Emhoo Blog

What does someone searching Google for your name or blog name find?

Earlier in the year I met a blogger at a conference who I had a pretty good conversation with. He had pitched me an idea for something that we might one day work on together. However when I got home, while I could remember his name I couldn’t remember his blog’s URL.

So I did what everyone would do and ‘Googled Him’ (by the way - I can’t believe that ‘Googled’ doesn’t come up in my spell check).

What I found when Googling him was not his blog (or not immediately) but the first three search results for his name were:

1. a rant about him written by another blogger who complained that that he’d left comment spam on his blog
2. his Flickr account which had pictures of him with scantily dressed women at an Adult Entertainment convention
3. another rant from another blogger who he’d had a fight with (ironically over the same idea he’d pitched to me)

When I finally found his blog’s URL (it was 10th for his name) I decided to search Google for the blog’s name and found a similar list of links in the top search results.

This blogger has a reputation management problem - at least when it comes to Google.

Whether there is truth in the allegations made by the other bloggers I’m not sure - but certainly the impression you get of this guy when you type his name and his blog’s name into Google is not a positive one. It’d be enough to put off potential business partners, some potential life partners and potential readers.

There is an element in the search results for your name or blog’s name that is out of your control as a blogger. It depends upon what others write about you and the ranking of their site’s in Google - however there are things that you can do to help get the results that you want to the top of the rankings.

1. Identify Which Pages You Want to Rank Highest For - Obviously you want to rank highest for your blog’s home page when someone searches for your blog’s name but there is more than one search result above the fold that people will see - so what other pages do you want to rank well for? One that I always try to boost are my ‘about pages’. Knowing which pages you’re attempting to rank higher enables you to target them in the strategies outlined below.

2. Link to Key Pages - perhaps one of the best things that you can do is to link to the pages that you want to rank well for your name. Link to them from other sites that you have control over (social media sites and your other blogs), link to them from your own site (for example here at ProBlogger I link to my ‘about page’ from every page on my blog and as a result it ranks highly for my name) and when you have control over how others link to you get them to link to those key pages (for example when you guest blog you might ask them to link to your about page).

3. Use Your Name in Links - this is something I don’t need to do (after years of building up the ranking of my blog) but link to your about page with your name. Search Engines look at the words used in the links pointing at your pages to work out what they are about. If you have a link to your about page that simply says ‘about’ or ‘about me’ then it doesn’t tell Google what the page is really about. Instead use About Darren or About Darren Rowse type links and it’ll add to the power of the links to rank for those terms.

4. Use Your Name on Highlighted Pages - a search engine won’t rank a page for a term that is not used on that page. If you want to rank for your name or blog name on a particular page you need to use that term and use it more than once. This means on an About page that you’ll want to talk about yourself in the third person or at least find some way of incorporating your name into it. Name images on the page with your name, title the page with your name, use your name in headings, make it bold etc. All of these things signal to Google that your page is about the words you’re highlighting.

5. Use Social Media Sites as Secondary Ranking Pages - if you look at the search results for ProBlogger you’ll find that my ProBlogger twitter page, my ProBlogger Stumbleupon page, my ProBlogger Mybloglog page, my facebook page all rank for the term. This means that instead of just coming in at #1 and #2 search results for a page (for your blog’s front page and your about page) you can potentially rank for all of the top results for your name. Some of these social media sites naturally rank very well in search engines as they have so many incoming links but if you link to them (like I do in my footer) you can give them an extra boost. You can also help boost the ranking of all of your pages with some interlinking between them - this particularly helps as they will all be ranking well for your keywords.

6. Manage negative pages - so what happens when a page that is negative towards you ranks highly? Sometimes it’s difficult to have much control over these pages but there are often opportunities to manage the situation. If it’s a blog post - attempt to leave a comment that balances out the post and answers the concerns in it. If it’s not you might want to try reasoning with the site owner.

7. Remember Everything Online is Permanent and ‘Builds’ Your Brand - keep in mind that everything you put on the web is permanent. Even if content is deleted it is usually recorded somewhere in an internet archive page and it can come back to bite you later. Not only is the content online permanent but it all says something about you and your brand. This doesn’t help you fix poor online reputation - but I guess should serve as a warning as you build content online (whether on your own blog or not).

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Click on the image: Chiaiano, professor Marfella

The Public Prosecutors Office of Naples has ordered the arrest of 25 people, all of which are public officials and employees of companies with links to the Refuse Emergency Committee (Cdr). The arrests made the headlines on the day that the news first broke, but within just a few hours it was relegated to the inside pages (Corriere) or became an irritation, as in the case of La Repubblica’s headline: “Refuse, now the magistrature has begun to cause problems”. The Veltrusconi newspapers have stood together in defence of “Monnezzopoli” (The refuse scandal). The managers of the Cdr plants in Naples, Benevento, Caserta, Avellino and Salerno were placed under arrest, namely the Cdr technical manager who is solely responsible for the procedures relating to the Acerra, the Managing Directors of the Fibe company, which is part of the Impregilo Group, and Ecolog, which is part of the State Railways Group, and Marta Di Gennaro, Bertolaso’s right hand man.
The psychodwarf’s continuous presence in Naples raises certain doubts. His decree making provision for a Super-prosecution Department is yet another example of clockwork injustice, one of his long standing specialities. 75 deputy prosecutors and acting prosecutors have rejected the decree as being unconstitutional. Naples’ jurisdiction over the entire Campania Region will result in the paralysis of all the investigations, since all of Campania’s justice departments will be required to “interact with a single Public Prosecutor’s Office, thereby risking that a drop in efficiency and increased delays will affect the co-ordination of police activities by the public prosecution”. The court proceedings that are currently in progress will be entrusted to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, retroactively. This is tantamount to snatching the investigations away from the people who began them, thereby causing chaos in terms of the processing of procedural documentation.
Bertolaso is embittered and talks about refuse as if it was a lost love: “The intervention at Chiaiano was good”, “The intervention by the magistrature has created problems, not only for itself, but also for the local communities”.
The inquiry that led to the arrest of those 25 people commenced in January 2008, which was already too late, but also had nothing to do with the psychodwarf’s decree.
In addition to the abovementioned 25, there are another 28 people committed for trial for crimes including corruption and fraud relating to the provision of public waste disposal services. Amongst these are the former Managing Director of Impregilo, the former Managing Director of Fibe and the salt statue that is Bassolino. The court case is due to commence in July. This blog will be monitoring the proceedings with much interest.
25+28 equals 53, or “old man” in terms of the ancient “Smorfia Napoletana”. Since I am rather superstitious, this worries me, also because the number 71, which also happens to be the age of a certain old man, totally co-incidentally you understand, in the Smorfia means “man of shit”.
Monnezzopoli is coming.

Earlier today I was asked to take a look at a blog of a reader to give it a critique. On arriving on the blog I immediately noticed that at the top of every article on the front page of the blog there was a copyright notice which ascribed the copyright to a ‘free article’ website. On opening each post I saw that at the bottom of each post was a paragraph byline from an author with links back to their own websites. Classic ‘free article’ stuff.

The concept of ‘free article’ websites is simple. Authors wanting to build their web profile and incoming links to their sites write articles and submit them to a ‘free article’ website. The free article website then allows any website owner to republish those articles as long as they do so with the links that are in them in tact. In this way the author of the article gets links (which helps their search engine ranking), the article site also gets free links back to them and the person using the article gets free content.

Everyone wins right?

Wrong…..

I won’t unpack whether the article writer wins (that’s a whole other post) but as a blogger republishing free articles on your blog you could actually be doing more harm than good to your blog.

Let me illustrate this with a simple exercise:

On searching ArticlesBase.com (a free article site) for ‘blogging’ to see what articles they have there an article titled ‘13 Steps to Successful Blogging’ comes up in the search results (as pictured below):

I highlighted a segment of the article and plugged it into Google within “quotes” to see how many exact matches I could get for it (to see how many times the article has been republished).

Here’s the search results on Google:

Google sees that phrase ‘about’ 54,000 times!

There are three main reasons why I wouldn’t use ‘free articles’ on a blog:

1. A key to growing blogs is unique and useful information - if you want to grow a blog into a profitable and sustainable venture you need to provide your readers with useful and unique information. Post the above article and you’re 1 in 54,000 (and counting).

2. A key to growing blogs is personal voice and connection - if your blog is filled with free articles you’ll end up with a collection of content that is disjointed, that doesn’t personally connect with readers and is devoid of personality. Blog readers will subscribe and become loyal to a blog when they feel a personal connection and want to track with someone over the long haul. Not when they see a disjointed collecting of articles by a different person every day.

3. A key to ranking well in Search Engines is ‘Unique’ content - using an article that appears 54,000 times on the web almost guarantees that it’ll never be found by one of the biggest sources of traffic out there - Google. For starters you’re competing with 54,000 other versions of the same article, secondly you’re competing with the ‘free article’ sites you got the post off (remember they generate millions of links from their free articles) and on top of all that Google hates what it calls ‘duplicate content’ and works hard to not rank highly content that is republished over and over again. The article above does appear in the rankings for a search for ’successful blogging’ in the #1 position - but the site that ranks for it is a free article site.

The long and short of it is that as a blogger you’re doing yourself and your readers a disservice by using ‘free articles’.

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Around a month ago regular readers will know that I wrote that I was about to start an online video making course at WebVideoUniversity.

Around 10 other ProBlogger readers signed up with me and have been partaking in this four week course over the month of May. I said that I’d give a review of the course at the end of the month so wanted to give a little feedback for others considering signing up.

I should say up front that I’m behind in the course. I’m still getting through week 3’s content - the reason being that there’s just so much of it and I’m rather time poor at the moment. Luckily buying the course gives you 12 months of access to it, including any new content that is added in future weeks. So I’ve still got 11 months to get through weeks 3 and 4!

I wouldn’t normally review a course half completed but enrollments for the June course are open for a few more days and as there’s a baby about to arrive at the Rowse House I thought I’d better review what I’ve done as it could be another month til I get to complete it!

So how’s the course been?

Overall my experience so far has been positive.

Content

There is no shortage of information, it is clearly presented and of a high quality. The content is largely presented in video with lots of examples given.

As mentioned above - there’s lots of content given. Week 1 has 12 videos (around 50 minutes), week 2 has 24 videos (around 3 hours of content), week 3 has 24 videos (over 3 hours) and week 4 has 20 videos (around 2.5 hours). That’s around 10 hours of teaching in total.

Topics covered in videos include:

Week 1 - in this week it’s mainly introductory information around different concepts and tools. There’s an intro to video editing software, cameras, audio, video lighting, music and voice overs, using stock clips, making a teleprompter, green screens/backdrops and technical terms.

Week 2 - this week focuses upon introducing the idea of ‘videos that sell’ where there is teaching on the kinds of videos that work well in selling online. Then you get into video editing and learning how to do some of the basics like working with text, using transitions and effects and many other aspects of creating a video.

Week 3 - this is what I’m working through at present and is focused upon more advanced video editing techniques, green screen video, whiteboard video, 3D compositing and other editing tricks.

Week 4 - is what I’m looking forward to more advice on and includes getting video on the web.

The focus of the course is ‘making videos that sell’ and as a result there’s an emphasis upon making ‘web commercials’ but I’m learning things that I think I’ll be able to apply in the making of the type of videos that I’m making here on ProBlogger (talking head ones) as many of the principles apply.

Each week not only has teaching but a ‘resource’ section which has lots of helpful links, examples and further learning suggestions.

Presentation

David Kaminski is the presenter in the videos and he’s done a really excellent job of pulling this course together. The quality of the videos are great. At times David is slightly dry in his presentation style (that could be extenuated by me doing this course late at night when I am also a little ‘dry’ myself) but he explains concepts so clearly and in a way that even I (a complete dunce technologically) can understand and his ‘dry’ approach actually grew on me the more I watched (after watching him for hours I feel like I see more of him than my best friends). I really appreciate the way that the course is broken down into bite sized videos - it means it’s not overwhelming and that you can actually do the course a little at a time in your own pace over time.

Support

One of the things that I’ve appreciated about the course is the support that David has given participants. He’s not only been helpful to me but in chatting to a few other participants they’ve also been impressed by his prompt replies to questions (usually well within 24 hours). He’s even added a section in the course’s home page which has video answers to some of the questions he’s been getting. It’s refreshing to find someone not only who knows what he’s talking about but who is genuinely interested in helping people apply it to their own situation.

Mac Users Should Note…

If you use a Mac then you need to note two things. Firstly there’s a bug that prevents you viewing the videos at present using Firefox unless you are using version 3. Safari is fine to watch it in though - no problems there.

The other thing to note is that David uses Sony Vegas as his video editing package of choice and illustrates editing using that. He is currently making tutorials for Mac users using Final Cut Express and says that these videos will be available within a month or so. I am a Mac user so found watching him edit on Sony Vegas a little frustrating at times but was amazed how much of what he showed was so easily transferable to my Mac software. Having the Mac focused tutorials will be fantastic though and I am glad I have access to them for another 11 months.

Overall - I’m impressed with WebVideoUniversity and am glad that I’ve invested in it. I know that there’s another 10 or so ProBlogger readers who did the course so I’d love to hear your opinions on it too if you’ve done it!

If you’re interested in joining in June’s run of WebVideoUniversity you can sign up for the next day or two here.

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After my post a few days back about my love hate relationship with Akismet I was pleased to see Six Apart announce another option for bloggers looking to stem the tide of comment spam - TypePad AntiSpam.

While I’m yet to try it the reports coming in about it are good so far. It’s free (Akismet costs for a commercial license, it has plugins for MovableType and WordPress, it’s open source, and it’s compatible with Akismet (so you can run them together).

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Image by Michael Sarver

Over the last two days I’ve been writing about building relationships with other bloggers including tools and techniques for building blogger relationships as well as general principles of building relationships.

Today I want to finish this series on building relationships with bloggers with some tips from some of my own network of blogging friends.

A few days back I mentioned on Twitter that I was writing this post and asked those who follow me there to submit their own tips. Here are some of the tips that they mentioned. By the way - my Twitter followers are fantastic and are some of my favorite people to interact with. If you’re looking for a place to start networking why not follow some of these people on Twitter - by responding to this question they’ve proven how willing they are to network - what a great starting place!

1. meanttolive - I’m part of one blog network. I follow bloggers on Twitter. And I read and comment on lots of blogs.
2. galadarling - Be personal, complimentary, offer something, get their attention, be different. Works a charm ;D
3. mattwardman - Ask them questions so they think they can help me … seriously.
4. robbyg - I start with blog comments, move to twitter second, and finish off with regular emails if the relationship is strong.
5. travelrants - networking: commenting on blogs, twitter, blog forums, email / MSN communication, blogger summits, conferences etc.
6. bkajino - I read blogs I like & participate in conversation when I have input
7. miguelpineiro - building relationships, selfish promotion and genuine interest in their success.
8. DebNg - Twitter and Skype mostly though I do belong to a couple of forums as well.
9. profwebs - Leave meaningful comments on their blogs, become active in their “community” when relevant, “reach out and make new friends”
10. StuartL - email, twitter and the phone seem to be working for me at the moment
11. RossMaguire - I have to agree with Stuart about twitter, it is very effective
12. Telemill - simple, social networking sites: twitter, linkedin, mybloglog and blogcatalog.
13. sharrypdx - among other things, I have very few close relationships with a couple of other bloggers. We share insights, leads, tips, etc.
14. shawnfarner - Lately, Twitter :)
15. jakebouma - interact w/comments, establish a relationship, send articles of interest to them via email, connect on other social sites
16. auer1816 - email tends to work well.
17. theotherdrummer - Comments, e-mail and/or Twitter.
18. chrisguillebeau - everything all the others have said is good, but for me i think the slow building of personal relationship is most important
19. rahsheen - Twitter and FriendFeed primarily…in regards to connecting to other bloggers
20. inkedmn - comment on their blogs to start, then casual emailing
21. davidcubed - Twitter, IM, Private Forums, and Blog Comments are my biggest ways of connecting with other bloggers
22. kristarella - Comments are the best networking, subscribe, comment, email. Networking sites are tools: useful, but often fickle, short-liv …
23. genuinechris - It depends on if we’re in sync. I often link first to show up in their dashboard, and then if it’s apropo, exchange guest posts
24. AGoodHusband - I comment on blogs I like, link to blogs that I love, and find something useful for bloggers I admire.
25. jimgoldstein - good old fashion flattery via any communication medium ther person uses regularly. Email is a great standby.
26. briancarter - Twitter with them and help them write their blog posts by answering twitter questions… ;-)
27. davenavarro - Comment on their blog, start conversations that lead to more comments, get noticed :-) Looking fwd to your book va SF
28. jonathanfields - Twitter is a great tool for casual banter/fun, for more important/detailed contact, I still lean on e-mail

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Image by Michael Sarver

Over the last two days I’ve been writing about building relationships with other bloggers including tools and techniques for building blogger relationships as well as general principles of building relationships.

Today I want to finish this series on building relationships with bloggers with some tips from some of my own network of blogging friends.

A few days back I mentioned on Twitter that I was writing this post and asked those who follow me there to submit their own tips. Here are some of the tips that they mentioned. By the way - my Twitter followers are fantastic and are some of my favorite people to interact with. If you’re looking for a place to start networking why not follow some of these people on Twitter - by responding to this question they’ve proven how willing they are to network - what a great starting place!

1. meanttolive - I’m part of one blog network. I follow bloggers on Twitter. And I read and comment on lots of blogs.
2. galadarling - Be personal, complimentary, offer something, get their attention, be different. Works a charm ;D
3. mattwardman - Ask them questions so they think they can help me … seriously.
4. robbyg - I start with blog comments, move to twitter second, and finish off with regular emails if the relationship is strong.
5. travelrants - networking: commenting on blogs, twitter, blog forums, email / MSN communication, blogger summits, conferences etc.
6. bkajino - I read blogs I like & participate in conversation when I have input
7. miguelpineiro - building relationships, selfish promotion and genuine interest in their success.
8. DebNg - Twitter and Skype mostly though I do belong to a couple of forums as well.
9. profwebs - Leave meaningful comments on their blogs, become active in their “community” when relevant, “reach out and make new friends”
10. StuartL - email, twitter and the phone seem to be working for me at the moment
11. RossMaguire - I have to agree with Stuart about twitter, it is very effective
12. Telemill - simple, social networking sites: twitter, linkedin, mybloglog and blogcatalog.
13. sharrypdx - among other things, I have very few close relationships with a couple of other bloggers. We share insights, leads, tips, etc.
14. shawnfarner - Lately, Twitter :)
15. jakebouma - interact w/comments, establish a relationship, send articles of interest to them via email, connect on other social sites
16. auer1816 - email tends to work well.
17. theotherdrummer - Comments, e-mail and/or Twitter.
18. chrisguillebeau - everything all the others have said is good, but for me i think the slow building of personal relationship is most important
19. rahsheen - Twitter and FriendFeed primarily…in regards to connecting to other bloggers
20. inkedmn - comment on their blogs to start, then casual emailing
21. davidcubed - Twitter, IM, Private Forums, and Blog Comments are my biggest ways of connecting with other bloggers
22. kristarella - Comments are the best networking, subscribe, comment, email. Networking sites are tools: useful, but often fickle, short-liv …
23. genuinechris - It depends on if we’re in sync. I often link first to show up in their dashboard, and then if it’s apropo, exchange guest posts
24. AGoodHusband - I comment on blogs I like, link to blogs that I love, and find something useful for bloggers I admire.
25. jimgoldstein - good old fashion flattery via any communication medium ther person uses regularly. Email is a great standby.
26. briancarter - Twitter with them and help them write their blog posts by answering twitter questions… ;-)
27. davenavarro - Comment on their blog, start conversations that lead to more comments, get noticed :-) Looking fwd to your book va SF
28. jonathanfields - Twitter is a great tool for casual banter/fun, for more important/detailed contact, I still lean on e-mail

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I’ve been playing around with Shopzilla publishers network for a few months now but it’s only been in the last week that I’ve had time to take it for a full run on my blogs.

Today I checked my stats and am kicking myself that I didn’t take this program more seriously sooner!

You can read my first impression review of Shopzilla here from when I first started to play with the ad network.

This last week I’ve experimented with some more aggressive positioning of the ads and I’m very impressed with the conversions. You can see one such campaign operating on single posts right at the base of Digital Photography School Posts (like at the bottom of this one).

Now the positioning of the ad unit on that page is far from prominent (it’s so far below the fold that it’s not funny) but my initial testing is that while the CTR isn’t high, it is higher than the ad unit that I previously had in that position. What makes Shopzilla attractive however is that while CTR isn’t massive the ads are paying a significantly higher amount per click (I’m talking a 500% increase).

As usual with this type of ad unit, they work best on product related sites and where the products featured relates strongly to content (I suspect that the higher value the products the better for click value) - but it’s a great program that I have a new found excitement for and plan to start using more and more.

Check out the Shopzilla Publisher Program here.

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I’ve been playing around with Shopzilla publishers network for a few months now but it’s only been in the last week that I’ve had time to take it for a full run on my blogs.

Today I checked my stats and am kicking myself that I didn’t take this program more seriously sooner!

You can read my first impression review of Shopzilla here from when I first started to play with the ad network.

This last week I’ve experimented with some more aggressive positioning of the ads and I’m very impressed with the conversions. You can see one such campaign operating on single posts right at the base of Digital Photography School Posts (like at the bottom of this one).

Now the positioning of the ad unit on that page is far from prominent (it’s so far below the fold that it’s not funny) but my initial testing is that while the CTR isn’t high, it is higher than the ad unit that I previously had in that position. What makes Shopzilla attractive however is that while CTR isn’t massive the ads are paying a significantly higher amount per click (I’m talking a 500% increase).

As usual with this type of ad unit, they work best on product related sites and where the products featured relates strongly to content (I suspect that the higher value the products the better for click value) - but it’s a great program that I have a new found excitement for and plan to start using more and more.

Check out the Shopzilla Publisher Program here.

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In my weekly column over at ScribeFire this week I started a series on Offline Blog Promotion (ie promoting your blog through means that have nothing to do with the internet).

You can read part 1 (it’s a 3 part series) here. In this post I introduce why offline blog promotion is worth considering and 4 techniques to get the word out about your blog. Over the coming two weeks I’ll be sharing another 9 techniques.

Got some offline blog promotion techniques to share? I’d love to hear about your own experience of how you’ve done it in the comments on that post.

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