By garwoodpr | December 26, 2010 at 10:34 AM EST | No Comments
Q. Make a suggestion on the existing Google Short Link product http://goo.gl
A. I like to refer to link shorteners as link shredders, because they shred both the seo benefits as well as the human friendly description away from whatever is at the other end of the hyperlink. While I'm not a huge fan of these links, it is a pleasure to provide a basic recommendation to improve the Google short link product.
Integrate relevant short keywords in the short links to make url's more human friendly.
This suggestion would send a Googlebot (web) to crawl the target page, before creating the short link, and return a short link with some relevant keyword-phrase that helps the human user know what is on the other side of that short url. For example instead of providing http://goo.gl/14cim to reference the home page of http://www.garwoodpr.com/ the link could be more informational/relevant to users if it some/any keyword were present in the short link http://goo.gl/ClintRocks
On the short Link Brand: The existing short link product goo.gl does not really show adequate respect for the existing brand; or it could better positioned/branded than it currently is. It is my opinion that any/all of the following short link suggestions would be an improvement to the branding of the short Google links better than the existing short link extension.
This url shredder brand improvement uses the 'period/dot' instead a single character/keystroke; so although the word google is still misspelled, at least it is a complete word (with a dot replacement for different letters) rather than a misspelled version of the brand name. All four of these shredder brands could be added as new products, and specified for different industries or user purposes (consumer, industrial, non-profit, edu, etc). Even using the entire Google brand but simply separating the word with periods would be a better representation of the brand (i.e., http://googl.e; http://goog.le/; http://goo.gle/; http://go.ogle/; http://g.oogle/)
By garwoodpr | December 24, 2010 at 01:49 AM EST | No Comments
Q. Describe a relevant industry job/position (not available at the Company) that you believe would keep your interest (personal and professional) for a period of at least five years.
A. There is a need for live talent in the text-to-market-entertainment field. I believe this area represents a next-generation opportunity for professional talent (actors, communicators, writers, & entertainers) to produce programs tied primarily to text, sms and or other text-heavy social communication platforms. The talent would (like radio dj's, tv entertainers, or a noisy friend) combine their personality with topical information into a live entertaining, fun and worthwhile presentation that the audience would subscribe to, watch, participate in and share with friends through their phones, and other internet connected devices. The programs would connect celebrities/fans/audiences through simple text-in options and be supported by sponsorships.
Working as a producer of text-based entertainment programs, I believe the opportunity to explore different types of shows on behalf of artists, bands, media networks, companies or other entertainment venues would keep my interest for an extended period of time.
By garwoodpr | December 23, 2010 at 10:52 AM EST | No Comments
Have you ever tried to read a book starting with the last page first, and work your way to the front? Books are published first to last because it’s the normal progression of a story. "Boy meets girl..." Blogs, however, do not currently offer the option (easily) to show a story from first to last; it is always last to first, which means that a first time blog visitor always shows up in the middle of the story.
Blogspot Product Suggestion: Provide an optional smart cookie (blog owner/admin could enable this option as needed) that recognizes a first time or return user and displays the blog in an appropriate order.
First time visitors would see the first story (or other summary post to set the tone/theme) from the beginning... "Boy meets Girl...” Return visitors see the blog in its normal order with the most recent post at the top... "Boy falls in Love all over again..."
This simple re-ordering feature would be triggered by either the absence of a cookie (posts displayed first-to-last), or the presence of a cookie (display posts last-to-first). Additional variations on the basic theme are also possible. This feature could help make presentations much more relevant to first time users, and help improve the engagement that writers have with their online audiences.
By garwoodpr | December 22, 2010 at 07:53 PM EST | No Comments
reposted from http://clintgarwood.blogspot.com/
Situation: Online social networks (fb/twitter etc.) benefit from having their logo boxes included at the bottom of nearly every page on the web, and although the 'g' in a box logo follows their basic model, Google has an opportunity to jump ahead with the introduction of a short//search co-branded instant search solution that could deliver an entirely new dimension to its traditional search product.
Suggestion: Create a unique type of targeted, co-branded search solution (web code text string) that connects google search to businesses and organizations at the keyword level. The idea is to create a very short text string, that when entered into the url field of an internet browser, would return a Google search page with the corresponding keyword results. Businesses could use the co//branded solution their websites, and other collateral material.
Co-Branded Example: google//co-branded-keywords
For example a co-branded string google//clintgarwood could be made to return this page:
Although the example (when entered into the url field) currently returns this page:
Any brand or keyword-phrase could be used, and if done properly, companies could simply adapt the format without having to receive prior permission or approval to use in their promotions: google//Sony-Music google//McDonald's google//George-V-Eatertainment google//Tropical-Vacation google//Chicago-Restaurant google//Find-A-Job google//World-Peace etc...,
Google short//search co-branding would serve, and provide value to Company customers, partners and other organizations by allowing them to share targeted Google searches. Businesses that dedicate professional effort and resources to ensure their presentation is competitive on the other end of the short search line (top three results) will enjoy access to an extremely targeted stream of online customers. The co-branded format would also reduce the number of user keystrokes and web pages users need to visit to connect with the targeted keyword search results page. The concept is easily adapted for mobile products in unique formats.
By garwoodpr | June 01, 2010 at 10:39 AM EDT | No Comments
Had a great conversation with a manufacturer's rep in the sport's apparel industry this weekend about how social media platforms can be used to help support his work on the road. I suggested that social media platforms like http://www.twitter.com could be used as a way to cast a wide net for sales leads.
On Social Media, I suggested to the rep that twitter can be more useful than simply a means to promote material and that if he approached the network as a research/follow tool, it could work like an assistant that delivers real-time sales leads with little/no cost involved.
The strategy in principle is simple: 1) Create the profile and populate it with a targeted ‘following’ list; 2) Open the maximum number of conversations allowed by twitter (20 +more); 3) Search the page for relevant keywords and contact the relevant sources; 4) Repeat on a regular basis.
1) The strategy requires standard twitter set up stuff, which includes registering for the network, setting up a profile, and finding potential clients/stores to follow. Use the standard search functions already available on twitter to get started. You can also use some off site directories to find other relevant profiles (http://www.twefollow.com, http://www.wefollow.com, etc). Follow anyone who could be a good potential contact. "If it would be a benefit to talk to the person (behind the profile) in person, follow them on twitter." Granted, not everyone you might want contact with will be on twitter, but there will be plenty of them there. You can always un-follow any profile.
2) Next, once you have a good 'following list' visit twitter each day (several times/day etc) and open up the maximum amount of conversations allowed on your page. To do this, go to the bottom of your page and click {MORE} You can do this 20 times, to show the most recent 200 tweets that have been posted by the people you are following.
3) With all the tweets open, do a simple text/keyword search on the page (keyboard: ctrl +F) or (toolbar: edit +find) Search the entire feed for a specific or relevant word/phrase which these potential clients might have used in a post to indicate they have a need for product, or desire for contact with a rep, a complaint about a competitor's product, or some other phrase/word that indicates a pressing need where support/product would be welcome.
I use this technique in media relations, and terms I typically search for are (want) (need) (source) (interview) (please) (help) etc. For my clients I'm looking for journalists who are asking for sources to contact them for interviews, or are looking for real time interviews/info or other industry background. On profiles where I follow 1500 people, opening all twenty +more tabs typically gives me about one-hour's worth of the last tweets.
4) One final technique to help save time is to copy (highlight +ctrl C and paste to a notepad or text editor) the profile name/tweet of the person posting the request. If you click through the tweet and visit the person's profile directly, you will have to reopen all the +more feeds again.
By garwoodpr | May 30, 2010 at 01:37 PM EDT | No Comments
I'm a huge fan of video tutorials, but on occasion I'll venture out of my comfort zone to do a standard text-based online tutorial, and the following resource didn't disappoint.
In today's world, marketing professionals, and PR pros simply cannot get by with good web surfing skills alone. Online marketing pros have to understand what is behind the code of the pages they are looking at, and more importantly what can/could be done with client and agency websites to improve performance, tracking and audience engagement.
Enter http://html.net/ The site provides two tutorials one for learning HTML and one on learning CSS, both are extremely easy to follow, and if you can read English, you can be coding new/existing websites in no time. There are also translations for Deutch, Espanol, French, Italian and a few other languages as well.
I didn't see any indication that the site is going to provide additional skills courses, but if I were asked for what would be next in the series, I'd pick Java, Flash and FBML (Facebook Markup Language).
Although the courses are great for refreshing skills and gaining knowledge about the basics, I have no plans to offer website design services. Here is a list of consulting services I do provide.
In addition to the great tools she listed with this article, I also recommend adding Google Analytics to the list, as a vital and free tool for any digital PR program. Although analytics won't drive unique traffic to a website, like many of the tools already on the list are intended to do, it is vital to help identify the ROI/click-through of different publicity techniques, and helps clients and publicists spot the best approach for their marketing campaigns.
By garwoodpr | May 28, 2010 at 06:09 PM EDT | No Comments
The other night an individual in my SEO | Search Marketing Class asked me what RSS stands for. Really Simple Syndication is the answer I provided, and of course after class I looked up additional definitions for RSS which are quickly explained in a wiki on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS
Subscribing to an RSS feed is of course extremely easy, and most blogger platforms like word press automatically create an rss (or often atom) feed directly from their publishing platform, but for other bloggers, who use wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) blogging platforms, rss isn't always built into the system. Network Solutions, for example (the host of this website and blog) doesn't provide any outbound rss tools that users can include with their wysiwyg blog.
In cases like this, bloggers that want to provide an rss feed from their site need a secondary service to generate and host the feed. However in exchange for providing readers with the always up-to-date rss feed from theblog the rss provider retains any/all the SEO benefits of that feed for their own website.
For example the third party rss site feed for this site is http://www.webrss.com/createfeed.php?feedid=10533 Because the url is a webrss feed, when/if I post that link to a social network any garnered seo benefit of the link or anchor text simply benefits webrss, rather than this site. For sites that have their own rss tools, the blog rss feed would be something like http://www.garwoodpr.com/rss.xml which, when when posted to a third party site, would provide tex/link seo benefits back to the original website where the blog written/published.
Still... I'm looking forward to to exploring the benefits of webrss services, which includes pinging services, and feed metrics (click-through and hits measured over time).
By garwoodpr | May 28, 2010 at 10:36 AM EDT | No Comments
Blogs are an excellent method for improving the keyword density on a page, and a good way to share information with dedicated (and first time) visitors to your website. There is no perfect method for creating and maintaining a blog, however there are some great lists of blogs where you can pick up pointers and ideas for your own presentation.
A list of the Top 100 PR Marketing, Advertising, and Digital Media Blogs has been published by Spotlight Ideas: go http://www.spotlightideas.co.uk/?p=302
Regarding non-English blogs…, translate.google.com is an excellent platform for translating an entire web-page, or a snippet of text, from/to nearly sixty languages. It will even detect the web page language if you are not sure what it is. Maybe using the translate function a future/specialty list could be provided of other language websites that are of the same quality as these English-language ones.
By garwoodpr | May 20, 2010 at 01:30 AM EDT | No Comments
The truth for any small business is that back-links are tough to get, and sites don't rank well without them. Asking customers to provide links from social network profiles, link-for-link strategies with partners, friends and suppliers only go so far for small and upstart businesses. The following links provide direct pointers to organizations that allow you to submit your website for consideration into their directory. Keep in mind that the more descriptive, targeted and relevant anchor you use for each listing helps explain your site to visitors and web spiders.
Keep in mind, these site have no obligation to list your site in their directory, and many will tell you at the time of submission that it will likely be a few months before they get around to considering your site for inclusion... but like most SEO stuff, work hard now, reap the rewards for a long time, sometime down the road.
By garwoodpr | May 19, 2010 at 01:02 PM EDT | No Comments
Roberta Rosenberg's Landing Page Makeover Clinic provides lots of great pointers on how to create a great landing page that drives conversions, not just traffic. Go http://www.copyblogger.com/landing-page-makeover-seomoz/ for the whole discussion.
It continues to surprise me that many/most adwords campaigns still direct traffic to a company’s main website/url rather than to a targeted or even custom landing page. Companies that embrace the idea of providing unique content for different ppc keyword campaigns, and use the good structure you suggest in this article, will experience a much higher conversion rate with their click-through traffic.
I’ve spent quite a bit of time using the ‘real estate’ feature of maps.google and while their geo-location is pretty good, it is not yet great. While the real estate map shows red-pin listings from the Realtor MLS, and allows for some sorting (price, #beds/baths) it struggles in other key areas critical to property search like current vs inactive listings and other critical mover amenities (dogs, AC, parking). The search feature also tends to ignore online ads from major city newspapers, Craigslist and other highly relevant local classified ad postings, even those these listings often can be found through the standard google ‘web’ search. For a local business (specifically leasing/Realtors) this means that not all local online classified ads are created equal in the eyes of the Google real estate search map, and to get double duty out of a classified ad (to make it show up on the Google map), you have to use third-party sources that are actively friendly to the real-estate search map (Postlets, Sublet, etc).
My remarks... Depending on the type of organization, offering a special seminar (for example to a national/regional sales team) during quarterly, semi-annual, yearly, team meetings can dramatically expand the connectivity of a company's web presentation. Helping these professionals understand the benefits of linking through their own social network profiles, and educating them on how to generate additional links from customers/associates back to the main company website, helps strengthen relationships and the authority of company's main site.
By garwoodpr | April 12, 2010 at 09:32 PM EDT | No Comments
What is search marketing and why is it important?
Search marketing, in short, is the function of driving sales through a marketing effort online, and can take place as either a paid or organic function. The most important part to the organic effort is to optimize a company website and to drive traffic (preferably customers) to a website where they make a purchase or request services.
Search marketing is a specialty that deals with driving customers to a company website by improving the placement of a company's website in the search results lists from popular search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo, however it can also be done though social network sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Regardless if the search originates from a search engine or social network platform, the result of successful Search Marketing programs will generate a company website/information to show up in the search results, of course the higher the better.
Visit http://www.garwoodpr.com/consultingservices.html for a menu of services provided including research reports, on-site training presentations, trade show seminar presentations and other specialized corporate consulting services provided by garwoodpr.
By garwoodpr | December 02, 2009 at 08:05 PM EST | No Comments
Search marketing campaigns benefit from promotional back-linking strategies that make appropriate connections to other websites that have relevant content. Public Relations back linking, or Blurbing, typically uses a contributor’s profile on a news-media website to post information and links back to their online information.
A company might use promotional back linking to share links to relevant information about a breaking news story or share information with a beat reporter devoted to a specific coverage area. Customer tips and charitable announcements are better contributions than links to products, unless it’s a news worthy new product introduction.
Having a back-link remain posted with a news article transfers a simple kind of recognition to the audience that the comment hasn't been deleted as spam, just yet. Worthwhile contributions made with news articles can trigger website visits from news reporters and their audiences.
From a technical perspective media-focused promotional back-linking can trigger search engines to visit the linked page & domain, and provide a solid authoritative link that will benefit the website over time. Campaigns can focus on Blurbing for a temporary jump, and companies can implement the strategy to build long-term website strength, authority and to improve the competitiveness of the site on search engine results pages.
Blurbing campaigns should make use of keyword optimization techniques, as comments are often indexed and provided to search engines as content available to be be returned with keyword searches.
By garwoodpr | December 02, 2009 at 05:07 PM EST | No Comments
Backlinks are not all equal in the value they deliver to a connected page.
No-follow; Means a hyperlink will be active (click-able) and counts as a backlink, but the page is not expected to transfer PR. Outbound links, anchor and regular text are available for search engine indexing and can be found through keyword searches.
Do-follow; Means the hyperlink is active; and will transfer some page rank, which is equal to on-page PR divided by the number of out-bound links. Outbound links, anchor and regular text are available for search engine indexing and can be found through keyword searches.
No-html: Means that neither the hyperlink or the text are available for search engine indexing. Contributions to these sites do not count as backlinks. Website url's anchor and regular text are not available for search engine indexing and can not be found through keyword searches. The contributions are kept under a shell, if you will, that only visitors to that site can see.
No-Follow Will Transfer PR It is well known that links from pages that are do-follow will transfer some Page Rank (unique measurement system for Google) to the site they link to, but what is less well known is that all hyper-links transfer some authority and in fact a tiny bit of page rank as long as the hyperlink is active.
Inbound back-links coming from domains with .gov and .edu extensions carry, and transfer authority/PR to the site they are linked to. While .org might have/transfer some extra authority, the most common extensions .com, .net, .cc, and .info are all considered equal in their weight (assuming they are not coming in from spammer/link-farm sites).
Links from and to sites that are flagged, or known to be spam/malware or are otherwise considered to be disreputable by search engines transfer their problems along their links. When a reputable site links-to or has incoming links coming from flagged/suspicious sites, the reputable site can sometimes be penalized by the search engine. While one bad link leading in from a spammer site might not significantly bring down the overall rank of a domain, reciprocate (linking back) or having many links leading to and from these sites can harm the authority of the reputable site.
Keyboard Shortcut to Discover On-Site No-follow From a web browser toolbar click (view => View Page Source) to view the html code. When the source box opens search the page toolbar (edit => Find) and type in the word 'NoFollow' which, if it appears is clearly a no-follow site. Keyboard shortcuts are Ctrl-U (view source), Ctrl-F (find), Ctrl-W (closes source window).
By garwoodpr | November 30, 2009 at 04:12 AM EST | No Comments
Establishing bookmarks for websites is a good idea for ongoing promotions, and can be critical to jump-starting a search engine review of a new website.
When you submit a link through a bookmarking site (digg, delicious, and hundreds more), search engines are put into action. This 'call to action' of adding the site to a profile, often leads to the search engine robots indexing entire sites, and updating the cache page for the referenced site page. When posting new client articles, and for indexing new web sites, bookmarking can be a shortcut for getting search engines to visit the site.
While you shouldn't be posting the same bookmarking link to every possible bookmarking site you can find, you can submit sites/pages/stories to more than one bookmarking site, without worrying about blow-back or penalties from search engines, or site administrators. Never try to bookmark every web-page for an entire website (even a small site), its tacky at best, and triggers red flags.
Because managing even 20 or so bookmarking profiles can be overwhelming, consider using a bookmarking bookmarking site like http://www.socialmarker.com to help make the process easier. You have to have an active profile with each of the sites they offer services for, but once you're registered, sites like this will make the process of bookmarking through social networks more streamlined and less time consuming.
By garwoodpr | November 29, 2009 at 03:22 PM EST | No Comments
It is easy enough to track how organic keyword strategies are working if you control your own domain and have ready access to on-site weblogs.
For agents and outside promoters however, access to a client's web-log is typically not available on a 'just need to check it' basis. For promoters who work on a pay for results basis, knowing exactly how much traffic was delivered to a client's website is crucial to providing an invoice for the benefits that the service provided. In this case, it might be even more difficult to obtain that web-log, when client's know their invoice will be based on the traffic numbers contained in the report.
So to help client and agent alike, third party services can be used to monitor organic keyword search delivery from web portals to any specified web page/site/domains. None of the services are free, however they are accurate enough (each has different capabilities) and the sources listed below will separate ad-campaign traffic from organic traffic search results.
By garwoodpr | November 26, 2009 at 03:10 PM EST | No Comments
Social Bookmarking is a great way to get back-links to articles and to your main website. Digging or Mixxing up a story also provides additional traffic from the people following profiles on social bookmarking sites. Bookmarking can also trigger additional search results for a story or site in traditional search engine results. These links lead directly to tool/buttons for a few of the most popular bookmarking sites.
By garwoodpr | November 25, 2009 at 11:44 PM EST | No Comments
It's always a good idea to check your promotional copy once it is finally live on other people's websites. After an article is live, you can check for back-links, page rank and a host of other online properties with free online tools. You can also analyze articles published by other authors on a site you are intending to publish to, to see how the publishing website treats and promotes submitted information published to their site.
Keyword Density Analyzer Keyword Density Checker PageRank Predictor PageRank Prediction Page Comparison Site Comparison Links Value Calculator Link Price Calculator Back Link analyzer Backlinks Checker
By garwoodpr | November 25, 2009 at 05:53 PM EST | No Comments
Age is a discriminating factor in search engine site rank, and the older a domain name is, but more competitive it will be for Search results. Year-one sites in fact get a virtual timeout, which is know as having a site in the sandbox.
All other factors being exactly equal, a domain that is three years old will outrank a domain that is two years old. Search engine lists use domain name age as a factor to help determine which link/resource is listed higher than another. Buying an aged domain can provide benefits to a business or a online promotional effort.
Here are some basic elements you can use to compare links you might be consider purchasing: URL Optimized, keyword Age: 5/yrs old+ Back-links: Backlinks from (.edu .gov) are authoritative, .com is simple/standard PageRank Existing traffic flow Background/blacklist history More info Aged Domain Info http://www.articledashboard.com/Article/Checking-Domain-Name-Availability-With-Scripts/888973
Please leave a link to any software that organizes this type of information into a good format.
By garwoodpr | November 23, 2009 at 02:47 AM EST | No Comments
There are plenty of Firefox Plugins that can be beneficial to use, when working on an seo pr campaign. Plug-ins give you a quick look at some measurement stats on a site or search engine page, in exchange for slowing down the browser performance. Try disabling them ( tools > add-on ) when you don't need them to save your bandwidth.
Confucius Never Said: 
