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What Page One of Google Looks Like Without Corporate America
Ryan Farrell | May 18th, 2012
I’m gonna keep this one short and sweet cause it’s the witching hour and there’s a planet of the apes marathon on AMC just screaming my name.
Search Engine Round Table churned out an article earlier today about a new development in the search world that shows you whether or not your site was penalized by the latest in Google’s swath of algorithm shifts (ominously dubbed “Penguin“).
The melee in this post was all over a supposed Google “hack query” that allowed you to show your rankings as they were before penguin hit by simply adding a “-amazon” after the query.
Example: Your site used to rank for “blue smurfs” (I hate widgets) but no longer does… just enter the query
Posted in Google, Internet News | No Comments
In January 2011, I wrote what was at the time an outlandish prediction: that Facebook Will Be The Next $100 Billion Company. While I was right about the outcome, I was wrong about was how it got there: it got there out of pure growth of users and riding investor enthusiasm and pent-up Wall Street demand. And that is not a good recipe for Facebook out of the gates of their IPO; it is going to be rough waters ahead. Here are my 6 Post-IPO Facebook predictions.
1. Facebook Will Not Be Toppled
I want to make clear that as bearish as my predictions may be around valuation and expectation, I am equally confident that Facebook is not going anywhere. The network effect – where the more people that use it increase the utility for everyone – is past the point of no return, so expect it to be ingrained in more aspects of the products and services in our lives.
Today you see Facebook friends’ reviews rise to the top in Yelp and TripAdvisor and your friends’ song choices in Pandora and Spotify, and this is just the beginning. Facebook is here to stay.
2. Facebook Is Already Overpriced, So The Stock Doesn’t Have Room To Grow
Google had 2011 revenue of $37 billion in 2011; Facebook had revenue of $3.7 billion. That’s a whopping 10x higher, and yet at $200 billion, Google’s market cap is only double the $100 billion Facebook is going to IPO at.
Posted in facebook, Internet News | No Comments
How To Set Up A WordPress blog
Rebecca Eaton | May 2nd, 2012
It seems like everyone is a blogger these days, from grandmothers writing about their favorite recipes, to trend-spotters writing about their new favorite looks for the season. The user-friendliness of web publishing tools and the ability to monetize those sites with minimal effort has lead to an explosion in the blog space. Recent stats from WordPress show anywhere from 15.1 million to 17.4 million blogs have been created on the platform alone.
What Is A Blog?
A blog is essentially a website that allows the users to post updates, photos and videos on an ongoing basis. Viewers can then read posts chronologically or search posts by different categories or tags.
Types Of Blogs
There are a number of different types of blogs from company and corporate blogs to personal blogs. A personal blog can chronicle a life event, like a child being born or ones travel escapades. Other people may use their site as a way to make money. Blogs allow individuals to make money either directly selling products and services on the site, or through advertisements that are placed on the site. When people click on the ads, the blog owner gets paid a set amount. The more traffic to your site and the more ad clicks, the more money you can earn. One of the most popular blog platforms out there is WordPress because it is easy to use and free to install.
To Start
Before you can start a blog, you need to get a domain name, which is the URL address that people type into their browser to get to your page. To do this, you can go to a domain site like Godaddy.com to see if the URL you want is available. Typically, reserving your domain name will cost around $10 per year.
Posted in Blogging | No Comments
How To Improve Organic Search Rankings
Rebecca Eaton | May 1st, 2012
Organic. Is it better? That seems to be an ongoing point of contention in the foodie world. But in the SEO world, hands down, organic traffic is not only better, it is necessary to ensure that your website gets the attention it deserves, which comes in the form of higher search rankings.
Organic traffic is any traffic that comes to your site naturally, through search criteria rather than someone clicking on a paid advertisement for your site. Most large companies spend a lot of time and money optimizing their website content with the goal of gaining high organic search rankings. While there is no tried and true strategy to ensure that your website can get on the first page of the search engine results, there are a number of agreed upon tactics in the industry that can help you get off to the right start.
Keywords
Everything goes back to keywords. One of the primary ways a search engine finds your site is by taking into account the keywords in your title tags, meta descriptions, and URL. When you pick the domain name for your site, try to use a name that includes your main keywords. If you are an independent plumber in Los Angeles, you might get a lot of competition from big companies with keywords like “plumber Los Angeles,” but having a domain name like laplumber.com or losangelesplumber.com will give you a huge advantage from the start. Of course, the hardest part will be getting a domain name that is not already taken. If necessary, you could also try adding hyphens between the keywords in your URL to see if it is available.
Nearly as important as using the keywords in your URL are the keywords in your title tag. The title tag is the clickable headline that comes up in blue in the SERPs (search engine results page). It’s the first thing that visitors see about your page before deciding whether or not to click on it. Use your main keywords towards the beginning of the title and try to create an enticing title that will draw visitors to your site.
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How To Remove A Negative Listing In Search Results
Rebecca Eaton | April 27th, 2012
You know that old saying, if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all? Unfortunately, that doesn’t apply to the online world. If someone has a gripe with you or your company, it’s likely that the first thing they will do is go online and vent their frustrations about it through a negative review. 
The bad news is, unless they say something so harmful and blatantly false, that a court would consider it libel, there isn’t much you can do to get it removed. Rather than spending time and money trying to battle negative online chatter through legal means, a far better strategy to combat such situations is to use SEO to make the negative listing become less prominent in search results and make the positive listings rank higher.
Here are a few things you can do to start combating negative listings:
Write Press Releases
Many companies don’t spend enough time tooting their own horns, especially when it comes to all the good work they may be doing in their communities. A good way to get the word out is by writing press releases. Maybe your employees have volunteered hundreds of hours at a local charity, you’ve donated money to a scholarship program, or you just started composting all the waste your restaurant uses; these are great items to share in a press release.
Posted in SEO | No Comments
How To Get More Facebook Fans
Rebecca Eaton | April 10th, 2012
You’ve created a Facebook fan page for your business and now you can just sit back, put your feet up and 
watch the numbers of fans grow, right? Not quite. With millions of Facebook business pages out there, getting a high number of faithful followers will take some time and creative thinking. But the benefits are worth it.
Getting a large fan following on Facebook doesn’t just get your company’s name and brand out to the masses; it gives your business priceless creditability. When you go to a Facebook fan page for a business you’ve never heard of before and see that it has 40,000 fans, don’t you take it more seriously than a business with 82 fans?
Here are five tips to help you boost page viewers into a legion of adoring fans.
Ask
Once you set up your Facebook fan page, it’s easy to send out invites to all of your friends and family members asking them to like your page, and if you’ve linked your business page to your personal page, it’s even easier. Use the Invite Friends link to accomplish this. If they don’t sign up after a few weeks, send a reminder. Also send out an email to your current database of clients and contacts and ask them to like you on Facebook. Be sure to include 
the link so they can do it in one click. Another way to indirectly ask people to become your fan is by including a link below the signature block of your business emails. You can even set up the link to go to a specially created Facebook Welcome tab that visitors can like.
