.

More on the plastic…less plastic in the trash.

Sell Reusable Sleeves

I have recently had customers who come in with their own rubber sleeves for their cups. They tell me they purchased them from Bed Bath and Beyond. They prefer to use them as the grip is more secure and they are helping preserve the trees. Starbucks should have these manufatured with the company logo and sell them for a really reasonable price point so we could also help save the trees etc

Recycle!

Recycle! Become greener!

Recycle In Stores

It concerns me that we do not have recycle bins in our stores. In Seattle, and in most large cities the opportunity to help the environment by recycling is readily available in our homes and many business. I would like to see Starbucks stores embrace this as well by providing Glass, plastice and compost waste in containers in all stores.

Recycle the Waste in the Back of Your Stores

I don’t think Starbucks has shown a real connection between environmental health and human health. Here is why: My local Starbucks produces a tremendous amount of garbage everyday and nearly none of it is recycled. Nearly all the store waste is thrown out and put in the garbage and taken to the landfill. Recycle the waste in the back end of ALL your stores. It goes beyond the polish of the front end and sales. Make it a real effort to connect environmental health and human health. Thank you.

Reusable Cups

I use my Starbucks reusable travel mug almost every time I order and this is what I often see:

- 99% of the time I don’t get the mug discount,

- some baristas have no real clue what to do with it,

- they stick a disposable cup inside it to take down the order and then throw the disposable cup away (I’ve seen stickers but they seem to be out of them a lot).

We need more people to use the mugs and reduce the number of disposable cups used. Push the sale of them (make them cheaper - why not just $5?) and then train staff on how to handle the cups!

Locally sourced (organic) baked goods

Offer locally sourced (organic or not) high quality baked goods similar to some of the baked goods Whole Foods offers, instead of the nationally consistent scones, cookies, pastries, cakes, and breads offered now. This sacrifices some of the national consistency now in place (though there is some variance already) but brings better quality, better tasting food to Starbucks, supports the local community, and elevates Starbucks above other coffee outlets (national outlets now also serving coffee) by cranking up the quality level and local community/local business tie ins. As a result, Starbucks will feel more like a local coffee store again rather than some big national chain.

Biodegradable drink and food containers - Yeah!

Replace plastic containers for cold drinks, straws, salads etc. with those made of biodegradable polylactic acid or polylactide (PLA). These are readily available and currently in use by forward-thinking entities like Paul Newman’s “Newman’s Own” products.

Fair Trade Coffee

I think that Starbucks should switch to only selling and brewing coffee, lattes … with only fair trade coffee. Fair trade coffee costs the consumer no more than regular coffee and still gives the coffee grower a fair price for their coffee. In return these coffee growers use organic means to grow their coffee making it environmentally friendly. That is why I would like to see Starbucks switch to only selling fair trade coffee.

Real Fruit Smoothies

real fruit smoothies

Porcelain Cups

When I first started going to Starbucks, they used to ask here or to go, and if “here” you’d get a porcelain mug of various sizes. Would that be cheaper than buying all those paper cups. Too much washing dishes?

Corporate Social Responsibility at Starbucks

I’ve seen Starbucks come a long way. Since 1999, when it was assailed by numerous activist groups upset with the company’s fair-trade policies, labor relations, and environmental impact during the WTO talks in Seattle, Starbucks has evolved with a commendable corporate social responsibility program.

The mission of Starbucks’ CSR program is to work daily with partners (employees), suppliers and farmers to help create a more sustainable approach to high-quality coffee production, to help build stronger local communities, to minimize their environmental footprint and to be responsive to customers health and wellness needs.

In 2005, Starbucks received The World Environment Center’s 21st Annual Gold Medal for International Corporate Achievement in Sustainable Development, where it was recognized for its leadership in sustainable development within the specialty coffee industry.
From www.greenbiz.com:

In particular, WEC commends the company’s development of Coffee and Farmer Equity (C.A.F.E.) Practices, a set of environmentally, socially and economically responsible coffee buying guidelines created in conjunction with Conservation International that are designed to contribute positively to the livelihoods of coffee farmers while placing an emphasis on environmental conservation and supply chain transparency.

According to Calvert Funds’ December 2007 edition of Socially Responsible Investing News, in “Calvert’s view, Starbucks Corp. remains an industry leader with significant and progressive programs on renewable energy and the environment as well as workplace diversity and safety.”

While many love to hate Starbucks, I would point out that, over the past decade, Starbucks has proved to be more socially responsible than many other multinational corporations of equal reach and caliber. My Starbucks Idea is simply another way in which the company has demonstrated a willingness to address public opinion, even if its primary motivation is maintaining competitive advantage.

The power of social media for social innovation is evident. If consumers are vocal enough about Starbucks’ environmental impact, Starbucks Ideas may indeed be the catalyst to a Greener, more earth-friendly Starbucks.

Technorati Tags: starbucks, starbucks ideas, web 2.0, salesforce.com, corporate social responsibility, csr, social innovation, social media, social networking, green business, environmental sustainability, lorna li

It’s time to wear your favorite hat, because Search Marketing Salon launches this Thursday. White hats, grey hats, and black hats are welcome - we do not discriminate.

If you are obsessed about search engine rankings, gaga about the SEO benefits of social media, and have a tale or two to tell about how you dominated the SERPs, have a drink with us!

When:

Thursday March 27 6:00pm - 9:00pm

Where:

Otis Lounge

25 Maiden Lane (b/w Grant & Kearny )

San Francisco, CA 94108

Join Us!

RSVP via Eventbrite for Search Marketing Salon’s Wear Your Favorite Hat Launch Party.

To become an official member of Search Marketing Salon, join Search Marketing Salon on LinkedIn.

You can also connect with Search Marketing Salon on Facebook.

Technorati Tags: search marketing salon, search engine marketing, search marketing, sem, seo, ppc, social seo, web 2.0 marketing

I haven’t blogged for a long, long while,’coz life got real hectic for me at the start of the year. For one, I changed jobs. I have been hired by Salesforce.com to help them with search optimization of their content, social media marketing, building social networks, and scoping out new technologies for acquisition.

After that was all squared away, I took off to Honduras for a couple of weeks, where I spent one week doing a raw food, eco-yoga retreat in the rainforest just outside of La Ceiba. Every morning, I practiced Mysore-style Ashtanga yoga. In the afternoons, I went hiking. I did a lot of skinny dipping in waterfalls (not featured)

After a week of living a yogic lifestyle, eating only raw fruits and vegetables, I ended my retreat with a yummy meal of coconut shrimp & rice, apple pie, and an Irish coffee at the jungle eco-lodge up the road. Then it was off to Roatan for a week of scuba diving.  There I balanced out my raw food regimen with the shrimp, king crab and lobster diet.

The highlight of my stay on Roatan island was a swim with a group of ocean-faring bottle-nose dolphins intent on out-swimming our dive boat, the Bad Boy.

Now I’m back in S.F., 5 shades darker, a lot more relaxed, ready to begin the rat race again!

presented by Giovanna & Aaron Wall

Tuesday night I went to one of the first SF Blogger Meetups to gather after a long hiatus and it was well worth the wait.

The group practically took over Amici’s pizzeria on Lombard and, with the exception of my bub.blicio.us buddy Victor Karamalis, included no one I recognized from the Web 2.0 circuit.

But it did include a treat - I got to meet, sit next to, and pick the brains of Aaron Wall and his wife Giovanna. Yes, THE Aaron Wall, of SEO Book and one of the most well known SEOs of our time. In fact, the couple is so successful with building monetizing blogs that they now occupy the ranks of the New Rich - a term coined by Tim Ferris of the 4-Hour Work Week. Both Aaron and Giovanna are seasoned veterans of blog monetization - they’ve optimized and monetized websites so that several of them bring in over six figures in income. Sharing their blogging secrets, as well as picking up the tab for 40+ attendees, was their way of giving back to the community.

They also threw in a free resource The Blogger’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization.

Alas, if only I could spend an ENTIRE DAY learning from Aaron or Giovanna!

The Blogger Meetup was largely made up of novice bloggers, and folks unfamiliar with the term SEO. Most of what the Walls shared was pretty general knowledge, seasoned with nuggets of valuable insider wisdom, some of which they urged, to keep to ourselves.

Topics covered were:

1. How to Generate and Grow Traffic

Content is King

Write good content that caters to your target audience - ideally content that is so good that it redefines the industry. Be sure to create a unique angle the reflects your personality. Mention and link out to other blogs - the owners will notice the incoming link, and often they too will share some link love.

A good tip from Aaron on scrapers stealing your unique site content is to create links to older articles in your blog post. That way, if scrapers pick up your content, at least they are providing links back to your site

Community Participation

Start online friendships by in conversations on blogs, forums and social networks related to your topic. Try to have a popular blogger mention you and link to you - this can bring considerable traffic to your site. You can also offer to write for other well-known bloggers.

Create a community project related to your topic and ask web-savvy experts to give their opinion about it. If your project is buzzworthy, all of the sudden you will have organic citations from thought leaders in the field pointing to your site from around the Web.

Pay Per Click

Use PPC to build traffic. My take on PPC is that it’s worthwhile if you have a product to sell that would at least enable you to generate some kind of ROI, otherwise buying this kind of traffic can get very expensive very quickly.

However, Aaron and Giovanna maintained that even if you’re not selling anything, buying traffic through PPC can be powerful, because, if your content is good, it can go viral. And niche keywords can actually be very cheap - around 5 or 10 cents a click, so if you have a small budget to play with, PPC traffic can be relatively inexpensive and worthwhile.

StumbleUpon Ads

For a nickel a visitor, StumbleUpon, a social search application, can drive considerable traffic to your site. StumbleUpon allows users to discover Web sites, people, videos, online communities, product information and more in a manner very much like channel-surfing, but for the Web. You can use StumbleUpon as a social media marketing tool for free - join a Stumble group for maximum impact - or as an advertiser. Other Stumblers vote your content up or down - the more positive votes you get, the more the StumbleUpon recommends your site to other Stumblers.

Paid Reviews

Solicit paid reviews from other bloggers through ReviewMe.com and PayPerPost.com.

2. Building a Large Subscription Base

RSS

Encourage RSS subscriptions by promoting RSS buttons aggressively. Create a page that explains what RSS is.

Create Brand Evangelists

Make your email accessible or use a contact form. Aggressively solicit comments and answer every real comment.

Encourage Registration

Encourage registration if you want to build a community and offer bonuses for registering.

3. Monetization Strategies

Adsense

The easiest way to monetize is Adsense, which is good for setting a baseline. Aaron recommended staying ad-free in the beginning and to avoid putting ads on your homepage unless you are very well trusted.

Affiliate Offers

Make sure that they are selective and relevant to your topic - and put the offers section on another part of your site.

Create or Sell a Product

Create or sell a product that is relevant to your topic; this works best if you are a recognized expert in your niche. You can also try to sell information-based products created from your intellectual capital, such as e-books, videos, or DVDs, or consulting services and speaking gigs.

Do not pollute your blog with advertising - it becomes a roadblock.

4. Technology

Aaron and Giovanna’s recommended blog platform of choice was WordPress, Drupal if you want to start a community. They also recommended Google Analytics or HaveAMint.com for site stats.

5. Other Takeaways

Trendspotting

One of the key takeaways from the Meetup was the value of spotting trends. According to Giovanna, “The best way to make $ out of blogging is to spot trends and be an early adopter.”

Here’s how to do it:

1. Research trends

Tools you can use to spot upcoming trends include Google Trends, trendwatching.com, ebay’s Marketplace Research Pro, which for $20/month gives you access to what people are searching for on eBay.

2. Keyword Research

Once you’ve zeroed in on a new trend, research the keywords around those trends, buy a domain name with those relevant keywords. Remember:

• Make sure the keyword is in the url
• Hyphens are branding suicide
• It doesn’t matter if your domain is a .biz, .org, or .net

3. Launch a blog about it.

Now all you have to worry about is creating a continuous stream of compelling content. Good luck!

As a blogger, creating quality content is probably the most difficult and time-consuming aspect of blogging, and not all of us have budgets to hire writers.

But according to Aaron, if you have a niche site optimized for niche keywords you can still receive a healthy stream of organic search traffic without the need to aggressively create content. The need for fresh content depends, a great deal, on the market.

Aaron, “I would never start a blog about SEO now - it’s too saturated a field.”

Giovanna, “If you are starting a blog about mortgages now - good luck!”

Given that the blogosphere only seems to be expanding exponentially, like a rogue galaxy hurtling out into space, it seems nearly impossible to gain any traction at all on anything, let alone monetize it.

Following these tips from Aaron and Giovanna Wall, you too, can earn money from your blogs. May the force be with you.

Technorati Tags: sf blogger meetup, blogging, blog monetization, blog seo, seo, search engine optimization, aaron wall, giovanna wall

These days mention “buzz marketing” and most people think of your marketing message proliferating through the Web and beyond through the word of mouth and viral mechanisms of the social web. As I mentioned in an earlier post, social media buzz marketing can generate great free hype, exponentially expand your web presence, is relatively cheap, and has great search engine optimization benefits. However, it’s important not to overlook a key process that sets the stage for a successful buzz marketing campaign - effective buzz monitoring.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have the most buzz share of all 2008 presidential candidates

Buzz Marketing can be broken down into 2 key components:

• Buzz Monitoring - the art of online reputation monitoring (and management)

• Social Media Marketing - the art of harnessing user-generated content and online conversations to enhance your brand, through blogs, forums, social networks, wikis and more.

In order to effectively directly engage the public about your brand, it’s important to know what they are already saying about your company, products, services and/or executives. By doing your buzz monitoring homework, you will not only be able to understand how much buzz share you have in your market, you will discover where your target customers hang out, what they like and don’t like about your company, and a plethora of other highly valuable insights.

Buzz Monitoring In 4 Easy Steps

There are numerous ways to monitor buzz about your company and products using free tools. Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim recommends 26 free tools you must have for your buzz monitoring needs. You may not need all of them, so keep it simple and narrow it down to the basics.

Here are 4 simple steps to help you jump start your buzz monitoring campaign:

1. Sign Up for Google Alerts

Google alerts is a service that notifies you by email of the latest Google results pertaining to your query or topic of choice. Google alerts covers your query results appearing in news, blogs, web page updates, video and groups.

Because of the large volume of alerts that will come to your inbox, it’s recommended that you create a “Rule” in Outlook that will filter all Google results to a specified folder.

Google Alerts will also list recent blog entries. However, to retrieve a listing of blog entries that span a longer period of time, use Google Blog Search or Technorati.

2. Monitor Blogs

Google Blog Search

Blog Search is Google search technology focused on blogs – all blogs, not just Blogger blogs. Google Blog Search will search for the latest blog entries related to your query. You can also subscribe to search results for your specific keywords by RSS, and receive continuous Blog Search updates for that search term.

Technorati

Technorati is an Internet search engine that focuses on blogs. I find that its search results tend to be less relevant than Google or Yahoo, delivering a broad spectrum of results for queries with more than 2 keywords and delivering nothing when exact match is enabled.

It does allow you to query tags, and suggests alternative tags related to your search term.

For continuous updates subscribe to Technorati search results via RSS feed.

Co.mments

Tracking a blog may not reveal the full conversation about your business. Even if a blog post makes a positive mention about your business, those commenting on the post can still attack your reputation. Co.mments helps you to stay on top of blog conversations by keeping you updated of new comments, allowing you to break into the fray and defend your brand at a critical moment. Just bookmark, track and follow. You can also subscribe to your tracking feed and read new comments in your feed reader or e-mail client.

3. Track Conversations in Community Forums & Message Boards

Boardtracker

Boardtracker is forum search engine, message tracking and instant alerts system designed to provide relevant information quickly and efficiently while ensuring you never miss an important forum thread no matter where or when it is posted.

You can pre-define search terms and receive an alert by email or RSS as soon as a thread matching your search term is posted in any of the thousands of forums it tracks.

If you want to track specific forums, you can also submit the forum url to be included in the Boardtracker database.

4. Use RSS Feed Readers to Stay on Top of Industry News

In the Information Age, staying on top of news the old-fashioned way can be overwhelming, time consuming, and inefficient. Why not let the latest news come to you? Sign up for a free RSS feed reader/ news aggregator and peruse hundreds of news items with your morning cup of coffee.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary. RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. An RSS document, which is called a “feed,” “web feed,” or “channel,” can either contain a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with their favorite web sites in an automated manner that’s easier than checking them manually.

Several good, free RSS news aggregators are available, such as:

Google Reader

This is Google’s free news aggregator. You can also share news feeds by publishing your feeds to your public page.

RSS Owl

It’s a platform independent, downloadable news reader. It’s cool because it:
• Allows you to import your feeds using the OPML format
• Bookmark your favorite feeds
• Import blogrolls
• Export an entire category of news feeds into PDF, RTF, or HTML files.
• Has search options that allows you to search within news feeds or an entire feed category%