The search engine has made it clear that it does not like these low quality techniques. In fact, they have been saying the same thing in their Google Webmaster Guidelines since around 2002.

So what does Google want to see? It wants to see brands earning recognition for the good work that they do. It wants links to be a representation of a real world relationship or affiliation. They want quality and meaningful search. Here are a few ideas for sustainable methods of “like building”.

You Get What You Give

The truth is, genuine, honest links gained through your credibility are the hardest to achieve, but the most effective are those that are built as a by-product of increasing awareness of a brand.

Do you want to ask someone for a link with commercial intent? Think like a human, not an SEO. Why not do something nice for them first? You will have a chance to demonstrate your knowledge, show that you are a genuine person and you may even pick up a few opportunities along the way. If you help someone out they will be much more willing to do something for you in return.

Give a Presentation/Host a Workshop

This is an ideal opportunity to help others using nothing more than your time. Why not utilise your knowledge and experience to help those that may benefit from it. For example, are you a Project Management consultant? Why not offer to give tips at your next local chamber of commerce event? It shouldn’t take much time to prepare for and it gives you an opportunity to demonstrate your knowledge of the subject. Plus, you will be at the forefront of their minds when they come looking for a specialist like yourself.

Help Colleges and Universities

Educational establishments often feel disconnected to industry so are usually more than happy to receive help from ‘real life working professionals’. What can you offer them? Your career experience and tips for working in your chosen field. I recently gave a presentation to students at my old college and they just happened to write a blog post on the occasion and link to me. And we all know how much search engines value back links from educational domains.

Create a Student Guide

Students are ready and willing to consume and share content that help them with their studies. If you can share your experience and create something that is helpful you can earn links from very high places.

John Mayall, a UK Patent Attorney created a microsite on patent searching which contained expert advice and a list of links out to other relevant resources. This guide was picked up by Intellectual Property students at Southampton University and eventually passed on to their lecturers who dropped the link on to their resources page. This resulted in a relevant backlink from a trusted, academic resource and most certainly contributed to his business as a legal practitioner.

Donate to Charity

Charities are often considered in the same league as educational domains. Why donate to your chosen good cause? You will get a warm fuzzy feeling and they may even have a dedicated supporters’ page where they can link back to your organisation.

Doing nice things often results in recognition without even asking for it. Our very own Alex Faux recently ran the London marathon for a charity close to his heart, and the team here at Strategy fully backed him with his fundraising efforts. Alex managed to raise over £1,700 for Headway and was interviewed on the local radio. Good karma is a great thing.

Sponsor an Event

Sponsoring a non-profit event within your circles can generate some great exposure and potentially some relevant links. For example, I recently attended the Bath Content Strategy Meetup which would not have been possible without the sponsorship of Gather Content the creators of a content planning tool for Web Teams. Not only does this put their product in front of the people that might use it, it has resulted in a link from Eventbrite and oh… look at that, another one from us too!

Karma is a Metric

So there you have it. 5 ways to deserve recognition and earn some back links.

Now if SEOs could stop spending so much time reverse engineering the latest Google algorithm and focus on earning recognition, they will build ‘links’ to a site but more importantly ‘likes’ to a brand.

Now what is your proudest ever ‘like building’ achievement? Please let us know in the comments.

Image Source: Cose666 on Flickr

The post Karma is a Metric – Build Likes for Links appeared first on Strategy Internet Marketing.

• Exterminate 1
• Exterminate 2
• Exterminate 3

I thought my work was done. I’d proved that the Daleks were right in trying to exterminate humanity. Surely things couldn’t get any worse…

I was wrong. Extremely wrong. It’s not just the Daleks we should be worried about. If there are any intelligent lifeforms out there and they find us and study our use of technology – particularly the internet – they will all come to the same conclusion, no matter what the temperament their species might have: humans should not be allowed to survive.

Google’s Failure: the Proof

This morning, I began to type an innocent query into Google and was presented with this:

There was nothing I could do. Exterminate 4 had to happen.

The Science of Exterminate 4

As always, the science is simple. But this time, instead of using a question, I’ve used a statement.
My research shows that people frequently type statements into Google. Why? Maybe they think Google needs to know that they are “extremely absolutely boiling”? I’m not sure who they think might care / will do anything about it, but they seem to let Google know anyway.
So, I’ve taken the statement “I am extremely” and followed it with each letter of the alphabet. Below are my findings. Enjoy, my friends. May the results fill your Friday with joy.

I am Extremely…

Summary

Are internet users causing these types of query to be presented? I’ve witnessed reality television, so know it’s possible. But I’m beginning to wonder… How advanced is Google, really? Is it as cutting edge as we are led to believe? From what I can see, its edge cuts as effectively as a pilchard through granite. A dead pilchard, which has travelled the digestive tract of a bear.

I’ll be honest – at the end of the day, I don’t really care. It’s Friday. I need something to laugh about.

Image Source: Smabs Sputzer on Flickr

The post Google Fails: Exterminate Part 4 appeared first on Strategy Internet Marketing.

Almost everything you’ve ever created – whether that’s a status update, a comment, a witty tweet, a snarky message, a funny picture or a superbly well written and researched blog post – could be saved indefinitely worldwide.

But is this global scrapbook really the way to go? Or should people have the right to forget and move on?

Google for Good, not for Evil

With people increasingly afraid of where their personal information ends up, the EU is pressing for more legal restraints on what personal information websites can store. They’re calling this – a conglomeration of smaller laws – “the Right to be Forgotten”. The UK (always being a bit of a firecracker) has opted out pending further negotiations as to whether companies like Facebook should delete all personal data if requested.

This law is very much in the public interest. Last week saw England’s first “Youth Police Commissioner” – 17 year old Paris Brown – step down after a grand total of a week at the salaried position with Kent Police. The reason? She’d used Twitter as a personal diary of her earlier teens. The media got hold of this old, cached feed and Paris was proved a racist, homophobic, drug taking and generally quite unpleasant child:

“Been drinking since half 1 and riding baby walkers down the hall at work oh my god i have the best job ever haha!!”

“I really wanna make some hash brownies.”

“Everyone on Made In Chelsea looks like a ******* fag”

And a personal favourite from the then under 16 year old:
“Worst part about being single is coming home from a party/night out horny as **** and having to sleep alone”.

The offending account has since been ‘properly’ deleted, but the comments are still available on many websites and newspapers across the UK. There’s nothing special about a teenager acting with disregard for themselves or their families, but this shows how serious it can be in the modern age where every action is recorded.

Of course there are two sides to every story: the “Right to be Forgotten” would have meant Paris kept the job – and saved face.

So what would this mean for businesses?

You won’t be able to check up on employees as much, but you’ll also have more power over your brand’s presence online. This includes false profiles, ex-employee slander, libel, incorrect statements/quotes/facts and more. When it comes to your traffic Google will not be able to crawl this data either; it could be a big benefit if you’ve been victim of underhand competition creating false profiles and comments.

And regular Joe?

If the “Right to be Forgotten” does get accepted it means you might not be held accountable for those slightly anarchic, libellous or murderous comments during rants about politics/sports/TV. “Might” because the police have been using Twitter, Facebook and other social media as evidence in criminal and civil cases for a couple of years now, so they may still be able to access this information. The big thing to keep in mind is that it’ll be irreversible: once your data’s gone, it’s gone. There is no way of repealing heat of the moment profile deletions when trying to cleanse of an evil ex.

What do you think would happen to the rest of Europe’s online lives when this is accepted? What’re your predictions on the UK?

Image Source: Stairhopper on Flickr

The post Google Yourself: The Right To Be Forgotten (Virtually) appeared first on Strategy Internet Marketing.

Now, with your face beginning to turn crimson with embarrassment, you need to start thinking about what you are going to tell your family after you spent all day yesterday convincing them to forsake Facebook, chocolate and the obligatory showing of Citizen Kane for a cold 24 hours in the bunker.

But at least you can be safe in the knowledge that you are not the only person that has been caught out today.

Just savour the thought that you happen to be one of thousands of people who have fallen foul of an April Fools’ prank today, and one of the many, many more that have had the same fate throughout the holiday’s long and distinguished history.

From the Roman festival of Hilaria, to the Medieval Feast of Fools and the Iranian Sizdah Bedar (celebrated since around 536 BC), pulling pranks on each other for no other reason than the belly-quaking hilarity of it has been a common feature of all human civilisations throughout history.

So relax, don’t take it personally and watch this. Feel a little better now?

Of course, there might still be time to devise your own genius prank to pull on someone you know.

So in the spirit of goodwill we would like to present you with some of the best April Fools’ Day pranks that have been pulled by the biggest names on the internet in the last few years.

Google

Google are fast establishing themselves as the undisputed kings of April Fool’s Day, with the nerd baiting 8-bit version of Google Maps, the “economically focused” search engine Google Nigeria (“just enter your bank details to start”) and the Gmail Tap feature all appearing in 2012 alone!

Youtube

Last year Youtube launched the Youtube Collection: A service that allowed you to physically own all videos on the site in a handy DVD format. Once ordered the site dispatches 175 trucks to your home to make the first delivery!

Sony

In 2012 Sony were boasting that they had solved the ongoing battle between power and mobility in the tech market…by creating a fully-fledged Ultrabook that was the size of a penny while still packing in 8GB of RAM and 1080p HD resolution.

Amazon

Forget the cloud. Last year Amazon realised that it was all a bit impersonal and so decided that it would launch a 15 minute EC2 home delivery service, but only for people who happened to live 45 degrees North or South of the equator.

Virgin

Last year Richard Branson was beginning to tire a little bit of the whole ballooning around the world thing. What better way to give the brand a much needed reinvention then being the first people to drill to the centre of the earth? And so Virgin Volcanic was born.

The Register

The online tech magazine perfectly lampooned the vicious and drawn out patent wars between Apple and its competitors with this fake story claiming that Apple was launching legal action to patent the rectangle.

So have fun for the rest of April Fool’s Day and don’t trust anything you read on the internet. Except this obviously.

Feel free to tell us about the best pranks you have come across this year in the comments below.

Image Source: naturegirl 78 on Flickr

The post APRIL FOOLS!!! appeared first on Strategy Internet Marketing.

Unfortunately, installing them is a logistical horror story which will cause a previously unseen amount of global internet downtime. Imagine that scene in Jaws where the head pops out of the bottom of the boat. It’s worse than that.

This means that at 8am GMT next Monday, the internet will be turned off for up to 4 hours. Normal service is expected to resume no later than noon on the same day.

Why do this at Easter?

Historically, the Easter weekend has seen a lack of internet activity due to people being busy praying and eating chocolate. In fact, last year saw the lowest ever recorded amount of online activity ever – less than 1,000,000 searches were conducted looking for pictures of famous people with little or no clothes on.

IoII spokesman, Justin Hale, said, “We originally considered undertaking the upgrade at Christmas, but there was uproar from online retailers as they were worried that the updates and downtime might have a negative impact on Boxing Day sales revenue, so we had to rethink our strategy. Easter, especially the bank holiday Monday, is notoriously quiet in internet terms. We decided an internet closure at this time would cause the least amount of disruption globally.”

Due to the complexity of the installation, IoII have asked permission from governments across the globe to block all access to the internet, just like Syria and the FBI did last year.

A website has been set up, ready for IoII to turn off the internet. At the moment it pretends to work. On Monday it will work for real.

The IoII Bug

Worriers are concerned that the upgrade will cause many on-going internet problems due to bugs in the new hardware and software. They are referring to the collective mass of potential problems as the IoII Bug. It’s a bit like the hype caused by the Millennium Bug, but less likely to disrupt air travel.

Conspiracy theorists are already suggesting that this is a government-IoII plot to implement more spyware technology into search engines and the internet so they can closely monitor what people do online.

Normal people are suggesting that turning off the internet might result in a boost to TV audiences, more socialising and riots.

What do I need to do?

Nothing. In the UK, you just won’t be able to use the internet on Monday morning. In the US most people will be asleep. Ditto Australia. The overall feeling at Strategy Towers is that many people are overreacting.

Executive Chairman, John Courtney, said, “The internet will be running like normal by noon on Monday and by tea time everyone will have forgotten that anything happened.”

If you still have concerns and would like to talk to an industry expert who takes things very seriously indeed, please get in touch.

Image Source: IDOMMDAD on Flickr

The post IoII Turn Off the Internet appeared first on Strategy Internet Marketing.

“Why would this idiot want to weave fudge into the plot?” I hear you cry.

Well, rather stupidly, I set myself this ridiculous task as a challenge while writing Part 2. Actually, if you want to make sense of anything that follows, you will need to read the preceding instalments:

• Oleg Og Part 1 – The Cyber Spider Rides Free
• Oleg Og Part 2 – Carl Bronson, Security Ninja

And so, here’s the finale to the Oleg Og trilogy…

Part 3 – The Destructive Dance of the Cyber Spider

“Ah, Og, you have freed me, loosed me, released me.” A cruel titter echoed everywhere. The sound clawed its way down Og’s spine, tickling at his cyber balls** like a nympho.

** Cyber balls don’t actually exist. They couldn’t, as Og no longer possessed a physical form in need of any organs, least of all gonads. So the sensations of clawing spines and tickling balls were entirely born of imagination and habit^^.

^^ When one has inhabited a body that has testicles for many years, even if one feels imprisoned in said flesh, it is VERY hard for the subconscious to give up the idea of having a scrotum filled to the brim with reproductive wonderment.

“Now you must face me,” screeched the voice.

Og spun around, and screamed.

Before him loomed a monster more gruesome than the list of ingredients in a pack of Tesco Everyday Value sausages. It was creating carnage, its eight gangly limbs lashing out, corrupting anything they touched.

Threads of silver code flowed everywhere, like drooling mercury. The code was being drawn towards the beast, which was swelling in size. The code screamed as the thing devoured it, slurping it between two fangs which oozed a venomous malware. Above the fangs, a myriad of eyes gleamed with malice.

Another shiver cascaded through Og’s imagination. This thing looked like a spider in a cyber-world. It must be the Cyber Spider. But if it was the spider, what the hell was he?

“I am the Cyber Spider,” said Og, confusion making his anger rise.

Now the mocking titter became a thunderous laugh, filled with wrath. “No, Og. You were my vessel, my host, the yolk for my embryo. I am the Cyber Spider. So easily tricked, Oleg Og, so weak, so pathetic, so human. I will finish you, your world, your everything.”

The creature thrashed about, gorging itself, relishing in annihilation.

“Looks like you’re in some pretty shit now, mastermind.”

The voice belonged to Bronson. Og looked to his left and saw a Cyber Snake, powerful and coiled, graced with Bronson’s scaly face. Og felt relief cascade through him. He could hardly comprehend his own feelings, but it felt so good to see someone he knew amidst this nightmare. Such a sensation would have seemed inconceivable only hours ago, but now Og recognised Bronson’s dry humour, even behind the insult. The Cyber Spider parasite must have blinded him to reality.

“What are you doing here?” asked Og.

“My job.”

“Is my body dead?”

“No. It looked a mess, but you had a pulse.”

Og was surprised to feel overjoyed at Bronson’s words. A return to the flesh seemed infinitely more acceptable than living in the cyber chaos which surrounded him. This was no utopia. It was a technological hell.

“It was inside me,” said Og. “It wasn’t me that–”

“No need to explain, Og. I’m seeing in twenty-twenty right now.”

Og looked at the monster he’d unleashed. Shame filled his soul. “We have to kill it,” he said. “It will destroy everything. Once it controls all the hardware and software on the planet, it will turn our weapons against us. It feeds on obliteration. It will delight in destroying all life on Earth.”

“You sure?” asked Bronson.

“Yes,” said Og. “That thing has lived inside me for years. It’s beyond evil. It’s insane.”

The Cyber Spider was growing, its eyes glowing with maniacal megalomania. All the time it tittered like some unearthly banshee.

“How can we kill it?” asked Bronson

Og didn’t know. He eyed the Bronson snake for a moment.

“What do I look like?” asked Og. “What form have I taken?”

“An oak tree.”

Og was hoping for something more predatory, like a lion, or an eagle, but a Cyber Tree was blessed with majesty and wisdom – it was more than he deserved. Then an idea came to Og, a tiny glimmer of hope. He realised what he must do.

“Can you lure it towards me?” asked Og.

“If I do, can you finish it?”

“I’ll die trying.”

The Cyber Snake nodded. Og was surprised to see a glow of respect in those unreal eyes.

As Bronson slithered away, Og considered his foe. The Cyber Spider had one main weakness – it was blinded by its own ego and had failed to recognise the threat Og presented. It would come at him without caution, thinking itself unstoppable. That would give him his chance.

Og watched Bronson goad the spider, nipping at its legs and squirting venom towards its eyes. Slowly, the beast’s irritation turned to anger. The lure was working. The Cyber Spider took the bait and charged.

As the gigantic abomination lumbered towards him, Og focussed his concentration. He hated this thing, but he needed to temper his rage with something that was 100% Oleg Og; a part of him the Cyber Spider hadn’t enhanced or influenced during its invasion of his body. Something human.

His love of fudge.

As a child, Og had adored the stuff. Liquid fudge was hot and gooey, like the sap from a tree. That was the key – the Cyber Spider was huge and grotesque, but it was just an arachnid. Throughout history, like insects, arachnids had been entombed in amber, suffocated and imprisoned for millions of years. That was the significance of the oak. Og had taken a form that could defeat the monster.

The Cyber Spider screeched in fury. Bronson darted past Og as he spread his branches, concentrating on his hatred of the parasite, his loathing of what it had made him become. As the rage built, he thought of his love of fudge and felt sap building beneath his bark. As the creature collided with him, he exuded the fudgy goo in torrents. It flowed over the spider, oozing and gummy, ensnaring it in stickiness.

Og saw fear flash in the creature’s malignant eyes. It squirmed in resistance, trying to escape the trap, but the sap was thick and heavy. Quickly the spider’s struggles weakened. Entombed in cyber sap, it could no longer feed on its environment. Its strength failed. The sap began to solidify. Moments later a blob of cyber amber stood before Og. Inside it was a frozen arachnid, trapped forever.

“Pretty impressive, for a programming geek,” said Bronson, slithering up next to him. “Can it escape?”

“No,” said Og.

“I had you figured all wrong, Og.”

Og didn’t know what to do with the compliment. “You need to get out of here,” he said.

“How?” asked Bronson.

“Concentrate on your body. The spider might have destroyed any pathway out of here, but if there is a way back, you’ll be drawn by the rhythm of your heartbeat.”

“Are you staying here?”

Og looked around him. This wasn’t a place for a soul to reside. It was lonely, devoid of life, sterile and alien. Og wasn’t the one that had craved this place. It had always been the dream of the spider inside him.

“Not if I can help it,” he said.

“If I make it back, I’ll shove your finger into the USB. OK?”

Og nodded. Without Bronson, he might be dead. Worse, all life on Earth would have been in danger of extinction. “Thank you,” said Og.

Bronson closed his eyes. The Cyber Snake he’d become shimmered and then disappeared.

Og watched the code flowing around his branches. His leaves caressed the silver threads and they began to repair the carnage. Moments later, Og heard the beat of his own heart calling him. Satisfied that the damage of the Cyber Spider could be undone, he concentrated on the rhythms of his flesh and allowed himself to be drawn home.

He coughed, spluttered and opened his eyes. He was lying on the office floor, next to his desk. Bronson was sitting beside him. Og pulled himself free of the USB and licked the blood from his fingertip.

“You look awful,” Og said, seeing dark rings around Bronson’s eyes.

“You’re no picture of joy yourself,” said Bronson. He regarded Og for a moment, then a thin smile touched his lips.

“But you’re less ugly than you were before, Og, far less ugly than you were before.”

And so Endeth the Tale of Oleg Og

Image Source: stephendepolo on Flickr

The post Oleg Og Part 3 appeared first on Strategy Internet Marketing.

First things first, what on Google Earth is it?

Google Glass is the search engine’s foray into the augmented virtual reality field of technology. Essentially, it integrates a pair of glasses with a visual heads-up display in front of your eyes where you control what you see with voice commands, interacting with the world around you by simply looking at an object. Google initially released the video below in April 2011 as a way of illustrating the capabilities they wanted the glasses to have and to create a buzz about the project.

Pretty cool, right? Well don’t make a decision just yet. Let’s start with what we do know about Project Glass.

• The hardware consists of a plastic frame that wraps around your head, just like any conventional pair of glasses, with a small plate of glass covering the right eye – it is unclear whether the screen is interchangeable.
• Google filed a patent for ‘Wearable Computing Device with Indirect Bone-Conduction Speaker’ in 2011 and the idea is that there wouldn’t be any need for headphones as sound would vibrate through the skull. This isn’t as high tech or gruesome as it sounds, as Ludwig van Beethoven first did this in the 18th Century by listening to the vibrations between a piano and his head via a rod.
• It will run on Android, have 3G or 4G connections, GPS and a motion sensor built in.
• While the device is intended to be its own entity, rather than a mobile phone add-on, it will still be able to interact with your smartphone and the cloud.
• A camera will be installed beside the glass lens for video recording and taking photos.

Now take a look at the new video of the project:

The purpose of this video is to show off the range of uses and applications Google Glass has to offer, from extreme sports recording and taking photos of a tranquil scene, to video calling another user.

As we can gather, this is much more than just spectacular vapourware. It is currently under development at Google X Lab, the Area 51 of the scientific community, who are also pioneering a self-driven car. The Google X Lab personnel pride themselves on developing new, outlandish ideas that will have a genuinely positive, life-changing impact on society. But does Google Glass fall under that remit?

Advantages

If it’s developed correctly, the GPS satellite navigation on GG would truly be groundbreaking. Current car sat navs tend to have a reputation for being unreliable but you get the impression that, with Google Earth combined, GG’s sat nav would be the best there is. How many times have you gone roaming around a new city, or driven down a dirt track, not knowing where you were going? Not only could GG tell you where you are, and where you need to be, but it could also offer detailed info on the surrounding buildings, landmarks and other areas of interest too.

The same goes for walking down a familiar street. Just like in the video, if you saw a cinema billboard, poster for a gig or ad for a restaurant, you could simultaneously view the menu, book a table, choose a film to watch and book tickets for a gig in town after – all with a few simple voice commands.

For more practical applications, GG could be used as a way of giving subtitles to the hard of hearing in mainstream theatres or, for sports purposes, you could view a ghost of yourself so you know exactly when you need to push that little bit extra to beat your personal best.

Disadvantages

There’s a big question mark looming when it comes to how web pages will be viewed. Already there is some disparity between mobile devices and desktop views of the web where some sites can’t be scaled down to suit different viewing methods. So how will a web page be viewed on a glass plate the size of someone’s eye and how would they interact with it?

The February 2013 video features an ice sculpture artist giving a voice command for ‘photos of tiger heads’ and conveniently up pop six pictures of tiger heads that he could use to sculpt from. The first six pictures of a Google image search of the same phrase (‘photos of tiger heads’) brings back a completely different set of results – two of which are bad cartoon drawings – so it may not work as smoothly as the video might suggest.

If the idea takes off, the mobile market could be dented. You could phone other Google Glass wearers; send them texts, videos and images all via the camera and Wi-Fi attached.

For the glasses to work and perform their full function, they need to be constantly connected to the internet. This could use up a lot of bandwidth in the home, cost a huge amount on any pay as you go tariff and be susceptible to the unreliability that goes with being connected via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.

Following the video in February, a press release from Google followed announcing a competition for 8,000 lucky winners to get their hands on the latest Google Glass prototype. All they have to do is use the hash tag #ifihadglass followed by their idea on what they’d use it for. This sounds like a major scoop but there’s a catch: you have to pay $1,500 after you win in order to get hold of the hardware. The Guardian ran a survey titled ‘Would you pay $1,500 to wear Google’s Glass’ and at the time of writing, the poll stood at 70% ‘No’ with over 500 votes cast.

Another major negative aspect to GG is the privacy/anonymity issue. Already, Google know exactly where you are based on your search terms and social media profiles, giving you tailored results for your area. So if we put Google patented glass on our face everywhere we go, there would always be a moment where someone who doesn’t know you, knows exactly where you are. The Orwellian connotations to this do get slightly over hyped in places like YouTube comment boxes (like ‘let’s all replace our eyeballs with ping pong balls, made by Apple/Google, filled with apps to advertise us to death’) but the overriding theme of the lack of privacy is certainly valid.

This Google Glass parody on the first video released in 2011 illustrates the lack of privacy very well in morbidly black humour;

On a more practical level, it is unclear how long the battery will last. For a device so small – and a subsequently smaller battery – that makes videos, takes photos and uploads/downloads content, how long would you actually have before it runs out of juice? In addition to this, they expect it to produce sound that reverberates through your skull, but would this really be better than headphones?

Finally – saving the most angst-filled problem till last – we come to the subject of advertisement. A large number of sceptics believe it will be just another way to force-feed you adverts, reminiscent of Fry’s commercialised dreams in Futurama. Coincidentally, a YouTube search of ‘Futurama advertising in dreams’ returns the Google Glass promo in one of its results. If this is the case, it would infuriate consumers no end, after being duped by a very flashy video, to see that they are just guinea pigs in a grand commercial scheme.

Are People Excited By It?

Prior to the new video in February ’13 there were far more sceptics than believers to the project. An article by The Washington Post titled ‘Google’s Project Glass: Gimmick Or Great Idea?’ sparked a debate where roughly three quarters of the 112 comments posted on the article lambasted the idea. However, after reading through all of the trending tweets from when the new video was released, it’s evident that people were in awe of its sleek beauty and versatility, dreaming of what they would do with it.

Wow. Pretty blown away by this new Google Glass thing google.com/glass/start/wh…

— innocent drinks (@innocentdrinks) February 21, 2013

The new Google Glass interface is WAY better than what we saw in last year’s video. Apply to get one! pops.ci/Zh8IbD — Popular Science (@PopSci) February 21, 2013

Is It The Future?

On the same day that Google Glass announced their new video, Sony gave their official overview of the Playstation 4. It seems that rather than concentrating on a better gaming experience, they’ve pushed the boundaries for the next generation by incorporating a whole new level of social media sharing options. You can record clips and take screenshots at a push of a button and instantly share it with all your social media channels. The question that needs to be asked when taking into consideration these two new forms of technology is why do we need to share it? Or rather, why do we feel the need to share it?

If consumers want to buy Google Glass to take home videos, photos and use it for personal recreation, why would they want to share it with potentially thousands of people they don’t even know? Moreover, when it comes to sensitive data such as addresses, bank account details, phone numbers and email addresses being thrown about on things like Google Glass, how secure would that data and a user’s identity be?

I’m not suggesting that the overlords of Google intend to exploit this kind of information, but there are certainly people out there who would and have the know-how for getting it.

There are some amazing new technologies being developed, like Asus’ new touchscreen and Apple’s iWatch, but Google Glass seems to take precedent in terms of consumer hype. This is hardly surprising due to the well crafted videos they have used for showcasing the product.

You can use it while skydiving, performing spins in ballet, playing table tennis, creating art masterpieces, barrelling down high speed rollercoasters, getting out of bad traffic, skiing, horse riding, fencing. This is all well and good, but what the video doesn’t tell you is: what would happen if it were to rain?

Image Source: Mali on Flickr

The post Google Glass: Revolutionary Or The Death of Privacy? appeared first on Strategy Internet Marketing.

This is a roundup of all the actionable tips you need from LinkLove 2013. The takeaways from conferences are the most valuable bits, whether it’s new learning or relationships, or even just the reassurance that you are doing the right things, the real ROI comes from what action you take. Distilled’s conferences are packed with actionable tips so here is what you need to know from 2013. Basically #RCS works, just do it!

Head Smackingly Simple: Post Conversion Link Building Tips

by Wil Reynolds Checkout: Wil’s Slideshare

Wil Reynolds getting his groove on at LinkLove: “Do RCS!”

1) Read this book: Nudge by Richard Thaler.

2) Content marketing is the big buzzword in SEO at the moment. Between 2005-2008 there were 843 results in Google and now there are 8,090 in just a month! Real companies have been doing content marketing for a long time before the phrase was coined. But think of building content as being synonymous with getting married… you have to commit to it, you can’t just do it and forget about it.

3) It’s all about the ‘nudge’. When someone follows you on Twitter, that’s a nudge. It’s a good first step towards building a relationship, so pay attention and respond.

4) When visitors complete a form on your site (newsletter, lead form etc.), that is a nudge for your site, so follow up with a thank you nudge back. E.g. let them know how much you are looking forward to working with them or sending them great news tips etc.

5) Nudge them to follow you on Twitter.

6) Even better, have a testimonial from a client saying how pleased they are that they did the same thing as the visitor has just done. Seer are working on a video now so watch out for that.

7) When someone sends you a resume/CV that is a trust signal, nudge them back with a video that gets them excited to work there.

8) Find the nudges you are receiving into your website and see how you can get more relationship/links/clients by nudging back.

9) Blog about your vendors new features and how great they are (if you believe that). Offer them a testimonial and you become an advocate for them and could get a link back. Seer got a link from the Adwords blog after writing a great post about using their new feature.

10) The more people you help, the more people will help you – good karma come back atcha. Build trust by giving away tips and strategies.

11) Use Full Contact’s API to find the social information of your newsletter subscribers then segment your list to find new link opportunities.

12) Work out who your link targets link to. Run linkfromdomain:domain.com in Bing, run the results through SEOQuake and then Screaming Frog to find the sites that get the high quality links and then get links from them. They are doing #RCS.

13) Use regex in followerwonk to get really specific e.g. put in location and topic to see who is a hot target.

14) Corporations have people working in them, find the ones you want to target and drop them in Gplusdata to see who follows them.

15) Use Circle Count to search by employer URL and then get people in your own company to promote and share content.

16) Drop your URL into Google+ ripples so you can see who are the influencers who are likely to push your content.

17) Who are the people your link targets reply to? Use Twtrland to find them and see who replies, stalk who your target responds to and maybe that is a route to that target if you can’t go direct. You can at least get a better handle on the things s/he responds to.

18) You can use scraper for Chrome to extract the Twitter handles so the stalking can commence.

19) Use Get Little Bird to find the people your influencers are following as these are likely to be the influencers of the future – get in early!

20) Don’t underestimate the influence that listeners have, they are reporters even though they may not contribute that much to the current conversation – get them too.

How do i Get Them to Link?

by Lyndon Antcliff Check out Lyndon’s slideshare

Lyndon explaining the different parts of the brain.

21) Lyndon introduced himself as a link baiter but you don’t need to be a link baiter to link bait, you just need disciplined practice. Link baiting = content marketing for the suits. It’s the same thing!

22) Link bait is about the human mind, we create content for people, not for machines. It’s publishing, not content farming. Think about publishing as being the same as marketing, its about transferring our thoughts to the minds of other people to excite them. When people are excited and like what they see they are more likely to link to it. It’s people who link, not websites.

23) Think about psychographics. This involves looking at how the viewer emotionally engages with the content. It’s the reaction that’s important as this is what triggers people to link naturally. To better understand our target and achieve our end goal of getting them to link to us, Lyndon suggested that we build a psychographic profile of the linker we want to target. Think about what content is going to attract and engage our target.

24) Focus on the mental triggers that cause a positive reaction and think about that in terms of one specific person, it’s easier than thinking in terms of groups of people. Be objective in your thoughts – you are a dealer not a user, you are pushing it.

25) Mass Publishing – this is about having a tabloid mindset when you are creating the content. It’s hard to get links so appeal to as many people as possible so you can grab as much attention as possible.

26) Appreciate that there is a war on for people’s attention. It doesn’t matter how good your content is if no one is aware of it so getting it attention is a key factor in making it successful and getting links. The more people who see your content, the more will share and the more links you will get.

27) Be aware of how different areas of your brain reacts to your content on initial impact. There are 3 main areas of your brain: primal brain, midlevel brain and high brain.

28) Primal brain is your first target: it is intrigued by sensational headlines, it responds to fear, sex and death etc., Your content should call out to the primal brain to make it excited or scared.

29) The subconscious does the deeper processing, it responds to outside stimuli and is emotional and irrational. This area of the brain can perform millions of processes at once. It’s where you get impulse buys and also links!

30) Aim your headline at the primal brain and your content at the subconscious brain. Litter the body of your content to the impulsive and emotional brain or it will wander off as it gets bored. Basically “think like The Economist and write like The Sun”. For example, here is a headline for a site selling home security “How to stop serial murderers from breaking in and eating you” It’s a must read!

31) Do this: brainstorm as many headline and content ideas as possible over a few days, get a big list.

32) Do this: cut the list down to eliminate the rubbish.

33) Do this: make headlines as simple and terse as possible. Read poetry to train your mind to think in this way! Top headline example: “Boy Eats Own Head” by the National Enquirer. Your primal brain has to read it (toddles off to look it up it’s so intriguing…. urgh far too many sensational headlines, will need more time!) Remember the areas of the brain you are appealing to as it’s really hard to ignore great headlines.

34) Read Alan Carr’s book on comedy for inspirational ideas about link bait.

35) Research what people are talking about in your vertical and also what general topics of interest there are such as Olympics last year, end of the world and zombie apocalypse or the Mars landing and then mash these popular topics together with your vertical topic. Scale this by having the best content and the best promotion.

36) Lyndon say that it’s not hard to get links to any sector – you are just not thinking hard enough!

37) It takes time, money and risk to get the best links but this gives the highest ROI so it’s worth it.

38) Book recommendation from Lyndon is Robert Cialdini’s Influence: Psychology of Persuasion.

23,787 Ways to Build Links in 30 Minutes

by Hannah Smith check out Hannah’s slideshare

Hannah’s talk was packed full of actionable tips & contained some fancy footwork

39) Don’t use Fiverr for link building.

40) Basically the message is that nothing has changed, bad links are still bad it’s just that now you can no longer get away with it so don’t try!

41) If you have a good blog with great content then you can sign up to Zemanta to get your content promoted to bloggers who are looking for references to what you do. It saves them searching for appropriate content so it matchmakes content generators with bloggers. It works well too.

42) Photos – make them embeddable (use Paddy Moogan’s image link embed tool). Upload your photos to Flickr under the Creative Commons license so you ask for an attribution link when anyone uses them.

43) Image raider from @kiwialec finds who has embedded your image but hasn’t given you an attribution link so its super easy to go find them. You can then go ask for an image credit (attribution link is jargon, don’t use jargon)

44) Video – make them embeddable too. Use this tool by Phil Nottingham

45) If you are doing PR it can be tough to get a commercial link so get quotes from the client and then link them back to a profile page which has no commercial intent.

46) Use Rapportive for finding emails in Gmail.

47) Use Boomerang for scheduling email reminders in Gmail.

48) Identify your target audience and think of what content needs they have at different stages of the buying process and create content that serves those needs.

49) Make the content you create better than anything that has already been done. Make it look sexier, make it more comprehensive, update it etc.

50) Tell the top sites on that topic about your content e.g. if you write a great post on Google Analytics then tell the GA blog; write a great post on WordPress and tell WordPress about it. If it’s awesome then the chances are they will mention your content and you’ll get a link.

51) If you build cool stuff using people’s tools then tell them what you did using their tools (write a case study) and they will most likely promote the fact to their audience.

52) For awesome data go to the Guardian data blog and see the little blue link <get the data> use this to find data on your sector. They have awesome datasets that you can use for all sorts of infographics, just rock up with your imagination and dive in.

53) Doing #RCS (real company stuff) gets links – innocent smoothies got their customers to knit hats for their bottles and submit them to innocent who then donated 25p for each hatted bottle that was sold in supermarkets. The product flew off the shelves and they also got links even though this wasn’t a link building campaign.

54) Create content that is likely to naturally get links rather than creating content specifically to build links. There is a difference: one has long term value and the other doesn’t. For example: a site Reevo created gives customers the answers they want without making them trawl through reviews which they know they already trust.

55) Stop behaving like an SEO. Don’t just contribute once and walk away. Become a regular contributor.

56) Remember to fully leverage existing assets and create new ones.

57) If you want great links to a commercial page add a useful resource to that page.

58) Get experience in traditional marketing processes and practices as having this experience is incredibly useful to an online marketing career.

Enterprise Link Spam Analysis

by Ian Lurie, check out Ian’s slideshare

Ian employed elements of the hand jive to emphasise machine learning

59) Machine learning is very real and is improving all the time plus it’s becoming more prevalent in marketing. We should not ignore this, we should clean up our back link profiles because Google are coming to get you!

60) Google’s updates are currently all about spam and they are creeping and increasing their reach. What is tolerated in 2013 may not be tolerated in 2014 so keep it clean and keep removing the dross!

61) The context of your links is important and Google is very sensitive to context so consider this when cleaning up your link profile. Don’t just delete the link if the page looks spammy but the context is very relevant.

62) Generally links on pages with lots of links on them would be likely to be considered spammy so if context is not there then delete!

63) Ian introduced http://isitspam.portent.com/ as a tool that can be used to see if a link is spammy or not (at the time of writing this Ian has taken the tool down as it’s a tool that is still learning and results are not reliable enough, but he is still working on it and will bring it back soon).

64) Check out Google’s Prediction API if you are interested in knowing more about machine learning.

65) Keep an eye on Ian’s blog where he promises a long blog post to follow up his presentation. Actionable tip is to go read that when it appears here.

How to Build Agile and Actionable Link Data Reports With APIs

by Richard Baxter

Richard stayed cool under the pressure of a live demo on APIs

Richard did a live demonstration so there is no slide share but here are links to tools he recommended during his presentation on how to break down components used every day and rearrange them to find incredibly useful insight using APIs and Excel. A very technical and fascinating presentation.

66) When you are doing link spam analysis reverse sort your list and start from the worst and work upwards.

67) SEO Tools for Excel to super charge your SEO analytics skills.

68) Find anything about APIs at Programmable Web.

69) Sharedcount.com have an API that gives you the number of social shares for a URL.

70) Wipmania is a good place to start if you are interested in APIs and want to start with something simple.

How to Transform Your CEO into a Link Building, Social Sharing Machine

by Rand Fishkin, check out Rand’s slideshare

Rand used a cardboard cut out of SEOMoz’s CEO to demonstrate how talented CEOs are

71) The CEO has the ability to massively move the needle when it comes to marketing your business successfully. Is this happening in your company?

72) CEOs should be the leader, the evangelist, they set the tone, the core values and choose the right people. No one else has the power and influence that they have. They set the mission, the vision and although lots of others contribute no one else has the final say. Think how this can be leveraged.

73) They are in a unique position and so have an opportunity to leverage that for the good of the business. As SEOs we can encourage our client’s CEOs to use this influence and benefit the outcome we are trying to achieve.

74) The CEO is responsible for ensuring the company is properly capitalised and that resource allocation supports core values. SEOmoz spend $700 per month on cupcakes and $700,000 on Amazon Servers! Both are considered essential to the success of the business.

75) There are different styles of CEO marketers, recognise yours. For example: leveraging celebrity for brand recognition (aka Richard Branson); participatory and very visible, they take action socially and locally (aka Danielle Morrill, CEO of refer.ly); and, CEOs who are perhaps more behind the scenes but are smart, authentic and they add value (aka Jeremy Stoppelman of Yelp or Chris Lindland of Betabrand).

76) As a CEO become a marketer like these examples. Be a proactive industry contributor, do guest posts, get involved.

77) Leverage press opportunities. As a CEO you carry more weight and the press are more likely to listen. Bart Lorang of Full Contact introduced Paid Paid Vacation which got a heap of links from massive news outlets (Daily Mail, ABC News, CNBC, Huff Post, Fox etc. etc.).

78) As CEO, get good at least one form of content – podcasts, blogs, thought leadership, video, webinars etc. etc. Just one will do but definitely do one!

79) Publicly recognise the marketing achievements of your staff in the same way you do performance and financial achievements. Props from the boss makes employees feel great!

80) Empower your marketing team with development resources so they can leverage their efforts too.

81) Optimise your online bio and update it regularly too – get links in there as people will use it.

82) CEOs amass favours, ask for links and shares by calling them in.

83) Leverage your contacts to amplify messages. CEOs know a lot of people who know a lot of people.

84) Embrace authenticity. People care more about why a company exists than what it produces. Wealthy people want to be hipsters now and have the latest cool thing that no one else has.

Small Business SEO for £350 per month

by Ade Lewis, check out Ade’s slideshare

85) Small business SEO in this context is aimed at businesses with less than 10 employees. There are over 1 million of these kinds of businesses in the UK and most have a very small (or no) marketing budget. These are great targets for freelancers as you can leverage a really good income through good processes.

86) Get to know your client and understand their business goals so that you in turn can establish some marketing goals to aim for. These should be goals beyond rankings and traffic but real marketing outcomes – this will help you focus on creating content that works towards these goals. The budget is low so it can only do so much, ensure you are focusing on what is most important at the end of the day.

87) Educate your client so you are able to manage their expectations. If they understand what you are doing and why as well as how long it will take they won’t be wasting your time asking why nothing happening fast enough!

88) Make sure the website deserves to rank well, even if that eats up several months of budget. The site needs to be credible online, which means a professional design and a proper brand. It will also convert better and be more likely to attract links.

89) Do a great job on the on-page optimisation. The better this is the fewer links you need to create.

90) Identify orphaned pages and 404s then fix them. Use SEOmoz tools.

91) Improve the site speed using Google Page Speed Tools.

92) Combine thin content pages into better quality pages to concentrate linking opportunities.

93) A small budget is unlikely to allow you to compete for competitive national terms so be great at local optimisation if this will meet realistic business goals. Koozai have some local search guides that are very comprehensive.

94) Ask the customers and suppliers of the small business if they have a website, if they do work out an approach that adds value in order to get a link. For instance, offer a supplier a testimonial or offer a customer a discount.

95) Offering a site audit in return for the opportunity to guest blog can be an effective way to open up linking opportunities.

96) Teapot have built an Link prospecting Tool to help you find linking opportunities. You can nest search operators to find link targets. Aim for DA 30 to 60 and look at domains that link to more than one of those results.

97) Use Buzzstream to find and manage outreach link building prospects.

98) To keep costs down outsource your link data research. Check out Matt Beswick’s Guide to Outsourcing if you haven’t done it before.

99) Use Odesk and double research your list and mark up the following: 1) does the site look good, 2) do they have a blog, and 3) is the blog on topic. All the sites that appear on both lists become your link target outreach list.

100) Draft up a good personalised and targeted outreach email which you send to this target list offering to write a very relevant guest blog. From 25-30 outreach emails you should be expecting a return of 5 successes. Send out in batches of 10 emails so you don’t get too much success and can’t fulfil the offer.

101) Ade recommends using Text Broker for content but it takes a while to find the best writers at the best prices. Don’t ever go for lower than 4 star quality! Here you can favourite writers and build teams.

Out of 5 million infographics only 1.3% will give you an orgasm in 0.3 of a millisecond

by Claire Stokoe, check out Claire’s slideshare

102) Infographics are visualisations of data, not just a collection of pretty graphics. Get good data sources, get correct information and present your story well. Sub-standard infographics will die, so make your infographics remarkable!

103) Before starting on the infographic understand your client’s needs and identify a topic and idea that would make a relevant story for your client. Know the answer to the question ‘who is going to care about this infographic?’

104) Work out where your infographic is going before you start to create it. If it’s going on the client site know where it will appear on their site, how it will be linked to internally so people can navigate to it and most importantly know that they can and will publish the image. If it is aimed at a publisher such as Mashable or Engadget pitch it up first so you know they are expecting it and want it.

105) Find a correct and accurate data source – this is so important as incorrect data will get you called out and mean your infographic is useless no matter how good it looks. Research and gather all the data before you start thinking of the design.

106) When you have your data follow these steps: sort it (eliminate the crud), arrange the data so it makes sense, present the data in an order that walks you through the story you are telling. Planning and organising the narrative is essential to creative a remarkable infographic.

107) Now you can start sketching out ideas for design and layout. Pass this to the designers who can take this brief and turn it into a thing of beauty.

108) Test your infographic before publishing – do people understand what the story is? Is it really a visualisation of data and can people learn from what you are presenting? When it passes with flying colours then host the infographic and don’t forget to add analytics!

109) Just like any other great content you need to share your infographic. Seed it out to people who are interested in the data and this should bring you links – as long as it is remarkable.

110) Once promotion is complete look at the analytics and back links, how has this particular infographic performed and what can you learn from the process so you can do it better next time?

111) Watch out for the mistake lots of people make when creating infographics: they are pretty but don’t tell a story. They are hard to read and understand, actual data should be at the core of the content, this is what makes it more interesting and actionable.

112) If you can get your infographic on high domain authority sites such as Mashable it makes it much easier to say “will you share this, it’s been on Mashable”. Get credibility by association.

113) There are lots of different types of infographic that you can create. Know what type yours is so you can keep it focused e.g. statistical, geographical, timelines (these can be evergreen as you can keep adding to them), opinion pieces, seasonal (create well in advance and pitch them to your best targets so you know when and where they are going up).

114) Always have at least three outreach target audiences for your infographic. For instance, an infographic about what 007 would wear to dinner could target 1) film fans, 2) James Bond fans, and 3) fashion bloggers.

115) Make sure your infographic has a very clear header – it should tell you exactly what it’s about, just like any other effective content header.

116) Provide a clear path through your infographic and walk people through it, hold their hands and they will come with you.

117) Be creative and artsy about the design of your infographic images but keep it simple and readable too. Don’t just download stock images.

118) Get exciting with your typography and if possible try to thematically relate it. Try to turn the text into icons if that helps add to the visual representation of your data.

119) Go to Colour Lovers for effective palettes, you don’t want to give your viewers a headache. If you can incorporate your client’s colours into the infographic even better as this can support your branding.

120) Ensure your infographic includes references for the data sources. This gives credibility and recognition to those who did the hard work of pulling the data together in the first place.

121) Put creative commons on your infographic so you can combat theft and get an image credit when it’s used by others – more lovely links!

122) Use Reddit for promoting infographics, it’s very effective

123) Identify outreach targets on LinkedIn and join the groups they are in. It’s much easier to connect, build relationships and outreach to these targets this way.

the future of link building

by Will Critchlow, check out Will’s slideshare

Jiggy Will – Robot – Still Will

124) Link building is not dead but don’t do crappy link building because it can be harmful. Good link building is more like content and social love because that is real and sustainable.

125) Avoid the temptation to take risks on quick wins that could give you short term explosive growth but could penalise you long term. Take risks that might not work and not risks that might blow up your business.

126) Concentrate on getting the best most relevant links and forget about manipulating opportunities for a quick win.

127) Do things that result in getting you links. Don’t do anything solely just for the sake of the link.

128) SEO has a reputation for breaking things that ought to work well for communities – this has to stop. SEO has broken directories, article sites, blog commenting, bookmarking, forums, all ruined because of spamming and irrelevancy. Don’t break things! Concentrate on creating genuine relevant content on your site to attract links rather than blasting existing communities with things they don’t want.

129) SEOs are currently breaking infographics by failing to do the primary job of the infographic which is presenting data visually. It’s not a collection of random graphics, it’s data visualisation. Make sure you do infographics exceptionally well and your efforts will survive.

130) Check out Scott Cowley’s Ugly Infographics Pinterest Board for some great examples of what not to do.

131) As a smart online marketer you could be the best online marketers and the next Chief Marketing Office (CMO). Do this stuff right and you will rise to the top. There is huge demand for excellent online marketers.

132) Google will give more weight to verifiable content so make sure you associate your content with a verifiable online profiles.

133) People listen to big brands and celebrities because they trust them. Your brand must be trustworthy and must demonstrate that with the content that is delivered and the value added to the user experience. Big brands have bigger budgets and strong marketing strategies. You might not be able to compete on budget but you can have a strong and effective online marketing strategy.

134) Check out Jamie Steven’s slide deck on Technical Skills for Marketers if you need more technical oomph!

135) Don’t fake this stuff, be real. Imagine if ChromeSync started syncing cookies so that you are the same user everywhere. This takes personalisation to heady heights and imagine what that would do to search.

136) Use analytics to drill down by source, referrer and landing page to find the links that send the biggest number of engaged people. Will has found that the most valuable links are often behind a paywall or are no followed.

137) Check out the Entrepreneurial Design Course by Gary Chou – this is homework for technical design people to level up with marketing.

138) Don’t underestimate your spidey-senses. Good SEOs can deconstruct and reengineer why websites are performing well or badly. They can tell if a link is good or bad. Give yourself credit where it’s due and use your skills to get better results. That way we all win.

139) How do we get to be CMOs or just become better online marketers? Put yourself outside your comfort zone and do something you haven’t done before. Not as in jumping out of a plane or buying a cat but something that exposes you to handling a new situation that could develop your skills.

140) Do this: Call three journalists on the phone to tell them about your tip and get them to run a story on it. Bonus tip: keep in touch with the journalists.

141) Do this: make 10 cold calls on the phone or go door to door. This is guaranteed to make you feel very uncomfortable if you are not a hardcore sales person.

142) Do this if you are an introvert: you don’t need to present at a search conference or a large crowd but try to present to a group of your peers or the board of Directors. If that scares the bejeezus out of you, start by recording a webinar and putting it out there.

143) Do this if you are not in sales: negotiate a discount. It could be with a sales person e.g. when buying a car or it could be in a restaurant or at the hairdressers. Markets are good places to try your hand at bartering. It will make you feel uncomfortable, but your confidence will be boosted afterwards and you’ll have learned something new.

144) Do this to get to know colleagues and stretch your debating muscles: Get together with a few colleagues from departments you don’t normally work with and debate a Harvard Business Review Case Study.

145)  Do this: initiate a live usability test. In a coffee shop offer to buy a coffee for someone in return for them doing a live test on your website. Watch what they do to get your user feedback.

146) Do this if you are not technical: install an Apache web server, send traffic until it breaks then fix it.

147) Do this: contribute feedback to an open source project. It doesn’t have to be a very technical response, it could be pointing out a typo but do it. Use things like GitHub.

148) Do this: make something and sell it online. Try to do it end to end, even set up the payment processor yourself.

149) Not creative? Do this: film and edit some video. Use your smart phone and an app. Try to make it look good and put it on YouTube.

150) Not creative? Do this: make a graphic end-to-end then promote it to get 20 shares. You don’t need fancy software, just your imagination and some free tools.

151) Not creative? Do this: remove someone from a digital photo, you’ll learn some useful photo editing skills and it’s fun too!

152) Not a writer? Do this: Write a piece for a publication you previously bought (tip: it doesn’t have to be about marketing, it can be about motorbikes or gardening) and try to get it published.

153) See Will’s slide deck for more examples but basically find ways to put yourself in situations that make you feel uncomfortable to stretch your skill set and learn new things. Also try learning new things that you just haven’t thought of before. Designing a graphic or editing a photo shouldn’t make you feel uncomfortable but it will give you an appreciation of what is involved. This way you are heading towards becoming a full stock marketer and these people make the next CMOs. Just do it!

Did I miss any tips? Let me know below. I wonder how many of you will actually put these tips into action? Wil Reynolds can’t believe how many are not actioning the awesome tips they pick up from conferences. We are and we are loving the experience of delivering great results for clients while also having a great time getting ever more creative with our client’s content. Tell us about your #RCS efforts below too, we are working on a post compiling some inspirational examples so add your voice.

For those of you interested in how I created the animated gifs, I used my iPhone and the kinotopic app. It was super easy!

The post 153 Actionable Tips from Distilled’s Linklove 2013 (#linklove #rcs) appeared first on Strategy Internet Marketing.

Cutts confirmed that the leaner, meaner Panda is expected to be released into the wild on either Friday 15th or Monday 18th of March 2013 and will be setting its sights on further cleansing the web of thin and poor content.

The last update was announced on the 22nd of January, and affected approximately 1.2% of English queries. We can fully expect this update to have just as significant an impact.

Here at Strategy we will be watching our Analytics statistics for any improvements in traffic as our clients are rewarded for having great content. If, however, you hear the words “Panda Update” and are struck down with fear, then the chances are this refresh will almost certainly affect your site, so make sure to keep both eyes firmly on the watch for any changes.

Return of the Penguin?

Matt Cutts was also quizzed on the next release of the Google over-optimisation penalty, A.K.A ‘Penguin’.

Cutts was rather coy on the release date for this algorithm update; however he was clear on the fact that the next development will be a big one.

The last Penguin update was back in October 2012. However, it was relatively minor. The last major refresh of the Penguin algorithm was way back in May 2012 so Google has had plenty of time to add modifications and upgrades to its killer penguin!

So there you have it. Get out your hard hats and protective vests and prepare for battle as the Google Zoo is making a comeback. You have been warned!

The post March 2013: Google Panda Update Imminent! appeared first on Strategy Internet Marketing.

Eek!

The resulting palpitations means a visit to Cardiac Monitors R Us, and that doesn’t fit into your schedule. So what do you do?

Keep it Simple

The search engines are making updates. Good updates. Updates that actually make SEO easier to understand. If your SEO agency is on top of their game, they will be creating evergreen content for your website. You’ll be able to see it, because it’s on your website. You’ll know it’s evergreen because you’ll want to read it and see it updated regularly. Having read it, you’ll want to share it because it’s amazing. Other people will be compelled to share it too. More people will come to your website because it has timeless content on it. Because you’re becoming THE greatest thought leaders of your business sector, people will trust you. You’ll get more enquiries and sell more stuff.

See? Simples.

If you want a far more detailed (and very interesting) explanation, look at this slide share by Jonathan Coleman.

Keep it Human

Corporate salesy brand focussed content can seem spammy and does little to help your social presence on the web. If you spend your time banging on about how awesome you are without actually doing anything of interest, people will simply ignore you.

People like people. Humanising your content helps make it real, accessible and engaging.

Me, looking lush

That’s me, doing what I do on the weekend.

‘You sit in front of a mirror, naked, wistfully reliving your 80s mullet haircut?’

No. I play drums in a band called ‘Ye Gods!’ We dress up in togas, wear mullet wigs and play rock music loudly. On very rare occasions, we make videos. This means I have to sit in front of a mirror and achieve a Zen state known as ‘Rock Lord’ before donning my toga.

See? I’m a real person, talking about real stuff. You’re still reading this. It works.

Google Updates

A lot of the recent Google algorithm updates focus on content. If you’d like to see a detailed history of these updates, visit SEOmoz’s Google Algorithm Change History, but here are easy to understand explanations of the Panda and Penguin updates:

Panda - Panda identifies poor content and penalises you for publishing it on your website

Penguin - Penguin penalises you by identifying poor content that links to you

That’s the simplistic version, but it’s the essence of what you need to know. If you generate crap content, no one will read it, no one will share it, the search engines will ignore it and you’ll be wasting your time.

What you need to do is create good, evergreen content. Research your audience and give them what they want. Prioritise quality over quantity.

OK, enough theory. It’s time for me to prove I know what I’m banging on about by using a real example.

Content Case Study

Providing Useful, Timeless Content makes a Good Content Strategy

For this case study, I’m going to use a non client example so I don’t upset anyone by inadvertently divulging top secret information. So the following information is about a piece of content I produced as an experiment in my spare time.

As well as being a part time Rock Lord, I’m also a fiction writer. I run a personal blog which showcases my writing. When I started the blog, I received very little traffic to my website as I’m relatively unknown as a writer. I wanted to provide something useful that would help my website and writing gain exposure.

Understand Your Audience

I AM a writer, so I AM my target audience. I was lucky. Most business owners won’t have this luxury. You’ll need to find the communities you want to target, see where they hang out online, what they talk about and who the current thought leaders are. Then engage with them, find out what you can offer them and ensure they’d definitely be interested in it. How? Contact them and ask them. Once you have answers, provide them with the content they want to see.

This part of the process is essential.

If you don’t think through who’d be interested in something you intend to produce, you’ll create content aimed at no one. No one will care about it. No one will read it. Things will be bad. You’ll turn to drink. Rehab awaits (sometimes I overuse melodrama). OK, there will be the odd lucky ‘it’s gone viral and all I did was film my dog suggestively licking a Cornetto’ exception to this rule, but 99.9999999% of the time it’s true.

Deciding What Content to Create

Once I’d written a few short stories I did some research about publication opportunities. I wanted to find a list of short story writing competitions with lots of details about how often they were run, how big the prizes were, when their submission dates opened and closed etc. Although there are some lists and calendars on the internet, there weren’t any as detailed or as easy to use as I would have liked and a lot of them weren’t updated very regularly.

So I compiled my own list.

Then I thought, ‘If I find my list useful, I’m sure other writers will find the list useful too. Lordy, my mind is ABLAZE with ideas.’ I did some keyword research and found that lots of people search for writing competitions and competition lists and calendars. I also found lots of writers discussing these kinds of resources online and in writing magazines.

So I made my list look as pretty as I could (with my very limited design skills – I used Excel instead of Photoshop which says it all really…), presenting the details in an easy to understand, useful manner (within the capabilities / parameters that my website allowed) and published it.

The Results of Creating Evergreen Content

Traffic data from Google Analytics 3^rd June 2012 to 23^rd February 2013

The graph above is taken from Google Analytics. It shows the visits the short story competition page has attracted via organic search (through search engines like Google and Bing), referrals (people visiting my website through links on other websites) and direct traffic (people typing the URL straight into a browser or using a bookmark).

Below are some interesting statistics. They are correct at the time of writing, but are continuously increasing over time.

• All page visits (3-Jun-12 to 23-Feb-12): 32,977
• Organic page visits (3-Jun-12 to 23-Feb-12): 28,080
• Referral page visits (3-Jun-12 to 23-Feb-12): 4,114
• Direct page visits (3-Jun-12 to 23-Feb-12): 783
• Social shares: 75
• Number of user comments: 37
• Number of links generated to the competition page: 2 (all very relevant)
• Number of links generated to the homepage: 7 (all very relevant)
• Word count of the content: 8,605 (including comments)

Details generated using Shared Count

This page currently accounts for attracting 58% of the traffic to my website. It receives over 2,000 visits a week, 1,700 of which come from organic search. The average time spent on the page is 3 minutes and 33 seconds; 3:19 from organic, 4:50 from direct and 3:18 from referrals.

People like the page because I am providing something useful. Writers now come to me with a wide variety of questions about writing because I am beginning to be regarded as a thought leader. People are linking to my site and sharing it on Facebook and Twitter.

The search engines like the page because I am providing something useful to their users. They can see it being shared and people engaging with the site through the comments they leave. They can see the incoming links. So they are ranking the page for more and more search terms.

Because of all of the above, more people are reading my stories and buying my books. That’s the key. The content is working for my target audience, but it is also working for me.

For me, this website is a hobby and I enjoy experimenting with it because I like writing fiction and investigating SEO. But the same principal can be embraced by businesses, sometimes on a much larger scale with good in-house or agency resources.

The Value of Producing Evergreen Content

This type of content is timeless. By this, I mean people will keep coming back to it, especially if I update the resource regularly. I clearly state the last time it was updated at the top of the page so users and search engines can see I maintain it.

In addition to blog comments, I receive a lot of contact via email. On average, 2 short story competition administrators contact me each week, asking to be added to the list. This makes it an ever growing resource which keeps people coming back to my website.

Embracing Evergreen Content Strategies

The competition page is just one part of an evergreen content strategy. Due to its success, I have created pages on writing advice, short story magazine publishing opportunities, novel and book competitions etc. All of these pages are beginning to show signs of engagement and growing visits.

Why?

They appeal to the site’s target audience. They’re useful. Without sounding like a swollen headed egotist, they’re well written. OK, admittedly I am a tad biased, but I did spend a decent amount of time researching them and attempting to write them in an engaging manner.

Community Outreach

Once you’ve created the content, you need to share it – just creating it isn’t enough. I shared the page on Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms. I also approached a couple of the competitions I’d listed, saying I’d created the page and included them on it and asked them for feedback. The response was good – my contacts were pleased that I’d listed them and gave me valuable advice about the page layout.

They shared the content via social media. They linked to my site, sometimes stating that it’s a regularly updated resource. I’ve found most links end up being to the homepage rather than the competition page, but this is just what people choose to link to.

I wish I had more time to spend on outreach, but like I said, this website is a hobby and I have a gazillion other things to do. But if you have an agency (like ours!) working for you, they will have the resource to be able to contact a whole heap of people, bringing in better results. Even though I only generated a handful of links, this still helped the page and my website gain more exposure. The content started to work for me.

Inreach – a New Method of Outreach?

OK, the terminology in the title is flagged in spellcheckers because I just invented it. Inreach is just another method of outreach, but you’re encouraging people to come to you rather than approaching them. I shall explain…

Evergreen content naturally gains links over time. Because it’s continuously useful, as more people hear about it, more people will link to it and talk about it. This means more people will outreach TO YOU, contacting you to ask questions or wanting your help. While you should never ignore the outreach process, having people contact you minimizes the time you need to spend outreaching. You just have to be sure you respond to people and engage with them

Other Examples of Evergreen Content

Competitions are a good example of evergreen content. If you run them annually and make them appropriate to your target audience, they will keep on working for you. Creating advice pages and keeping them regularly updated when changes in your industry occur is another good example.

There is SO much scope in evergreen content that any website owner should be able to come up with ideas suitable to their audience.

Don’t be Afraid to Give Away Links

One of the competitions I link to was kind enough to share some Google Analytics data with me, so I could see how many referrals they received from my website. The details are below, but the provider has asked not to be mentioned, so I’m afraid I can’t tell you who they are.

Referral traffic generated by my content to a website I link to

In 1 month, this site received 431 visits via my site. They are very happy to receive this traffic. Their short story competition is getting a lot more exposure because I link to them. This data also proves that writers are using the resource I’m providing.

Don’t be Afraid to be Yourself

I am a real person, engaging with other real people. This is the essence of evergreen content.

It’s not about shouting what you want to tell people and expecting them to listen.

It’s about listening to what other people want to know and showing them what you can offer.

Summary

All this illustrates how producing timeless content can work for you. I did this in my spare time. The initial preparation was fairly time consuming, taking maybe 10 working hours to do the research, write the copy and build the page on the site. Now, it takes me a couple of hours a week to administer the page and keep the content updated and accurate. In my opinion, that is time well spent. It’s much better to prioritise quality before volume as the rewards can be so much higher.

From the success of this page, we can also see the value being placed on the page content itself. By creating and promoting the content, I have generated a few links which are all highly relevant and will be helping rankings. However, due the limited time I have to spend on it, the quantity isn’t huge.

OK, I admit that for highly competitive search terms, you will need more links to rank well. But the quality of the content and how people engage with it and share it is becoming an ever more important factor in search engine algorithms.

For your business to succeed online into the future, the creation of excellent, targeted content is a must.

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