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 Search Engine and Social Media Strategies: How Many Accounts Do You Have?

Submitted by Raj Dash on February 21, 2008 - 9:25pm in

How many social media accounts do you have? I lost track months ago - and that's not including the seventeen niche voting sites that I convinced myself and other members of Hive that I was going to build. Last year. Fact is, I already have too many accounts to keep track of, let alone actually use. Nevertheless, my account list will still grow as my online friends explore new sites.

Earlier today, one of my colleagues AIMed me with a social voting link that he wanted me to vote up. I'm not a member of the site in question and I loathed the thought of signing up for yet another social voting site. However, part of my online functionality is to be "social". That means having the basic accounts on the most popular sites, plus accounts on a few niche sites including a few that I co-own. But I find that the more sites I join, the less I use any of my existing social accounts. There seems to be a law of diminishing returns, and I'm afraid my social effectiveness might decline. I'm loathe to join more, but some of my fellow bloggers get offended when I won't join the site they've just emailed me about.

Unfortunately, the fact is that being "social" is becoming an absolute necessity for online success for web workers, including pro bloggers. (Business Week has an extensive article on how social media will change your business, whether or not you're using blogs. A lot of this article is an assessment of how certain large corporations or even formerly offline consultants/ marketers are faring using various types of social media.)

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 Search Engine and Social Media Strategies: Feedburner Burns Itself?

Submitted by Raj Dash on February 20, 2008 - 5:42pm in

Breaking: Feedburner takes away all-time stats.

Breaking: Feedburner restores all-time stats.

Now that Feedburner all-time stats are back, you should go check how your remarkable content (e.g., pillar content, resource bait, traffic bait, linkbait, etc.) is doing. Is your linkbait failing on Digg? That's a refrain I've been hearing from some bloggers lately, especially after Digg's recent algorithm change. Someone I know had 220 votes on one submission and no home page (last I heard).

What to do you about failing on Digg, possibly because of your domain name being "tainted"? Cameron Olthuis suggests building mini-sites for posting the linkbait to.

But how does building and baiting mini-sites help the domain you're NOT getting diggs on? Go read Cameron's article. It's brief and to the point. And while you're over at Search Engine Land, check out Debra O. Mastaler's roundup of link building tools. You'll need these tools more than ever, thanks to more webmasters avoiding reciprocal links.

Another thing to possibly avoid: targeting a specific search engine. Though that doesn't mean you should not follow the changes in search engine algorithms.


 Search Engine and Social Media Shenanigans: Yahoo! Blocks Other SEs From Spidering Del.icio.us?

Submitted by Raj Dash on February 19, 2008 - 8:19pm in

Several SEO websites are reporting that Yahoo-owned Del.icio.us has blocked some search engine spiders from accessing certain links on del.icio.us. A couple of people tested this theory by trying Del.icio.us page accesses using a faked User-Agent value and were denied.

On the flipside, Andy Beard is blocking Googlebot. Specifically, he's blocking paid reviews posted on his site from being indexed by Google. He apparently feels that Google's preference for all of us to use "no follow" on any link that has been purchased is not the answer.

Paid reviews are, for some, a supplement to remarkable content. If you're just starting to build remarkable content, check out these proven headline templates.

Of course, remarkable content should include multimedia such as video. DailyMotion is now offering HD embeds, which you might want to use in a video marketing campaign.

Though no matter how much remarkable content you have, if you don't join social media sites to help promote, it's unlikely your site's profile will increase before blogger's depression sets in. On the other hand, you might make too many online friends and be overwhelmed with requests for social loving.