As I sift through my plethora of social media feeds and apps, I can’t help but think of Google Reader and its relevancy in today’s marketing and business world. Personally, I use Google Reader to sign up and subscribe to feeds of websites that I want to follow. I also use Feedburner and Guy Kawasaki’s My.Alltop.com (you can find me at http://my.alltop.com/zioneyemedia) as my feed resources, but I tend to check out Alltop moreso than I do my Reader. I love the look, flexibility and ease of use on Alltop, and I can get a lot of sites’ feeds within Alltop off the bat without having to subscribe to individual websites.

So is Google Reader still relevant to feed readers? Maybe I should ask this: is Google Reader even relevant now to those who search for sources of inspiration? Did Google +, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook Pages, and the thousands of other social networks taking more of your time?

Let me know your thoughts!

I am sure that there are various ways of creating optimized content for site development, but I hardly think that a lot of them result in positive ROI given by the “click here” verbiage, lack of quality search terms, and untargeted search phrases that are predominant in most sites and advertisements I have seen.  Below you’ll find a method I use that really helped me in differentiating keyword weights and defining a targeted search engine marketing infrastructure.  I wrote a response to an SEO question in my LinkedIn account that is similar to what I am writing here, and basically outIines a more complete basic SEO guide.  I hope that this tutorial will help ease the content development process for you.

For the purpose of this tutorial, the business in question is an independent record label named Rawk Fist, and its summary is as follows:

1) Rawk Fist is a new record label with a new web site and a budding following.
2) Rawk Fist is looking into conducting mostly guerrilla marketing tactics and online marketing initiatives to offset their modest marketing budget.
3) Rawk Fist’s artist base and target market are mostly unsigned bands, musicians and artists that are predominantly online but also offline-based.

RESEARCH KEYWORDS AND KEY PHRASES

Google Keyword Tool and SEOBook Keyword Tool

1) Have a list of keywords to research. The first thing to do is to determine the best possible key phrases that will produce better ROI and search engine exposure for Rawk Fist.  I suggest writing down words and phrases that you want to include or want to research and keep notes on them.  Some of the notes I usually take down are the search volume data for each keyword and/or key phrase, the average volume, competitor use, and so forth.

2) Use Google’s Keyword tool or SEOBook’s Keyword tool. There are a few free tools that I like using to find key words and phrases that have great search engine weight:  Google Keyword Tool and SEOBook’s Keyword tool are 2 I will focus on for this tutorial.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool

Using Google’s Adwords Keyword tool, typing in “record label” will net these results [See images to the right].  I have recorded the metrics for both October and November. For both metrics, notice that the advertiser competition for this search term results in a very high amount for a broad generic “record label” term, generating over 90,000 search queries (more if plural), and averaging between 110,000 to 160,000 search queries throughout a 12-month period. That’s a lot for a monthly search query, especially if the goal is for Rawk Fist to reach the 1st page and/or top 3 search positions.

What this means is that there are WAY too many people searching for that “record label” phrase at any given month.  Moreover, it will take a lot of effort to even compete in generating a positive ranking for that phrase due to the high volume.  Generating positive ranking (or in other words, positive return on investment, or ROI) requires a lesser search volume and average search volume to: 1) increase chances of the company and search terms being searched, 2) increase chances of search terms being positioned and company being ranked, which leads to 3) an increase in branding power, search quality and integrity (how Google defines and values your company and your value as a search entity), deliverability, and prolonged search exposure that leads to direct (and indirect) business revenue growth.

3) Target your keywords. In order to gain better ranking positions in search engines, the search phrase “record label” needs to be more targeted. Targeting keywords and phrases results in a smaller, more refined search volume which gives your keywords a better search positioning. While it is ok to include the generic keywords to your site, it is more important to include targeted keywords and phrases, as these will be the driving force of your organic search results.  In this case, the phrases “independent record label,” “independent record labels,” “music record label” and “indie record label” are more likely to generate a more positive return because of the level of search frequency.  You will also note that the advertiser competition box for each keyword and phrase show different levels of advertiser activity.  The differences in levels will be need to be addressed when you’re trying to find keywords that fit for your company.  In this case, while the advertiser competition is high on some of Rawk Fist’s potential phrases, it shouldn’t be a deterrent to  choosing that keyword nonetheless.  Using it will help expand into other territories and give other businesses a run for their money.

The keywords and phrases to start off are as follows: record label (s), independent record label (s), music record label (s), and indie record label (s).

Outside of “record label” and “independent record label,” Rawk Fist wants to be more diverse in its genre and musical audience.  There will be a need for musical genres to be infused in the keywords and phrases for Rawk Fist.  Examples include “hip hop record label,” “rock record label,” “pop rock record label,” and “funk record label.”  Going back to the Google keyword tool, add the words “hip hop,” “funk,” “rap,” “rock,” and other genres you want to put in the mix and press enter to see the results.  To show you a more detailed example of a genre, let’s focus on the word “hip hop.”

Google Keyword Search

The phrase “hip hop record label” shows a high advertiser competition rate, with a search volume of 1300 search volume for the month of November and average search volume of 1000 for a 12-month period.  Its plural version (“hip hop record labels”) show double the monthly search volume and at least double the average search volume.  The results of both term’s search volume show a great starting point for building organic search engine credentials and integrity from the ground up.  Why?  Because there is enough search volume to warrant the work to conduct optimization without drowning in heavy search volume, and at the same time, having enough volume to climb up the search positioning and ranking with the keywords being searched on.

4) Expand on your targeted list. Now that we have established the keywords further, we can add hip hop record label (s) to the mix.  To research other genres, keep adding phrases and words on the Google keyword tool to find positive results in mid-size search volume and average search volume.  To include more targeted versions of these keywords, add other market audience parameters of choice, such as city, state, geographic location, more defined genres, etc.  Some examples can include: los angeles underground hip hop record label, seattle grunge rock record label, new york indie hip hop record label, etc.  Adding mixtures such as the examples I mentioned will create more refined and funneled search structures for your marketing initiatives.

That’s it for this tutorial.  Are you exhausted yet??  The next few tutorials will be built on this keyword tutorial, focusing on creating meta codes such as titles, keywords, and descriptions, naming convention infrastructures, and diving into more detail on content development, with examples of proper image optimization, in-text linkings and more!

Stay tuned!

Google recently launched its search engine starter guide within the past couple of weeks, and after reading it (and re-reading it), I was reminded of my earlier post on why some companies have difficulty getting ranked in search engines (see “Why Can’t I Get Ranked In Search Engines??“).  Reiterating and reconfirming what my colleague John Ellis had to say about his review, I was glad that they were able to provide a standard guide for basic SEO work.  Even if it’s just basic, it provides a refresher course for those that are in deep in the world of SEM, but at the same time makes for a great foundation for newbies.

For those new to the SEO/SEM world, PLEASE (I implore you!!!) to read this and apply it to your end of the industry.

2 things that I read that made me ponder a moment or two on how people do SEO: 1) how they come up with their search phrases and keywords, and 2) how they come up with the naming URL infrastructure of their site.  It really amazes me to see how many people want to rank at the top of search engines and use plain, non-targeted words or phrases that lack search weight and search frequency.  If you, for argument’s sake, run a restaurant and want your restaurant to rank on the first page of Google, you don’t want to just use the word “restaurant” to get search engine exposure.  That’s like using “person” as the search word for trying to look your name up on Google.  Try that sometime and see how the results fare on searching your name.

Next is dealing with the URL naming convention.  It’s usually developers that do not know anything about SEO/SEM, but I won’t hold it against them.  At my work, naming conventions are out of whack when it comes to optimization, because naming conventions weren’t a part of the whole online marketing infrastructure.  There needs to be a cohesive balance, foundation, and best practices in all aspects of site development, but it is not necessarily common for marketers to have all of those in tact.  Say, for another argument’s sake, you have a travel agency site and you want to build traffic for a special microsite or page on visiting Ireland.  The person who is developing your site ends up with the index page title of visitIRL.php, and each corresponding subpage on that particular visiting Ireland site is visitIRLpage1.php, visitIRLpage2.php, etc.  Will your subpage rank high on Google when a user is searching for the cost of visiting Ireland on your page and your page name is visitIRLpage[insert page number here].php?  Or do you think they will see your page higher on Google with the URL name of visiting-ireland-cost.php (or some other variation of that)?

I’m sure it may be easy for some, but for those who are still confused, do not fret.  My next blog is about creating a step-by-step tutorial on how to find quality keywords and phrases to generate more quality traffic for your site.

Stay tuned!

Now that I have had more time to spend on playing around with Google, there are a handful of things that I can see working well for them in comparison to the other browsers.

I noticed that opening new tabs in Google now function similarly to how FF does now, where a new tab will open up at the very end of the set of tabs open.  From what I remembered initially, a new tab will open up next to the current open tab available, which I liked a lot.  I’m not fond of tabs being opened at the very end, as I usually have multiple tabs open simultaneously, and having to scroll to the tab I opened can be a pain.  With FF, to offset having to scroll to view the tab I just opened, I can just click on the FF tab showcase plugin to view all the tabs, and I’m unsure if there are similar plugins for Chrome.

I do like how, on an existing tab, if you right-click a link and select open in a new tab, it goes directly next to that existing tab that you clicked from.  FF/IE doesn’t function that way, and that sucks.

When I sign in to my web-based emails, I love how Chrome has my login highlighted and ready for me to enter my information.  It beats having JUST that blinking text line, which doesn’t help much on both FF and IE.  However, I’m still seeing some quirks on my yahoo account when I access it on Chrome.  Not as much as I have seen before, but still… something to think about.

I do like how Google has the recently viewed sites at the very first opening of the browser, which I think is very helpful if you don’t have an existing home page.  Again, it reminds me of a plugin that I have for FF.

I don’t like how I have to hold down the “back” button to get the history of the sites I have browsed.  FF and IE both have that dropdown arrow that lists my visited sites, which I can just click instead of having to hold a button.  I think from a user standpoint it makes you work harder for what you want to do versus providing the user as much ammo as possible to do little work in order to be more productive.

Downloading files can also be somewhat mundane with Chrome.  Chrome’s download functionality, while it does seem seemless when downloading individual files, does not seem to be user-friendly when it comes to collecting all the downloaded files simultaneously.  You have to open up each download file window or double-click on that file within the download file window to be able to access that specific file.  FF has a download window which stores all downloaded files and items for you, which provides all downloaded files in one location versus multiple windows.  I have not yet tried downloading multiple files within multiple tabs to find out if I have to click on each individual tabs to get to the download file window, but that is something I would definitely investigate.

I don’t believe that Chrome will take over IE or FF anytime soon, but give it a few more years and I can see that there may be some shift in the browser market share.

I’ve been playing around with Google’s Chrome browser for a while, and have had some cool things that I liked and others that I’m still getting used to.  Nevertheless, here are my two cents on Chrome.

The Positives

First off, it seems very fast and responsive when conducting searches, and even saw some very tight functions on display responses when conducting these searches.  Automation on meta tag descriptions and keywords were, in my opinion, faster than Mozilla’s Firefox and IE 6 and 7 (I have not yet tested IE8, at least on the laptop I’m using LOL).

Second, the simplicity of the design felt like I never left Google; rather, it showed that the design’s “simple” features did not present itself to be the forefront representative of its browser capabilities, but rather accentuated the “speak softly but carry a big stick” mentality.

Third, I was surprised that it was able to upload most of my Firefox bookmarks on my laptop, and I was hoping to see Google being able to upload my Foxmarks account information based on the FF bookmarks.  While it was a good thing, sadly enough, there were limitations to the upload process and the final results yielded so-so marks.

The Negatives

In light of this event, to which Google is now supposedly trying to take over Microsoft’s browser market share, I played around Facebook with some good ol’ fashioned MobWars and found some interesting issues that came along while playing it.

I encountered errors after errors on attacking other mobs, and ultimately, I would have to use the back button or my backspace button to go back to the main MobWars home page.  I’ve seldom had this issue before, and it was not as often nor as frequent.  Other buttons to vamp up my mob were stalled with error messages and load time, which I felt like it was more of the server-side issues and not necessarily Chrome’s servers to begin with.  So I left that application to the home page and checked out some new pics, and it didn’t take long for my Facebook app to go haywire, stalling every other pic and sending me back to the home page.  Some of the notifications I have received were also hard to open, when it was working at a fairly normal rate in Firefox, which is usually fast.

My Yahoo email address was also screwy in performance when accessed through Chrome.  Yes, how ironic that Yahoo email is going to crash in a Google app LOL, yet mine hardly crashes at all.  If anything, it’s my hotmail account that kills me.

I also heard of other people who have used this open source browser, and found issues with JavaScript and Captchas.  And as I am writing to you at midnight, I am still thinking whether or not I should stay up a little more to see if any of my Google-based apps are having issues in Chrome.  But, since I have been sleeping at 2 every morning for the past couple of weeks, I think writing about testing other apps will be for another day.