Search Blog and Reporter Forum
Posted on November 15th, 2006by Michael Gray in SEO
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Read my top posts or learn more about Michael Gray. Want more frequent updates follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!
Michael McDonald, Managing Editor, iEntry Inc.
Barry Schwartz, President, RustyBrick, Inc.
Andy Beal, Internet Marketing Consultant, Marketing Pilgrim LLC
Lee Odden, President, TopRank Online Marketing
Rand Fishkin, CEO, SEOMoz
Aaron Wall, Author, SEO Book
Q: We had a few reporters write articles and I’m assuming the article will be up forever, and be crawlable?
Andy: it depends where it ends up and do they have an archive
Rand: You should link to the article yourself using digg, stumbleupon, reddit
Lee: Use a service like furl to archive the article
Aaron: create a press release or wikipeidia page
Barry: this gives you the opportunity to get more articles written
Q: I’m in a boring industry, student loans and consolidation, I need to find ways to leverage social media
Rand: if you know you want to leverage social media you need to think of them as a different audience, and target them, find the content matches their intrest
Andy: You are tapping into a great demographic thats online and can link to you find ways to talk about saving money and spending it on things they like like beer
Aaron: Don’t look for direct traffic keep link equity
Barry: Get stories from the students for user generated contnet
Andy: Go back to your original idea and shift the focus of the page
Todd: Where are the college students hanging out online places like secondlife
Michael: Find other information users are interested in and repackage
Q Does it matter who posts the article?
Rand: yes it matters very much, they have lots friends
Lee: if it’s a crappy story you won’t get visibility and will get burried
Aaron: I had a story get burried based on the user and the same story it stayed on the homepage because
Todd: It’s ok to digg your own stuff so you get the right anchor text
Q: I work at a B2B publisher find some existing bloggers to post content for us
Lee: A lot of our content gets picked up on web pro news outrank us, some people link to the webpro news article
Andy: I have a the same problem, and it happens they outrank you but you still get the link
Mike: We like to syndicate the content and the other on page info helps us avoid the dupe issues, we want the blogger to get traffic as well so we give then links
Barry: The stories sometimes overlap, and I write different stories for the different audiences
Aaron: You want to try and drive link equity at the place you want the links to be
Rand: Try to leverage a blogger who has great content but not well recognized, paying a blogger to write on your site so you get all the value from the content
Andy: guest writers come on write for exposure and the link value
Rand: be careful not to water down the persons voice with too many rules, let them be creative, as an example robert scoble became the voice of Microsoft
Q: Is it ok to make a hybrid blog using different divisions
Barry: Google does this but they use separate blogs for each individual products
Andy: If you don’t have enough content use categories
Mike: If you have enough people let them have their own section, as long as it fits into the site
Aaron: Many blogging platforms allow you to subscribe to a specific author or category via RSS
Q: Are there instances where using a hosted service like wordpress or blogpress
Rand: if you want to stay annonomous they are
Lee: From a marketing standpoint there are alot of disavantages
Andy: The service has rules you may not agree with
Lee: if you want to take control it’s not something you can do
Todd: As the blog gets popular the inbound links don’t benefit you
Barry: As a splog tool they are great to create things quickly
Q: I’m getting advertisements for a feed
Barry: try unsubscribing and resubscribing
Rand: yahoo is just promoting podcasting
Q: I have a number of blogs one is about archeology, if I link to articles and newspapers that get hidden behind corporate wall
Rand: I quote the most important spots and link back to the source, and my readers get the important snippet. Newsvine is very good about archiving AP and reuters articles
Barry: I use the article name to help people search and find it later on
Andy: If I know it’s going to disappear I look for an alternative news source.
Q: Do you think comments belong on a corporate blog and are they a way to measure success
Rand: at the executive level is someone ready to give up control in exchange for the positive ideas that can come out of the discussion
Barry: You want them on your blog so people comment on your blog instead of people speaking back at you somewhere else
Q: How do you encourage people to give comments
Rand: When you are in demand in the space leverage people who are already talking about you. Go after the most controversial subjects and open it up for discussion
Andy: Rand engages his readers whereas I provide information, so try to find ways to encourage comments and people can subscribe to the comments
Mike: I don’t think you can use comments as a metric to measure success, a press release type post won’t elicit a lot of comments
Todd: It’s the style of writing that has a lot to do
Lee: Look for people clicking thru rss feeds
Aaron: Check in technorati to see who’s speaking about you.
Barry: there was a post on webmasterworld about letting other people answer questions not just allowing the authoritative moderators
Rand: I end a lot of posts with question
Aaron: introduce tangentially related subjects
Barry: Complain about someone elses service
Q: Is there a different response rate between announcing news than other types of content
Aaron: Opinion masquerading and fact gets lots of comments
Todd; It’s very audience dependent, and what are you looking for out of the post, and what is your goal
Barry: If you do a study on that
Andy: If you thought long and hard creating good content, you are more likely to get more response
Rand: messages have different formats depending on who you want to reach
Q: press releases are adding social bookmarks
Rand: you don’t see press releases in digg, delicious, technorati
Mike: putting a digg tag on press release is like putting lipstick on a pig
Lee: I’m talking about that in tomorrow’s section
Q: I had a client who had an unfavorabe article and publishing things in wikipedia
Rand: You want to write the wikipedia article first
Q: the wikipeida article shows up in the search
Andy: create more content that is positive and find people to help you push it up
Aaron: Structure you site to use subdomains, link to other pages speak positivly about you and create other pages where you control the message
Andy: if you put a reputation management program in place unless you have an army of enemies you should be able to displace others fairly easily
Rand: how do you deal with ethical issues
Andy: As long as people put it behind them it’s ok
Mike: the point of PR is to divert attention away from the bad things
Todd: once you are past the bad thing it’s a business issue
Rand: if you are competing and can’t displace the wikipedia article find a wikipedia editor with more rights
Lee: If all you is go after negative results you are treating the symptoms not the problem
Q: is having discussion a way to combat negative sites
Todd: engaging them on your blog gives you all the control
Andy: the companies who are most afraid are the people who have issues outside
Q: What wordpress plugin do you use
Rand: Threaded comments is something I can never give up
Todd: Akismet catches all spam
Rand: the farm animal captcha is great
Andy: I posted mine on my blog
Q: Our company is big and our wikipeidia entry got deleted but we are big enough how do get it in
Rand: go through a secondary IP, or create a positive profile, also find someone who has a wikipedia profile
Q: I’m starting to get into myspace but for products that don’t match how do I get thing in
Todd: half the myspace accounts are owned by people in this room
Lee: find people who are in that community you join to leverage
Q: Who will overtake myspace and who willit be
Rand: the market has changed 4 times in the last year and the user base might change again
Andy: you may see the market segment and split into niches
Mike: a future iteration will allow splinter groups to connect
November 15th, 2006 at 5:31 pm
I started writing this one but then saw you and you can type a lot faster!
Nice job on the recap - it was a lot to get down..
November 15th, 2006 at 5:36 pm
Hey, these summaries are great - thanks for taking the time to write them up.
November 15th, 2006 at 10:28 pm
This blog is the best coverage of Pubcon I’ve seen yet. I really mean that. Nice job.
November 16th, 2006 at 2:58 am
November 16th, 2006 at 3:24 am
Michael, thanks it’s interesting to read.
November 16th, 2006 at 5:38 am
Interesting Article. Thanks for sharing!
Best regards, Urs
November 16th, 2006 at 11:24 am
I hate to be another “me too!”… but yeah, thanks for taking the time to post this.
Lots of awesome tips without any fluff.
Much appreciated!
February 22nd, 2007 at 11:34 am
Interesting Article, i’m sorry not reading it firstly.