A Wonderland of Unintended SEO Benefits

Every now and then one of my posts hits the search engine jackpot. To my dismay, my first post to garner a large amount of search engine traffic was about Twitter and pornography. Because a lot of people typing the keywords "Twitter" and "pornography into search engines arrived at that post, it quickly became one of the top 10 most popular posts of all time on my website. It maintained this ranking for months despite getting minimal views and tweets from my … [Read more...]

Google Tests Crowdsourcing Search Result Quality

Did news of J.C. Penney successfully gaming Google to deliver its website No. 1 search results disgust you? How about news of the New York eyewear merchant who used cyberbullying to get top Google rankings and more business? Now you—and the wisdom of the crowd—can take matters into your own hands to stop content farms and websites using shady black-hat search engine optimization (SEO) methods from appearing high in Google search results. Thanks to an … [Read more...]

Cyberbully Seeking High Google Rankings Arrested

I was glad to read in the Huffington Post today that cyberbullying is no longer helping New York eyewear merchant Vitaly Borker get top Google rankings and more business. Instead, Borker is behind bars charged with, among other crimes, fraud, interstate threats, and cyber stalking. A Manhattan judge has denied him bail. Accordingly to the New York Times, Borker intentionally created a customer experience so vile, his customers would rant about it on the Internet, … [Read more...]

Are Blogs King and Press Releases Obsolete?

UPDATE: As noted in my Is Twitter King and the Press Release Obsolete? post, Brokaw: ‘I Don’t Get Twitter…Just Stuff That Fills Air' post, and Video Clip of the Month: Conan’s YouTube Choice post, social media has the future of press releases in a flux. Stay tuned! Blogs are more effective than press releases, Arianna Huffington, cofounder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post, said during a Q&A interview in the February 2010 issue of PR Week. “I … [Read more...]

HOW TO: Arm a Press Release with Magic Magnets

A snappy, eye-catching headline used to be the most critical part of a press release back in the day when a press release was—shockingly—actually a release to the press. Now that the Web has allowed people to read press releases directly, even the cleverest headline is useless on a news release that doesn’t generate traffic. In today’s Web 2.0 world, the most important thing your press release and its headline needs is keywords. Keywords are what Publicity Expert … [Read more...]

Your Brand: Taking Social Media Seriously

Now that Google has added live results from Twitter into searches, you need to face the fact once and for all that you can no longer control your organization's online reputation. Negative comments on blogs, Facebook, or Twitter have the power to tarnish your brand overnight in ways unimaginable a few years back. Even a small business should take social media seriously and try to influence conversations about its brand. A common concern, however, is managing … [Read more...]