Bay Area SEO Consultants | Link Buying Experts

by Jennifer Laycock

A round up of what Jennifer thought was worth sharing today. From her first “Plurkshop” to social media espionage to a couple different viewpoints of creating online content, Jen offers up half a dozen articles worth your time.

• If you’ve taken the time to work on optimizing your site, or have hired a firm to do it, you need to read Lee Odden’s article from last week’s AllBusiness.com. Lee outlines four common issues that can quickly tank a search engine optimization campaign. It’s a quick read and a good reminder of how important it is for companies to view SEO as an ongoing issue to be considered each and every time they update their site.
• Bet you’ve never heard of a “Plurkshop” before. (Unless you follow Mack Collier on Twitter in which case you know all about them.) Despite my personal belief that Plurk is backed by big pharma companies that want to encourage the spread of ADHD so they can sell more drugs, I sucked it up and joined in a Plurk conversation last night. The “Plurkshop” was led by Amber Naslund of The Brand Box and focused on the challenge of fragmented conversation in social media. In other words, how do you keep track of what people are saying about your company when they’re saying it on Twitter, blogs, Plurk, YouTube, Digg, Kurtsy and a million other sites? There are no solid solutions, but the conversation was very interesting. Amber recaps it today over at The Brand Box.
• Speaking of Social Media, Rohit asks if concerns about social media espionage are just around the corner. I’ve wondered that myself, especially as I see more people sharing more and more details of their personal lives.
• One of the biggest challenges for small businesses when it comes to writing content for their site isn’t so much learning how to build keywords into the mix, it’s learning how to do that while still creating copy that sells. That’s why it’s essential to make sure whoever is responsible for writing your copy has the ability to mix search engine friendly writing with customer friendly writing. There’s a great post over at Copyblogger right now that looks at the difference between hard sell copywriting and soft sell copywriting.
• Anita Campbell looks at the glut of content on the Web today and examines what small businesses can do to stand out from the crowd with their own content in an article at Inc. Magazine. With more than 261 million Google results for “top ten” lists, Anita reminds us the bar has been raised and the best way for small business to own a piece of the content pie is to go “narrow and deep” in your focus. Good advice for targeting the long tail as well!
• Apparently Google has chilled a bit and decided SEOs might actually be worth hiring. In a post over at Google Webmaster Central Blog, they mention an update to the “What’s an SEO?” article in the Webmaster Help Center. The new version makes it clear Google has no problems with search marketers and even offers some useful questions to ask while hunting for an SEO.

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