Successful Blog

Finding Irresistible Skills at SES Chicago

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Search Engine Strategies — December 7-11, 2009

Before people find us irresistible, they have to find us. Some do that by Word of Mouth and Referral. Some do that via our social media efforts. But still a most powerful influence is our search engine presence.

search-engine-strategies-2009

Understanding the Tools that Run the Engines Is Key to a Professional Online Presence

Next week at the 11th Midwest Search Engine Strategies Expo will be will be packed with 70+ sessions covering PPC management, keyword research, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), social media, local, mobile, link building, duplicate content, video optimization and usability, while offering high-level strategy, keynotes, an exhibit floor, networking events and more.

Whether you’re a beginner, got some skill, or a seasoned veteran being up-to-date in current conditions and the latest strategies and techniques is the only way to offer the strongest value to your own business or those you serve.

Take a look at who will be there. Follow these folks on Twitter and come meet them in person. Check the agenda to see how much they’re offering. Registration offers a variety of ways that you can participate. I hope I’ll be seeing you learning with me.

Irresistible also means constantly learning how things work.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Then get ready to join us at SOBCon2010

Buyers, Readers, Buzz Snackers and Bandwidth Bandits

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Not Live, but from Blog World Expo

Some asked that I post my slide deck. I’m delighted to say an hour after I put it up on slide share last night it was featured on the front page.

The Presentation had two parts.

The main points of Part One are about stats.

  • Stats are great for drilling down and sorting information.
  • We can learn about past behaviors from statistical data.
  • Statistical data does not aggregate into something human.
  • People don’t behave like stats.
  • People are important for many reasons stated on slide 8.
  • People are also important because they make exclusive relationships, understand / interpret your intentions and can tell you what you’re doing wrong.
  • The web talks a lot about traffic. Traffic comes in more than one kind.

The main points of Part Two are about strategically using stats.

  • Use them to know your position
  • Understand your objective.
  • Know the players and their objectives.
  • Then use statistics to choose your tactics.

The rest supports those points.

Buyers Readers Buzz Snackers Bandwidth Bandits By Liz Strauss

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: strategy business)

Note: Clicking the little screen next to the x/23 pages allows you to see the show full screen.
Hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

The SOBCon Influence According to BuzzLogic

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Conversationally

BuzzLogic logo

This news from Valerie Coombs at BuzzLogic . . .

I just did an influence query on “sobcon liz strauss” and got these results.

How did we get these results?
BuzzLogic’s influence algorithm takes a dozen factors into account in determining the influence of posts and a blog overall. They include:

  • a blogger’s credibility and expertise on a specific topic over time,
  • who is linking in,
  • the quality and influence of all in-linkers and
  • the popularity of a post overall.

Congrats to Lorelle VanFossen for the most influential post in the entire sobcon conversation!

SOBCon Remembered and Recommended

See below the Top 25 right as of the close of SOBCon.

  1. Liz Strauss
  2. Lorelle – Lorelle has the single most influential post ever about SOBCON!
  3. Phil Gerbyshak
  4. Brain Based Business
  5. David Armano
  6. The Blog Herald
  7. James D Walton
  8. Timothy L Johnson
  9. Bootsnall travel community
  10. Ben Yonkavitz
  11. Joe Hauckes
  12. Tim Draayer
  13. Des Walsh
  14. Dawud Miracle
  15. Jon Gatrell
  16. Drew McLellan
  17. FutureLab blog
  18. Kent Blumberberg
  19. Geoffrey Philp
  20. Robert Hruzek
  21. Christine Kane
  22. Amy Palko
  23. problogger
  24. Mary Schmidt
  25. Adam Kayce

See the screenshot of the Social Map around Lorelle’s post. Click to see it full size.

BuzzLogic Conversation around the Most Influential Blog Post

We will continue to watch the conversation and update you on changes…. Valerie, BuzzLogic

Do you have influence? Will the SOBCon blog posts you write change this listing?

For more about BuzzLogic, visit Jeremiah’s post of Shel’s Interview with the Co-Founder. Sandra and Valerie are both in the vid.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Does Anyone Take Technorati Seriously Anymore?

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I Held Out

On January 29, 2006, I wrote a post to Technorati about a problem I was having. I documented communication since August of 2005. I’ll quote from it because the words I’m quoting are to this day still true.

The original issue has never been resolved. It involved the fact that Technorati wasn’t accurately tracking links to my account and that the count kept getting stuck and links kept getting missed.

At the time I wrote, isn’t 5 Months Patience Enough? Now it’s been 30 months and my blog is still wonky in the Technorati index.

Anyone who has followed the list of posts I’ve written about Technorati knows that I give a lot of space to a group that works hard with an overwhelming task. But what’s the point when the basic service — 180 day index of “blog reactions” — has in my case been, at the most, only 75 days. I sure would the other 105 days in my count.

On May 19, 2006, I recorded a comment to benchmark the problem.

Recently, I was told the problem would be fixed immediately.

It’s been more than immediately and still nothing.

Do you even pay any attention to Technorati anymore?

UPDATE: Here are some responses I got to this question on Twitter.
Does Anyone Take Technorati Seriously Anymore?

  • I haven’t taken Technorati seriously for close to a year now. Sad, really. Was a great idea for bloggers. No more… ;(
  • Personally speaking, no. I used to check it out regularly, but haven’t in months.
  • I haven’t looked at Technorati in months.
  • no the technorati rank seems to be more akin to a random number generator at the moment.
  • I never took them seriously, but that’s just me.
  • I haven’t visited Technorati in months, to be honest.
  • I only use it to look at who links to me… that’s it.
  • I had been using Technorati quite a bit. But somehow, 200+ links to me disappeared in the last two weeks. I don’t believe it.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Google Changes the Game — 10 Sites Hit in October . . . Now Look

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NOT Just a PageRank Update

The Living Web

Every Monday, I check in to see how the web world is treating me. It seems that Technorati has left me out in the cold . . . my 180-day archives have been only 60-90 days deep for over a year now. When I wrote last week, no one answered. . . .

But it’s looking like Google may be having a change of heart . . . We could have a mutually-beneficial relationship again. Something more than a PageRank update is definitely going on. PageRank seems to be getting an entirely new definition.

  • I see it in my backlinks.
  • I see in new site links for Successful-Blog.
  • I see it in the way my SERPs are playing out and in the Webmaster tools information being reported.
  • I see it a change in PageRank for LizStauss.com, The SOBCon08 Blog and one other URL I own.

Other signs life and page rank is changing . . .

  • Live PR Live Pagerank appears to be dead. Every site is coming up 0. Note: the Alexa ranks are coming through fine.
  • The same thing — 0 PR for every site — appears to be happening at Smart PageRank
  • iwebtools PageRank Checker is reporting changes and lots of “Datacenter down” responses.

And then, of course, there are the blogs taken down hard last October . . .

10 Sites Hit in October . . . Today

Some stats collected by Daily Blogging Tips last October and the current page rank reported by more than one tool. NOTE: Google datacenters are still dancing, not all datacenters are reporting. That means numbers could go anywhere.

I love looking for patterns in Google thinking.

What does this mean? Do you care?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Dear Google, I'm the Relationship Blogger

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Dear Google,
It’s Liz.

I’m a little confused about our relationship. After two years, you dumped me from Page Rank 6 to a Page Rank 3.

I would have thought it was text-links I had — they’re gone now. I’m sorry. The world knows I’m not an SEO whiz, if I was one, I wouldn’t have 40-some categories in my sidebar. At least, that’s what folks tell me.

But you dumped my LizStrauss blog too, and it doesn’t have any ads and never did.

It’s disheartening when I think of how I advocate NOT GAMING the system.

You might remember when I said

Links and relationships are intertwined and inseparable to me. It’s about people and connections that last.

Did you misunderstand the SOB program after all of this time? Not all of these folks have all of the links you might expect, but they will, because they show the key traits of a successful blogger. I know they will because they write good content and they make good relationships.

Is it that I write creative entertainment sometimes? Isn’t that better than just regurgitating someone else’s content?

Everyone knows that a link exchange on this blog is out of the question.

I’m the kind of blogger who wants a relationship not a one link stand.

And then there was my personal stance on link trains and other valueless link posts.

Dear Emperor: A Test for Your Next Link Post

If the recent birthday party invitation to 646 blogs threw you, please know that it lived up to the “Dear Emperor” standard. So will the link posts like this first one that celebrate the links the party guests brought to show their most successful and outstanding experiences — a birthday only happens once a year. You can believe I’m checking them. I do that for you, for me, and for my readers.

So Google, that’s our history. I know you know me better. I’m the person behind the numbers. I don’t link promiscuously.

I’m the relationship blogger. I want folks to respect me in the morning.

Liz's Signature