The Write Stuff - Blogging for Fun & Profit

By Carl Weiss

Image courtesy of hotfrog.ca

When it comes to generating results online, most people still act as though a website is the be-all, end-all of Internet marketing.  That kind of thinking is so 20^th Century.  Sure, before the year 2000, there were only two things you needed to succeed online: a website and a search engine.  Fifteen years later, not only is this clearly not the case, in some cases you don’t need a website to generate results at all.

Since it can take from 4-6 months on average for a website to work its way up the food change onto the first page of the major search engines, this isn’t always the best route to success for many businesses.  Sad to say it, but 99% of websites never make it onto page one.  In the first place, a website only represents 25% of the criteria that search engines use to determine ranking.  The other 75% consists of off-page media, including blogs, social networks, and videos.  Unless you have the time or money to post relevant content to Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Blogger and YouTube on a regular basis, then your chances of making it to the top of the search engines is slim to none.

However, that doesn’t mean you should throw in the towel.  Especially if your resources are limited, it is sometimes a better course of action to choose your battles and start growing your web presence on the installment basis.   One of the quickest ways you can create a growing audience that you can sell to is by blogging.

This Ain’t Your Daddy’s Blog

Started on August 23, Blogger was originally created in San Francisco by three contract programmers during the dot-com boom.  When dot-com became dot-bomb, Blogger barely survived the shake out.  Then Google came calling in 2003 and bought Blogger.  Since that time, Blogger has seen quite a few changes.  Today’s platform allows users to do much more than merely post blogs.   Fully fledged, a writer can do everything with Blogger that they can do with a website, including:

·         Post text

·         Embed videos

·         Include banner ads

·         Host forms

·         Create subsidiary pages

·         Add backlinks

·         Automatically resize to any platform

·         Generate a loyal following

Even more important is the fact that as soon as you click on the submit button, the Googlebots will spider your blog.  This means that a properly optimized blogpost could wind up on page one of Google in as little as a few hours.  Try doing that with a website.

We Don’t Need No Stinking Website!

wikipedia.com

Face it, the reason anyone builds a website is to generate exposure.  The problem with that idea is that the current monopoly exerted by Google, Yahoo and Bing means it’s their way or the highway when it comes to what generates top ranking. That makes trying to getting on page 1 very hard to do.  (This is especially true when the search engines “Tweak” their algorithms on an almost daily basis.)

But what if there was a way to generate the same or even better exposure for your business without having to rely on search engines at all.  In fact, what if I could show you a way to generate a bigger, more targeted audience while at the same time increasing conversion without the use of a website?  Would that interest you?

Before I do that, let’s take a look at the best case search engine scenario.  Let’s say for the sake of argument that you woke up one morning to find your website in position 1, page 1 on Google.  Let’s also assume that it was for a highly coveted keyword or phrase that produces 10,000 relevant searches per month.  Sounds good doesn’t it?  Well, it should, because on average the top organic listing on Google generates nearly two thirds of the clicks that land on that search.  So your website would receive around 6,500 clicks that month. 

That’s the good news.  The bad news is just because your site generated a few thousand clicks doesn’t necessarily mean that it will generate a lead, much less a registration or a sale.  That’s because on average a visitor to your site from a search engine is going to spend less than two minutes on-site before they either take action or click back to search.  After all, there are upwards of twenty listings on page 1 of Google search from which to choose.  Unless your website fulfills a need, or contains an irresistible offer that compels the visitor to act, odds are they are going to peruse several sites other than yours.  That’s the main reason people “Google it” in the first place, to comparison shop.

Blog readers are a different breed of cat.  In the first place, blog readers spend on average twice the

Courtesy of bytecubed.com

amount of time on a blog as a visitor does when they visit a website.  Secondly, a well-written blog can not only make an impact on the reader, but it can also elevate the writer to the level of expert. That’s right, it raises your credibility!  Since it is important that a visitor know, like and trust you before they make a buying decision, you can convey much more authority with a timely blog than you can with even a highly focused website.  Best of all, once immersed in your blog, the only subsidiary clicks available are not to competing bloggers, but to the other content contained on your site.  Just like your website, Blogger comes complete with analytics that can help you adjust your message, your subsidiary content and your offers. (Take a look at a snapshot of our readership below.)

Currently, our blog is being read by almost 50,000 people per month.  This figure far exceeds the 6,500 clicks per month that our mythical website above achieved during the same period.  These blogs are well-read and our offers and ads produce results nearly every day.  This blog’s readership was generated by writing an average of 1 post every week for the past three years.  So this is something that anybody can do as long as they follow the ABC’s of successful blog writing.

A - Always intrigue the reader.  The last thing anyone wants to read is about your last board meeting or ad copy.  To create a following you need to answer a question, fulfill a need, or provide real value. A catchy title and lead paragraph are also a plus.  The objective is to inform and entertain at the same time.  (We refer to this as Infotainment.)

B – Bring your readers a great read.  We have found that the minimum copy for a great blog is 1,200 words or more.  Don’t short sheet your readers by penning only a few paragraphs.  Think magazine article as opposed to a tweet.  Your readers will thank you.

C – Create a sharing atmosphere.  Provide your audience with information that they can’t find anywhere else and they will treat you like an authority figure. Also make it easy to share your blog with others. Post it to your social nets daily so that your current following can stay current.

A few other must haves are:

1.      Keywords embedded in the title and text

2.      Backlinks to your website (if you have one)

3.      Brief bio of the writer at the end of the blog

4.      Appropriate images and/or videos embedded in the copy

5.      A clear offer or call to action

Then there is just one more task and that is to distribute your blog.  The problem is if you write the world’s best blogs and no one reads them what you have created is a billboard in the desert.  While there are a number of ways to create an audience, the most popular way to promote a post is via pay-per-click advertising.  And that can get expensive.

From ihatepresentations.com

However, that isn’t the only way to generate an audience.  The two best organic ways to get the word out are by posting to your social nets and by working with other successful bloggers.  If you already have a substantial amount of followers on Facebook, Twitter, Pintrest and/or Google+, pushing your blogposts couldn’t be simpler.  That’s because at the bottom of every Blogger blog is the F, T, P and G that were created for you to do just that.  Simply point and click to push your blog to your followers.

An even better way to generate a following is to pool your resources with fellow bloggers.  One of the services that we offer to clients is called Team Tech.  This is a peer-to-peer blogging club where members are matched with five bloggers from non-competing businesses.  Every week these blog buddies are tasked with reading each other’s blog, adding an appropriate comment and then pushing member blogs to their respective social nets.  This creates instant readership, since their blogs are seen every week by thousands of readers who would otherwise have no way of receiving their blog.  This has literally allowed us to help bloggers generate thousands of readers in less than a year for participating club members.  (If you would like to learn more about this service, call Carl or Hector at 904-410-2091.)

On top of that, we coach each team to make sure they are optimizing their blogs and acting in each other’s best interest. As part of the service we also share their blog post to our 65,000+ followers and groups we belong to. This gives each of the team tech members an additional bump each week and really kick start their readership.

The important thing is that with a little imagination, you can create an audience without having to duke it out on the search engines.  If you do have a website, adding a blog is a great source of Google Juice, since the world’s most popular search engine puts a high value on blogs that generate a substantial following.  You can also use these blogs to bolster your social networks as well, in essence killing two birds with one stone. All you have to do to succeed is apply the write stuff. 

Carl Weiss is president of Working the Web to Win, an award-winning digital marketing agency based in Jacksonville, Florida.  You can listen to Carl live every Tuesday at 4 p.m. Eastern on BlogTalkRadio 

Will Pay-To-Play Payoff Online?

By Carl Weiss

It’s said that the best things in life are free.  But as Berry Gordy so aptly added in 1960, “But you can keep them for the birds and bees.  Give me money, that’s what I want.”  The song aptly named, ‘Money (That’s What I Want)’ went onto become the first hit for Gordy’s Motown record label Tamla.  It also went onto be covered by many prominent recording artists such as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Doors, among others.  Even though fifty four years have passed since ‘Money’ first became part of the public consciousness, the concept behind it seems set to make a revival on the Internet if a number of powerful portals have their way.

As recently as three days before Halloween 2014, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki publicly confirmed that Google’s video portal was considering the introduction of a subscription service.  Since other popular video portals such as NetFlix which started as a subscription service and Hulu which began as free only to turn into a subscription service, have been using a monthly pay-to-play charge to vend everything from first run movies to television series, this isn’t likely to cause people to run screaming into the streets.  The chief difference between the likes of Netflix and Hulu when compared to YouTube is the fact that they both stream professionally produced feature-length content.  Whether or not a portal where the lion’s share of the content is created by amateurs can make a go of it is anybody’s guess. 

An article in the NY Times sums it up like this: YouTube’s subscription effort is still in the very early phases, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. In essence, the company is making phone calls to potential partners, including anyone from big media companies like Disney to popular individuals with millions of subscribers, to see if they might be interested.  At first, the model is likely to be similar to YouTube’s long-planned subscription music service, which Ms. Wojcicki said would be introduced “soon.” Rather than an entirely new paid YouTube, there would be several subscription services based on certain topics – for instance, a subscription service with nothing but video games.  http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/28/youtube-weighing-new-subscription-service/?_r=0

Currently YouTube produces revenues for airing in-stream ads that are displayed on participating videos on the world’s most popular video portal that streams more than 4 billion videos per day.  The portal has also gone to great lengths to partner with homegrown content producers such as these ever popular channels: PewDiePie, Stampylonghead, SkyDoesMinecraft, and CollegeHumor, just to name a few.  While some of PewDiePie’s  videos have garnered as many as 59,917,883 views, it is questionable how many people would choose to pay to play short videos with titles such as ‘How to Get Ebola,’ ‘Corpse Party,’ or the animated ‘Brain Transplant.’

The Backstory

While the idea for an online subscription model is hardly new, what YouTube is hoping to capitalize on is the ever growing disenchantment many people have toward broadcast and cable programming.  What with the advent of the four-minute commercial break, as well as the ever more costly way in which cable companies charge families for the hodgepodge of channels foisted on them, even major players such as HBO have started to realize that people want better choices. 

The NY Times article added: An example is the service recently announced by HBO, which said that next year it will start a stand-alone streaming service aimed at “cord cutters,” people who want cable quality shows but refuse to pay several hundred dollars a month for the jumbled mess of cable channels.

That’s right, starting in 2015 HBO will begin a pay-to-play online streaming service that will not require a subscription to a traditional TV provider.  Recognizing the fact that there are currently more than ten million homes in the US that do not subscribe to either cable or satellite TV services but who do have Internet access, the CEO of HBO, Richard Plepler announced that the opportunity was ripe for direct-to-web programming.

While 10 million households seems like a drop in the bucket when compared to the sheer number of consumers with cable or Satellite TV access, the number of households that are expected to switch to services such as Netflix continues to grow. 

“Netflix has more subscribers in the United States than HBO, which counts about 30 million subscribers. But HBO delivers more profits because of lower costs and its distribution through cable and satellite providers. HBO generated $4.9 billion in revenue in 2013 and about $1.8 billion in operating income. Netflix had $4.4 billion in revenue in 2013 with $228.3 million in operating income.”

The Boob Tube vs YouTube

The real question for portals such as YouTube is how much of an impact it can make on the viewing public.  Currently the Boob Tube outguns YouTube four to one, seeing as how most American adults watch an average of four and a half hours of broadcast and cable programming per day on average versus about an hour of online video.  It has been suggested that YouTube can try to bump these numbers up by either improving the technology and/or trying to create higher-quality content that people will come back to watch week in and week out.

To this end, YouTube has built production studios in such places as New York, LA and Sao Paolo, Brazil, to help their ‘creators’ produce more TV-like programs.  They are also seeking to woo show producers with Hollywood or broadcast TV experience, many of whom are underemployed.  Whether YouTube can reinvent itself as an entertainment service that people will lineup to pay for is still in question.  But as the world’s viewing habits change and companies with online audience loyalty continues to grow what does this hold in store for the future?  Will popular blogs start charging readers to peruse their pages?  Will social networks demand a fee to allow their users to connect with more than a handful of friends? Who knows?

Just as the opening of Pandora’s Box unleashed a number of unintended and unwanted problems for the masses, what is left to discover is whether pay-to-play is to become a benefit or a burden to those who want the web to remain free?  While the future of pay-to-play Internet programming is anything but a sure thing, I will leave you with a little pearl of wisdom from a man who was clearly ahead of his time: Berry Gordy.

Money don't get everything it's true
What it don't get, I can't use
Now give me money
That's what I want
That's what I want, yeah
That's what I want

While Carl Weiss doesn’t always get everything he wants, you can listen to him every Tuesday at 4 p.m. Eastern on BlogTalkRadio

Can Dirty Tricks Deep Six Your Business?

By Carl Weiss

There was a time not long ago when the search engines began cracking down on what were termed Black Hat SEO Techniques.  Tactics such as keyword stuffing, serial websites, and link farms, just to name a few, were deemed verboten by every search engine on the planet.  The reasons why were obvious: If you could cheat them to beat them, there was no way that search engine operators could guarantee the validity of their searches.  Back in the early days of the Internet, there was little that the search engines could do to curb this trend since their spiders were not savvy enough to understand what it is they were reading.  However, this is no longer the case.  What this means is if you either knowingly or unknowingly hire a practitioner of black hat SEO, you could find your site sandboxed or even de-listed.  As a result, you need to take care when entrusting your online business assets to a third party.

The good news is that Black Hat SEO firms are a dying breed.  The bad news is that a number of former black hatters have retooled their heinous skills in order to turn a profit.  What I am referring to is the growing danger of online dirty tricks, where an unscrupulous business owner willingly pays to have a competitor’s reputation besmirched or even to cause overt damage to their web presence in such a way that it becomes difficult or even impossible to do business on or offline.

Here’s how it works:

1.      What’s In a Name? – Everyone knows how online reputation sites have changed the way in which we do business. Whereas in years past a shoddy business could operate with impunity, today the first place that a disgruntled customer will go are to sites like Google Local, Yelp, Angie’s List, Ripoff Report or other reputation sites to lodge a complaint.  While a boon to consumers, many of these sites allow people to post complaints anonymously.  This opens up the doors for underhanded competitors to post fabricated complaints against a competing business in order to damage the competition.  Worse still: a number of these complaint mills offer no way for a business to address or reverse a complaint. This means that once posted, it’s is nearly impossible to seek redress.

2.      Yellow Press Express – Another way to damage a company’s reputation is by publishing inflammatory blogs, newsfeeds and press releases about a competitor.  Sound far-fetched?  Back in May of 2011, ABC News reported that Facebook admitted hiring a major public relations firm to pitch anti-Google stories to news outlets across the U.S.  The blog went onto elaborate the fact that a cottage industry of sorts has sprung up where writers are paid to write comments on review sites that either boost a given business or criticize it. http://abcnewsradioonline.com/business-news/nasty-competition-fuels-dirty-business-tricks.html

3.      The Hack Attack is Back – Hackers can also be employed by a competitor to do everything from launch Denial of Service attacks on your website, to attempting overt industrial espionage.  Several businesses were even damaged by hackers when they subverted ownership of a company’s social sites or even closed or deleted a company’s social site or blog.  Wresting control of another person’s online asset is surprisingly simple.  Even if that fails, it is child’s play to create a social site or website that spoofs a competitor’s, thereby giving the hacker carte blanche to post all sorts of slanderous material.  Just like identity theft, if this should happen to your business, it could take months sort out the mess this creates. Since these tricksters can be located anywhere in the world, trying to seek redress for any damage done can prove to be all but impossible. (See our previous blog, “The Hack Attack is Back.”)

4.      Fraud Free For All – Another way that competitors can strike is by making fraudulent purchases.  In a recent CNN Wire report, Uber, a San Francisco ride-sharing service was accused by competitor, Lyft, of having its employees order and cancel some 5,000 rides since last October.  The article goes onto say: “Lyft claims 177 Uber employees around the country have booked and canceled rides in that time frame. Bogus requests decrease Lyft drivers’ availability, which could send users to Uber instead. But it’s not just the company that suffers. Canceled rides jeopardize income that Lyft drivers depend on — plus they spend time and gas money en route to passengers who have no intention of taking a ride. And even when Uber employees don’t cancel, Lyft drivers complain to headquarters that they take short, low-profit rides largely devoted to luring them to work for Uber.  Lyft claims to have cross-referenced the phone numbers associated with known Uber recruiters with those attached to accounts that have canceled rides. They found, all told, 5,560 phantom requests since October 3, 2013.” While the article goes onto state that there was nothing to suggest that Uber’s corporate office commissioned or sanctioned the canceled rides, it states there is the potential for a competitor to create havoc in a company by the use of such a tactics.  http://kdvr.com/2014/08/11/uber-accused-of-dirty-tricks-to-damage-competitors-business/

5.      The Ultimate Inside Job – If you have ever wandered inside a casino then you know that they are awash with security cameras that record everything from the players and dealers on the gaming floor to game supervisors and security guards that handle either chips or cash.  Unfortunately, most small businesses do not have access to this kind of technology.  As a result, this leaves the doors open for a competitor to have one of his or her minions infiltrate your business.  As the old saying goes, “It’s hard to find good help.” However, for underhanded competitors it’s oh-so-easy to find bad help by hiring a saboteur that is paid to join your ranks.  Once inside a company, the damage that can be done by an interloper is incalculable.  Everything from client lists, to suppliers, and even in some cases social security numbers can be purloined by a wily competitor.  Armed with the keys to the vault as it were, this kind of access can not only harm a company’s bottom line, it can destroy in from within.  Also, if a hacker wants to gain access to a server, there is no easier way than being able to plug an external thumb drive into a system.  If that wasn’t bad enough, Amazon even carries a book in its listings entitled, “How to Steal Your Boss’s Job.”  Talk about an inside job!

When it comes to doing business, competition isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  It’s been known to spur innovation and force an industry to tighten its belt, which in many cases improves prices for consumers. (Remember when laptops used to retail for $2,500?)  However, if a competitor decides to go to the dark side and employ dirty tricks, the only numbers you’re likely to see could be the Deep Six.

Carl Weiss is president of Working the Web to Win, an award-winning digital marketing agency based in Jacksonville, Florida.  You can listen to Carl live every Tuesday at 4 p.m. Eastern on BlogTalkRadio

Google Gives Everybody the Bird with Their Pigeon Update

By Carl Weiss

SEO is for the birds, at least in terms of the last two updates from Google, the first of which was  called Penguin and the latest that has been deemed Pigeon.  While birds of a feather, there are big differences when it comes to the intent of the two most recent algorithm tweaks.

Penguin Puts a Chill on Black Hat Operators

First released back in May of 2012, Penguin was designed to penalize websites that were deemed to be using deceptive online marketing techniques to achieve ranking on the world’s most popular website.  What this meant was that anyone using such tactics as keyword stuffing, link farming, hidden text or any of a number of other back door techniques employed specifically to generate search engine ranking was punished by having their sites relegated to the backwaters of Google.  In some cases if the infractions were serious enough, Google delisted these sites, meaning that they would never again appear in search.

The reason that Google was able to accomplish this was due to the fact that their spiders were now sophisticated enough to not only read what was on a site, but they were able to comprehend the meaning of what they read.  This made the job of sifting through hundreds of millions of websites possible.  Prior to that it was necessary to flag a site and then have a human being physically check it out so that it could be determined whether black hat tactics were being used.  When you consider that more than 130,000 new websites are published every day, this was a superhuman task prior to 2012.

Pigeon Flies the Coop

Male homing pigeon, (showing of ;-) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Where Penguin concerned itself with identifying and penalizing cheaters, Pigeon is more interested in improving localized search parameters.  In fact the most pressing reason that Google commissioned its latest update was due to local directory Yelp complaining that its listings were being unfairly weighted in Google search.  What this means is that local directories will benefit directly by the latest update.  If your site is not listed, or if your directory listings are incomplete or inaccurate now is the time to address this issue.

Another vital task is for website owners to police their online reputation and to embellish it by actively pursuing a policy that encourages satisfied customers to rate your website.  Face it, sooner or later you are going to rub a customer the wrong way.  While in the past this could have produced a snub, what it is more likely to produce today is a ding.  By ding I mean a negative review on any number of local directories such as Google Local, Yahoo, Yelp, Angie’s List, etc.  Since many companies have no policy that encourages satisfied customers to post positive reviews, all that leaves for the public to find online are negative ones.  Even if you have to offer a reward to customers in order to get them to post positive reviews, the reward to your business far outweighs the cost.

Learn a Few Tactics from Homing Pigeons

Homing pigeon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If you really want to create a local sensation on Google then you need to take a lesson from homing pigeons.  These birds have been known to find their way back to their nests after being released as far as 1,100 miles away from home.  So long has their ability been known and so accurate was their homing instinct that Genghis Khan used the birds as a pre-aviation version of air mail.

Like the homing pigeon, if you want to achieve outstanding local results then it is vital that you start feathering your next with local content.  This can include everything from location specific landing pages with keyword sensitive urls, to blogs and social posts that are keyed to local events.  Also make sure that you include a Google map on your site and landing pages.  Include (and label) videos and images that pertain to your locale.  In short, anything and everything that points out your location is going to be vital to getting Pigeon to roost.

Instead of Merely SEO You Need to be Concerned with GEO

If you want Pigeon to make sure that people in your neighborhood can find you, then you need to make sure the name of your neighborhood is included on your website, landing pages, your blog, your videos and your social posts.  As geotargeting gets more and more prevalent you need to seed your site with geographical breadcrumbs that can be seen by the spiders.  Just make sure that you don’t overpopulate any content piece with them or you might wind up being considered a spammer.

Keep in mind if you find out that Google Pigeon has done to your site what pigeons the world over do to statues, the best way to keep pigeons from dropping all over you is to leave breadcrumbs in front of someone else’s door.

Eggs of the homing pigeon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Top 5 Ways to Feather Your Nest:

1.      Use location specific landing pages.

2.      Create more location specific content such as blog posts.

3.      Encourage your customers to review your site on local directories.

4.      Generate more local links

5.      Make sure your local profiles are accurate and complete.

Carl Weiss is president of Working the Web to Win, a digital marketing agency based in Jacksonville, Florida.   You can listen to Carl live every Tuesday at 4pm Central on BlogTalkRadio. 

Ready to Ware

By Carl Weiss

The Paris Fashion Show has nothing on Google and Amazon when it comes to offering wearable technology.  The two titans of tech have recently weighed in with major advancements in wearables.  Amazon has just opened a Wearable Technology Store in the UK that offers more than 100 different wearable devices including activity trackers, smartwatches, smart glasses and wearable cameras.  Google last month rolled out their Android Wear operating system for smart watch developers.  This says nothing of the hundreds of companies that have also leapt into the rapidly expanding wearables market.

What Ware and Why?

People are certainly talking about wearables.  The telegraph.com reported in a recent blog that “Twitter dominated as the main location of wearables with 75 per cent of all mentions, with news sites a distant second at 10%. Year-on-year the conversation around wearables has increased an impressive 190 per cent when comparing the first quarter of 2013 (973,300 mentions) to that of 2014 (2,816,814 mentions).”  They also reported that the conversation seems to be relegated mainly to the United States, the rest of the globe seeming to take a wait and see attitude.   

The iWatch - Only a Matter of Time (Photo credit: wmacphail)

What’s to see on amazon.co.uk?  If you are into smartwatches and bracelets you will have your hands full since the site carries hundreds of offerings.  This in itself is impressive when you consider that the smartwatch as we know it really only got its start about three years ago with the first rumors of the Apple iWatch.   While hundreds of imitators have thrown their hats into the smartwatch ring, the iWatch is still not available for sale and rumors about its description and launch date are as elusive as that of a unicorn.  This is curious in and of itself since Samsun reported to Reuters that it had sold more than 800,000 of its Galaxy Gear smartwatches in two months.

Priced at around $300, the Gear works as an accessory to its market leading Galaxy smartphone, with a small OLED screen offering basic functions like photos, hands-free calls and message notifications.  Samsung has poured marketing resources into the Gear with heavy advertisements and collaborations with fashion shows to seize leadership in the wearable computer market after the device got off to a rocky start after being critically panned by reviewers.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/19/us-samsung-gear-idUSBRE9AI0AU20131119

As for the vaunted iWatch rumor has it that they will hit the market in September.  That’s if you can trust the pundits.  http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/apple-iwatch-release-date-price-concepts-features-and-rumours

Of course, smartwatches are hardly the only wearable tech currently on the shelf.  If you are one of those leading an active lifestyle there are a number of wearables that are designed to track everything from the amount of distance you travel afoot to the total calories burned, to time spent idling and/or sleeping.  

One of the more intriguing of these is a device called the Jawbone UP24 which strangely enough is worn on one’s wrist.  According to the company’s literature, “The UP® system is like a coach that gets to know you, then guides you to make simple decisions that lead to a more active life. With precise step tracking, workout logging and Insight Reports, UP is way more than a pedometer. Use Idle Alert to remind you to move throughout the day. And whether you want to shed a few pounds or just eat healthier, tracking food is now even easier. New features include frequent meals, an enhanced calorie counter, and an expanded library of restaurant menus. There's even a Food Score, so you can quickly see how healthy your food choices are. It's all designed to help you make great choices about what to eat and when.   The UP® system gives you an in-depth picture of your sleep. Sleep graphs let you see the good, the bad and the rapidly improving. Use bedtime reminders, Power Nap and Smart Alarm® to get to sleep and wake up at optimal times. UP intelligently analyzes your sleep, diet and exercise, then suggests simple adjustments that lead to more rest and happier days.”  https://jawbone.com/up

If tracking your every step, bite and REM sleep isn’t enough, there is now an entire armada of wearable cameras and mounts designed to record your every move in HD video.  So whether you prefer to walk, run, drive, bike, hang glide, spelunk, scuba dive or jump out of a perfectly good airplane, there is a camera and mount designed to allow you to capture the moment.  So whether you wish to capture those selfies in a camera mounted on your wrist, head, foot or chest, rest assured that someone somewhere has created the perfect camera rig. 

  

Nothing to Ware?

If you think that smartwatches, bracelets and helmets are outré, then you may want to look into some of the latest developments in wearables. A Taiwanese company called AIQ Smartclothing that contain everything from built-in lighting and/or heating, to their Bioman shirts which are machine washable and contain embedded electrodes that are designed to connect wirelessly to any tablet or smartphone in order to provide the wearer with real time biometric data.  http://aiqsmartclothing.com/

 As if Google Glass was not enough, the company has partnered with Swiss drug company Novartis to develop a type of smart contact lens that contain non-invasive sensors, microchips and other embedded miniature electronics that can be designed to either monitor the glucose levels in the tears of diabetics, or that can restore 20/20 vision to people who require reading glasses.  (I am not making this up.)  While the prototype was unveiled in January, the smartcontacts are not expected to reach market for several years, by which time wearers will probably be able to use them to take pictures with them since Google recently filed a patent for Embedded Microscopic Cameras.  This will come as a relief to many Glassholes who have experienced everything from intimidation to forceable ejection from movie theaters, restaurants and other public places for wearing Google Glass.

In the meantime, expect the rush to computerize other forms of apparel in the not too distant future.    Already I have seen everything from bionicbras designed to produce electrical power , to an emotion-sensing dress that changes color to suit your mood.  (Boy could we men get behind this invention.) 

Speaking of wives, in years to come as wearable technology becomes ever more ubiquitous, will the lament of spouses transform into one of, “I can’t go out tonight.  I have nothing to ware.”

When he isn’t showing his lack of fashion sense, Carl Weiss is leader of the crew of innovators at the digital marketing agency Working the Web to Win in Jacksonville, Florida.  He is also co-host of the weekly Blog Talk Radio show of the same name that can be heard every Tuesday at 4 pm Eastern.

Who Wears the Black Hat on the World Wide Web?

By Carl Weiss

If you have been working the web for any length of time, then you know that the search engines frown on what is known as “Black Hat” techniques.   This technology has been used to exploit search engine algorithms since the first search engines appeared.  The reason black hatting used to be so popular was because it could move your website onto page 1 in a hurry. 

Before the turn of the century, black hatting was practically a requirement since the practice was so prevalent.  However, during the past few years, search engine operators have designed their spiders to search and destroy anyone employing black hat techniques.  In fact, the past half dozen updates on Google have been designed specifically to crack down on sites that are still employing black hat SEO.  While tricking the search engines into giving your site a higher ranking than it deserves may work in the short term, once the other shoe drops and the search engine spiders catch onto such tactics there most definitely will be repercussions.  Many times it results in a site being either downgraded or even delisted. 

The problem today is that most people still don’t know where the line in the sand has been drawn when it comes to black hatting.  And the line keeps moving all the time.  So to make it easy to understand what is considered black hat SEO I have compiled the list below. 

Keyword Stuffing relies on inserting repeated keywords within the text, hidden text, title or meta tags in order to generate increased relevance of a page.

Spamdexing doesn't involve men in tights.  Like keyword stuffing the technique involves repeating unrelated phrases, to manipulate the relevance or prominence of resources indexed in a manner inconsistent with the purpose of the indexing system.

Doorway Pages are web pages created specifically for spamdexing.  Also known as bridge pages or jump pages, their purpose is to redirect those who click on the page onto another website.  If you have ever clicked on a search engine listing only to be redirected to a porn site or a spam site then you have hit a doorway page.  Doorway pages are relatively easy to identify since they are designed for search engines and not for people.  They redirect the reader so quickly that it is virtually impossible for a human being to even see the original page.

Link Farming doesn’t involve the swine industry, although the search engines tend to treat perpetrators of the technique as swine.  What link farming does is create numerous backlinks for a site by generating an increasing number of fake sites that link to your own.  Back in the late 90’s paid link farms were prolific.  Since links indicate popularity, these businesses did quite well until the search engine spiders became savvy enough to determine real links from the farmed kind.  Today, relying on fake links is one of the quickest ways to get delisted.

Cloaking does not have anything to do with the series Star Trek, although it works for web sites much the same way that it worked for the Klingons.  Cloaking involves hiding the presence of Flash animations, by displaying a text-only version for the express purpose of getting the search engine spiders to ignore the fact that you are employing Flash (which Google hates). 

Duplicate Content on Multiple Sites is an SEO no-no.  Many people try to game the system by creating clones of sites with different urls in order to generate top ranking.  The problem is that once the search engines catch onto to this tactic (and they always do), all of these sites will wind up delisted.  Better to create unique content for each landing page (which is not a carbon copy) in order to go after the SEO high ground.  They can have a similar skin, provided that the guts are different.  (This is called a landing page and is a legitimate way to work the web.)

Automated Content Generation is becoming ever more popular with website owners.  Everything from page generation to autoblogging has become all the rage.  The problem is the fact that automated systems are still not sophisticated enough to take the place of a human being and the spiders can tell the difference.  In fact, they regard the use of automated content generation for the most part as cheating.  So if you ever hope to win the war for keyword dominance, this is not a technique I would recommend.

What happens if you get caught black hatting?

If you or anyone in your employ is caught using black hat SEO the penalties can be severe.  Not only will your websites start disappearing from page one, depending upon the infraction, you may never be able to get back on top of the heap again.  Google has an especially long memory. 

Case in point: We were hired by a client with two physical locations and corresponding websites to help them conquer the search engines.  What the client failed to mention was the fact that they had previously hired an SEO pro to promote one of their two sites.  This pro had then used black hat technology to get them onto page one of Google.  This worked for about a month, then they disappeared from the world’s most popular search engine altogether. 

They hired us a few months later and failed to disclose this fact.  After about four months we had worked their sister site onto page one of Yahoo, Bing and Google.  However, the sister site appeared only on Bing and Yahoo.  After questioning the partners they admitted that they had indeed hired someone whom they knew used black hat SEO on this site.  So poisoned had the well become that not only did it affect their main website, but it also put the brakes on any other landing page attached to their physical address.  This is due to the fact that Google Maps and Google Local link every landing page connected to their address with their previous black hat infraction.  As a result, the only ways for them to generate page one results were either to move their office, or resort to pay-per-click ads on Google. (Guess which of the two they chose to pursue?)

The bottom line is that you don’t need to cheat them to beat them.

English: White hat seo symbolizes good ethic techniques in search engine marketing (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The reason that I point out the previous case is to remind all of you that if you really want to start working the web to win then you have to stop looking for the easy out.  Instead of trying to cheat your way to the top, simply make a long term commitment to produce quality content on a regular basis.  Sure, it can take a few months to see the results, but it is worth it.  As an added inducement when the search engines alter their algorithms you won’t be whipped around and forced to start from scratch.  Plus, you will never run the risk of being either delisted or blackballed by the search engines.  Remember, the good guys always wear the white hats.

If you want to learn even more SEO tactics, Carl Weiss and Hector Cisneros have just published their Working the Web to Win book on Amazon.com.  Along with detailed online marketing tactics the book covers everything you need to know in order to start generating online success.  The e-book version is just $4.95.  If you want to learn how to start working the web to win, this is a sure bet.  

Working the Web to Win in the 21st Century

by Carl Weiss

Before the 1990’s businesses were relegated to using print, TV and radio to advertise their wares. Then along came the Internet in the latter half of the 90’s and suddenly businesses had a whole new lease on life, along with a new set of skills to hone.  Because when it comes to promoting products and services online, there is no such thing as one size fits all.  Far from it. 

Before the turn of the century webvertising was a bit simpler, due to the fact that it all came down to two things: a website and a search engine.  Back then, there weren’t any such things as blogs and social networks.  Video was something that was worse than useless, due to bandwidth considerations.  Web designers back then had to selectively choose images due to the slow loading speeds that dial-ups provided.  Too many images could cause a site to load like molasses, or even freeze the screen solid. 

Then came the development of broadband and suddenly it was a whole new ballgame.  With that ballgame came an entirely new set of rules.  Instead of relying almost exclusively on text, many sites began experimenting with podcasts and video.  With the advent of YouTube, where anyone can post and host videos galore, multimedia went from being an anomaly to being practically a requirement. 

Search engines as well began to capitalize on the multimedia nature of the Internet, with many of them adapting their search algorithms to take into considerations all the latest online offerings.  Several, most notably Google, went one step farther by developing their own brand of blog, social network and video portal.  This meant that website owners and optimizers had their hands full feeding all these additional mouths.  As a result, many sites that previously dominated the search engines were relegated to its backwaters.  It also meant that SEO was no longer SOP (standard operating procedure.)  Whether you choose to administer your web presence yourself or outsource the task, there are a number of factors you need to take into consideration if you hope to succeed.

1.      Geo-Targeting – One of the things that has changed in a big way is the ability to geographically target online ads.   Unlike in the early days of the web where global advertising coverage was the norm, today online ads can be directed to targeted regionally, state-wide or locally for both pay-per-click and organic search. 

2.      What is SEO Today? – When I hear people conversion about search engine optimization, I ask them to define the term SEO.  Before the turn of the century everything a search engine needed to determine who ranked best resided exclusively on the website.  Today, only twenty five percent of the criteria used for ranking purposes is contained on-site.  The remainder consists of everything from blogs and social networks to videos and podcasts.

The other thing that has changed in a big way is the acumen of search engine spiders.  Not only 

can the spiders read, they can understand how well your website, blogs and social posts are constructed.  They are also programmed to look at how often you post as well as how much engagement this content generates.  The only things they can’t understand are your images and videos.  This is why it is so important to make sure your alt tags are filled in and the text and tags used to wrap your videos is complete.

3.      Blogging for Business – Blogs are without a doubt one of the least understood of all web assets.  Most people treat them as a bastard stepchild of the web, not realizing that blogs can not only achieve search engine ranking on their own, but you can also sell products directly on your blog.  Add to this the fact that well-written blogs can be far more engaging than websites since they change more often than your site.  (The average website is updated quarterly, whereas the average blog is updated weekly.)  I have known clients who literally generated more traffic and sales from their blog than they did on their site, even when their site had page-1 ranking on Google, Yahoo and Bing. 

4.      How Social is your Business? – There is a big difference between having a social presence and feeding your social presence.  If you hope to turn Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and other social networks into a way to promote your business you need to understand a couple of things.  In the first place, social nets are all about telling as opposed to selling.  This means that for every attempt to display ad copy on your nets you need to deploy at least twenty pieces of information that would be of interest to your followers.  And by “information” I don’t mean ad copy.  The second factor is that social nets are all about your followers, not you.  If you provide them with useful information and prove that you are an authority in your area of expertise they will inevitably buy from you when they are ready.  However, if you rarely feed your nets or if you bombard your followers with ad copy then don’t complain that social networking doesn’t work.

5.       Do You YouTube? – YouTube is another area that most businesses do not really get.  Look at it this way; If your local TV station told you they were giving away space for free TV spots and that they were looking for programming to fill air time, you would probably bust a gut to provide them with as much video content as they would accept. Then why is it that the world’s largest superstation is not on every business owner’s radar in a big way?  Not only does YouTube stream more video than all the other TV stations on the planet combined (4 billion videos per day), but they provide free hosting and broadcast, plus they are owned by the world’s most popular search engine (Google). 

YouTube is much more than just a video portal.  It is a search engine, it is a social network and it is a free web TV station that can place your videos on page 1 of Google.  How cool is that?  Yet most businesses are not taking advantage of this free marketing powerhouse.  By taking advantage of it, I don’t mean having one or two videos on YouTube. What I am talking about is having dozens or even hundreds of videos on YouTube.  Better yet, why not start a channel that focuses on your business?  Don’t think that’s practical?  Think again.  We have shown all kinds of businesses from chiropractors to plumbers how 2-minute microcasts can be used to generate a following and turn their owners into rock stars.  Shooting 2-4 short videos each and every month isn’t all that complicated or costly.  All it takes is a little imagination to turn the world’s largest superstation into a business asset that’s hard to beat.

6.      Reputation Management – In years past it was all too easy for companies that produced slipshod       workmanship and poor customer service to remain below the radar to consumers.  As a result it was very difficult to judge a business’ reputation until after the fact, by which time it was too late.  With the advent of online reputation management all that has changed.  Today the emperor wears no clothes and it is simple for the public to find out how your customers perceive the quality of your company.  Whether they use Google Local, Yahoo, Angie’s List or any of the hundreds of sites dedicated to broadcasting reviews good and bad about a business, this is generally the first place that consumers go to check out a company with whom they have never done business.

That being said, many businesses have no system of encouraging satisfied customers to post positive reviews.  What this means is that for the vast majority of businesses, all there is to be found are negative reviews.  I don’t care how capable and courteous you are, as they say you can’t please everyone all the time.  So it’s a foregone conclusion that sooner or later you will rub someone the wrong way.  That someone (or even a wily competitor) can sully your reputation at the click of a mouse if you aren’t actively encouraging your best customers to submit positive reviews all the public will find are complaints.

One of the things we use to promote our business as well as those of our clients is to ask your best customers if they wouldn’t mind telling the public what they think of your services on video. By shooting a 2-3 minute interview and then cutting this down to 60-90 seconds not only will you have a powerful endorsement of your business, but while they are there you can then have them submit a positive review on Google+ that will go a long way toward helping you prove once and for all that you are the man or woman for the job.

7.      Who You Gonna Call? -  Obviously creating and distributing everything from daily social posts to weekly blogs and monthly videos takes time.  And time is something of which no business owner or manager has enough.  So outsourcing some or all of the above mentioned tasks is the path of least resistance for many businesses.  That being said, you need to be very careful who you allow to promote your business online.  While there are a number of legitimate digital marketing agencies, there are also thousands of shortcut artists that can do more harm than good. 

In past blogs, we have written about Black Hat tactics that can put your website 

between a rock and a hard place.  It isn’t at all unusual for a search engine to delist or even black ball anyone caught using black hat techniques.  While it would take more than a blog to cover them all, the biggest red flag to watch out for is anyone who claims they can get your site listed organically with Google or any other major search engine within 30 days or less.  Depending upon the competition involved with any keyword or phrase it can take anywhere from four to six months or more to produce enough compelling content to leverage page 1 on any of the major search engines.  However, the results can be well worth the effort.

In short, with the exception of pay-per-click advertising (which takes an entire skill set of its own to employ successfully), there is no shortcut to online success. The only way of leveraging the Internet in the 21^st century is to take the long view.  Just like your business, working the web to win takes time.  But it’s time well spent.

When he isn't surfing the web, Carl is Working the Web to Win, which is both a digital marketing agency in Jacksonville, Florida and a weekly online radio show on BlogTalkRadio.