6 ways to help Google find your blog

I attended the Front Range Blogger Meetup last week, hosted by our very own Dave Taylor. One of the traditions they have each month is to take someone's blog (they ask for volunteers), project that blog up on the screen, and the crowd provides constructive criticism. A great opportunity for bloggers who are open to feedback. I don't always make it each month but I was very glad I came to this one because Katharine Zaleski was there as part of a two-week visit to Colorado. She is a senior editor for The Huffington Post and a highly experienced and influencial blogger/editor. Katharine has worked for CNN and has appeared on MSNBC, Fox News, CBC, Air America, BBC Radio as well as other media outlets. You can see her latest interview with CNBC here (she arrived on the set seconds before introductions). She had some valuable advice on improving SEO (search engine optimization) for blogs and some of her suggestions are included in the list below, which stemmed from a conversation about how blog post titles and links benefit (or hurt) your search engine rankings:

1. Titles matter to Google. When you set up your blog, make sure your template puts the title of your post in the "title tags" on the back end of your blog.
2. Use keywords. Think of the keywords someone might be searching on and include those in your post title. For instance, if your post is about finding consumer deals to save money, consider including "surviving a recession" or "saving money" or "best coupon deals" in your title. Google likes that.
3. Pay attention to word order. The words you use at the beginning of your title are more important than the later ones. For instance "Free music at Oskar Blues on Saturdays" won't do as well as "Oskar Blues live music - free on Saturdays". Google also likes proper nouns at the beginning of a title.
4. Use the verbs people are more likely to search on. For instance "Michael Jackson dies" does not do as well as "Michael Jackson dead". Not a happy example but that is the example Katharine used so I'm passing it along.
5. Link to other posts you've written. When you write a post that references a place, person, event, or topic that you have written about before, be sure to include a hyperlink to that previous post.
6. Link to blogs that are bigger than yours. Google analyzes all the links (incoming and outgoing) in each post and loves "one-stop shopping". If you are writing a post about a new recipe, consider linking to bigger food blogs that cover that dish, link to places readers can buy the ingredients, restaurants that serve that kind of food, origins of the special spice it features, etc. You can get really creative with this. It will take some extra time to write the post, but it's worth it.
   

These are more "behind-the-scenes" tips and won't show results immediately but if you make a habit of doing this with your posts, your blog stands a much better chance to showing up higher in search results.

Top 12 email marketing mistakes

As a marketer, I can't help but notice and critique emails, letters, and voice mails I get from people trying to introduce me to a product or service. Cold calling or buying lists and doing email marketing is sometimes a necessary evil when it comes to getting the word out about your product, especially if you are new. So I can definitely feel for their thankless plight. I've been there. But my tolerance runs short when they don't even take the time to pay attention to some basic rules that at least increase the chance that I will not immediately hit 'delete'.

Normally, when I get lousy email solicitations from people trying to promote a product or service, I delete before I get past the greeting. But I actually took five minutes and wrote this company back. Mainly because I wanted to help them. See, they were selling a very valuable product in my mind, SEO. Who doesn't want to improve their rankings in search engines? In this situation, someone actually was promoting something I am interested in but they blew it by violating some simple, basic rules. This is the actual email I sent back:

Hello xxxx,

Thank you for your email. I normally ignore solicitations like this but I just can't help but provide some (hopefully) helpful feedback. Search engine optimization is actually something I am interested in and need for my business. But your solicitation (the one chance you had to make a first impression) violates about a dozen basic rules of marketing:

1. You don't even address me by my name.
2. You address me as Dear Head of Business Development (which I'm not).
3. After that generic greeting, I’m blasted with a HUGE run-on paragraph that is so daunting, it does anything but make me want to read it (I still haven't read it).
4. There was no greeting - at least start with a friendly "Hi".
5. Your name or contact info is lost in the sea of run-on sentences at the bottom.
6. There is not one single link in your email that I can click on to get more info.
7. There is no indication that you took any time to find out about my company at all.
8. Your email was sent to our customer service address when my direct email is super easy to get on our site. When I am answering customer support requests, I am in "help" mode, not "evaluate new products" mode.
   
9. I see sequential numbers scattered in your run-on paragraph that appear to have info after them - ever heard of bullets?
10. You are in the SEO business and yet you spelled "optimization" wrong (and it wasn't just a European spelling - it was a typo)
11. In the first sentence, you reference the online advertising mistakes I am probably making. First, we don't do any online advertising right now. Second, instead of telling me how stupid I am, why not tell me how smart I'd be if I chose your service to help me improve how I reach my customers?
    
12. You don't even provide a website. At least not one that was easily placed in the beginning or end of the email. I did not read any of the mess in between.
    

Those are just the glaring ones I could think of and type out without losing any more than 8 minutes of my day. Do I need SEO? Badly. Will I use you to get it? Absolutely not. You lost me as a potential customer but perhaps this feedback will help you keep the next one.

Sincerely,

Holly

What happened to my career? (and other questions entrepreneurs ask themselves)

I have been helping to launch start-ups for about 15 years and every now and then someone asks "how many start-ups have you worked for". I usually say "about 5 or 6, maybe 7" I lost count, really. So now I'm in one of those moods where I want to know the real answer. How exactly did I end up steeped in the start-up life when I spent many wonderful years on the east coast with a corporate commute and a pretty badge that told the elevator I was allowed to visit the 17th floor? Major change typically happens when you're faced with a major decision. One choice is usually "safe", with a predictable outcome. The other is full of unknowns and way more likely to get you in trouble. I figure making that choice 10 or 12 times is bound to move you around a bit. Or not.

Do I stay in DC and fight with the FCC over telecommunication depreciation rates or do I pack up my truck and move to Boulder, CO where I have no job and do not know a single person? (I moved).

Do I date the MBA student or the bush pilot from Alaska? (many fond memories helping deliver beer and whipped cream to Eskimos)

Should I stay and rock climb with the band of firefighters at the campsite next to mine or leave early and make it to Kansas before Tuesday? (I climbed)

Do I drive up the coast of California in search of my dharma or make turkey burgers for dinner? (turns out they have turkey burgers in CA)

Should I have a baby or get a puppy? (a puppy can't play Risk or mow the lawn)

Do I throw the yearly bonus into my 401K or take my son to Burma and meditate in caves with Japanese monks? (we met monks)

Do I eat the quarter-sized ball of wasabi or lose the dare and the $2? (OK that wasn't me, that was my son, but he SO got that stupidity from me)

Should I stay with the company with the stable paycheck or jump ship and create something new? (I jumped)

Repeat last question (and answer) 5-6 times.

OK, I'm beginning to see the pattern. When faced with the decision to stay where life is seemingly predictable or jump into the abyss of the unknown, I tend to always take the riskier choice. One of my favorite quotes has always been "fate favors the bold", although I don't know who said it. Another favorite is from Wayne Gretzky, who is famous for saying "100% of the shots you don't take, don't go in". SO. TRUE. How will we ever know what we could have been if we don't ever try? What if the odds were so drastically skewed towards those who simply tried something new? Would it inspire you to try?

Another pattern in my career is choosing creating over maintaining. The early, creative stage of a start-up is way more fun for me. I like getting in when there are few people and no real brand name or market presence and then building it all from scratch. I've written about this stage before and it is as true for me today as it was 15 years ago, when I worked for my first start-up.

So that is what happened to my career. It feels weird even calling it a career. Its more like an addiction. A bizarre love affair with risk and possibility that continually draws me deeper into the world of start-ups. So that's how I got here - glad that mystery is solved :)

Playing detective (and having fun with video)

We recently posed a challenge to our Blog Frog Community Leaders to explore, play, and learn to love including video on their blogs. Video is quickly becoming one of the most desirable ways for blog readers to engage with content. Its more fun, its a richer experience, and there is so much that can be communicated on video that simply can't be conveyed in writing. And check this out - 78.5% of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video last year. In December alone, nearly 100 million YouTube video viewers (98.9 MM) watched 5.9 billion videos, for an average of 59 videos apiece. People are eating up video.

So I decided to play along. I had a mystery to solve this weekend. Raccoons were somehow getting up on the roof of a small rental house I own and I had to figure out 1) how they were getting up there, and 2) how to prevent it from happening.

The best part was I had a legitimate excuse to climb up on the roof and wander around! While I was up there, I took a video or two of what I discovered.

Holly on the roof from Holly Hamann on Vimeo.

Mystery solved!

A day for celebrating!

I have posted about start-up life before and I do swear its addicting. The instability, insane hours, insane people, managing others (and my own) unreasonable drive to win. It can drive a person crazy. Or maybe you have to be crazy to being with.

But every once in a while, you have one of those days that makes it all worth while. When something you worked hard for comes to fruition and everyone gets to win.

Today was one of those days. Rusty and I have been quietly collaborating with 5 Minutes For Mom, a very successful (Technorati Top 100 blog kind of success) website for moms, to help them build and launch an interactive community for their readers. Since March of 2006, Janice and Susan, the founders of 5 Minutes For Mom, have been working hard to provide a place where women can share their stories, interact, and learn from other moms in a caring, supportive online community.

Together we launched their new reader community today and I encourage you to go check it out! The idea was to create a place that not only allows readers to interact and discuss what is on their minds, but allows them to share their own blog content as well. The community launched a few hours ago and it already has over 40 conversations going on with 400+ replies. Here are some of the features you'll find there:

• Instantly connect and interact with other 5MinutesForMom readers.
• Start discussions that expose your blogs to thousands of new readers daily.
• Subscribe to a discussion so you never miss someone’s reply to you.
• Every time you reply to a discussion, your picture and blog URL shows up on the 5MinutesForMom homepage.
• Your picture and blog accompanies every reply you add in the community.
• Every time you publish a new post on your blog, it automatically shows up in the 5MinutesForMom community!
• When you visit the 5MinutesForMom community, your tweets automatically show up for all visitors to see.
• The more active you are in the community, the more visibility your own blog gets!

There is still lots of work to be done, but its fun to know we helped create a community that supports thousands of moms every day. Go see for yourself!

Mom, can I have a Facebook?

The debate about whether or not to let our kids have Facebook accounts has been going on for about a year now. We have three boys, ages 13, 13 and 12 (no twins - blended family). I guess its really not a debate because the conversations with my son go something like this:

Son: "Can I have a Facebook?" (side note - when did it become "having a Facebook" instead of "having a Facebook page"?)
Me: "No"
Son: "Why?
Me: "Because you're not old enough"
Son: "But all my friends have a Facebook?"
Me: "What did I say?"

(this repeats until heavy eye rolling takes over and teen retreats).

To me, my criteria for letting them have an account is crystal clear. Until they are smarter and more tech-savvy than the creeps who prey on children online, they do not get a social network account. Until their instincts are governed by safety, reason, and restraint and not "hey, that person looks friendly", they don't get near MySpace.

And its not because our kids aren't smart enough or don't have good intentions. They have great intentions. The problem is that they trust that everyone else has good intentions, too, and that is where the problem lies. They are trusting and playful. They think deeply about life one minute and are trying to see how many marshmallows they can fit in their mouths the next. They are gullible and snarky at the same time. Behind the back-talking, hormonal man-boy is an insecure teen trying to figure out his identity. And that's exactly where he's supposed to be.

Which is another reason why it is not the right time to get involved in social networks. Navigating the awkward, often uncomfortable, self-defining maze called adolescence should take place in a safe, supportive, forgiving environment. Where guidance is provided by trusted adults who care deeply about how their answers affect young minds. Young teens push boundaries, make mistakes, try stuff, and practice making decisions. I'd rather my kids work through those issues in real life and not online.

And don't get me wrong. I'm in the social media industry. I LOVE the internet! I'm a Twitter-a-holic and I go to blogging conferences. Does that make me a hypocrite? Maybe, but I don't think so. I just have a healthy dose of caution when it comes to my kids.

What are your views on kids, teens, and social media? Come join the conversation over here in my BlogFrog forum!