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In a session I did with Brian Clark at Third Tribe last week Brian made the statement – Guest Posting is the New Article Marketing.

In days gone by the way one of the best ways to build a website’s ranking in search engines and to pull in traffic was to write articles for article marketing sites and allow others to republish them on their own sites. In return you’d get a link or two back to your own site.

While I know some bloggers do use article marketing as part of their promotional mix the evidence that I’ve seen lately shows that links in these types of articles tend to count for less than they once did as Google gets smarter in the way that they rank websites.

I wouldn’t write off article writing completely but in the last couple of years we’ve seen the emergence of guest posting as a primary way for bloggers to build their profile, traffic and generate some SEO Google Juice to their sites.

Over the last few years I’ve seen numerous guest bloggers really build careers for themselves in a variety of niches. People like Leo Babauta and Chris Garrett are two that come to mind who built solid reputations and sizeable audiences for themselves through the tactic of guest posting.

While Guest Posts can be a great tactic to use to grow your presence – as someone who uses quite a few guest posts on my blogs I’ve noticed an incredible variety in the quality of guest posts that I’m pitched. I get 20-30 guest posts per week – I couldn’t use them all even if I wanted to – but there are some things that make some guest posters much more attractive to me than others.

In this post I want to explore 10 things that I’ve noticed about the best guest posters that set them apart from the field. These things make them more attractive to me as a blogger evaluating a guest post – but they also make the guest post more effective – which has flow on effects for the guest poster.

1. Offer Your Best Posts

I chatted with one blogger a few months back that told me that his guest post strategy was to give away his 2nd rate posts as guest posts to other blogs. He kept his best stuff for his own blog and whipped up half hearted posts for guest spots.

While I understand the temptation to keep your best content for your own blog and give a half hearted effort for other blogs if you want to maximise the chance of getting a guest post published on a well known blog and you want to maximise its impact upon the readers of that blog – you need to keep the quality up in your guest posts.

2nd rate posts are not likely to get published and if they do – they’ll not drive you the traffic that a first rate post would do.

So take the time to carefully craft your guest posts and to make them as useful as possible.

2. Use Images

This will vary a little depending upon the blog you are submitting to but I know if a guest post is submitted to me that has a good creative commons licensed image with it that I am much more likely to use it.

I love images – they lift a post to a new dimension and make it attention grabbing to readers – if a guest poster goes to the effort of finding such an image I’m always impressed.

3. Optimize the Images

If you do send in an image to go with the post make sure you take a few moments to optimize it and make it ready for posting. By this I mean:

• reduce the file size of the image so it’ll load fast
• make sure the image width will fit into the post box on the blog you’re submitting to so that the blogger doesn’t need to resize it
• name the file something that will help the SEO of the post (use a keyword in the heading).

These things are all small touches that can not only make an impression upon the blogger but help the post load fast, look good and rank a little higher in search engines.

4. Do a Little On Page SEO

While we’re talking search engine optimisation – take a few moments after writing your post to think about SEO. You might not think there’s any reason to do this and that its the blog owners job – but if your guest post ranks well in Google you’re more likely to benefit from the post for the long term as it’ll continue to attract traffic (it’ll also help pass on some Google Juice to your own blog through your byline links).

On page SEO includes making sure you work out what keywords you want the post to rank for and then using those keywords in places like the title of the post, header tags, image alt tags etc.

5. Format Your posts

Another tip to think about before sending off a post is to look at the styling and formatting that the blog normally uses for its posts.

For example – does the blog use headings in posts? If so – what header tags does it use? If it’s

tags, put your own headers into

tags.

If the blog uses blockquotes – consider using that. If the blog has a byline in a certain style or format – include yours in that format. The more ready your post is to publish the better.

6. Send posts in the Right Format

This leads me to my next point – wherever possible send your post to the blog you want to appear on in a format where it can easily be copied and pasted into the back end of that blog. I LOVE it when guest posters send me text files already marked up into html so I can copy and paste them straight in. I generally do a little re-formatting but it is so much easier if things are already formatted in html to some extent.

The best way to do this is to simply write the post up as a draft in your own blog – then copy and paste the html out into a plat txt document to send over. If you’re including images I generally would attach them to the email and indicate in the post where they should be inserted.

If you’re not sure about what format the blogger prefers to receive guest posts in – shoot them an email to ask. Alternatively some guest bloggers I’ve worked with will send two versions of a post – one in a Word Document and one in html.

7. Link to Other posts on the Blog

One technique that some of the very best guest bloggers go to the effort of doing is making sure that their guest posts interlink to other posts on the blog that they’re submitting to.

This is good for a few reasons including:

• it shows the blogger and their readers that you’re familiar with the blog you’re writing for
• it helps the SEO of the blog you’re submitting to
• it gives readers more to read and increases page views on the blog you’re writing for

It certainly takes more work to do this step but it does make an impression.

8. Monitor and Interact in the Comments of the Post

Some guest bloggers feel that their job is done when they send the post off to the blogger for their consideration. However the best guest posters going around see this as just the beginning.

One extra task that can lift the guest post to another level is to monitor the comments being left on the post and interacting with those who read it. This shows a willingness to followup with readers and can make the post more useful to everyone.

9. Promote the Post after its launched

One last task that can also make the post all the more effective for both you and the blog you’re writing for is to take some time out once the post is live to promote it to your own network.

Link to it on your own blog, tweet about it, submit it to other blogs in the niche to see if they’ll link to it, promote it in forums, email it to your newsletter list…. etc

The benefits in promoting the guest post are numerous:

• it makes an impression upon the blogger who is using your post (which could lead to further guest posts or opportunities)
• it can make an impression upon people in your own network to see that you’re published elsewhere
• it can help the SEO of the post to have it linked to (which has flow on effects for you both in terms of traffic and SEO)

All in all – the more successful the post is the better for all concerned so do take the time to give it some promotion – as if it were your own.

What Tips Would You Give Guest Posters to Help Their Posts Become Exceptional?

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

9 Ways Become an Exceptional Guest Poster

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9 Ways Become an Exceptional Guest Poster

A Guest Post by www.lewishowes.com on driving traffic to your blog with LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is the most powerful, yet under-utilised social networking platform on the web.

Whether you just created your first blog, or you are considered one of the top bloggers in the world like Darren Rowse, Chris Brogan, or Tim Ferriss, you are always looking for ways to generate more traffic to your site.  Even more so, you are looking for qualified traffic to your site, (i.e people who are interested in the content you produce).

LinkedIn is a great way to generate free, organic, traffic to your blog.

“But Lewis, isn’t LinkedIn just a site to post my resume when I am looking for a job?”

No, wake up people!  Although LinkedIn has been great for job seekers during the most recent economic cycle, it is much much more than that.  Individuals and companies are achieving more professional goals than imaginable on LinkedIn.  For example, LinkedIn can help you:

• Sell products
• Find new clients or employees
• Generate leads
• Receive funding for your company
• Obtain sponsorships
• Sell hundreds of tickets to your professional event
• Get national and local press coverage
• And last but not least, drive massive traffic to your blog

Achieving these goals on LinkedIn don’t come naturally.  You’ve gotta work the system on LinkedIn and experiment with different methods.  I’ve come up with the best ways to achieve those goals.  Here are my top 10 ways to drive traffic to your blog using LinkedIn:

1.  Complete Your Profile:

Numerous individuals have told me LinkedIn doesn’t work for them. I always ask them how much time they have put into using LinkedIn, their response – very little.  If your profile is weak people will lose interest quickly and may never click on your website links.

If you want people to read your profile and click on your websites then make your profile concise, compelling and value driven throughout.  Complete your profile 100%, add a great picture of yourself, and take the entire process very seriously.  The more complete and compelling your profile is, the more people will read and visit links you have posted.

This advice goes beyond driving traffic to your blog.  If someone were to Google your name (which most people do when they are researching you) your LinkedIn profile is one of the first things that pop up.  Personally, my LinkedIn profile is the third result, and for Darren Rowse it comes up seventh (before Facebook or Twitter).  Google your own name and check out what position your LinkedIn profile shows up.  You must make your profile compelling.

2.  Increase Your Connections:

The more connections you have, the more people will have access to your profile.  Every time you take an action on LinkedIn (i.e. update your profile, join a group, recommend someone, RSVP to an event, etc… this shows up on the home page of your 1st degree connections).  If you only have 100 connections, this limits the amount of potential clicks on your profile and website links per day. Constantly be updating and adding new connections.

3.  Customize Your Website Links:

When you first create your profile your website links will look like this:

However this is not a “call to action” and you are missing potential traffic because of it.  No one actually cares what your blog is unless it is relevant to them or solves a problem.  Instead, customize your website links to attract more clicks and drive more traffic to your blog.  If I were Darren, I would insert this:

The second image is more compelling and explains exactly what the viewer will see on the next page when they click on each link.  In order to change your websites with a custom headline, click on the “edit” button next to one of the websites. View the image below for further details:

4.  Answer Questions:

This is a great way to drive traffic to your blog.  The more questions you answer, the better the chances are of that person asking the question to click on your blog to learn more about you. Not only will that one person be more interested in learning more about you, but also others answering that question.  Additionally, when someone rates your answer as “The Best” of the mix, it will improve your thought  leadership status. It moves you up the rankings as a “featured expert” in the category you answered in.  When you are a featured expert people become more aware of your profile, and the chance they will click on your link to learn more about what you have to offer improves.

5.  Update Status:

For you Twitter lovers out there, this should be an easy step to take.  LinkedIn also has a status update feature that is a lot like Twitter, only it gives you 148 characters to work with instead of 140. Why is it so important to constantly update your status?  Because it is the first thing that pops up the home profile for all of your connections.  Check out your home page on LinkedIn and you will see a few status updates of those your are connected to.  If they are smart, they will include some compelling copy with a call to action and a link back to their blog (something I do that drives traffic to mine).

6.  Join Niche Groups:

Whatever your blog is about, there is an audience of people on LinkedIn that share interest with.  To make it easy to find these people click on the “Group Search” tab and type in some key words that relate to your blog.  I have a sports industry blog that focuses mostly on social media with an audience of professionals who work in the sports.  I joined all of the professional sports groups I could find:

Some of these niche groups have thousands of members who are actively involved in connect with other members.  If you are not in the groups where your audience for your blog is hanging out, then you are missing out on the opportunity for new readers, and organic traffic to your site.  Join as many groups as you can after doing a key word search that relates to your blog.

For starters – check out the Professional Bloggers Group.

7.  Post Comments In Groups:

Some larger groups are receiving hundreds of new discussion topics every few days (think of it as a forum).  People are sharing points of discussion, commenting and giving further feedback and suggestions on those comments.  Every time someone creates a new discussion topic, it shows up on the home profile of everyone in that group.  If there are 100,000 people in the group, then you are potentially getting the attention of 100,000 other individuals for your comment.

8.  Add RSS Feed to Groups:

Each group has a section that allows you to add a link to a website with the latest news you think is relevant to that group.  It also allows you to add your own RSS feed or website link so it will automatically update the group every time you post a new article on your blog.  This creates an automated flow of organic traffic that will show up on the home profile of everyone connected in the group.  Again, this gives you more opportunities for people to view your blog.

9.  Create a Group:

This may be one of the most powerful things you can do on LinkedIn.  I won’t go into all of the amazing details on how this has helped me, but I will tell you that owning a group drives a lot of traffic to your site. I own several niche related groups on LinkedIn.  For example, I created the Sports Industry Network group on LinkedIn and there are currently over 19,500 members.  When a new person joins the group, they see a brief description of the group, my name as the owner of the group, plus my website url www.sportsnetworker.com.  Since my group gets over 100 new members each week, that’s additional traffic from new members alone. That’s not even including the close to 20,000 members who are actively engaging in the group, and clicking on my blog links.

10.  Add the Blog Application to Your Profile:

This might be the most obvious suggestion, but I still see some of the top pro bloggers leaving this feature out.  This application posts the title and first paragraph for your most recent articles you have published on your LinkedIn profile.  It is a way to give viewers of your profile a sneak peak of what they will read on your blog.

Go to “applications” and download either the WordPress or Blog Link application and add your URL for your blog.

LinkedIn continues to be one of the top sites that drives traffic to my blog, thanks to these 10 examples, but the power of LinkedIn doesn’t stop here. What other tips have you found through using LinkedIn to increase traffic to your blog?

=====================================================

Lewis Howes is the co-author of the LinkedIn book, LinkedWorking: Generating Success on the World’s Largest Professional Networking Website. He founded the Sports Executives Association and SportsNetworker.com, which provides daily social media and marketing tips for sports professionals.  You can connect with him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/lewishowes or on his site at www.lewishowes.com.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Top 10 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog Using LinkedIn

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Top 10 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog Using LinkedIn

Fellow Internet marketer and Canadian, Ian Lee, has compiled a list of the Top 50 marketing blogs in Canada and you’ll never guess who’s number 1. Well, I wouldn’t have guessed it anyway.

The list was pulled from the AdAge Power 150 daily ranking of marketing blog. Ian went through the list and pulled out all the Canadian based blogs to create his Top 50 list. I’m tied for 12th place on the AdAge 150 list but that’s enough to rank me the number 1 marketing blog in Canada!

If your blog is on the list, Ian created a badge to display on your blog. And for those who want to re-publish the list and give some exposure to Canadian blogs, Ian has raw HTML codes on his blog. Just copy and paste. Congrats to all my fellow Canadian bloggers who made the list. I have a whole bunch of new blogs to check out now.

1. John Chow dot Com
2. Dosh Dosh
3. Danny Brown
4. IttyBiz
5. Dave Fleet
6. Get Elastic
7. Web Analytics World
8. PowerShift
9. The Michel Fortin Blog
10. WebTrafficROI
11. Twist Image
12. adgoodness
13. David Leonhardt’s SEO Marketing Express
14. Pro PR
15. Profectio
16. shape+colour
17. InspiredMoneyMaker.com
18. The Praized Blog
19. ideasonideas
20. Ian Lee – ADS-Links.com
21. Buzz Canuck
22. Blogging Me Blogging You
23. Canadian Marketing Blog
24. Leo Burnett Toronto
25. ASK Enquiro
26. Search Engine People Blog
27. AdJoke
28. Blog Campaigning
29. azaroff.com
30. chroma
31. One Degree
32. MediaBadger Monitor, Measure, Manage
33. PPC Advice
34. Experience Planner
35. Great-Ads
36. Radical Trust
37. Behind the Buzz
38. The Daily Grind
39. Burning the bacon with Barrett
40. EmailKarma.net
41. The New PR
42. Advertnews.com
43. My Name is Kate
44. Saul Colt
45. The Client Side Blog
46. PR Works
47. The inmedia blog
48. social media group
49. The Advert Fan
50. FlackLife

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

Read more from the original source: 
Top 50 Canadian Marketing Blogs – Guess Who’s #1?

If there’s any one thing that can be said about SEO with certainty, it’s that it manages to cause a lot of confusion.

For example, it seems like many people’s idea of SEO was formed 10 years ago, and hasn’t bothered to change with the times. Even an online veteran like Robert Scoble is completely clueless about modern best practices for search engine optimization.

So, before we go any further, let me answer the question posed by the headline . . .

Yes, SEO copywriting still matters.

Here’s why.

Search is still the biggest game in town

“Pick your survey, search remains one of the top activities on the Internet and has been for over a decade,” said search industry legend Danny Sullivan when I pinged him on Twitter. Danny pointed me to one such survey that shows search is the most common online activity after email, and that fact cuts across generations.

“People make billions of unique searches each month,” said SEO guru Aaron Wall via email, “and unlike Facebook flittering, those people are in focus mode.” In other words, compared with most Internet traffic, searchers are the most motivated people that hit your site.

If they’re looking for a product or service, there’s a good chance they’re looking to buy it. If they’re searching for information and your site provides it, you’ve got a great chance of converting that drive-by traffic into a long-term subscriber.

And of course if you’re a professional web writer, whether freelance or with an agency, this discussion is purely academic. You try telling the client not to care about Google traffic, and let me know how that goes.

So, search traffic is clearly important, as long as it’s targeted search traffic. Let’s look at the elements that constitute the modern practice of search engine optimization so we can attract those highly-focused visitors.

Off-page elements eat the biggest slice of SEO pie

Take a look at the image below, generously loaned to me by SEOmoz:

A quick review of the chart reveals that as far as SEO goes, what happens off your site matters more than what’s on it.

• 23.87% – The general trust and authority that your domain builds is the largest indicator of SEO success. As Authority Rules makes clear, what works for search engines is what works with people as well.
• 22.33% – The number of links to a specific page matters a lot too… so think twice about link viability when your content is just out of the gate.
• 20.26% – The anchor text of external links matters because this is Google’s way of finding out what your page is about according to other people, not just you.

In other words, it’s like my favorite saying goes:

What people say about you is more important than what you say about yourself.

In this case, Google wants to know that people are linking to you, and the words they’re using (link anchor text), because that’s a more trusted relevance indicator. So yes . . . compelling content is always rule number one. But just like great content goes unnoticed without promotion, great content doesn’t rank well if you don’t make it clear what it’s supposed to rank for.

But how do we get people to notice our content so they can link to it? That’s where social media comes in. Blogging, social news sites, Twitter, Facebook – these are organic content distribution systems powered by your audience (and their friends).

It may come as a surprise that some of the brightest minds in social media are SEOs, and they’re completely on the up-and-up and non-shady. It’s just that they’re too busy getting things done to proclaim themselves social media experts or some other nonsense.

The huge influence of “off-page” factors on search optimization is why I wrote the SEO Copywriting 2.0 series 3 years ago. I updated it for 2010, but it is still directly on point, because it deals with fundamental aspects of strategic content development that don’t really change.

If you haven’t, check out SEO Copywriting 2.0 to get more out of the remainder of this series. An understanding of content development strategies is critical before going the “last mile” with on-page optimization.

SEO copy is the “last mile” to strong search rankings

Are you familiar with the “last mile” problem in the broadband industry? You can have thousands of miles of high speed fiber optics carrying loads of data cross country, but if the final connection to the customer’s home is aging copper or pokey coaxial, the benefit of the optical cables is lost.

Likewise, if you do everything right by building an authority site that Google trusts, but don’t tell Google that your page content matches what people are actually searching for, the targeted traffic benefit is lost. That’s what effective SEO copywriting does – it tells Google which words are the most relevant ones.

You don’t have to optimize on-page upfront. But you do have to begin with the ending in mind from a keyword standpoint, due to the importance of anchor text when people link. We’ll go more into that in part two of this series.

And if you ignore this SEO stuff? Sure, you’ll get plenty of untargeted “long tail” traffic otherwise, but what good does that really do you? Even with an advertising business model, irrelevant traffic bounces off your site quickly, leading to disgruntled advertisers who don’t renew. And if you’re selling something, you’re only burning bandwidth.

The beauty of building a subscriber-focused online presence based on valuable content is that you can do well even if Google hates you. But the irony is, if you actually follow that path, Google loves you.

Take advantage of that. It’s the critical last mile of a well-rounded online marketing strategy that makes a huge difference to your overall success.

Traffic must convert, or why bother?

Now we come to the big point. Everyone loves traffic – it’s addictive and strangely gratifying in its own right.

But traffic doesn’t pay the bills. It’s people who take the actions you need them to who do.

Going back to that confusion, many think that a search-optimized web page is some ugly keyword stuffed mess that sends people running for the hills on sight.

That’s not true. At least not when done well.

Danny Sullivan said it well at the close of our discussion:

“Unfortunately, too many assume that SEO means trying to trick search engines. It doesn’t. It simply means building a site that’s friendly to them.”

And that’s what we’ve been talking about here at Copyblogger for four years now (and helping at the code level with Thesis). Now let’s further explore on-page optimization specifics in this Simple SEO Copywriting series.

Coming up next:

• Seven Best Practices for Effective On-Page SEO
• Does Writing for People Equal Good SEO?

About the Author: Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and CEO of Unglued Media . Get more from Brian on Twitter.

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Does SEO Copywriting Still Matter?

It’s been a week deserving of a shout-it-from-the-rooftops “TGIF!” So much going on, makes a girl just wanna curl up with a bucket of Rocky Road, watching the lightning storm out my window.

Alternately, I could kick back and watch the Sundance Film Festival online. YouTube announced it is getting into the movie biz starting this week. YouTube will start renting movies, launching the offering by making five Sundance Film Festival films available for rent this weekend.

Have you heard that it’s raining in SoCal? A series of monster storms pummeled the Cali southland this week.

Driving about after a storm brought Paula to an observation that I second:

Seriously, what’s up with that? How do rain-drenched towns deal? Someone please speak up in the comments. Think I’m overreacting? This is not just the weather-privileged California girl in me talking. See, this image from space proves that NASA believes me. (Related: Images from space show that Mars is a hottie!)

NASA added to the history books today when an astronaut broadcast the first live tweet from space. Careful there, space rangers. Tweeting while astronauting could be dangerous. Multitasking with mobile devices seems to be a dangerous feat these days. Scientists and researchers are beginning to look at the effect of constant multitasking, both behind the wheel and on foot. And maybe even from the space station.

While we’re on the subject of dangerous feats, behold! The flying blogger!

Sorry, that doesn’t have anything to do with anything. I’m just so darn proud!

Know who else should be proud? Internet marketer Lyndon Reid who trusted his gut on a major wager. One group of Internet marketers. One hand of black jack. What happens next?

“What happens next?” is a question that has been top-of-mind for many SEOs staring in the face of a personalized search world. David Harry has published the results of his latest round of testing around the rankings flux of search personalization.

A great company and client of Bruce Clay, Inc. is looking to support their Internet marketing efforts with two in-house SEO/SEM positions. Salem Web Network is looking for two search engine marketers to work in the Richmond, Virginia area, so if you’re an experienced SEM or SEO interested in working hand in hand with Bruce Clay, Inc. at a passionate company in Virginia, be sure to check out this opportunity.

I ran across some fun, interactive visualizations this week. I’m not sure how new they are but I figure it never hurts to share. Digital marketing agency Razorfish brought us A Decade in Search, which outlines the most popular search queries along with the shifting partnerships in search. There’s also the Conversation Prism, now available in a zoomable, clickable format. Last but not least, I learned about Charting the Beatles, a crowdsourced collection of Beatles-themed graphics.

Bing is getting fancy, adding some new visualizations as well:

[10:05:42 AM] BCI-Susan Esparza: Kinda neat Bing feature
[10:06:13 AM] BCI-Susan Esparza: I feel like this is typical of Bing (and Ask too.) They have lots of neat features but when it comes to “just search” they fall down.

Photo by D Sharon Pruitt

Okay, that kinda hurt. [Truth often does. —Susan] How about a unicorn chaser? Shoot. Fresh out of unicorns. How about some funky candy instead? Apparently the chocolate in England is superior to its American counterparts. In the East, Japan takes the gold for these 20 strange candies. It’s like an adventure for your tongue.

I have to veer back around to Twitter news because I didn’t get to it all when I was talking about tweeting astronauts. Rumor is that Twitter plans to release the usernames of inactive accounts. Sadly the Twitter name I’d like is quite active. Making it worse, the user known as @Virginia wouldn’t even be my friend if I asked her to. (See bio. Sad face!)

One tweeter was arrested under the Terrorism Act and has been banned for life from his local airport after tweeting a bomb threat that was intended as a joke. The moral of this story? Bomb threats to airports are never okay. Was that so hard?

A Friday Recap almost wouldn’t be complete without an outstanding blog post by Lisa Barone. Today she caught a new feature making its debut on Twitter called Local Trends. The tool lets you see the trending topics broken down into location. Lisa tells us that people in SoCal are whining about the rain. Ahem. Please refer to the image from space linked to above.

Has Twitter usurped your vanity search results against your will? Turns out you can add one line to your blog or site to indicate it’s your preferred representation of you. Handy-dandy microformat, FTW.

Now on to Google and SEO. Internet marketer Ian Lurie has published the Google Analytics Cheatsheet. It’s not an exhaustive cheat sheet, but it does cover all the tools he and his staff use day-to-day. Ian has generously licensed it under Creative Commons, so feel free to download and share, but definitely give credit where credit is due for this incredible resource.

On the David Naylor blog we find common mistakes of beginner SEOs. Strategy, research, keywords, content, links, and on and on. No SEO sector is immune, so stay alert.

And just for fun, ever think about what properties Google might be looking to acquire? Phone maker HTC? Competitor Yahoo!? Or maybe they’ll look to gain a stake in everyone’s favorite superstore Walmart. Oh the possibilities!

Things I learned from Boing Boing this week:

• What does vengeance look like when money is no object? (Watch the Bugati Veyron skit to find out.)
• Sloths have gotten a bad wrap. They’re actually fast, smart and, um, really picky eaters.
• Our Stone Age ancestors may have started farming for love of beer. Probably should’ve seen that coming.
• The Shiba Inu puppy cam is back! I also recommend the two-week old Boxer pups and the rambunctious CKCs if that’s your style.
• In 2011 the New York Times will begin charging frequent readers to access the Web site. I plan to pony up. You? [Not a chance. —Susan]

Friday Recap: Storm Chaser Edition was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO services company.

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Friday Recap: Storm Chaser Edition

Does the PicApp name sound familiar? It should! It wasn’t that long ago that I wrote my first review on the service for free licensed photographs.

In case you didn’t catch it the first time around, PicApp is a website where you can search for all sorts of premium licensed photos. The kicker is that you can freely embed any of these pictures, which come from sources like Getty Images and Jupiter Images, on your website or blog without any concern for copyright infringement. It’s all free for you to use.

Well, the team at PicApp decided to order a second review for their service, this time highlighting a slightly different set of features. You can think of the first review as an introduction and this second one as a more specific chapter in a book.

The SEO Benefits of PicApp

As you know, search engine optimization can play a major role in the success of your website or blog. You want to rank well in the search engines for your target keywords and keyword phrases, but how can using images from PicApp help?

Sifting through the official PicApp blog, you can read a post on exactly this topic. More specifically, the PicApp team says that using their images can be like using “a real SEO steroid.”

That’s because each of the images that you embed from PicApp come preloaded with “in-depth and professional metadata and captions.” As you know, having an SEO-friendly file name, along with good “alt” and “title” text can go a long way in helping Google understand exactly which keywords it should associate with your image.

Even if you’re not a site that is particularly focused on images, you have to recognize that over 10% of searches online are being conducted for images. The Google Image Search utility is used extensively by just about everyone. If you can rank there and someone clicks on the embedded image of John Mayer, guess whose site shows up in the lower frame? Yup, that could be yours.

Should the site visitor find that your website or blog provides more useful information or other related photos, they just might stick around or even bookmark your page. The higher quality images from PicApp will certainly help in that respect too.

Can you achieve similar results with your own photos? Of course you can, but you will need to spend the time to create your own high-quality pictures (or hire a photographer) and you’ll need to write your own in-depth metadata to accompany them (or hire a writer). Even then, you probably would not be able to get your own shots of Barack Obama and Taylor Swift… but PicApp can provide thousands of those for you.

A Noteworthy Endorsement from Blogger

In my first review, I noted how PicApp got an official endorsement from the WordPress.com community and how there was a plug-in to work with self-hosted WordPress.org installations. PicApp plays friendly with other platforms too, but it got a noteworthy endorsement from the Blogger.com crew too.

Going through the official help documents for Blogger, you’ll find one entry that discusses using images from the web. In addition to a paragraph on “stealing” bandwidth, it also talks about copyrighted materials.

In it, Google says that “if you’re unsure whether or not an image is copyrighted, it’s best not to risk it. However, there are places that make it easier for you to find images you’re allowed to use.” The first place listed is PicApp. It’s a full two slots above the Flickr Creative Commons search. That’s a big achievement!

I don’t think I’m supposed to say anything just yet, but I hear that PicApp will have another major announcement to make early next year. Stay tuned for that.

CLICK HERE FOR FREE LICENSED PREMIUM PHOTOS FROM PICAPP

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Another Look at Free Images from PicApp

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but it’s also true that some pictures are worth thousands of dollars. Many bloggers will tell you that it’s a good idea to include a relevant picture with most of your blog posts, but the average blogger cannot afford to pay the expensive royalties for high end photos.

Sure, you could just jump into your favorite search engine and pull out some pictures that way, but you could just as easily run into all sorts of copyright issues should you take that route. Thankfully, there is an equally easy way to get pictures that is 100% legal and 100% free. It’s called PicApp.

Discovering a World of Free Photos

Some of you may already be familiar with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and how it protects the copyright of digital content found online. If you chose to pull and use a protected image from a website without the right permission, you could run into a whole world of legal issues. That’s why PicApp could be a more suitable solution.

Going through the PicApp library, you will find literally millions of photos at your fingertips. These premium pictures come at no cost to you, thanks to special agreements that PicApp has made with the copyright owners. The pictures come from Corbis, Getty Images, and other similar sources.

By using a picture from PicApp, you agree to the terms and conditions. For example, you must link back to the PicApp site each time.

How Does It Work?

To get a better sense of what PicApp is all about and how it works, watch the brief video overview embedded here.

You can browse through the photo galleries, view the most recent uploads, and so forth. Naturally, you can also perform a search based on your chosen terms. For example, here are the results I got when I searched for a picture of Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning.

Integration with WordPress Blogs and More

When I click on any individual image, I am provided with more information, like the date and location, as well as the important code options for embedding image in a blog. Here is the pop-up that I got on an image of Roberto Luongo at the poker table.

The “image code” is regular HTML and should be compatible with most blogging platforms. It also contains a brief snippet of Javascript, search engine optimized tags, and a link back to the image page on PicApp. You can also define your alignment settings and choose from the three available sizes.

Here is a live example of an embedded image using this method. You can also choose to download the new PicApp WordPress plugin for your self-hosted blog.

Underneath the standard image code is a special shortcode for WordPress.com blogs. This is a more recent development and it is one that has been highlighted on the official WordPress blog.

One of the key differences is that you get a photo slideshow underneath the embedded image if you use this method instead. This can provide extra value for your readers, since they can view all of the related images from PicApp right from your blog.

An Invaluable Resource for Bloggers

Many bloggers seem to think that they are immune to any copyright infringements. They think that they can get away with using any kind of “borrowed” content that they’d like, but this is just as illegal as software piracy.

If you want to avoid any legal gray areas, the powerful image resource from PicApp seems to be just the ticket. You get access to millions of licensed photos and none of them will cost you a penny. They’re all high quality too, but you are restricted to maximum width of 500 pixels. The WordPress integration, both for WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress.org blogs, is quite good too.

CLICK HERE TO GIVE PICAPP A TRY

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How to Use Licensed Photographs for Free

Real-time search has been getting so much buzz lately. But is it really everything marketers hoped for? What does it even mean? Let’s find out.

Moderator: Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land

Speakers:
Gerry Campbell, CEO, Collecta
Jeremy Hylton, Software Engineer, Google Inc.
Ken Moss, CEO & Co-founder, CrowdEye
Kimbal Musk, CEO, OneRiot
Vipul Ved Prakash, Co-founder, Topsy

Danny’s starting us off by answering the question “What is real-time search, really?”

Web search = search for Web pages
Image search = search for images
News search = search for news
Real time search = search for real times?

Real time content = content published within seconds of being found/created/thought.

Some examples are pics posted within seconds of being taken, or a tweet or status update.

Real time search = finding microblogged content

You can do real-time searches on Twitter. The disadvantage of it is time is the ranking mechanism, and they have a bad habit of losing tweets.

Facebook is another real-time search engine. But it only searches in Facebook and delivers results from people who opted in.

There are also a number of Meta real-time search engines. They tend to let you search for real-time sources among multiple sources. A lot of them are predominately designed to tell you what’s being shared in real-time, not necessarily the current thought process. Two real-time search engines can have radically different results. Until Twitter teams up with a major player, we’re not going to have a great real-time search experience for tweets.

Kimbal Musk steps up. He types “SMX” into OneRiot.com. Results are about the keynote this morning and some of the other session coverage. But in Google, it’s the SMX site and other results that aren’t about what’s happened at the show so far. So if you’re looking for what’s being talked about at SMX right now, you need to use real-time search.

Real-time search is starting to be leveraged at properties across the Web. The real-time search results are starting to appear in many places. It’s a real and growing market.

Jeremy Hylton is next and says that when users have an information need, freshness and real-time is a part of that. Freshness has been an interest for Google for a while. Over time Google has become faster at uncovering new content.

There’s lots of real-time content available, but it’s not necessarily of use to a searcher. If we can take timely content and deliver it to users in context when they need it, that’s going to be very useful for users.

But you still have to worry about spam and duplication. And you need good ranking — we have to be aware of international issues like language, and knowing where the user is if they’re looking for something they just saw. One worry is how open these platforms are and how accessible your content is. We need to be careful about letting the actual authors control how it’s indexed and discovered.

Ken Moss takes the mic and says that real-time search helps consumers and businesses keep their finger on the pulse of the real-time Web. Microblogs are a big deal. Social conversations are a new mode of human communication.

There are some weak aspects of real-time search that are being addressed with new services.

• Perspective: knowing the history of a search term or topic — hours ago, days ago
• Ranking: finding the most relevant results — not just about time
• Topics: a tag cloud can help the user understand what the conversation is about

They’re also experimenting with real-time searches as a dashboard or home page.

Gerry Campbell is up next. Real-time search means so many different things. Is real-time search overhyped? He says it absolutely is. Not because there’s not a ton of opportunity, but because no one’s certain of what the opportunity is yet. It’s here to stay but we’re just at the beginning.

How do we know it’s got value? Don’t measure it by the press; measure it by user intent. People must stay up on their brand and the conversations around them. Microblogging is just the beginning of real-time utterances — it’s a bellwether that people are looking to express themselves. They’ve found about 20 percent of microblogging is commercial. But the query stream is not stable. Though, trying to predict user intent over time is relatively stable.

Vipul Ved Prakash is our next presenter. At Topsy they are indexing all the links that people are posting in real-time formats. The search results page takes the signals shared on Twitter and culls it for the top results. As you go back in time, you start discovering more canonical documents — pages you’d find on a traditional search engine. As the data grows, we’ll have to find ways of condensing it and culling it to find the signal.

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Real Time Search: Opportunity or Hype?

Good morning and welcome to day 2 of SMX East! Pop quiz time! But don’t worry, it’s multiple choice — should be easy. Virginia Nussey A) had a blast at IM Charity Party last night, B) forgot to bring extra laptop batteries to the conference and isn’t afraid to fight you for a seat next to the power outlet, or C) is stoked to see the future of search in this crystal ball of a power panel.

Trick question! It’s D, all of the above!

Chris Sherman is on the stage and is wearing a rainbow clown wig. And out struts our panelists, also donning crazy wigs. They took this big wig thing very seriously! Here’s the line up:

Greg Boser, President and CEO, 3 Dog Media
Andrew Goodman, Founder and Principal, Page Zero Media
Sara Holoubek, Consultant, Columnist and SEMPO Board of Directors,
Jack Menzel, Group Product Manager, Google
Kristine Segrist, Search Managing Director of MEC Interaction, GroupM Search
Julie Sun, Director, Digital Marketing, MTV

Let’s start at the beginning. Where’s the search industry today?

Sara: We’re seeing budgets shrinking, but money is moving online. There’s positive movement, but we’re still feeling the pain.
Julie: There’s a lot of interest in digital and search. The budgets are tighter but digital is still able to maintain a foothold.
Greg: The amount of time it takes to negotiate and close a deal is dramatically longer. Price has dropped as far as what you can charge, but getting to the “ink” is dramatically longer. It’s not like ‘06, where people came to you with buckets of cash. I think we’re starting to see a bounce back, though.
Jack: Through the recession we’ve seen consistent growth and people are searching more than they were a year ago.
Andrew: Google’s found ways to grow in ways that other companies never would have, but if you look at the competition for placement among some sectors, those won’t bounce back the same way.

Chris: Is there even “traditional” media anymore? What kinds of needs do you see larger brands having?

Sara: Ad formats are antiquated concepts. What we’re seeing is morphing. Media is communication. Companies don’t have TV or print spend, and our space is less expensive than some of those traditional formats.
Kristine: Every dollar is more accountable, regardless of channel. There’s less appetite for testing, to some degree. Content delivery has to be agnostic — don’t be married to how it’s delivered, as long as you’re increasing views of your content.
Julie: Traditional marketing isn’t going away. What we’re doing at MTV is trying to complement them. A message on TV matches the message online, and we see a lot more effectiveness and engagement when channels complement each other. So one can’t exist without the other. From a budget standpoint, we can’t stop both traditional and online marketing because they work together.
Greg: In the future we’re going to see traditional media as a way to promote online, interactive content. There’s a whole middle tier of companies that are finding bang for the buck by using traditional channels to promote their Twitter account, for example.

Chris: Is Twitter a flash in the plan? Any thoughts of social media’s place going forward?

Kristine: Search and social inform each other. Search insights can help us understand what we should be listening to in the first place. The insights you glean from social monitoring can be activated quickly in search. If you know there’s an issue or you want to capitalize on a trend, you can leverage search quickly.
Andrew: The signals we had in organic were getting stale. Social is a fertile new ground.
Jack: Social is creating more information and connections that Google is excited about serving to people.
Sara: One: Media has always been social. It’s not new — we’re just freaked out because we can see it. And two: search and social are totally malleable. They can be used for direct response, awareness, as listening devices… it’s hard for a CMO or COO to see where it fits in the company. We need to do a better job explaining what it is and how we can use it.
Greg: Twitter has changed the landscape. It’s so quick and easy and there are so many ways it can be used. You don’t have to be Zappos and have hundreds of thousands of followers. Organic search has become more the space of the big players, but Twitter allows businesses to gain some traction before they show up in search.

Chris: With more narrow and precise targeting options, we’re starting to see some backlash. A study from UC Berkley found that more than 60 percent of participants felt that targeted ads weren’t okay. Are we going to be able to take advantage of these sophisticated technologies?

Andrew: The primary blind spot we have in North America is relatively lenient privacy legislation. It will probably be clamped down more in the future. But at the same time, targeted ads perform better than other contextual channels.
Kristine: The major scrutiny of privacy issues are in reaction to display ads. It’ll be interesting to see how we can leverage search behavior in offline forms.
Jack: Personalization feels less creepy when Google gives you exactly what you asked for in the first place. Also, giving users control over what info we can use in targeting, transparency, makes people more comfortable.
Greg: Time to pick on Google. Transparency is a bit of a crock. There’s a 30-minute cookie. I’m not a logged in user, but I still get local results for Beverly Hills. I’m not in Beverly Hills — maybe my ISP is or something. But my only alternative is to tell Google where I am. And I don’t want to opt in to tell Google where I am.
Jack: If there’s a query with local intent we’re going to give you our best guess.
Greg: But Google is showing local results for broad queries. It’s assuming you know better than I do about what I’m looking for.
Sara: Isn’t it interesting that of all the ways you can reach customers, search is the most scrutinized. There are a lot of imperfect systems — marketers can buy your information, send things right to your house. Maybe we need to rebrand it as “tailored” advertising. No one wants to be a target. Though maybe the rise of Google is the reason we’re paying more attention and scrutinizing privacy. It’s a good check and balance that Greg and the government raises the issue. At the end of the day we should be aware of the trail of data we leave when we push a button or buy something.
Greg: Personalization is not you spying on me. Personalization is me telling you about my needs and my wants.

Chris: The emergence of Bing and Bing’s partnership with Yahoo are among the biggest changes in search. How’s having 2 players rather than 3 going to change our space?

Kristine: I think it’s appropriate that the DOJ looked at the deal. But I am a fan of the deal. It’ll be interesting to see how it’s going to play out for agencies. I think it’s going to be a good thing for agencies. It’s going to be a slow transition and nothing’s going to happen in the short term. I hope we’re able to merge the best of the best and not lose any of the good things.
Julie: It’s good from a budget, targeting and volume standpoint. It will make the job a little easier.
Andrew: Is anyone going to miss Panama when it’s gone? [No hands.] I’d like to see something that turns the whole game on its head. The common assumption is that you can’t beat Google. I’m not sure that’s true — these things sneak up on you.
Sara: 10 years ago we might have been rooting to put a dent into Microsoft, and a decade later, it’s now Google. I expect someone to come out of left field. While 2 might make our job easier, it might be good for a newcomer to be on the field in case the offerings get stale.

Chris: If we came back in 5 years, what would we be talking about?

Andrew: I like the idea of trust and peer networks helping you decide stuff. But having that integrated into our apps, for instance — something universal.
Kristine: All media forms will be addressable, and we’ll be looking at a much more complex view of attribution.
Julie: Things move so quickly. I’d say privacy is still going to be an issue. But as younger kids get older, they’re used to being more lax about privacy. It might take a turn. With search and online marketing, it’s going to be more like traditional.
Sara: I’m so excited for the keyboard to disappear and be replaced by voice activated technologies.
Jack: We’ll be talking about the same angst we have today — “I can’t find exactly what I want.” It’ll be faster and more accurate, but search is so big.
Greg: Technology stuff doesn’t usually pan out. We do eventually get there, but in the immediate future, the biggest thing is going to be the complete integration of data streams. The concept of Google Wave will be the future.

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Keynote: What’s Next in Search: The Bigwig Crystal Ball Panel