Online Marketing Blog

The truth is, not all businesses need to have a blog. Blogevangelists might have you believe otherwise, but there are always enthusiasts that make blanket endorsements for up and coming technologies.

The back and forth between blog pundits and critics reminds me of all the noise people used to make in the mid nineties about web sites. There were as many critics on the need for a web site then as there are about blogs now. Half of all SMBs still don’t have web sites today, but does anyone question the value of a web site?

Blogs are tools. People are keen to criticize things they don’t understand. Most people that blog don’t understand the potential uses of blogs and RSS, let alone blog critics.

Yahoo! Publisher’s Guide to RSS – Includes how to use RSS on Yahoo!, how to submit and promote your RSS feed on Yahoo. There’s a tip on how to track RSS feed subscribers and mention of the upcoming RSS Help Center.

I highly recommend the book on RSS by MarketingStudies.net called “Unleash the Publishing and Marketing Power of RSS” if you want to know more advanced RSS marketing information.

Bloglines CEO, Mark Fletcher, commented in the Business Week blog that they will be launching a better blog search engine this summer. When Bloglines was acquired by Ask Jeeves, a new blog search engine was one of the enhancements Findory
Feedster
PubSub
IceRocket
BlogPulse

I like various features offered by the current blog search engines, but I’m looking forward to what Ask/Bloglines will come up with.

Jeremy Zawodny posts on the Yahoo Search Blog that Yahoo is offering a $5,000 incentive to come up with innovative uses of the Y!Q search tool. It’s called the Y!Q Challenge.

Check out Yahoo News Tag Soup and other fun Yahoo hacks

During the Google Factory tour yesterday Marissa Mayer pitched a personalization option for the Google home page. A Google blog post suggests the new portal looking, customization feature was developed as a way to assembled the various features of Google in one place: Gmail, news, weather, etc.

This initial version offers links to various Google services as well as RSS feeds from several major news sites (BBC, the New York Times, Slashdot, Wired). Some nice features include drag and drop editing and dynamic sizing.

Mayer commented, “We’ve seen that there were users who wanted more on their home page… and this is a way to give them more access to their information. I feel this is different my MyYahoo!. The fact that some people may say it looks like it’s aimed at MyYahoo! was not the reason.”

Well I have to say this is pretty cool. Either Thursday or Friday this week the search engine optimization blog called, “Search Engine Smarts” for AllBusiness.com will go live. (thanks for that name idea Kristina)

I’ll be in very good company and I hope I can keep up my end of the bargain with useful, hands on and practical posts on search engine optimization.

AllBusiness.com has recently signed agreements to provide content resources for About.com (a division of The NY Times) as well as entered into a deal with Yahoo! as the major content provider for the Yahoo! Small Business Center.

Another deal has been struck to provide content for SFGate.com the fourth most trafficked news site on the web.

Google is making a download available today of it’s desktop search tool for companies called: “Google Desktop Search for the Enterprise”

Google Desktop Search for the Enterprise has additional features including a series of installation, distribution, management, and security features that can be implemented according the specific needs of an organization.

Other features include the ability to index e-mail messages from IBM’s Lotus Notes and integration with Google Search Appliance and Google Mini.

“Google will compete against established players such as X1 Technologies and Autonomy. It will also compete against Microsoft, who this week announced its intention to develop an enterprise desktop search tool, which should be available in beta form by the end of the year.” via PCWorld.com

The consumer version of Google Desktop Search was launched about 8 months ago.

I just received an email from the long dormant Google Friends group.

“We didn’t plan on having such a long hiatus from this newsletter, and for that we apologize. Aside from other projects we’ve worked on lately, we’ve revamped this newsletter. Each month from now on you’ll see an insider’s roundup of Google tips, insights into our products, plus stuff that inspires us.”

This discussion group was previously hosted with Yahoo Groups but moved last year. Now it’s hosted with Google Groups (beta). If you want to keep up to date with happenings at Google you can subscribe to Google Friends here.

Google Blog has announced their AdSense for Feeds (aff) program.

Best practices include:
Syndicate the full text of your articles.
Don’t include more than one ad unit per article.
Place the ad unit at the end of articles.
Include terms and conditions on the use of your feeds.

If you publish a feed with more than 100 subscribers, you can apply. I did.

Tag: Google AdSense

There is speculation that Google is making some ranking changes. Some claim that it’s nothing, while others are seeing big changes in their search engine placement. Over at Webmasterworld there is already a 10 page post talking about the movement.

Keep an eye on your rankings. There is talk that Google has re-categorized it’s own directory and that is what is causing all the movement. Robho claims that they’ve seen a loss in the number of pages indexed by Google and Zygoot has seen a spike in traffic from Google.

It’s too soon to say if it’s anything major, however there are spotty reports of odd behavior.

Yahoo today posted in their blog about Tag Soup du Jour From YSDN. It’s a creation from the Yahoo! Search Developer Network (YSDN). What this shows you is how popular a tag is. The more it’s being used, the bigger the font size. It’s a quick overview of the most popular news stories on Yahoo News currently. Unfortunately it just grabs tags from Yahoo news at the moment, however these tag maps are popping up all over the internet. I was hoping that this was a Yahoo creation as the main search engines have pretty much ignored tagging. I’m hoping that Yahoo or Google can create a better, more relevant, searching system with tags someday.

Recent surveys of companies involved in Search Engine Marketing (SEM) by Jupiter Research imply there are changes in store for client/SEM agencyrelationships. Gary Stein posts a very good article pointing out reasons why – along with suggestions for agencies on what they can do.

I think this can apply to SEO firms and clients as well, although the timeframe for an appropriate implementation for a SEO project is much longer for SEM. Setting clear expectations at the outset of a client/agency relationship is key for productive engagements.

However, clients often change direction anyway. The most often cited reason for change in the Jupiter study was that the agencies were not proactive enough and cost.