The Organ Grinder’s Monkey

Do you really need to know SEO?

If you do any sort of commerce over the web, from heading up a full-scale international corporation to running an eBay store in your free time, you probably have a blog (or are thinking about it). But what good is a blog that no one can find, or that scores poorly in the search engines? Not much, beyond any cathartic relief you get from writing it.

SEO (search engine optimization - the art and science of making your site easy to find and creating good search engine mojo) is a basic skill that everyone who has a web presence of any kind needs to have under their belt. Even if you’re not the one managing your site, you should at least understand what’s going on so you can tell if your webmaster is getting it right or screwing things up royally.

But for bloggers, who are almost exclusively one-(wo)man-bands when it comes to creating and managing the content and structure of their site, not knowing about and understanding how to use SEO is like being a race car driver who doesn’t know how to drive a stick-shift - you’re won’t get very far without a great deal of luck, and even then it’s going to be a hell of a bumpy ride.

The Blogger’s Guide to SEO

In The Blogger’s Guide to SEO, Aaron and Giovanna Wall have created a great e-reference for beginners and old hands alike who want to learn more about the basics of SEO and how to apply these concepts to their blog. By understanding and implementing these ideas, you can learn to maximize the searchability, ranking and exposure of your work, and avoid some of the most obvious pitfalls.

This quick read is a great primer on blog SEO for newbies - it offers a deep enough overview to provide real, useful value without getting bogged down in unnecessary detail or confusing hardcore methodology. The writing is concise, easy to read and informative without being dry or overly academic (and, more importantly, without dumbing down the topic into trite, superficial fluff), and the content is broad enough to cover all the bases without chasing after all the shiny bits of esoteric SEO foil that often attract enraptured geeks, but that are meaningless to average readers.

Time to play with my new toys!

In fact, I like this little guide so much that, since I’m pretty much at the stage where I need to start implementing SEO techniques here anyway, I’m going to use it as a template for doing so. Over the coming weeks, I’m going to go through the tips and ideas they outline and either apply them (and blog the process) or write about why I’m not going to, both as a way to get this thing off the ground but also to test out their information for ease of use and effectiveness (when possible).

Of course, that means things like link structure, categories, page titles and the like may get changed around. Luckily, this blog is so new that I don’t have too many readers to worry about discombobulating; this is a good reason why it’s important to implement this stuff early in the process. But if you are visiting on a regular basis (God bless you), keep an eye out for housekeeping posts that will point out any changes that could affect your viewing pleasure.

Consider it a slow-motion review by way of a live field test. It’ll be fun! Plus it means I have a valid excuse for monkeying around with the site. (Not that that’s ever stopped me before, mind you.)

BTW, if you use any of these tips and ideas for your own site, drop me a comment or email to let me know how it went and what your thoughts were on the process. I’ll put any such submission up on the blog so that everyone can benefit from your experiences.

Photo credit: Scyza

Tags: Reviews by Soni Pitts
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Wow. Just…wow.

Is it breathtaking cinematography? Oh, yes. Is it great advertising? Certainly. Will it sell more beer? Eh, probably not.

This is what’s called “name recognition” marketing, and it’s designed to implant or keep a brand’s “memespace” in your head. Only the biggest companies can afford to do this (this ad cost £10m to make, and is tied in with a host of other interactive activities, according to this article), and there’s no real data showing how much effect any one ad (and its attendant costs) produces. So it’s not a viable strategy for smaller biz operators by a long shot.

But boy, is it ever beautiful when done right. Consider it art, supported by corporate donations. Enjoy.

Tags: Advertising and Marketing, Business, Reviews, Society and Culture by Soni Pitts
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Sean D’Souza is a f**king genius. Just accept that from the get-go and your life, particularly the part of your life that involves marketing your business, will become infinitely easier. Especially if you invest in his downloadable Brain Audit series of ebooks, audios and other goodies.

Sean is the founder and Chief Brain Auditor of Psychotactics, a marketing consultation and information business uses a research-based, psychological understanding of how the mind works to help you create better marketing, better products and a better business.

For example, did you know that simply re-ordering the way you present your tiered product line can vastly increase sales? Yep. In his article The Secret of Sequence Selling, he explains how a trip through an airplane to his assigned seat demonstrates how the mind changes the way it perceives, feels about and responds to choices depending on the order in which they’re presented.

Those are the sort of hardwired, evolutionary tics that you, as a business owner, can benefit from understanding when trying to convince a human to do something like buy, subscribe, invest, donate or otherwise take action. And since few of us are taking credit card orders from Fido and Fluffy, I’m going to assume that’s everyone in the room.

Psychotactics puts out a weekly newsletter, which I’ve also included in my sidebar listing, that offers regularly-delivered tidbits of Sean’s vast store of proven tips and tricks directly to your inbox. But if you’re really serious about making sales, converting website visitors, increasing subscribers - whatever shiny object it is that you’re chasing - you need to get your hands on his basic business brain-science bootcamp, the Brain Audit series. It’s the business owner’s trail guide for hacking your way through the jungle of the human mind (with the emphasis on “hacking”). And it’s all based on rigorous, tested brain science that clues you in on how we upright primates are wired and why we do what we do (and how you can use that information to your advantage).

Of course, Sean has an entire line of infoproducts and services that are equally valuable. Check them out for yourself. Some require having read the Brain Audit series as a prerequisite, while others are stand-alones. Every one of them will pay you back many times over when you put their information to work for you.

Just so you know, as far as I know Sean doesn’t have an affiliate program and I don’t get a cent from any purchase you make. I just happen to be one of his evangelically satisfied customers. Yeah, he’s that good.

Tags: Business, Reviews, Society and Culture by Soni Pitts
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The Cluetrain Manifesto was written in 1999, which would seem to make it desperately obsolete if not downright antiquated by today’s fast-moving standards…except, it’s not.

What started out as an internet bitch-slap upside the head of clueless corporations who were either in denial of the way things were changing or trying to game the system rather than join it quickly went from an online bitchfest to a marketing phenomenon as the manifesto became a book, which became a viral message, which became a movement.

Although it was written over 7 years ago as of this posting, the content remains as fresh as the day it was enpixelated, primarily because A) corporate mindsets are glacially slow when it comes to adaptation and change, and B) new businesses are being minted left and right by people who have been cloistered behind the culturally monastic walls of corporate America for most of their working life and who are no more prepared to fight their way out of this particular wet paper bag than their previous bosses are.

In the Cluetrain Manifesto are discussions on everything from doing business in the conversation economy and how to really screw it up, to dealing with an enlightened, incredibly intelligent workforce each of whom probably represents more brain capital on a bad day than the businesses entire historical line-up of executive level officers combined, all laid out in an edgy, direct lingua franca that never lets propriety get in the way of delivering their message with vigor and clarity.

In short, this is the unabridged, user-created wiki manual for doing business in the 21st century, and if you haven’t read it you’re missing out on a lot of very vital information.

And here’s the cool part. You can click the graphic link above if you’d prefer to have a hard-copy version (and send me some kick-back love in the process), but if you’re not adverse to reading book-length copy on-screen, the entire Cluetrain Manifesto is available online for free.

So now you have no excuse whatsoever for not knowing how this new reality works and how to function within it. Don’t make me come back there.

Tags: Business, Conversation Economy, Resources and Tools, Reviews, Society and Culture by Soni Pitts
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