Archive for the ‘Events’ Category
Aug
13
This is my third post in a series on how to do a good, and effective blog. Much of this series will be focusing on the SEO aspects of blogging. Obviously there are many other reasons than SEO to blog. Rather that reiterate them in each step in the series, please feel free to take a look at:
How to do a Good blog Step 1
which touches on several reasons to blog, and also focuses on choice of the domain name for your blog.
For this post however, the issue is: Links.
This may come as a shock to some people, but no matter how good, or how pretty, or how relevant your blogs is, it might no become successful. There are some very few people who grow their readership organically enough to get the momentum to every really get any good rankings on the search engines. Most blogs have to “play the game” a bit in order to get a jump start and get readership and rankings.
The biggest way to get rankings on the search engines, more so than anything else we have discussed in this series, is inbound links. That is to say, websites out there linking to you. We’ll look a bit at the relevance and value of various links in a moment.
But before we go into inbound links, I want to touch briefly on “internal links”, and outbound links. Internal, or inner links are links from one page on your blog to another page on your blog. Outbound links are links from your blog to somewhere else on the Internet. In the case of both of these, the most important thing is that if the text that someone clicks is “click here”, you should be slapped (okay, maybe you didn’t know better, but a slap can help wake you up and make you alert for this next part, so go ahead anyway.)
When you link to another post on your blog, or to another site on the Internet, you should use descriptive text, just as we did in the article “How to do a good blog Step 2: URL structure” when deciding what to use as the subject line of our posts. If you look at the two links in this article, they are descriptive of the content that they are sending you to, rather than stating:
To Read Step 2 of good blog Creation, click here.
Don’t be afraid to link to your own content (as we have done in this article), in fact do it often… it earns you Google juice. Use this same link text logic when linking to other sites, wiki articles, pictures, or YouTube videos.
But now comes the harder part: inbound links. How do you get people to link to your content? Well for starters, realize that you are one of those “people”. Put links to you blog in all of the social media platforms you use. Have a link in facebook, twitter, linked in, and any others.
As we go over this, I want to point out in a little more detail what I mean: Have a look at the previous paragraph. It points to my twitter, linked in, and facebook pages. This has created inbound links to those pages. As such, it has made those pages more credible in Google’s eyes. Due to that, anything I point to from those pages gets even more credit. Additionally, google looks at those links in this article, and believes that due to the fact that I have links out to sites using the words “facebook” “twitter” and “linked in”, that my blog must be about those subjects (among other things.) As such, I am now more likely to show up for searches if someone is looking for how to use those social media tools in conjunction wit their blogs. Pretty cool, huh? It all becomes very synergistic… one things feeds another, which feeds another.
The next step on your quest for inbound links: create other pages. Squidoo and Hubpages are great places to do this.
Next?
Stop being upset about those you think you are competing against. One of the cool things about blogs is that those who you perceive as competition can actually become link sources, as well as lead flow for you. Go find out who the top blogs are on the subject you are writing about. Chime in on the threads. Comment intelligently. This creates links back to your site. It also makes people who might not have found you otherwise think, “Wow… this person is really sharp on this subject. I need to go see who they are.”
Next on the list: Directories. Go find any directories you can and submit yourself to them.
Another tool I will mention, but I will say proceed with caution, is shotgun link building campaigns. All of the items we have mentioned above are link building strategies. Others that are very effective if carefully managed are asking bloggers to review your product. Another, very effective method is the shotgun link build. This consists of having someone go submit you to literally hundreds of sites, directories, etc. This links provide value. But only as part of an overall link building strategy. If all of your links are “garbage” links from such a campaign, it can actually hurt you. If managed closely however, and enhanced with high value links, this is a very effective method.
Posted in Events
Jul
30
This is my second post in a series on how to do a good, and effective blog. Much of this series will be focusing on the SEO aspects of blogging. Obviously there are many other reasons than SEO to blog. Rather that reiterate them in each step in the series, please feel free to take a look at:
How to do a Good blog Step 1
which touches on several reasons to blog, and also focuses on choice of the domain name for your blog.
In this post I want to focus on what is perhaps the most common problem that I see companies make on their blogs, and even on their websites in general: URL structure.
Let me make the point on URL structure in this way: Have a look at the URL below, and tell me what this article is likely about:
http://mycompany.com/?p=123
Have no idea? Neither does anyone else. Neither does Google.
How about this one:
http://www.myblog.com/recipes/?p=123
Well, it’s probably some sort of recipe. But I seldom Google for “recipe.” I would be much more likely to Google “Desert recipes”, or even more likely “Pecan pie recipe.”
So why do so many people keep this level of information from one of the most powerful SEO drivers on their site: the URL? If you’re running a blog this is pretty easy to fix. On wordpress specifically click on “Settings”, then “Permalinks.” This will open up a screen that allows you to change you URL structure.
Here’s a hint for you: The “Default” setting is the worst one. I would choose one of the settings that have “sample-post” in them. This alone should help your “Google Juice” a ton.
This step makes it so that the subject of your post is now par of the URL. But that’s just one step. Now you must be sure to use phrases that people use to search for your product or services in your subjects. Don’t have a subject like “Recipe of the day for Thursday”, when it is so much better to say “Amazing pecan pie recipe.”
All of this also holds true in your website. If you have URLs that remain the same as the site is navigated, or show meaningless variables and numbers, then you are holding yourself back.
One thing I have commonly seen is companies who work with an agency, using that agency’s CMS, and are told that URL structure is meaningless. I am stunned at how much I encounter this. I cannot say this strongly enough: If your agency is telling you that URL structure is not important, they are knowingly lying to you. That may seem very harsh to say, but it is shocking how common of a problem this still is.
So that’s it for now. Step 2 of how to do a good blog. Step 3 hopefully sometime next week.
Posted in Events
Jul
13
There are a lot of reasons to have a blog.
A blog can make your large business, or individuals in your business seem more personal… more “real”, and people like to do business wit people they feel they know.
A blog can drive communication and feedback (though this happens less often that a lot of bloggers might have you believe.)
A blog can be a really easy way to get your small business on the web. It can make you seem bigger.
It can be a spot to speak your mind on your hobbies, interests or gripes.
More often than not however, people tend to use a blog to drive more traffic. This might happen due to a combination of the reasons stated above. But it also likely includes a plan for SEO.
Blogs are very powerful for SEO for a couple of key reasons. They first reason is that blog content is very conversational in tone. It uses a lot of words you may never use in your marketing web site. This provides for a “Long Tail.”
Here’s the concept of the Long Tail:
Imagine you sell a diet pills that increases energy.
You make a web site that ways “More energy” “Lose weight”, and thins like that. You start to get traffic for these phrases (but a LOT of people are competing for them.)
Then you start to blog about successful customers. You write about “Susan”, who was heavy, and highly depressed. You write about how the product changed her life. Guess what happens… A few months later you are shocked to find that 7% of the traffic to your site is people coming in because they were looking for ways to deal with “depression.”
The Long tail means that if you can get enough of these types of people for phrases like “depression”, or other similar topics, that that traffic can actually combine, and begin to eclipse the traffic for “weight loss.”
But the Long Tail is only one aspect of SEO. Blogs are great for SEO for lots of other reasons. Over the next several days I am going to be writing several of these reasons, and steps to do them right. But today we start with step 1: Your Domain Name.
Domain names:
Unless you are a huge brand like Nike or Starbucks, people are probably not searching for your comapny name. They are likely searcing for the product or service you provide (sports shoes, or coffee.)
One of the most important pieces of good SEO is your domain name. You need to ask yourself when you start our blog, “Will people search for my company, or my product or service?” Also, what will the customer really be searching for? Sometimes we choose very generic phrases like “Fitness Gym”, when a customer will never find what they want if the look for that… they will need to look for “Utah Fitness Gym”, or “Orem Fitness Gym.”
Once you decide what people will likely look for, seriously consider having your blog use that domain name, rather than your company name. UtahFitnessGymBlog.com will rank much better than blog.Fitnesscorp.com for a search for “Utah Fitness Gym.”
Also, think about how you and others search when deciding what you want to rank well for. Most people type a search in to google and get too many results. So they refine the search by adding a word or two. Then a bit more, and a bit more. It’s on that 3-5th search that ou have narrowed things enough to be useful. So who is your target customer, and what do they look for on that third, fourth, or fifth search?
Get a domain name that fits with that.
Posted in Events
Dec
11
The Utah Social Media Developers Garage will be tonight, December 11, at 7pm at our office in Draper, Utah. Jesse Stay has lined up Jeff Barr, evangelist for Amazon Web Services, who will speak on how Amazon AWS is being used in Social environments. After Jeff’s talk, there will be a round-table discussion with topics such as Google’s OpenSocial, Facebook, and other Social Media.
We would like to thank Jesse and his consulting company SNAPlic8 for putting this event together, and Bungee Labs for providing the food.
We hope to see you there!
Posted in Company News, Events
Oct
18
Okay, so you’re going to have to forgive me for tooting my own horn here, but I am awfully excited. As many of you who know me well know, although we are increasingly involved in the community here in Utah, we also are extremely active in Nevada as well. So the fact that yesterday the Technology Business Alliance of Nevada announced Twelve Horses as the “2007 Technology Company of the Year” had me pretty jazzed.
Other exciting news: We are moving at the end of this month out to Draper. Our office size space will be roughly doubling, which should be nice. We’ll be sure to have you all out for an “office warming” party.
Posted in Events
Aug
7
There has been a titanic amount of buzz around Facebook and it’s new API. Some people love it, others pshaw it; but one thing is true… everyone is watching what becomes of it.
Phil Burns is hosting Utah Facebook Developers Garage, and we here at Twelve Horses are exited to be Sponsors for this upcoming event!
The location will be Noah’s, 644 N. 2000 W. Lindon, on Thursday, Aug 9th at 6:00 pm. Here’s a map to the location.
From Phil:
If you’re interested in meeting with other Utah people interested in exploring programming and business opportunities in Facebook,
please join our group on Facebook. Also, if you’re planning on coming to this Thursday’s meeting, please
RSVP on Facebook here.
The only admission for Thursday is to bring a bag of snacks or soda for the open-food table for all to share. Hope to see you there!
Posted in Events
Jul
26
I Just HAD to pass along this tidbit from the main Twelve Horses Blog:
This hilarious parody, entitled “The Couple”, pokes fun at the disconnect that currently exists between traditional advertising and today’s consumers.
There is definitely a need for change within the industry as advertisers continue to view their audience as a statistic or dollar opportunity instead of forging meaningful relationships that will benefit all those involved.
“You’re saying you love me but you’re not behaving like you love me. It’s not genuine.”
The world needs more genuine advertising.
Posted in Events
Jul
19
So I just got back from vacation in Norway for two weeks (wonderful experience BTW), and was completely slammed with stuff that needed to be done. Once I spent a week mowing through the backlog, I am now three weeks out from when I last wrote anything for this blog. It got me to thinking…
Have you ever noticed that the things that are never really a fire, never really urgent, seem to be the ones that sneak up later and bite you in the butt? Things like exercise, spending time with you kids, telling your spouse how much they mean to you.
I think marketing can often fall into this same trap. Sure, you market when you have a new product release, or some new flashy doodad that you want to make sure everyone knows about. But if you have not laid a consistent groundwork, you can find yourself stepping out onto your balcony to cry your exciting news out to…
no one… no one is there, because no one knows or cares who you are.
Posted in Events
Jun
27
As I’m sure you can tell from my blog, I tend to think a fair amount about communicating. But really, communication is a means to an end, and then end is: relationships. I really think that our relationships are what ground us.
In this vein, a dear friend of mine is taking an opportunity at another company at the end of this week. Though I’m very sad for myself, I wish him this best of luck, and know that it will be a wonderful growing experience for him.
It has really made me reflect back however, on situations like this. Wherever I have worked, there have always been times when either through my moving on, or through other changes, that I have had to part ways with talented people. Almost always however, this has brought new color, and new life to the friendship. As they and I both continue to learn more, we continue to interact, and bring even broader insight to each other.
There have also been many situations like this with customer. I cannot tell you how many times we have panicked to find out that a key point of contact is leaving one of our customers. There is often some initial pain, as new people have filled those roles, and have either needed to be brought up to speed, or sometimes have initially questioned the relationship between the two companies (it seems that many people like to be seen as decisive, and change making as soon as they are put into a position.) But fast forward a year down the road, and almost without fail we have found ourselves working very closely and happily with these new people, and converting them from skeptics to advocates. Additionally, we very often find that the previous advocate who has moved on is calling us from a new capacity in their new employer, and wanting to leverage us again.
It seems like so much of business is this way. It is so often the biggest challenges that truly make us rise to the occasion.
Never burn a bridge, and don’t despair… there is no such thing as an end… just changes and new beginnings.
The forest that never suffers fire becomes weak and old.  Capitalize on the change.
Posted in Events
Jun
6
I was listening to NPR on my way home last night, and they were talking about the new logo that had been chosen for the upcoming Olympics. Apparently there is something of an uproar about it. It got me thinking a bit about marketing.
It seems that way too often marketing can be vanilla… attempt to appeal to everyone, or at least not alienate anyone, and then win customers through simple repetition. For those who have an unlimited marketing budget that may be fine. But for those who need to get results with every dollar, repetition of mediocre messaging may not be an option.
The hardest part then, is making the right decision, and coming to grips with who you are not going to appeal to. It’s like the eagle… once it hones in on a rabbit, it does not lament the other rabbit, which it has chosen not to chase. Make sure you are willing, and able to make similar choices with your marketing. If you choose a “hip” new logo and campaign, make sure that the “hip” market you are after is big enough, and make sure you are comfortable with the “non-hip” market that you now might appeal less to. Choose your target wisely, do your homework, and then make part of the discussions around the campaign be identifying who might react poorly, and make sure everyone is on board with the choice.
Posted in Events, Marketing
