Entries for February, 2009

February 1st, 2009

Forums are they worth your SEO time?


Poddcorp

Here at PODD, we have been doing a bit of experiment. We were testing as to how effective are forum signatures as part of a link building campaign. Will this have sufficient effect to pull your rankings up in Google or will it not?

The Experiment:

We added in our forum signatures a hyperlink text using the keyphrase, "Best IT Outsourcing". The forums we attended are DigitalPoint, Seroundtable and among others.

                                                                                                      

Result

PODD Corp SERP position

 

 

As you can see, we ranked number 8 in Google as of Feb. 1, 2009. Our keyphrase density for "best IT outsourcing" is feable as opposed to some of our competition but we made it to the top 10. Yey!

Conclusion:

Forum signatures can aid your link building campaign especially if the thread gained a page rank and your signature remains there for 3 or more months (since the age of the link apparently matters). The weight for forum signatures as opposed to other links is relatively small and there are more stories out there wherein this specific tactic didn't work. Lucky for us, this keyword is not as competitve, if you compare it with our other keywords, but it defintiely helped that there are several links (coming from forums) pointing to our site with this keyphrase. One thing is for sure, Google do not give enough (very little is a better word) value to these forum links since they are very easy to get which validates a point that The Value of the Link is directly proportional to how hard it is to get.

Quick Forum Tips:

  • Make sure that the forums you attended do not put a "NoFollow" tag. You can just drop a link or you can use this mozilla add-on. 
  • Make sure that you post an informative comment so that the moderators won't regard you as spam.
  • Sometimes less is more, 1 link is much less noticeable & spammy.
  • When you sign up to the forum don’t post your signature right away. Join in on the conversation for around 10-20 posts then come back in a few weeks & add your signature then. You’ll draw less attention to yourself this way. With this method you need to be sure that your signature will be added to all your old posts though (some forums disable or don’t have this feature).
  • To search for forums relevant to your topic you can use this command: inurl:forum keyword

Posted by Poddcorp at 04:20 PM in IT/SEO | Add a Comment

February 8th, 2009

E-Mail Marketing 101


Poddcorp

If done properly, e-mail advertising can be an efficient way to get your brand known to a great number of people. With the recent assault of spam, you need more than just to send e-mails to possible clients. What you need to do is to make them want your messages. This is achieved by permission mailing - people have two choices: they can sign up to your web sites newsletter, or when they make a purchase, they will list their mail address. This is legal, compared to buying e-mail address lists from different channels, list that can be created and updated illegally.

Nevertheless, even if your clients and partners agree to receiving e-mails from you, this method of advertising can still lose its efficiency in time. You must not stand still and hope your two-year-old marketing campaign is still successful. You will have to regularly offer your clients discounts of products and services, as well as include informative content in your mails. Your messages must be this way very targeted. A way to make your mails stand out from the dozens received every day is to have something original included in their text. Short pieces of informative material, interesting facts or tips regarding your products can turn a dull message that would otherwise be deleted at once into a message that your clients will be eager to read and your next messages as well. You must grab your readers and clients' attention if you want for your e-mail advertising campaign to be efficient.

Below are a few tips on how to compose an interesting e-mail. Its headline must be catchy. In order for them to know that the message is received from your company, its name should stand out in the "from" section of the mail. Not to agglomerate your message with text, you can implement a one-click system, in which your mail readers can find out more about your products advertised in the message by using as few movements as possible.

People tend to skim very fast among received e-mails and that is why you need your messages to stand out from "the crowd". An interesting item in the subject line is all it is required sometimes to get the readers attention on that particular message. This item can be put either in the subject line, or in the mails header and it is called a window of opportunity. Your clients, when reading such a mail, should easily perceive the benefits they can obtain by choosing your products and services. The first step is the hardest and it includes getting them to read your mails and having owned their attention. After having achieved this, you can include elements about your business. They can either read them or not, but what is important, getting the to notice your brand name, has been achieved.

Posted by Poddcorp at 07:30 AM in IT/SEO | Add a Comment

February 15th, 2009

Death of Web 2.0?


Poddcorp

Is web 2.0 actually dying? I took a screenshot a few minutes ago and you can see that line is slowly plodding downwards.

 

I saw this post from TechCrunch and it is clear in this graph that there is a gradual decrease of interest on "web 2.0" over the last 12 months. Basically, according to Wikipedia, web 2.0 is a concept that have led to the development and evolution of web-culture communities and hosted services, such as social-networking sites, video sharing sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies. It means nothing more than the evolution of the internet into a two-way communication medium that connects people together.

 

So is web 2.0 dying? Or is it just the term “web 2.0″ that have died?

I personally think it's only the term that people are slowly losing interest at. Majority already knows what web 2.0 is about so there's really no point in scouring the web using that keyword. You don't see Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube dying anytime soon and they are the epitome of Web 2.0.

If you try to type in Social Media in Google Trends, you'd get this however.

 

The people have grown smarter. Most, as I've said, knows what web 2.0 is and now if there are any querries in Google, I'd bet it would be on the particularities as to what comprises the web 2.0 technology.

What do you think? Is this the dawn of web 3.0? Or is the term web 2.0 just losing its spark among internet users?

Leave your opinions in my comment section.

Posted by Poddcorp at 04:43 PM in IT & SOCIETY | 2 comments

February 21st, 2009

DocStoc DocShots


Poddcorp

This is a new and impressive find. DocShots provides publishers with a new option for presenting documents online while providing readers a better way to preview and download these documents. This free, turnkey service converts any posted document on your website or blog into a hover-able link that enables instant online document preview. With DocShots, there are no heavy downloads or disruptive wait times.

 


This is the screenshot for Docshot

 

To use Docshots, you'll need to log in to Docstoc, or take a moment to register, to generate your own custom DocShots code. The code is a few lines of javascript that you cut & paste into the bottom of your site’s HTML pages. All the documents you post on your website or blog will be accessible through your Docstoc profile. This way you can easily follow their usage statistics. Best of all, DocShots is made customizable for your site.

Users of Docshots have the controls to:

  • Modify the default width and height of the document preview
  • Set documents to display as public on docstoc or store privately in your own account
  • Include or exclude our Related Docs and Other Docs features in the DocShots display

Posted by Poddcorp at 04:21 AM in GOODIES | Add a Comment

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