Chris Pirillo » seo

Social Media SEO

Chris Pirillo — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 22:11:37 +0000

During my time in Texas at OpenCa.mp this past weekend, I reconnected with an old friend. Lee Odden used to write about Marketing on Lockergnome back in the day, and it’s great to see all of the things he has accomplished since that time. Not only did both of us go skydiving with the Army Golden Knights, we were both honored to speak at the event.

Lee and I took a few moments out of our hectic schedules to discuss SEO specifically as it applies to social media.

The things I do are SEO-like in nature… but I’m not an SEO person per se. Everything I do is organic. I create solid content and make sure to use keywords that people may be looking for. The funny thing about social media is that some of us have been doing it since before it was even a term. It has allowed us to really get to know the type of person that someone is. That tends to cause us to be taken advantage of at times, sure. The tools are in place for all of us to use. But it’s easy to see who is gaming the system. Those are the types of the people I won’t follow. This is what I mean by taking advantage of things and people.

Someone who takes an anti-transparent approach is someone I don’t want to associate with. I strive to be as transparent as humanly possible with my business and my life. When a person has to work at NOT being transparent, you have to wonder what the hell is wrong with them – and their business.

Yes, you should use certain tools to help you. But there are a handful of them floating around which are just bad – almost as though you’re cheating the system. Don’t fall victim to get rich fast schemes. Don’t let yourself be swayed by a fast-talker who claims they can turn your site into the most-visited place online. These things will do nothing but set you back several steps, causing you to lose site of your original goal.

You cannot just exist in one place online. It doesn’t matter how people find you. It just matters that they DO find you.

The biggest tip I have for you when you’re starting out on your own blogging journey is that you should not spend any money. There are numerous platforms and design tools available that will not cost you a single penny. You will find plenty of things to help you achieve your dreams without spending a bucket full of money.

Social Media SEO

How Do You Focus on the Task at Hand?

Chris Pirillo — Wed, 05 May 2010 05:14:04 +0000

How Do You Focus on the Task at Hand?

Sometimes, focusing our brain can be a difficult task. Things happen on a daily basis in our lives that end up muddling our minds. It becomes difficult to shut off the noise and truly focus on whatever it is we’re supposed to be doing. Even though the thoughts running rampant may be serious or life-changing, we still have to find a way to push them aside for a bit of time so that we can finish our work. Life goes on, even when we may not want it to.

My question is… how do you accomplish this? How do you manage to stop thinking about everything else and get the things done that you have to? What do you do to clear your head and distract yourself when you need to? I happen to know someone who is going through a very difficult and painful time right now. However, she still has to work in order to take care of her family. She’s having a lot of trouble concentrating. Instead of thinking through what she’s trying to write, she ends up having her thoughts consumed by what is going on in her life. I am hoping that our community may have some advice and tips for her to help her get through this period. I’m sure that she’s not the only one having this problem, either. I’m willing to bet all of you have had to deal with this at some point or another.

How do YOU turn off the noise and just focus?

You won’t find any type of noise or external clutter when you head over to our software center to get the latest software and apps for your devices and computers.

How Do You Focus on the Task at Hand?

Improve Your Website

Chris Pirillo — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 03:28:22 +0000

Improve Your Website

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Devir has created another excellent screencast for all of you. This time, he took a trip back in time to show you how my website looked back in 2002. It’s a TAD different these days, I know. The point is to show you how much website building has changed over the years. Devir is going to give you several tips in this screencast for tools you can use to improve your website!

The first tool is called Wufoo. Wufoo is a web application that removes the inefficiency and tediousness out of the form building process. It is a HTML form builder helps you create contact forms, online surveys, and invitations so you can collect the data, registrations and online payments you need without writing a single line of code. Wufoo is only free for the first three forms. After that, you would need to register and pay for the service.

The second tool that can help you improve your site is called MOBIFY. MOBIFY helps you to design a mobile layout for your website, as well as capture mobile traffic from both Twitter and Google. It also helps you to manage mobile analytics and advertising!

Next, we have something that I use right here on my own site – Wibiya. The Wibya toolbar is free, and works on all platforms. Use it to increase your page views, incorporate your Twitter and Facebook accounts, and communicate with your readers. There is no need to know how to code anything, and it takes literally less than two minutes to install!

Thanks, Devir, for an excellent screencast!!

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Improve Your Website

Who is Your Favorite Superhero?

Chris Pirillo — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 01:15:25 +0000

Who is Your Favorite Superhero?

By definition, a Superhero is a fictional character of “extraordinary or superhuman powers” who is dedicated to protecting the public. In my mind, though, a Superhero is something far more basic. It’s that person you know who is fighting to raise cancer awareness. It’s the man who travels the country, telling the stories of homeless people. A Superhero is a person who goes above and beyond themselves to try to make this world a little bit better for all of us.

A Superhero doesn’t have to be famous, or get much recognition. They don’t have to have their name splashed on billboards, nor their tweets retweeted by thousands. They simply do what they do because they are truly passionate about helping others. They don’t do it for fame or glory or even money. They do it because they care.

Who are the Superheroes in your life? What makes them someone you admire? I’m willing to bet we have them right here, within our own community. Let’s share their stories, and help them continue the work they love so much.

Don’t forget to stop by our software center to check out what new software and apps we have today – all at discounted pricing!

Who is Your Favorite Superhero?

Todd Friesen – Confessions of a Reformed Spammer

Chris Pirillo — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 01:53:29 +0000

Todd Friesen – Confessions of a Reformed Spammer

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Todd Friesen is a former blog spammer. Who knows? He may have visited your blog in the past. Hear his tales of the “old” days, why and how he did what he did… and why he no longer does it.

Todd Friesen is considered by many to be an SEO pioneer. He entered the SEO world in 1998 and has since worked with top-name clients like Sharper Image, Nike, Neiman Marcus and Accor Hotels North America on natural search optimization. He is an expert in search engine marketing, a former administrator at Webmasterworld, and former moderator for Search Engine Watch. He co-hosted the popular SEO Rockstars on WebmasterRadio.FM, as well as a regular speaker at Search Engine Strategies, WebmasterWorld Pubcon, SMX and other conferences including Shop.org. He has also a regular contributor to OMMA Magazine and regularly posts on his own blog at www.oilman.ca.

Todd is the VP of Search at Position Technologies and works with new and established companies to optimize existing sites and help architect new ones to achieve optimal natural search engine rankings. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Calgary and currently resides in Gig Harbor WA.

[awsbullet:seo for dummies]

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Todd Friesen – Confessions of a Reformed Spammer

Unraveling the Mysteries Surrounding Community

Chris Pirillo — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 12:06:00 +0000

Unraveling the Mysteries Surrounding Community

After watching my What is Community presentation, Seth sent a long and very well thought-out email to me. He voiced his agreement with many of the things I had spoken about, and told me I had inspired him to start delving deeper into life online and to try and unravel what he feels are the mysteries in relation to communities. Seth produces webinars, and has been working hard on building a community of his own. He has heart – and is passionate about what he’s doing. For him, it’s truly about helping people, and not about fame or money. Seth has several questions about how to help his community grow. Instead of writing an email back to him, I decided to post his questions here – for my community to answer. This allows Seth to gain several different perspectives. It will also hopefully help others who may have some of the same concerns and questions to learn for themselves.

Following is part of what Seth wrote to me. What I’m asking of you is to read what he has written, and let him know in a comment here what your answers and perspectives are. By helping him, you are even potentially helping yourself – and who knows how many others. Let’s show Seth what an amazing community we have here!

You talked about building a community and mentioned that the blog is just a tool, and I get that. I have been building a community for some time (it’s a little slower than I would like it to be), and your video on community really made me think. I wonder if you could talk in a little more detail about how you would recommend I go about getting more people into my community. Do I go out on other similar blogs and start posting comments with the hope that my words will generate the interest that will lead people to want to visit my blogs?

I have profiles on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and even MySpace. I realize now that I need to focus my efforts on getting to know people who come into the common areas of my Venn diagram. My Facebook membership is mostly comprised of people who know me directly on a personal level. I am just starting to get some interest via others on Facebook who have emailed me, asking for more information on the webinars. On Twitter, I have at times gone out and just randomly started following people, which I realize will get me nowhere. However, what is a better way to go about finding people who may cross into a community area that I would share?

Do you recommend having different blogs for different interests? Right now, I have a main blog, a QuickBooks blog, and an Excel blog. I also have my own personal blog, as well as another personal one that represents a part of my personal life that I normally keep separate. Lately, though, they all seem to keep crossing paths so to speak, without my having even tried to make them do so.

For SEO reasons, I am inclined to have several of these various blogs pointing back to my “money” site. Is this the best strategy? How do I even begin to generate revenue? Is that through advertising? I am asking that because I am interested in learning more about the web business model. Being in Accounting, there aren’t a whole lot of resources online to use as a model. Most Accountants aren’t using the web to build their business. I’m hoping to be a pioneer of sorts in that regard.

Well, folks, what do you say? How do you suggest Seth go about making his community into what he envisions it to be, and then making it grow into more than he could have imagined? I’m just as interested in hearing all of your thoughts and ideas as Seth is.

Unraveling the Mysteries Surrounding Community

SEOMoz

Chris Pirillo — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 19:38:02 +0000

SEOMoz

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I recently attended the WTIA Fast Pitch Forum & Technology Showcase. The conference featured two dozen of the of the hottest technology companies in Washington presenting their business in a competition for “Best In Show”. SEOMoz is a gathering place for search marketers worldwide. They provide education, tools, resources and paid services to help every SEO be the best they can be.

SEOMoz provides consulting, Internet marketing and search engine optimization services. Their goal is to provide you with excellent service and education so that you can use the unique reach of the Internet to help you achieve success.

It takes much more than a few good keywords in order to achieve search engine “success”. Everything from the URL you choose to the way your site is laid out is important. Even seemingly small, unimportant factors can end up being the differnence between success and failure. Links must be properly tagged and worded, and the positioning of content is critical.

If you or your company is trying to build your online presence and improve your search engine page rank – definitely read the articles that SEOMoz has available. You may even want to consider going a step further, and talking with one of their consultants. After all – you’re in it to win it!

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SEOMoz

What are Tags?

Chris Pirillo — Wed, 20 May 2009 20:04:58 +0000

What are Tags?

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If I were to tag my dogs, I would use words such as: wicket, pixie, dog, puppy, paws, pet, tail, wag, and so on. Tagging things is second nature to me now. But I’ve come to realize that not everyone knows what tags are, or why they should be using them.

To put it simply, tags are keywords that are used to make your post/picture/whatever easier to find. When you look for something via a Google search, you type keywords into the search box. Let’s say you’re looking for the best monitor to buy. You would start by searching something like “monitor review” or similar, right? Those are called keywords! They are what leads you to the results that you see.

If you have a website or blog, you definitely want to use good keywords. How else will people find what you’ve written? Using tags is the easiest way for people to find you! If you write about your dogs and use good dog-related tags, people searching for dogs may just hit on your site!

The reason I started talking about tags is due to an email I received from Olrik! He asked about tags, and how useful they are. He was writing his blog posts through Windows Live Writer. In that program, there’s an option to set up some tags. He’s no professional writer, but he does want to start becoming more professional.

Using the built-in feature allows you to choose from pre-set tags and keywords that will apply to your content. They are live tag selections, which are similar in nature to Google Suggest.

If you’re not already using tags, you should probably start. After all, you are probably not only creating content for yourself, right? You want to be heard – and you shall!

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What are Tags?

Danny Sullivan – Search Life Meets Real Life

Chris Pirillo — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 09:43:01 +0000

Danny Sullivan – Search Life Meets Real Life

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Widely considered a leading “search engine guru,” Danny Sullivan has been helping webmasters, marketers and everyday web users understand how search engines work for over a decade.

Danny’s expertise about search engines is often sought by the media, and he has been quoted in places like The Wall St. Journal, USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, Forbes, The New Yorker and Newsweek and ABC’s Nightline.

Danny began covering search engines in late 1995, when he undertook a study of how they indexed web pages. The results were published online as “A Webmaster’s Guide To Search Engines” [now "Search Engine Marketing 101"], a pioneering effort to answer the many questions site designers and Internet publicists had about search engines.

The positive reaction from both marketers and general search engine users caused Danny to expand the guide into Search Engine Watch, where he served as editor-in-chief through November 2006. Now he heads up Search Engine Land as editor-in-chief, taking it into the next generation of search coverage.

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Danny Sullivan – Search Life Meets Real Life

Jason Calacanis: The Internet’s Environmental Crisis

Chris Pirillo — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 19:56:41 +0000

Jason Calacanis: The Internet’s Environmental Crisis

http://live.pirillo.com – The internet is being destroyed by selfish polluters and we can stop them. Jason talks about all the garbage that is being thrown into our internet, and taking a stand against those spammers putting it there.

Jason Calcanis is an “Entrepreneur in Action” at Sequoia Capital. He was previously the co-founder of Weblogs, Inc., and the GM of Netscape.

Back in 1994, the internet was associated with good things, and today it is synonymous with spam. Jason talks to us about all the garbage that is being thrown into our Internet, and taking a stand against those spammers putting it there.

Email – Communications email and then marketers create spam, consumers revolt, but the forces of evil win and email is ruined for marketing. It’s now impossible to be in the email newsletter business.

SEO – Over-aggressive marketers have ruined the system. CEO is destroying the web. The concept of “I have to rank higher than I deserve to” has destroyed search.

User-generated video and community sites – again, a lot of spam taking over these services.

Search results from places like Ask and Google return a bunch of spam. Mahalo is trying to fix that. Jason has just introduced Mahalo Follow, which is an extension you can install that will bring up a Mahalo sidebar when you do a search on Google, Ask, Yahoo, or similar search sites and displays the Mahalo results when the service has a result for that term.

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Jason Calacanis: The Internet’s Environmental Crisis

Is SEO Good or Bad?

Chris Pirillo — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 02:39:59 +0000

Is SEO Good or Bad?

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http://live.pirillo.com/ – Search Engine Optimization (or SEO for short) is generally a very good thing. Just as there are white hat hackers and black hat hackers, there can also be black and white SEO’s.

Search Engine Optimization is crucial if you want to get your website or blog found by others. Having fresh new content isn’t enough these days. Everyone and their grandmother uses search engines… in particular, Google. SEO is simply defined as optimizing your site or blog for better searchability. Man I must have had plenty of caffeine today. Check out all these big words I’m using! Never fear… the normal Chris is still here. Using words like ‘searchability’ and ‘optimization’ shouldn’t scare you off. They honestly aren’t that hard to achieve, if you know where to look and what to do. An excellent place to start is by reading what Google themselves has to say.

There is a bad side to Search Engine Optimization, as well. Have you ever searched for let’s say a hotel, only to have the actual hotel website NOT be the first hit on Google? Some of these affiliate sites are not so good to be visiting, unfortunately. The biggest one to worry about is something called Rogue Anti-Spyware. If you are looking for a good program to keep spyware off your computer, and do a search, you may very well get programs that show up on the Rogue Anti-Spyware List. STAY AWAY from any program on that list, even ones who are now “delisted”. If they have been suspect in the past, are they really trustworthy now? Just because a program promises excellent protection and results, doesn’t mean it is so. Do your research. See the downside of good SEO now?

As with anything else, if you’re serious… do your research. There are many websites and even books out there that can help you learn to better optimize your site so that you reach maximum searchability.

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Is SEO Good or Bad?

2 or More GB of Ram for Memory

Chris Pirillo — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 02:00:59 +0000

2 or More GB of Ram for Memory

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http://live.pirillo.com/ – Every day it seems I get a ton of questions about RAM. I chose this one to answer, because this user is a bit confused. He has a 32-bit Windows setup, and can’t figure out why Windows won’t recognize more than 2GB of RAM when he installs it.

Elementary, my dear Watson. A 32-bit system can not use more than 2GB of RAM. If your system supports it, you’ll need to upgrade to a 64-bit version of Windows in order to install more RAM. If you’re adding RAM, make sure you know what brand you already have. Certain brands do not play nicely together. Of course, if you’re buying all new RAM and totally replacing what you have, that issue doesn’t really exist. I’m not going to go into depth about one type vs another… we’ll leave that for another video. Keep in mind that saving money isn’t always the route to go. In my opinion, you get what you pay for with hardware of any type. No, I’m not telling you to spend a fortune you cannot afford. Just… buy the best in your price range.

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2 or More GB of Ram for Memory

The SEO Industry is Full of Snakes

Chris Pirillo — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 18:13:32 +0000

The SEO Industry is Full of Snakes

Ultimate Tag Warror META Keywords

Chris Pirillo — Sun, 21 May 2006 23:05:58 +0000

Ultimate Tag Warror META Keywords

It’s amazing what happens when you email the developer of a WordPress plugin – they respond. At least, most of ‘em do (I’m still waiting to hear back from a couple of ‘em right now, including Red Alt on being able to search posts from his admin search plugin). After blasting a note to Chris Davis about his community-based tagger, I sent a note off to Christine Davis (no relation) about some shortcomings in the current Ultimate Tag Warrior. I wanted UTW to copy tags into the META keywords tag. She responded with code which needed to be tweaked a bit by Shayne:

[php]< ?php if (is_tag()) { ?>
< meta name="keywords" content="‘%tagdisplay%’, ‘default’=> ‘, %tagdisplay%’)); ?>” />
< ?php } else if (is_single()) { ?>
< meta name="keywords" content="‘%tagdisplay%’, ‘default’=> ‘, %tagdisplay%’)); ?>” />
< ?php } ?>[/php]That’s for all you SEO types out there who are also using the wildly-popular Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin (and I’m not just saying that because it supports Gada.be). This is fun!

Ultimate Tag Warror META Keywords