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rssHugger Promises More Links, More Feed Subscribers

Here’s a new blog marketing and RSS promotion site to check out: rssHugger.com

What It Is

rssHugger is a new website developed to help bloggers promote their blogs, and to help visitors discover new blogs that write about subjects that the readers are interested in. Through the power of the internet and viral marketing, rssHugger looks to bring blog writers and blog readers closer together.

You get a free account for 10 years (like the web is going to be anything like it is now in 10 years, lol) for writing a post about it. Hence, this post.

Since I’ve just signed up, this isn’t a review. Just a new site alert. I will report back with my findings once I have had time to check it out thoroughly.

Tags: blog marketing, blog promotion, rsshugger

Nostradamus Was Right: Google Beginning to Test Voting System

On a public training webinar over a year ago I stated that Google would start experimenting with and eventually implement a user voting system to help them rank sites. Something like a Digg button to thumb up/down sites that would give Google qualitative data to go with their mathematical data used to rank sites.

TechCrunch and Search Engine Journal report today that the first part of my prediction has begun. And now everyone is claiming they saw it coming, lol.

Right now you can only use this feature in Google Labs implementation on personal search. You can re-order results and bump results up and down with an arrow button. You can even entirely delete a site with an “X” button.

The second part of my prediction, that Google will eventually implement a voting system that will go beyond their current measurement of bounce rates by leaps and bounds, is yet to be realized.

But I will stick to my guns and say that people will have a say in the SERPs in some fashion in the future. Algorithms can be manipulated. So can social voting networks. But in order to get qualitative feedback on the value of a page you simply must include the surfer in the equation.

Algorithms cannot determine quality and value, much as the eggheads would like it to be true. People cannot be tricked into thinking something is good or valuable when it is not. That’s why, despite the spamming problems at Digg and elsewhere, the data stays pretty clean and the good content rises to the top.

Gaming The System

In the discussion on this topic in the coming weeks you are going to find hundreds of comments about this kind of system being abused or “gamed.” Let that commentary fall on deaf ears. The system is already being gamed Einstein. By a limiting algorithmic ranking of sites that excludes qualitative feedback from real people who are the only way to determine value, usefulness, and importance of the information they find in the SERPs.

People are going to try to game anything and everything. It’s a fact of life on the web. As is change. Hackers and unethical competitors are not reason enough to halt the evolution of the web. We’d be nowhere today if we were paralyzed at the thought of someone gaming our new ideas and systems.

I say shake it up and bring on a global implementation of qualitative human input for better search results!

Tags: google voting system, search engine news

Digg Completely Explained

I found a wonderful Digg algorithm article tonight from Search Engine Land.  If you’ve ever wanted to know what makes Digg tick and how people get to the front page, you should check out this post.

Hint:  If you think the number of friends you have or an absolute number of Diggs is what it takes to get on the front page, you’re wrong and you need to read about the Digg algorithm.

Yeah, I was just as surprised as you.  Digg has a serious algorithm!

But wait, there’s more!  For an additional $0.00 you also get the slicer, dicer, mashup of Digg and other buzz tactics from Dean Hunt!

Once you’ve read post above, come back here and download a completely free guide to Digg and Buzz marketing from Dean Hunt.  Dean is a master Digg front pager and he actually shows you exactly how he’s landed on the front page multiple times without doing a single scammy thing.  He actually earns it like everyone else!

I guarantee you that you’ve paid for reports that were nowhere near as good and informative as this one.

No affiliate link - this is a straight download.  It’s that good.  Nothing to buy.

Download Dean Hunt’s Web Traffic Orgasm 

Tags: dean hunt, digg algorithm, digg front page, search engine land, web traffic orgasm

Attention Age Doctrine by Rich Schefren

If you were around when the “manifesto” was being lauded from marketing elites to mom and pop site owners, you know what it’s like when Rich Schefren gets fired up and starts writing.

Today he made available for free download the Attention Age Doctrine Part 2 and we are set to hear about this one well into 2008.

Rich is a highly respected marketer (he’s buddies with none other than Jay Abraham) with a view of the internet marketing-scape few others have. He has the ability to help marketers like Mike Filsaime go from making a mere $15,000.00 per month with their business to well over $150,000.00 per month.

He’s done some amazing things for thousands of marketers and he’s back to help you take it up another notch.

In Attention Age 2 he explains “Thought Leadership” and how to use it to become the undisputed authority in your niche. You know how I like that topic!

After reading an advance copy of the Doctrine, I can back up Rich’s claim that:

“you will pull ahead of your competitors, position your business for invulnerability, pre-eminence, and market domination – and you’ll make it look easy” -Rich Schefren

That is, IF you apply what you learn in this free resource. Take a moment and grab this report. And don’t forget who turned you on to a better 2008!

Tags: attention age, attention age doctrine, rich schefren

The Power of Video Syndication

My buddy Rick Butts did a video for Authority Site Center and used Traffic Geyser to syndicate it all over the freakin’ world. Thanks Rick! Here’s the video…

That’s a nice thing to have syndicated all over the major video sites. Traffic Geyser is celebrating its 1 year anniversary on Wednesday as the web’s first and still the very best video syndication service out there. For one freakin’ dollar you can see what all the fuss is about and experience what it’s like to get all this video traffic everyone is talking about, once and for all.

Of course, if you aren’t an Authority Site Center member yet, that’s something to check off your list as well. That is, if you really want some serious traffic and a true authority site.

Tags: authority site center, blog marketing video, rick butts, traffic geyser

Can Copy And Content Commingle?

Guest Post By Michel Fortin

This Post Featured on Reuters

Last Sunday, a bunch of copywriters shot the breeze on the Nuts & Blogbolts talk radio show. At the end, Mike Sansone asked if we would individually respond on our blogs to this question:

“Writing for the visitor is more important than writing for the search engines. Can both requirements be met without sacrificing quality?”

Ryan Healy posted his answer on the subject. I agree with him, but only in part. This is not because I disagree with anything Ryan said, because he makes some great points. But because I think there are ways around it.

So my answer is both “yes” and “no.” Here’s why…

First off, I’m not a search engine optimization (SEO) expert by any stretch. However, I do know enough about SEO to know that it’s primarily based on three major factors:

Code, links, and content.

Code has to do with ensuring the content is presented in a way that makes it more appealing to the search engines. Simply, the code is optimized so that the search engines can find your content and read it more easily.

Why is this important? Because, in reality, your code not only helps search engines find and crawl your content, but also helps them present that content in a way that appeals to their users.

Links are links within your content, as well as links to your content — the latter being more important, of course. When people link to you, they are indirectly telling the search engines that your content is of value, and therefore of interest to their users.

Undeniably, this requires some skill, such as knowing how to write content that creates interest — and in a way that makes it interesting, too (which is still copywriting, by the way).

Content, which is third in this list, is the one on which the question behind this post really hinges. I think a better question to ask is, “Can you write content and copy at the same time?” Yes. But there are three ways of doing this in a way that doesn’t force one to sacrifice the quality of the other.

First, understand the difference between content and copy. Content informs. Copy invites. In other words, content educates its readers, while copy elicits a response from them, in some way.

So can you be both informative and response-driven? Absolutely. Now, there’s the rub: how do you blend the two?

I do believe that you can write content that’s appealing to both the search engines and its users. (And really, it’s all about the audience, isn’t it?) But to ensure that it’s generating a response at the same time does require some attention.

Personally, I don’t spend time on things like keyword optimization and density. I look at it this way: give what your users want, and you will naturally give what the search engines want.

The objective is to focus on your audience. Find out what they want and bring value to them. Because that, in effect, is why your website exists in the first place, whether it’s to educate or sell. (And it’s also what makes copywriting truly compelling in the first place, too.)

In terms of content alone, you can post a lot of it so that you naturally multiply your keyword density. You can focus on a particular niche. And you can also write content that’s buzzworthy, too.

Do either one of these, and you will naturally attract a lot of organic traffic as a natural byproduct, without much extra effort.

But if you want to maximize your content and make it response-driven at the same time, there are three ways to accomplish this:

1. Guiding
2. Funneling
3. “Newsifying”

Guiding
The content guides people into taking action, whether it’s directly or indirectly.

You can certainly turn your content into copy to a degree. In other words, you can use the content itself to elicit a certain response from your audience, or add copy to it to accomplish this. (Turning one into the other is what I call “newsifying,” and I will come back to it later on.)

Press releases, product reviews, and even articles can be both educational and promotional. But guiding can also be as simple as adding links or forms within the content, and even adding words or phrases that lead people to take a certain action.

Therefore, the copy may or may not be part of the content proper. It can be separate and distinct from the content, and it can either blend within the content or be placed in a sidenote.

However, in the case of a strictly long-copy salesletter, I agree that your aim is to elicit a response and not satiate the search engines. If you were to optimize your sales copy for the search engines, the quality of your copy may suffer at some point. As the saying goes, you can’t be all things to all people.

But this is where the next two options come into play.

Funneling
This is the process of using content to generate organic traffic, and siphoning that traffic to a copy-focused, response-driven page, site, or salesletter. It can be part of the same website, or it can be on another site altogether.

These content-only pages act like beacons or baits that attract people who are interested in the content first and foremost, and are then led to take action elsewhere. Unlike “guiding,” this step involves two separate and individual processes that are distinct from one and other.

Now, these may be concurrent or not. For example, you can funnel traffic from one to another, or through a multi-step process where one only occurs after the other has been completed.

For example, we see this in part with product launches that deliver content beforehand to increase exposure, create interest, and build lists of eager subscribers who are notified when the product and copy are officially launched.

But whether it’s concurrent or consecutive, when you really think about it you are still directing your visitors, are you not? So the content acts like copy, to some degree. It’s still calling for some kind of action, even if it’s to get people to read more.

Newsifying
This third step is where the two blend.

“Newsifying” is a term I’m coining to illustrate the process of turning copy into a newsworthy piece. Rather than adding copy to your content (as in “guiding,” above), you are adding content to your copy, or turning your copy into an informative, valuable, newsworthy piece in and of itself.

Even though the purpose is to elicit a response (most likely a sale), by making your copy educational you also make it palatable — and perhaps even more so, since you’re not overtly promotional.

In other words, it appears as a softer sell, where the content doesn’t appear as an outright promotional piece. But it’s not necessarily a “soft-sell” in all cases, too. You can newsify your copy and still be strong, hard-hitting, and benefit-rich.

In my report, The Death of The Salesletter, I talk about the increasing popularity in copy that’s newsworthy, intriguing, and informative, rather than copy that’s overtly hypey, aggressive, and mimicking every other salesletter out there.

Tests are showing that salesletters that provide valuable content in themselves are getting better results. These salesletters look less like salesletters and more like articles or editorials (think “advertorials”).

Here’s a forinstance: you sell an information product on how to reduce stress. So you create a free report on 16 tips for relieving migraines without drugs.

While the report talks about how to relieve headaches naturally, it connects with the effects of stress, and how eliminating or reducing that stress can help.

People will not only understand the real problem behind most headaches and become better educated on all the other effects caused by stress, but also understand the benefits of owning your product and ultimately buy it.

(Of course, I’ve just pulled this example out of thin air for illustration purposes only. I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV. But hopefully, you get the picture.)

Anyway, this is just one example. There are so many different ways of doing this.

In the above scenario, you are using content that logically fits into your product. But you can also pull one topic from the many covered in your product, offer content that teases your audience to want more, or provide content that’s separate from your product but proves it, supports it, or emphasizes any of its key benefits.

(These articles are salesletters in disguise, in other words.)

Nevertheless, the answer to the initial question about being able to write for both visitors and the search engines, without sacrificing quality, is to use one of the above three steps.

Remember, we don’t write for the search engines. Even when we do, we are still writing for the visitor. Search engines exist primarily to help people find information. So the sacrifice, in many cases, is caused not by writing for one or the other, but when we stray from our audience and focus on ourselves instead.

The more you focus on what people want and give it to them, the easier it will be to get the search engines AND your visitors to do what you want.

And in the end, it’s all copy.

About Michel Fortin…

Michel Fortin is a direct response copywriter, marketing strategy consultant, and instrumental in some of the most lucrative online businesses and wildly successful marketing campaigns to ever hit the web. For more articles like this one, please visit his blog and subscribe to his RSS feed.

Tags: content development, copywriting, michel fortin, writing content

Make Money and Drive Traffic Even Without A Website

There are a lot of ways to make money online these days that don’t even require you to own a website. Many social, web 2.0 sites do what is called “revenue sharing” where you create the content, they display the advertising, and you share what your content generates in revenue from the traffic it attracts.

It is a simple arrangement made even simpler due to the fact that you don’t have any hosting, programming, or other technical headaches that come with owning a site.

And you can drive your own traffic, above what the site itself drives to you from other members and direct traffic, with the same types of social sites.

Example: HubPages

There are HubPagers that have over 100 Hubs on all kinds of topics. HubPages allows you to quickly and easily set up a page on anything under the sun. Articles on child birth to cameras to the mating habits of African elephants if you want.

This content is displayed with advertising so that when it gets picked up in the search engines or linked to from other sites, you earn right along with HubPages.

The key to earning any decent amount of money here is to be prolific. Make tons of Hubs, but not only that, make them good. The only way to become a popular Hubber is to gain respect in the community of Hubbers. And there are some good Hubs on that network.

Take a look around and you’ll quickly see what it takes to be a serious Hubber. Then start creating your own Hubs and promote them with the same Web 2.0 strategies outlined in “Bending the Web” and “Authority Black Book” to drive serious traffic to them.

Example: Yuwie

Since you’re going to be social, you might as well make money doing it. That’s Yuwie’s stance, anyway. This site is much the same as other social communities except you make money doing very simple things like browsing profiles, commenting, blogging, and the like.

Their revenue sharing model doesn’t even require you to do something as easy as make a HubPage. Just belong to and use the site. Revenue is generated by ads, of course, and the money is spread among the community as a killer bribe for making Yuwie one of your social community staples, if not your main hangout.

I will be focusing on other money making social sites and revenue sharing models in the months to come.

Tags: hubpages, make money, make money online, revenue sharing sites, yuwie

Logo Size and White Space Affect ROI

Is Your Logo Too Small? Try a new logo cream designed to make your logo as large as your ego! Apply directly to your computer screen!

A very important factor in the pages you are sending all this traffic to is how big to make your logo. Additionally, how much white space is on your pages.

Some people will cram their logo into impossible-to-notice spots on their pages and completely lose their branding opportunity. Others have way too much white space and lose ROI.

It’s unbelievable how many people know about traditional conversion tools, yet have no clue what “website stardust” can do for CTR!

Watch this video and see what I mean…

Tags: advertising, branding, marketing, video, web design

New IM Social News Site

Edit: Without any warning, SwypeFile shut down. They are “rethinking their strategy” and have a note about it on their main page. It’s very odd when people do this. It doesn’t happen much, and they had a lot of people talking about them and linking. A lot of people would love to have that kind of linkage and wouldn’t ever consider just shutting down if it could be avoided. Weird.

—

Its called SwypeFile.com and its mission is to be the hottest destination for internet marketing news-heads and content providers online.

Rather than act as though it is a privilege to post content on their site, newer sites like SwypeFile work hard to attract writers to provide high quality content to them.

There are many ways to revenue share with SwypeFile, which is one in a new breed of social news sites that recognizes writers don’t stick around long to watch social news sites make tons of money off their work without even kicking back a link.

Will the new model work? Worked on me. I go where people appreciate the contribution I make to a network. And sharing the revenue I help generate for them is a good way to start a relationship.

Tags: internet marketing news, social marketing, social news sites, swypefile review

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