7 Things I Want from Google - NOW!

I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want. What I want is for Google to stop photographing street corners in Manhattan and give me a few much-needed tools! Here's a list of 7 things I want from Google for Christmas (or better yet, July 4th).

1. Search my Google Reader - Hello!? Google, your main thing is, um, Search. Well, someone had to say it. Listen, all I want to do is search my feeds. Is it too much to ask? Why are you making me star everything I might want to go back and look at? Punks.

2. Blogger. Where do I even START?

a. Customizable title and meta tags right there on the post interface.
b. More templates and easier to customize!
c. Accepting the templates I've found elsewhere. There are some super-nice and super-talented people who've created super-great templates but I can't get them to work.
d. Google Analytics right there in the Blogger Dashboard. I know, I know, that's just CRAZY TALK!
e. Let me transfer my blog to another Google account. I changed my name when I got married but you insist on referring to my maiden name.
f. RSS feeds. Now that Feedburner is being added to your harem, let's have all of their options right there in the Blogger dashboard. Including stats.
g. Basically become everything I love in Wordpress, but go one step further and don't make me upload a bunch of plugins. Oh and drag-n-drop EVERYTHING would be icing on the cake.

3. Gmail - I want to be able to reply to emails sent to certain filters automatically using the email address it was sent to. Right now I have to manually change it.

4. Google Talk - Support AIM so my husband doesn't have to download AIM (doesn't that just screw with your computer!) or Trellian. I like it when he uses plain old G-talk b/c it tells me when he's typing :) Otherwise, sometimes I think he's not responding to me.

5. Break up with Wikipedia - So many instances of inaccuracies have been documented, it's a wonder you guys still think this is what the users should find on the first page of results.

6. Index Wordpress better. Too many Wordpress sites are having pages fall into the Supplemental Index. Vanessa Fox is all like "Don't use nofollow" but Google doesn't offer many alternatives. But she's right. I don't want to nofollow my category pages b/c I'm trying to optimize them for the long tail. Figure out what a sidebar is, already!

7. Calendar. Maybe it's just me, but I've never once received a reminder for the events I set up on my calendar.

Technorati: seo, google, gmail, wordpress, blogger

Check out SEO Chicks!

Maybe you're thinking "Great, that's what the world needs - another SEO blog."

But hold your horses.

SEO Chicks is, yes, another SEO blog. But it's not just any SEO Blog. No, it's not written by baby chickens. It's written by three ladies who have a witty and unique voice.

So if you're tired of reading the same old SEO stuff by a bunch of bloggers who seem to imitate each other (I'm, of course, NOT speaking about the SEM Zone), then check out SEO Chicks. You won't be disappointed!


Technorati: seo, search engine optimization, internet marketing, online marketing

Hump Day Hot Stuff 5-16-07

Today is LIVESTRONG day. This is an annual day of cancer awareness and advocacy by the Lance Armstrong Foundation. Take part by wearing those yellow bracelets, educating yourself and your family about cancer, donating to research, and emailing your Congresspeople.

Now, onto the usual business. Here are the links since last week, with your usual round of fun to get you over the hump.

SEM/SMO

Andy Hagans quits his clients and talks domaining.

Search Marketing Standard offers tips on how to optimize your online video.

Li Evans writes about reinclusion requests.

David Wilson explains that B2B is slow to embrace SMO. Their loss!

SEOptimise has the goods on Digg alternatives. Hint: Better traffic, good links!

Daily Blog Tips listed the Top 10 Underrated Wordpress Plugins.

FUN Stuff

MapsKrieg is a mashup of Google Maps and Craig's List.

Sugarrae went to Scotland and I'm jealous!

Turtles really do have ninja skills.

Replace those boring old circular condensation rings with cherry blossom ones.

Before your next bike ride, be sure to check your helmet for bird poop.

Don't just settle for any old hot water bottle. Get one with the Hoff on it.

This sea lion has dreams of touring with Riverdance.

Rebellious cats everywhere are taking over fruit hammocks.

Harry Potter. No wait, Star Wars. No wait, Harry Potter.

Now even your gluteus maximus can enjoy the sounds of the movies when you place this subwoofer under your couch cushion.

Who said gutters have to be boring?

Need to get around your office in a jiffy? Try carpet skates.

Following me around like a duck is the new following me around like a puppy dog.

Kitty cage match wrestling!!!!!!!!

Always meet with your surgeon before they put you under.

Social Media

What is the easiest way to understand social media? Compare it to the types of media that have come before it.

Magazines

Television

Radio

Newspapers

Books

CDs

DVDs

Yellow Pages

Now, how is social media different than the above types?

After the newspaper is printed, it cannot be changed even though they made a mistake. You cannot interact and leave comments with the printed Yellow Pages and tell them that a business is no longer there. Books make it a little difficult to leave comments as well as see archived discussions. With social media, you can mix the media. A post may include for example, text, photos, audio, links; while newspapers do not have this option. To publish your post, you do not need permission to publish – you can do as you please.

Social Media is such a great tool to use to market a business and have your views heard in any shape or form.

The Great BlogCatalog Buzz Experiment

The best new blog this year has started a mass buzz experiement. iwebis is encouraging blogs to plug BlogCatalog today in an effort to generate traffic, networking, and social media marketing.

Of course, this is right up The SEM Zone's alley.

PLUS - iwebis has had amazing success in its three week history.

So without further ado....I'm going to walk you through my very first day on BlogCatalog.

I've just signed up The SEM Zone. Click here to join our neighborhood. Now I'm getting a message that we must link back to BlogCatalog. No problem. (I add that to my list of things to remember when we make the switch to Wordpress).

Now it's time to update our profile. I write a sentence about how awesome we are and upload a random photo of a runner at the starting line.

I'm not sure what to do next, so I just go to the home page. Oh look, there's The SEM Zone at the bottom of the page. A free dofollow link for like two seconds until we're bumped off the Recently Added section.

Now, I have a choice. I can either go back to the iwebis page and read all the wonderful things about BC or I can explore around myself. I choose the latter even though I know it would save time to read the iwebis page. This is how I put furniture, appliances, and toys together. By NOT reading the instructions. Old habits die hard.

I click on "Internet" in the tag cloud. On the results page, Andy Beard's page is first. Go figure. That guy is everywhere. As he should be. He's one of the best blogs I have in my Google Reader.

I notice an SEO link at the top in the categories and obviously I click on it. I scroll through the list of blogs, some familiar, some not. And then it hits me. I've been to BlogCatalog before. So now this post has turned into my second BC experience. Sigh.

I click "more" on the first blog (Search Engine Optimization Journal). It has similar qualities to MyBlogLog except it's somehow easier on the eyes. I see that I can join the neighborhood of this blog. Let's do it!

Phew. That was easy. I scroll through the page. I notice that I can look at the other BC users in the neighborhood. And there is a section at the bottom for comments. "Mr. Das" says that he expects more on SEO. I glance through the titles of recent posts. Mr. Das - your expectations are impossible! That whole blog is about SEO! Which is a good thing considering a title.

Another commenter requests a link exchange. Kind of a funny place to make a link request, much less a link exchange. I mean - crosslinking anyone?

I am then easily distracted (that's not hard) by a sidebar widget about discussions. I'm not one for forums, but the discussions at StumbleUpon are pretty user-friendly, so let's check out BC's discussions.

I click on the discussions link and a list of wait for it.... discussions pops up. The first one is about linking. I also notice a discussion from iwebis pal Cyrmrusteve, who recently left me a nice review on StumbleUpon. I click on that discussion and skim the page just for usability purposes. It looks incredibly easy to use. I leave a comment. BAM! It is easy to use.

There's more you can do with widgets and things, but I've got to get back to copywriting for a client today. Plus, after work, I'm going shoe shopping. But I intend to return to BlogCatalog soon for all the networking, linking, and social media marketing glory to be had.

See you there!


Technorati: blogcatalog, seo, search engine optimization, social media marketing

Friday Free for All 5-4-07

There was aLOT of funny stuff on the interweb this week. I'm half-tempted to just skip the SEM links for the week. But that's not what they pay me the small bucks to do. So, without further ado, I present the Friday Free -for-All for Cuatro de Mayo, 2007.

SEO

Rebecca Kelley checks out Wordze.

Neil Patel teaches us how to build links - NOT!

Matt McGee is one of many to discuss the new nocontent attribute introduced by Yahoo!.

SearchGrit told us that Marketwatch told him that Microsoft is dating Yahoo! again.

Bruce Clay introduces a new SEO Contest.

Paid Search

Like a good emom, Wendy Piersall (her blog rocks) tells you what to do when you've been banned from Adsense.

Andy Hagans says CPA is hot hot hot!

SMO

Darren Rowse tells us to let others republish our content - offline, that is.

Got icons? Lifehacker does.

Chris Garrett teaches us to monetize our blogs.

Then Daniel warns us not to go overboard by including in-text ads.

Copyblogger peppers the blogosphere with a series on blogging with metaphors.

Rand Fishkin says del.icio.us is a better search engine than Google.

Fun Stuff

This referee loves his job

What would happen if the Muppets remade Pulp Fiction?

This dog wears sunglasses a little differently

A cat gets her happy hour on.

Forget the Kentucky Derby, chihuahua racing is where it's at!

Granny shows us how it's done.

Maybe every child should be left behind at Lexington Middle School.

There's been a prison break. Has anyone seen this guy?

I hope the marketers over at Nintendo know their target audience.

If you can't telecommute from the beach, bring the beach to your desk.

Women are better than men at grammar.

Now you can go trick or treating with your car.

Hey Diggers - now you can wear that HD-DVD code.

Yo momma might be more tech savvy than you thought.

To be a successful Sumo wrestler, begin training at an early age.

Cool Stuff

Scan documents with a pen.

In Japan without a cell phone? No problem.

Is that an mp3, dvr, camera, camera, radio and webcam in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

In clock fashions, words are the new numbers.

Move over, Shuffle. The new $40 Creative Zen is rolling into town.

Blog Review: Five Cent Nickel

Five Cent Nickel , a personal finance blog, is celebrating their two-year anniversary by holding a contest where the prizes include free iPods. One of the ways to enter is to write a review of the blog. This gave me a great idea for The SEM Zone: blog reviews. Plus, I want to win an iPod. So it's a win-win for everyone.

Let's dig in.

What Five Cent Nickel (FCN) is doing right:

Good content. FCN's content is consistently selected for blog carnivals. Additionally, I have seen several organic links from other personal finance blogs I read. By organic, I mean the content was SO GOOD that other bloggers provided a link to their readers because the post offers so much value.

Engaging readers. The current giveaway is a prime example. Readers can enter by leaving a comment on the giveaway post (and promising to tell another person about Five Cent Nickel, consider yourselves told) and/or by blogging a 100+ word review of the FCN site. Not only does this encourage participation on the blog itself, it spurs word of mouth advertising, and keeps readers coming back to find out if they'll win the prizes.

RSS Feed. Having one deserves kudos. If you are serious about blogging, RSS is a must. FCN does a couple of key things with their feed. First of all, sponsored ads are included in the feed, which means the blog can still make moolah even when readers don't visit the site (and just read the posts in their newsreader). Secondly, a copyright notice appears at the bottom in an attempt to deter content theft.

What Five Cent Nickel could do better:

Title Tags. Title tags which feature keywords tend to help sites rank higher in the search engines. FCN's home page has the blog title first. Using Keyword Discovery, it seems that no one is searching for "fivecentnickel.com". No surprise there. "Personal finance tips" is searched for 26 times. However, Personal finance is searched over 19,000 times, so they can still get ranked for having that phrase in the title tags. But I recommend that FCN move "personal finance tips" to the beginning of the title tag. Having said that, personal finance is a very difficult term to rank for, so a little more research to find easier keywords might be a better idea. This type of research can be done for every single page on the blog. Just make sure to have unique title tags for each page or duplicate content issues can arise. Once the research is done, the SEO Title Tag Wordpress Plugin makes this task very easy!

Optimize the "Thank You" page. If you leave a comment, you have to enter a captcha password, which is put in place to deter spam. But after submitting, you're taken to a page that only has the words "Thank You" on it. FCN should offer the user the opportunity to return to the page they were on, go to the home page, subscribe to the RSS feed, or read related posts.

Design. The look of the blog is very text-y. It would be nice to see graphics and images mixed in. FCN could use the Get Custom Wordpress plugin to have a thumbnail sized graphic to go with each post. Each graphic could be assigned a category, and then every post within that category could automatically display the assigned graphic. I'm also surprised not to see any banner ads. There's a big white space in the top right corner just begging to be monetized.

Redirect duplicate pages. Wordpress essentially creates two pages for every post. One has a forward slash at the end of the URL and the other doesn't. Thankfully, there is a Wordpress plugin which fixes the whole thing for you. FCN should install the Permalink Redirect plugin to avoid duplicate content issues.

So that's my review of Five Cent Nickel. Obviously, they're not hurting for traffic. But who knows, maybe they could attract even more!

Want your blog reviewed? Drop me a line at njohnson at fortuneinteractive dot com.

By the way, I realize that the SEM Zone doesn't even employ all of these methods. However, we're hoping to switch over to Wordpress soon so we have greater control over design, title tags, etc.

Answering Alister Cameron

Today Alister Cameron was the guest blogger on Problogger. He dug into Google's patent for Blogsearch which is borderline Big Brother. At the end, he posed questions for readers which I will attempt to answer here.

1. Does it make sense to have Blogsearch separate from the main Google search engine? That's a tough question to answer. On the one hand, a niche search engine for blogs is highly useful. Where I get concerned is how Google handles blogs in its "regular" engine.

2. As Google Blogsearch gains in popularity, will new (or adjusted) SEO strategies emerge along with it? In Alister's post, he talks about how tagging, inclusion in Blogrolls, and even links in emails and IM are factors in Blogsearch. So I think the strategy should be a fusion of SEO/SMO.

3. How many people actually use Google Blogsearch (http://blogsearch.google.com)? I tried to find this information out by plugging it into Compete. It defaulted to Google.com. So then I plugged in the url for the Blogger based Blogsearch (search.blogger.com), but there wasn't enough data from Compete's users to offer traffic estimations.

4. Do you use it? I do use it! I have a personal movie-related blog and I use Blogsearch to get links for roundups. I've also found my posts listed in the first page of results for Blogsearch but nowhere to be found in Google. My blog is new, so it might still be stuck in the sandbox. Could it be that there's no sandbox for Blogsearch?

5. How do you find Google Blogsearch compares with Technorati? I've found far better results on Blogsearch. Having said that, Technorati is probably searched more, so it might make more sense to optimize for that.


Speaking of which: seo, smo, social media optimization, blogsearch

Friday Free-for-All 3-30-07

I know Search Haiku was supposed to prevent any roundups from occurring on this blog, but I had too much to share today. So, because you can't get enough Friday roundup, here is your Friday Free-for-All.

SEO

• Michael Martinez at SEO Theory reminds us to choose the right search engine to optimize for.
  
• Erik at SEO Speedwagon demonstrates how two sites with similar quantities in links can rank very differently. A Tale of Two Link Counts
  
• Getting poor results from your email link requests? SEO Hotline passes along the goods for writing the perfect link request.
  
• SEO by the Sea tests whether Google Maps or Yahoo Local is better at restaurant recommendations.
  
• David Wallace offers 10 Steps To a Successful SEO Relationship
  .
  
• Michael Gray at Search Engine Land offers great tips on writing headlines.
  
• Lisa Barone at Bruce Clay makes sure you're ready for mobile search.
  
• Pink is one of my favorite colors. Unless it's covering up your website. Andy Beard explains why pink websites are ugly.
  
• PRWeb releases new distribution statistics.
  

Social Media

• Ask a Ninja Interviews Will Ferrell and John Heder Movie studios engaging in social media is nothing new, but movie studios allowing ninjas into the press junkets is. America's favorite ninja interviewed the stars of Blades of Glory. He was far more entertaining than your usual entertainment interviewer. I mean, who else is going to talking about naming nunchucks? DISCLAIMER: In February, I saw the man behind Ask a Ninja perform at the DSI Comedy Fest in Carrboro. This dude is funny and well-versed in the skills of improv and comedy. And you should be too.
  
• Over on Techdirt this week: If you're thinking about blogging or creating an animated replay of a certain tournament this weekend, Techdirt reports that you might be committing copyright infringement. And is Trademark law going too far?
  
• Daniel at Daily Blog Tips shares 7 low cost ways to market a blog.
  

Geek-a-riffic

• GeekSugar introduces us to WiFi protecting paint
  
• LifeHacker offers up Top 10 Free Windows Downloads
  
• TechnaBob posts about a keyboard that can be washed in the sink. Spill away!
  
• The Chief Happiness Officer embeds a video about Cranium's office in Seattle. Now I'm wanting to ride a scooter at the office.
  

Prediction for the Week Ahead

• Neil Patel's SEO recommendations will continue to increase traffic for Jason Calcanis.
  

I'm Down with RSS, Yeah You Know Me

I'm on a list kick. And today, I'm posting my list of blogs where the primary topic is RSS.

• The RSS Marketing Diary and The RSS Cases Blog are both part of MarketingStudies.net
  
  
• RSS Specifications Blog
  
  
• FeedForAll Blog
  
  
• RSS Applied
  
  
• The RSS Blog
  
  
• And for our German readers: RSS Blogger
  

Technorati tags: RSS, blogs, blogging, seo, sem, search marketing