How To Get Social With SEO (because you have to)
"If you really want to outrank the competition, you’re going to need to tap into users’ social graphs and send search engines “social signals” that your pages deserve to rank..."
Why People Are Addicted to Info-Products
"Have you ever wondered why people buy dozens of info-products… and yet never seem to get around to consuming them, much less using them?"
Create. at ZenHabits
"It’s amazing how many people I talk to who tell me they want to create a new blog, write a book, start a new business, change careers, make something new. But they keep putting it off..."
Email Subject Lines Guaranteed to Get Attention
(I decided to read this because *this* subject line got my attention!)
Transforming the Book Industry: How Seth Godin is Poking the Box
"During this interview, you’ll learn about his latest book, his views on the state of the publishing industry and about his new venture The Domino Project..."
Burn The Ships and Hail Mary’s… by Ed Dale
"I have racked my brain to come up with one successful online business that has started from a “Burn the Ship” scenario. I can think of none..."
The Good Advice That Killed My Conversion Rate
"A little while ago I performed an experiment in the hope of boosting my conversions. And the results were nothing like I had imagined..."
How to Measure Your Facebook Engagement
"Building a compelling Facebook fan page is one thing. Creating consistent engagement is a whole other skill..."
16 Ways To Get More Comments On Your Facebook Page
"Getting fans to comment on your Facebook Page can take a lot of time and effort. And it can sometimes be painful seeing other Facebook Pages who make engagement look easy..."
And last but not least, great video by Chris Brogan:
About Lynn Terry
Some great points as usual. I read a lot about the importants of social from an SEO point of view but have you seen a single piece of evidence that proves such things drive rank, not including links gained?
I can't remember who it was - thinking Michelle MacPhearson, will have to look that up - but the test got a brand new domain indexed and ranking with nothing but tweets & facebook likes...
I haven't done tests, SEOMoz has done several though. I.E., one of their tests indicate that the text in a tweet w/ a link acts as anchor text for that link.
Matt Cutts has spoken about the topic and says that they do in fact take social signals into account. He was asked specifically about Facebook shares & tweets / retweets, and says that yes, those are a signal as is the idea of "author authority" - is that twitter user / Facebook fan page a trusted / quality source.
And yes, you can get a domain indexed with just a few tweets, absolutely. "Nofollow" (which is used on links spread through Twitter) doesn't mean "don't follow this link," it just means not to pass page rank to that link. So Google might not pass PR, but if definitely visits Twitter links and will index them - that's been the case for years. What's interesting about these *new* changes is that social signals are becoming helpful for ranking, not just indexation.
Sorry to drag you into this Michelle - lol, I don't know why I thought I read it on your blog! 😉 Here's the source: http://www.seoptimise.com/blog/2011/03/can-you-get-a-new-domain-ranking-using-just-facebook-likes-tweets.html
Ohh good stuff! Really liked the post on getting more comments on Facebook and the video from Chris WOW totally what I needed to hear this morning.
Me too, Ang, me too! Chris totally pwned me! ha!
Thanks for the great list and the KILLER video, Lynn!
I've been already reading Michel's blog and i have to admit it, he has some great insight into IM. I've also read Ryan's article: "Why People Are Addicted to Info-Products" and recently been in the situation he describes there, checking my mail every 10 minutes, staying on facebook and twitter most of the day. In the end it just tired me out because the addiction is similar to the one we get from coffee - gets you high at first, than hits you hard.
The man knows what he's talking about.
Thanks for the positive feedback, Maria. I appreciate it. 🙂
Ryan
Some great reads there, Lynn. 🙂
Enjoyed the post about being addicted to info products. I do agree that sometimes people keep on reading them, not just because they're lazy, but they feel happy to learn new information.
I really loved the get Social With SEO article - we've just spent a week or so teaching our clients that SEO is just one part of your marketing mix, and its not mutually exclusive to SEO.
Google's +1 feature is going to be a bit of a game changer there as well.
Not only that, we all place so much more emotional (buying) emphasis on what our friends and acquaintances say, Social SEO and Search are the "now"
I liked the article on Social SEO.. It looks like SEO keeps changing. Hopefully one of these day's I'll figure it out.
Two take-away points from your suggested articles.
1. Create time to create something great. But,
2. Get rid of distractions.
It's possible that the lack of time justifying not taking creative action is from compulsion to answer emails, log-on to Twitter and Facebook etc.
I'm guilty of spending more time than necessary on what Tim Ferriss terms unimportant tasks such as email, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
Tim Ferriss in his 4 Hour Work Week Book sets out two types of tasks: important and urgent. He suggests that people aren't productive because they focus on urgent tasks which aren't important. It's the important tasks that generate results.
I took this bit of advice seriously and revised my day. The first thing I do is write an article or build backlinks (or both ideally). I consider these two activities as the most important activities to blogging (whether for my online or offline businesses). Neither are urgent (I'll get by a day or week without doing them), but they are important. Once I get my important task(s) done, I deal with email, Twitter, Forum participation, etc.
This is turning into one of those posts where the comments are as interesting as the already interesting content.Peter Lawlor's comment and "Create" have just made me aware that I am far too caught up in the urgent while putting off great projects that are simply important. So much for being a constant fire-extinguisher. I've just decided to take a new tact: The present is priority #2 after I do something every day for the future.
I love the Chris Brogan video - does he ever nail it!
There is an old saying I just love - "When your up to your a** in alligators in the swamp its hard to remember why you went in there to begin with!"
Live is like that with all of the noise calling your name and drawing you away from your main goal - making a living!
As a newb in internet marketing, I am still feeling swamped by all the information (much of it contradictory). One thing I learned from a guru, was that the time I spent on twitter was wasted, but to be honest I enjoy twitter, so I stuck with it. Ive got several flower sites, and have built them from nothing with very little seo, cos I don;t have expertise in that area, but the fact that I make money from them means twitter works.
You have to watch those gurus sometimes 😉 They can be very opinionated! lol
Why do people buy info products and learn, but then fail to take action? I view all the money I spend on info products as investment in the business. To make the investment work I need money AND time. Sometimes though its not the distraction that stops me, its depression because I cant see any end to what I'm doing, or any result. I read an interesting article about ways to deal with that at http://www.webcopywriting.cc - I tried the 'smile' technique and was really surprised. It seems to work.
Hey Lynn,
I really enjoyed Chris' video. He's got such an inspiring way about him.
All great posts and very insightful reading, if I do say so myself 😉
I agree, Liz - I enjoyed it as well 😀