MappingTheWeb //

This week, TechMeme officially launched its anticipated “Leaderboard”. The board tracks the top 100 news sources on TechMeme, based on the number of headlines attributed to each source over the previous thirty days. To some degree, it can be interesting to follow. But I think it poses more problems than benefits. What is truly the point of displaying the top 100 sources? It simply creates a hierarchy of power and inflated egos.

Such a ranking system isn’t what the blogosphere needs. We all know that TechCrunch is popular, but we don’t need to be reminded yet again. The so-called hierarchy (A-listers, B-listers, etc..) is a bunch of crap. Blogs are meant to break down these barriers. A leaderboard simply creates an echo-chamber and a positive feedback loop within the realm. In other words, blogs may be giving way to the manufactured world of popularity.

I don’t really care who has the biggest presence. I don’t care that a lot of people read XYZ blog. What I care about is the content - I truly appreciate insight and analysis beyond the basic facts. If the content is good excellent, readers will follow. They don’t need to be influenced by a ranking system to see what ‘everybody else’ is reading. This is the herd mentality.

Personally, I judge every blog based on the quality of each individual post. Over time, I become more and more loyal if the content meets or exceeds my expectations. On the contrary, I lose respect for blogs when the content begins to degrade and succumb to mediocrity.

The TechMeme Leaderboard simply reinforces the so-called leaders and ignores quality content from lesser known sources. The way I see it, this board does nothing more than provide an added marketing mechanism for TechMeme. Now, the ego maniacs at the top will re-visit the leaderboard on a daily basis to view how their ranking has changed. Lemmings and wannabes will also frequent the chart to catch a glimpse of their idols and get an idea of what they should be reading. Is this what the blogosphere was meant to be? I hope not.

In my opinion, the best quality content nowadays isn’t always found at the top. A lot of these blogs have taken a more conservative approach and refuse to take a stance or express an opinion. This creates appeal to a larger crowd, but shows neglect for the initial minority. To some degree, these blogs are moving toward the more traditional media model (shame on them). Lower level blogs have nothing to lose. Therefore, opinions and thoughts are articulated in a much more concise and thought-provoking manner. This is the reason such content shouldn’t be ignored.

Don’t get me wrong… I’ve always been a big fan of TechMeme in the past. I just think this new move may be one filled with ulterior motives.

PS. I’m not bitter about not making the list. I couldn’t care less. It isn’t the reason I blog.

Come launch day, your marketing department shouldn’t and running around like chickens. They should be relaxing and breathing a sigh of relief. Ok, I may be exaggerating a bit, but not by much.

The basic premise is this: all Internet marketing and advertising campaigns should be ready to go before launch day. That way, once the day arrives, a metaphorical switch can be flicked to activate the marketing machine.

What does this means? Well, some or all of the following should be ready prior to launch:

• PR initiatives (including a press release)
• Ad campaigns (online and offline)
• Blogger relationships
• Internal marketing functions
• Branding/positioning/messaging
• Search engine optimization
• Web analytics
• Company blog
• Contest(s)

So when launch day finally comes, you can simply ‘flick the switch’.

Some traffic will come from one-time sources (i.e. press release, news story, etc..), while some will come from residual sources (i.e. search engines, current users, etc…). The list above translates to traffic from the following sources:

• News sites
• Offline publications (newspapers, magazines)
• Blogs
• Current users
• Search engines

Such diverse sources will ensure a steady, consistent influx of traffic. The reliance on a single avenue is always risky, as it may not provide the intended outcome. Any marketing campaign should include multiple traffic funnels to maximize exposure and overall efforts. Often, the main, pre-determined source of traffic doesn’t live up to expectations and some overlooked avenue ends up driving a bulk of the traffic.

You’d expect that when a new player enters a space, it hopes to attract users from competitor sites, right? That isn’t the case with Mahalo. But then again, Mahalo claims to be in a space that it isn’t actually in. You follow? Mahalo is a search engine in an identity crisis. Heck, it’s not even a search engine. It’s a directory. The search function is nothing more than a glorified shortcut to an individual directory page. “Guide Notes” and “Fast Facts” aside, this is really nothing more than DMOZ.

Mahalo lacks a dynamic, continuous crawl process - it’s static. Therefore, I don’t see how it can be called a search engine. Personally, I’m not convinced that you can define a search engine as such without an algorithm. Having said that, it is of my opinion that Mahalo won’t be able to compete with the big boys. Simply put, I can’t see people switching from Google or Yahoo. Mahalo has quickly realized this and since introduced Mahalo Follow. Now, users don’t have to switch services - they can continue to use Google or Yahoo at their leisure. In the event that a Mahalo result is available, it is automatically displayed in the sidebar.

It seems that Mahalo Follow is a good, passive approach for the company. It may even be the business model in the end (in my mind at least). I respect that the company has only been around for a few months, but the fact that this ’search engine’ lacks ’search results’ for many popular queries is inexcusable. I won’t even touch on unique, long tail queries…

On another note, Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis has been quoted as saying, “SEO is bullshit. If you generate a web page with good content, Google will rank the page properly”. Hmmm… that seems pretty hyprocritical. You see… directories thrive on SEO. Their very structure and nature are tailored for search engines. Even quasi-directories like Wikipedia and IMDB drive a significant portion of their traffic from search engines.

Consider this: both Mahalo and a given directory site contain unique pages with keywords and phrases stuffed into important areas such as the page title, URL, and header tags. In other words, Mahalo is a ’search engine’ dependent on other search engines. SEO is a primary traffic source. Instead of competing against Google and Yahoo, Mahalo has cleverly positioned itself to reap the benefits of these search giants via SEO.

Basically, Mahalo plans to profit from the search results of the other search engines.

If you are still not convinced, type in “Berlin vacation” or “save on your energy bill” into Google? Which directory ’search engine’ has a front page result?… You should never see a given search result in another search engine results page - it’s ridiculous. Need I say more?

What’s your take on the situation? Do you think Mahalo is a search engine?

An execellent way to drive free, qualified traffic to your blog is via search engines. Search engine optimization (SEO) has become known as one of the most effective, economical ways to generate prospective traffic. As a blog owner, I undertook an endeavour to optimize my blog for search engines to reap the benefits listed above. After some careful research and due diligence, I came up with a all-encompassing SEO strategy.

Having said that, I have to give many props to Neil Patel and his crew at Pronet Advertising. His post on blog optimization is second-to-none. I am simply hoping to add on a few bits and provide an analysis in my own words.

Title - For simplicity sake, ensure that the title of your homepage is the same as your blog name. This works well for branding purposes. A tagline or catch-phrase can be used, but I would argue against doing so, as it decreases the prominence and importance of the blog name.

With respect to post title, I would completely eliminate branding and focus on the content at hand. Unless you are a big gun in the blogosphere, no-one knows who you are or cares for that matter. Focus on the content. In other words, the post title should be the same as the page title, thus ensuring consistent keyword theming throughout the page.

Neil has posted both Wordpress and Movable Type hacks for this in the article above.

URL - Make certain that individual posts follow a specific format:

www.domain/post-title

By default, many blog platform number individual posts or provide IDs. These options can be changed in options section, at least for Wordpress. Another tip is to provide a descriptive “post slug” if the post title does not contain any keywords relating to the article or provides a poor description of the material. Post slug customization is easy in Wordpress, but I am not unfamiliar of the process with respect to other platforms.

As a side note, it is recommended to use dashes in the URL to separate keywords, rather than underscores.

META Tags - META keywords are lame. No-one cares. Leave them alone.

META descriptions, on the other hand, are very important. By default, Wordpress simply grabs the homepage META description and inserts it into every given post. This does not provide a very good description of the content. Furthermore, search engines index each post as having the same META description, which shouldn’t be the case.

Once again, Neil has provided hacks for Wordpress and Movable Type to ensure that each individual post has its own META description. These hacks pull the first 25 words of the given post and automatically generate a META description via this content. Very useful and much more effective.

Headings - Post titles are very important, on-page aspects of SEO. The content should in theory be tailored to the material contained within the post. In addition, the use of H1 tags, as well as h2, h3, etc… is highly recommended to put it mildly.

Categories or “Tags” - As is the case with most blog platform, one is able to categorize a post or “tag” it. These descriptive markers not only make your content easier for readers to find (if necessary), but also provide a much needed internal linking structure to ensure that all posts get crawled and indexed by the search engines.

ALT and Title tags - In this case, ‘title’ tag refers to the description given to a link. An ALT provides a description of a photo or image. These are both essential to any basic SEO strategy.

General Rules and Guidelines

• Ensure that keywords and content themes remain consistent through a post (i.e. in the page title, URL, META description, heading, paragraph content, ALT tags, etc…)
• External linking is a huge part of SEO. Network with other bloggers and trade blogroll links. These external links not only provide valuable SEO juice, but also direct traffic.
• A blog will get crawled more often if content is dynamic (i.e. the fresher the content, the more often the blog gets crawled). So, post often if possible.

Follow these tips and do your own research. Let’s hope that we can all increase our search engine traffic and provide quality content to those looking for it. Let me know how your conquest goes and if, indeed, you are able to climb the search engine ranks. 

As you can see, I am very biased to Wordpress as it is my blog platform of choice. I apologize for any confusion or ambiguity created for anyone using Movable Type, TypePad, or any other blogging platform.

I know I rant about certain topics to no end, but there are certain things I feel passionate about. The semantic web is one of them. I glorify links and a static web. I’m boring and lame. Call me Mr. Web 1.0. Having said that, I focus on simplicity and a stream-lined user experience. Practicality and logic are two ideals that I admire when perusing a site.

Directories are a great business model. They have a built-in:

• revenue model (i.e. premium listing)
• marketing mechanism (i.e. SEO)

The hierarchical nature of the system makes it easy for users to find what they are looking for. Furthermore, this set-up also facilitates search engine crawling, ensuring that all pages are indexed.

Directories fulfill all the requirements of a site well-optimized for search engines. Page titles, URLs (in many cases), META tags, headers, page content, and anchor text are all well-described by default.

Directories are also ideal for anything ‘local’. Regional sites have proven the model. The YellowPages and online classified ad sites, like Craigslist, function much in the same way. They are useful to the non-techie and provide offline value.

I find directories to be similar to forums and discussion boards from a user-participation stand-point. They both rely highly on social media and “crowd-sourcing” to aggregate content and data. Users and site visitors are submitting info to add value to the site or discussion, or to provide exposure for a given cause. In any case, the directory ’system’ takes care of the work, leaving little human labour to deal with site functionality. This allows the site to scale with very little additional manpower or resources needed. It is automatic.

So next time you’re conjuring up an idea for a web business, forget the ’sexy’ social networks and web 2.0 hype. Think simple, think straight-forward, think directories.