Seth Godin’s Ranking of 952 Web 2.0 Sites

Seth Godin commissioned a massive list of nearly 1000 Web 2.0 sites with live ranking data of popularity and traffic. The list is an amazing resource for blog marketers looking for new sites to interact with based on the traffic those sites receive.

Check out Seth Godin’s Web 2.0 Traffic Watch List and see if you don’t find scores of sites you’ve yet to explore for traffic and link building efforts.

The list also shows who has dropped a lot in the last 6 months in traffic, which should help you assess whether your involvement in those sites for viral marketing is still worth the trouble.

Tags: blog marketing, seth godin, social marketing, web 2.0 traffic

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Digg Study Highlights Collective Attention Dynamics

Eric Kintz of HP Labs reports a study of 1 million Digg users to explore the dynamic between “novelty” and “popularity” of stories posted to Digg.

In their full report “Novelty and Collective Attention” by Fang Wu and Bernardo A. Huberman, Information Dynamics Laboratory, HP Labs (pdf) I found some interesting data on the kinds of stories that really “kick” at Digg.

“The subject of collective attention is central to an information age where millions of people are inundated with daily messages. It is thus of interest to understand how attention to novel items propagates and eventually fades among large populations.”   -”Novelty and Collective Attention” Fang Wu and Bernardo A. Huberman, Information Dynamics Laboratory, HP Labs

Why Care About Collective Attention Dynamics?

“Collective attention” is something every blog marketer should be keenly interested in.  By default, we are working in the social medium of the web to bring attention to our content, products and services (or simply our advertisers).  But ask your average blogger what they know about the social scene as it pertains to “collective attention dynamics” and viral marketing and you are likely to be met with a blank stare.

Knowing how the average user of a social site deals with information they are bombarded with on a daily basis can only help content providers create better, more targeted, more “on the radar” pieces that succeed more often in the social news world.

What’s the definition of success in this case?

Lots of votes.  Lots of “pick ups” resulting in links from other sites talking about your story.  And some resulting improvement in overall search engine rankings or specific, significant ranking of the story itself.

The success or failure of a viral marketing campaign either depends on luck (not the ideal) or intel.  Here you get to peek at some real intel from a professional study of the dynamics of social networks which can only help boost your viral marketing efforts as you apply what you learn to your upcoming posts.

Tags: collective attention, digg study, hp labs, social network study, viral marketing

Link Building News

Link building is going through some changes.  Here’s the latest news from the streets…

• “What’s a nice girl like you doing with links like that?” - Debra O. Mastaler writes some insightful link building tips in light of the recent Google pagerank updates and the obvious slapdowns of some very big, popular sites.  She writes about some social marketing stuff we have already discussed here as early as last summer, but her ideas on alternative traffic and linking sources are something to pay attention to in your marketing for sure.
• Aaron Wall’s latest in WebProNews - “Using Google Date Based Filters to Detect Link Building…”
• WebmasterWorld forum members discuss link building and the new rules of SEO.
• Link Analysis Beyond Search Rank - Eric Ward’s article helps with link analysis and valuing links beyond search engine optimization.

Building with Trackbacks

A link building tactic that is often overlooked is using PRWeb.com press release trackback feature.   I wrote a piece on this technique and it is worth a read if you are not periodically scanning PRWeb for trackback-worthy content.

The key is to start branching out and seeking new traffic venues with your link building campaign.   I have always said that one should never rely completely on search engine traffic.  With the recent (and constant) changes Google is implementing, this is more true today than ever before.

Tags: google, link building, pagerank, sem, seo

Pagerank Update Data from Andy Beard

Andy Beard has been tracking some interesting pagerank data on several popular sites. His findings are below. There seem to have been a few pagerank updates close together dealing blows to several sites and confusing pagerankings across different Google datacenters.

For what it’s worth, my blog went back to a PR 5 and my main domain is still at a PR 4. Hey, I’ll take whatever I can get. Traffic and rankings all remain the same for me across the board, so for me, PR going up a notch didn’t do a darn thing. Well, if I want to sell advertising, even with this post claiming no more traffic than before, I’d still get advertisers because of their PR lust.

I’d rather make much more selling my own products anyway. In case you think Google is evil, note that I found them slapping themselves by dropping YouTube.com down to a PR 3!

Here is what Andy found:

Domain	Starting PR	First PR Update	Second PR Update	Today’s PR
www.autoblog.com	6	6	4	4 or 6
www.engadget.com	7	7	5	5 or 7
www.problogger.net	6	6	4	6
www.copyblogger.com	6	6	4	6 or 7
www.joystiq.com	6	6	4	4 or 6
www.tuaw.com	6	6	4	4 or 6
www.searchengineguide.com	7	6	4	4 or 5
www.searchenginejournal.com	7	7	4	4 or 6
www.johnchow.com	6	5	4	4 or 5
www.quickonlinetips.com	6	6	3	3 or 5
www.seroundtable.com	7	7	4	4 or 6
weblogtoolscollection.com	6	6	4	4 or 6
andybeard.eu	5	4	3	3 4 or 5
www.blogherald.com	6	6	4	4 or 6
www.Forbes.com	7	7	5	4 5 or 6
www.sfgate.com	7	7	5	5 or 7
www.washingtonpost.com	7	7	5	5 or 7
www.technosailor.com	6	6	3	3 or 5
www.9rules.com	8	8	5	4 5 or 6
blog.nafurai.com	3	3	2	1 or 2
courtneytuttle.com	3	2	1	1 2 3 or 4
www.SunTimes.com	7	7	5	5 or 7
TheGadgetBlog.com	5	5	3	3 or 5
Space.com/	7	7	5	5 7 or 8
OneMansBlog.com	6	6	4	5 4 or 6
entrepreneurs-journey.com	6	5	3	3 or 5
The following are site updates which were not hit by a penalty previously for comparison purposes
www.hobo-web.co.uk	7	7	7	5
www.doshdosh.com	4	4	4	6
www.searchengineland.com	7	7	7	7
www.seomoz.org/blog	5	5	5	6
www.connectedinternet.co.uk	6	6	6	3 or 5
More news and updates available from source Andy Beard - Niche Marketing

Tags: andy beard, goog, google, google pagerank, pagerank update

Google Slaps Itself for Buying Links…

Google buys a high PR site, YouTube.com, and then the pagerank plummets to a 3. Some would say Google is being “not evil” and including themselves in their filtering system of weeding out link buyers.

It might be because I turned Google in for link buying in their Webmaster Tools area where they allow us to snitch on each other. Whatever the case may be, It shows even Google isn’t above its own filtering and sniffing system.

(snapshot taken 12:55 a.m. eastern, 10/28)

Just goes to show that even Google doesn’t care as much about Pagerank anymore, lol.

Tags: google slap, google slaps self, linking penalty, pagerank, youtube pagerank

Social News Sites Directory

The Big List of Social New Sites and Digg-Like Sites by Category

All the sites below are digg-like social news sites where you can post your latest blog stories to have them voted on and read by your target market. Post to the sites relevant to your topic range and skip the rest!

BUSINESS MARKETING & FINANCIAL

• Internet Marketing News
• Sphinn
  
• PlugIM
• SeoYak
• SearchEnginePress
• Tagne.ws
• MarkTD
• Business-Planet.net
• BIZZbites
• 2CentsNews
• Ampminsure
• Digstock
• FeedtheBull
• Value Investing News
• RealEstateVoices

ENTERTAINMENT, HEALTH, HOBBIES & PETS

• Autospies
• MotorPulse
• CruisinAltitude
• Bloodee
• Boxxet
• Crankk
• Catster
• Dogster
• Pikapet
• picli
• CC Hits
• iJigg.com
• DealComet
• Dealspl.us
• AgentB
• Medical-Articles.net
• DissectMedicine
• Scoreguru
• SportsBlink
• EuroGoalNews
• Quadriot
• FWDiton
• DadDaily
• WebMomsPlace
• Bringr
• Pixelmo
• Jump it!
• Tribalwar
• MOG (milions of games)

GENERAL NEWS, CURRENT EVENTS
& PODCASTING

• Questionville
• Sperocite
• Riffs
• The Best Stuff In The World
• Shoutwire
• Reddit
• all.reddit.com
• Propeller
• OOZM
• Newsvine

-Don’t bother!

• Folkd
• LinkFilter
• NewsCloud
• BlogReporter.biz
• Daytipper
• iTalkNews
• BlueDot
• Wikio
• Wobblog
• Blogg-buzz
• Duggtrends.com
• Contentpop
• BARKS=BookmARKS
• HypeDiss
• Web Feeds
• SlideShare
• Tendango
• Digalist
• PodcastAlley
• Care2Network
• Hugg
• Citizenbay
• HostileCrowd
• Fuddle-Duddle
• Canadaka
• Chinamemes
• muti
• Astigg
• Kick.ie

COMPUTER, ELECTRONICS
& TECHNOLOGY

• Digg
• newsgarbage
• Techtagg
• Betamarker.com
• Bytemycode.com
• Dzone
• I use This
• DotNetKicks
• DevBump
• Protolize

EDUCATION,
LAW & BOOKS

• Edtags.org
• ProProfs
• qoolsqool
• Bookrevyoo
• Wordsy
• BinaryLaw
• LawFavorites

VIDEO

• Kyte.tv
• Uvouch.com
• UmmYeah
• LiveVideo
• Flurl

Tags: blog marketing, digg like sites, social marketing, social news sites

7 Valuable Blogging Tips and Resources Lists

After researching, compiling, and posting resource lists for everything online marketers could possibly need to get more traffic, the posts tend to get lost in the blog ether.

That’s when it’s good to dig up all the best blogging and internet marketing resources lists I’ve compiled and link them into one nice, tidy little list of lists.

Why Lists?

People love lists because someone has gone to the trouble of doing some sort of research and ranking system to presumably produce the top resources for a particular need. Some lists are good. Some are bad. Some are just spam. But we all love a good list and love to talk about the last good list of great places we found on so and so’s site.

It’s no small coincidence that the biggest list on earth (Google) is also one of the most powerful and popular sites on the web.

Here are some of my lists. Tune in soon for a list of all Digg-like social news sites organized by category coming this week.

• The Top 50 Video Sharing Sites
• The Web’s Shortest List: Pagerank 10 Sites
• List of Social Bookmarking Sites
• List of Internet Marketing Forums
• Top 10 Link Building Sites
• 7 Crucial Wordpress Hacks (Video tutorials)
• Article Directory List

The Magic of Lists is another post I did long ago which might be useful if you are still not convinced that a good list is worth putting together for the traffic and links it can bring.

Tags: article directory, marketing forums, resource list, social marketing directory

Google SiteLinks

Google has a new program out to display “Sitelinks” under your domain. 

This gives a pretty hefty boost to your “above the fold” rankings.  As you can see above, I have almost all the rankings and links above the fold in my particular browser setup.  I run a lot of toolbars, so others might see a couple more rankings that aren’t mine, but owning the top real estate above the fold, or the majority, is a big deal.

Aaron Wall talks more in depth about Google Sitelinks and the implications for generic domain names to prosper with this Google development.

Tags: google site links, google sitelinks

Interesting Sites and A Wordpress Plugin

His link is on every new Wordpress installation, yet how many people bother to check out Alex King’s site on a regular basis? (Well, a lot, but not many marketers I am guessing, unless they are there to pick up one of his plugins.)

For instance, Redmonk has a good post about younger folks and RSS.

How did I find Redmonk?

By checking out Alex’s cool Wordpress plugin “Link Harvest.” It produces a page (Alex’s link page in action) on your Wordpress blog that is a compilation of your most linked linked-to sites. i.e. - a link page should be about the people and sites you really like right? Well Link Harvest lets you show a valuable links page instead of a stupid blog roll which may or may not be what you consider your “most favorite” sites if you catch my drift.

There is a lot of good stuff on that link list, which proves my point. If you count who should be on your link page by the number of times you have linked to them over time, your list will turn out far different than your “link exchange” list.

Most importantly, it becomes a valuable thing rather than a throw away directory of “what’s wrong with the internet.”

Tags: alex king, redmonk, wordpress plugins

$10,000 Contest For Lead Generation Software

Want to have some fun generating profitable leads with some neat new software?

Dr. Mike and Howie Schwartz are holding a contest with a cash prize of $10,000.00 just for taking a look at their new lead generation software called “Lead Supreme.”

From Dr. Mike:  “Howie and I are giving you full access to our amazingly profitable lead generation software for 10 days, and we’re going to personally show you how to use it to generate a flood of leads.”

To enter the contest and learn more about generating a huge amount of leads for your business, click here.

Tags: getting leads, lead supreme, marketing contest

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