I was just on the phone with GoDaddy back-ordering a domain name for one of my clients when I got into an interesting conversation with the rep.  As anyone who has experience with GoDaddy knows, the tech people are really tech-sales people.  They try to up-sell you on anything they possibly can.

In this last call, I almost got off the phone without my rep offering to upgrade me when immediately she interjected that it would be a good idea to buy several domain names related to the domain of my client. (“Close, but no cigar” I thought, “I’ll entertain this one though.”) She wasn’t recommending domains that were spelled similarly or sound similar to the domain in question.  She was suggesting very different domain names and explained that this would help promote the primary site.  Immediately I asked her, “wouldn’t this hurt the natural ranking of the site?”  I wanted to see what she would say and what angle GoDaddy is training their sales people to use.  She said that it would be an alias domain and that it’s perfectly safe.  She told me to”… look it up.”  I challenged her by asking, “Isn’t it bad to have multiple domains with the same content?” She responded by saying that as long as the site uses its own files, it is safe.  She then said, “There’s a quick way to copy the folder structure for the primary site so that the new alias domain can have its own folder and not share the  same folder as the primary domain.”  I told the rep “That still duplicating content…” and, “Thank you, but I am not interested.”  I didn’t want to go into detail with her as to why that wouldn’t help but rather hurt my client. Instead, I’ll take the time to explain it to my readers!

The problem with the GoDaddy rep’s logic is that regardless of the file names, hosting companies, etc., Google only looks at the content displayed by the domain.  It only sees what your browser displays; it can’t access your hosting server to look at the PHP file names and Database entries.  Google isn’t an all knowing search engine god, it just knows what you display.  If you display the same exact content on one domain as you do on another, you risk being demoted or blacklisting your site from Google.  It isn’t guaranteed that you’ll be penalized, but I wouldn’t want to risk my client’s domain from being blacklisted and excluded from Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP).  I’d have a lot of explaining to do then.

Google’s goal is to provide its audience with unique and original content for every link it displays in the SERPs.  This is what their algorithm is all about and that’s why Blog sites get promoted when they continue to write about their niche.  If a business thinks in terms of presenting unique content and valuable information without duplicating it all over the internet, then they will eventually be rewarded for it.

The GoDaddy rep did mention a term that I recently spoke to another business about this week:  “Alias domain names”.  This business had recently hired an SEO in New York (not someone on the islands who you can talk to face-to-face) to optimize their website after the previous web designer left out all the goodies to help the website get ranked.  The business owner noticed that they ranked first for their domain name, but not at all for the key words they really wanted to target.  Naturally, the business owner thought that if he buys other domain names with more relevant key words in the domain name, he would rank first for those key words.  So, he bought several domain names and e-mailed me before he set them up.  He asked,  “Should I park these domains or redirect to my site?”

My answer was in two parts because it was a confusing questions at first.  Parking is associating the alias domain name with the hosted content of another primary domain.  Redirecting is automatically moving the user to the primary domain when they land on the alias domain.  Essentially, these two strategies are the same to users viewing through a browser or to the Google bots crawling your site.  In both cases, it looks like you are duplicating your site on another domain which is a no-no.

My suggestion was to focus on the primary site and to “…promote the hell out of it.”  I suggested that if he didn’t want to waste the domain names, that he can setup new sites and create unique content for each domain.  However, this would take resources away from promoting the primary site and wouldn’t really solve the initial problem of getting the primary site ranked for more relevant keywords.  Lastly, I explained that there is one form of redirecting which is acceptable by Google and that is a 301 redirect.  The 301 redirect is a type of redirect that tells Google that the initial page (found on the alias domain) has been permanently moved to the new site (primary domain) and to not index or store the information on the initial page (alias domain).  Typically, this technique is used if you have renamed your company and want traffic from your old domain to go to your new site.  Also, this strategy can be used for mistyped domains or domains that sound similar to your primary domain.  You want to buy those domains so if someone mistypes or spells the wrong word while typing in your domain, then the traffic doesn’t go to a squatter.  Damn Squatters, I hate them!

Was this post helpful?  Too technical?  Give me your opinion in the comment section below!

This morning I woke up and had 200+ automated messages in my inbox telling me that _____ was following me.  I was excited because the night before, I knew that I only needed 80 more followers to hit my goal of one thousand followers in one week on Twitter.  It was a bit of a social media experiment that I set exactly a week before after talks at the last Manoa Geek Meet held at the Honolulu Advertiser.

It was a great meeting, I just felt out of the loop for not being so integrated into Twitter.  People there were using their iPhones to exchange twitter names instead of business cards and here I was marketing myself as an experienced online marketer without anymore that 10 followers on Twitter.  Granted, most of my peers on the mainland in my profession aren’t even on Twitter simply because they don’t have the bandwidth to maintain their account or get involved with a new social medium.  Also, most of them work for companies / agencies who represent Advertisers or Publishers so their is no need for them to market themselves. Lastly, many people find it hard to find the value in Twitter.

I heard somewhere that 50% of the people who sign up for Twitter abandon it.  I think that explains a lot of my friends and why they have accounts with only a few followers and no avatar.  People don’t understand the value or purpose of Twitter.  I didn’t either until my conversations with @HawaiiSEO, @exbor, and @ KGMB9 at the Manoa Geek meeting.

Let me start this tutorial by explaining that Twitter is a content stream (from my perspective).  It is a way to share useful information with users who share similar interests with you.  It isn’t about telling people what you had for breakfast or what you are watching; its about providing information that people want.   If you understand this point, you’ll be giving yourself a leg up in accumulating followers.  I mean, seriously, is your life so interesting that thousands of people want to hear about what you are doing ever hour or every few minutes for that matter?

AlohaNewMedia Twitter Stats - 1000 followers in 7 days

Before I get into the real nitty gritty of how I gained one thousand followers in one week, I want to answer the question of “why?” First, everyone says that after x many followers, you can’t even keep track of the conversation.  I agree and I’ll explain how I deal with that.  Secondly, people have said that Twitter relationships are about quality and not quantity.  I agree but there is also a lot of value in having access to the eyeballs of thousands of people who fit your target demographic.  A perfect example is that I wanted to get some traffic to my wife’s photography site so I asked my followers to re-tweet a post that promoted her site.  Just from one simple post, her site received 67 clicks.  For that reason, I feel that Twitter is a great tool for promoting sites and gauging what appeals to users within your audience.  So without further ado, let’s get you some followers!

1.  Figure out what your interests are, what you are an expert in, or who you want to meet.  This will give you direction for how to target followers.  In my case, I wanted to target anyone in Hawaii.

2.  Determine who are the authorities in your target niche’.  Its easy to determine who the top Twitter users in your chosen area are with tool like Twellow and WeFollow. Just type in a keyword to see who’s the most followed for that area.  For the Keyword ‘Hawaii’, the top Twitter accounts are people like @AlohaArleen, @HawaiiReality, @Neenz, @Hawaii, @Honadv, and @KBMB9.  All of these people I have met at either the Manoa Geek Meet or at the Social Media Chapter Meeting.  Follow the authorities in your area and build a relationship with them.   These are people you should look up to so treat them with respect.  If you do, they will follow you back.

3.  Your Twitter account will soon get out of control, so you need to create a customizable view of all the Tweets that are going to go on around you.  Basically, you will never be able to follow 100′s of user’s tweets, not to mention 1000′s or in @AlohaArleen’s case, 60,000 followers.  Use Tweet Deck to manage your conversations.  The rule here is to create groups for users that you want to pay attention to.  In my case, I’ve created a “Hawaii” group and I have added all the above names (since I want to be involved in their discussions).

4.  Start Tweeting!  Start by providing your followers with useful information and content that is relevant to them.  In my case, that’s news or stories that I found interesting.  I use sites like StumbleUpon, Alltop, and Digg to find articles.  After I find these articles, I use Adjix to shrink the link to the article and post the article.  Also, you can delay your tweets with Adjix so you can space them out or Tweet while you are asleep.  What I really enjoy about Adjix is that you can track how many users click on your link.  This will help you gauge what time of day gets the most clicks and what types of links get the most responses. You can also shrink links with Tweet Deck, but I like Adjix because you can install a button on your Firefox browser to “one-click” shrink your link and tweet it.

5.  Start following.  It’s good etiquette in Twitter land to follow anyone who is following you.  You can choose not to follow this unspoken rule, but it is a good idea to just do it yourself.  As you follow people, you will see that they start following you back.  In some cases, this is immediate with a direct message response.  Look at the message closely, chances are, it’s a canned message.  You can set up this type of automation using TweetLater.  TweetLater lets you auto-follow anyone who is following you on Twitter.  Also, you can configure TweetLater to send a Direct Message to your followers.  This is a good way to send a link to your site or promote a recent blog post.

6.  Now start mass following.  Remember to continue following steps 1-5.  Keeping those in mind, use tools like InRev TwitIn to follow 15 accounts at a time.  Follow those who are following the authorities in your niche’.  I usually follow 200-500 people per day.  Keep in mind that the Twitter API only allows for 100 request per hour so you might hit that cap if you continually add users.  Continue to provide valuable content, and people will follow you back.

7.  Consolidate and reach an equilibrium.  Un-follow anyone who isn’t following you.  You don’t want to seem like you follow everyone in the world.  Also, you don’t want to follow people who aren’t actively tweeting (remember that 50% abandon rate I mentioned earlier?). I usually do this in the morning after I’ve gone on a long Twitter Follow Frenzy. I use Twitter Karma which my friend and mentor David Zuls recommended.  Recognize that it takes several hours in some cases for automation to auto-follow.  Also, not everyone is an avid Twitter user like you, so you might want to give them some extra time to follow you.  Bottom line is that communication is a two way street and if they aren’t following you, they aren’t going to be able to hear what you are saying (so stop listening to them).

8.  Repeat.  Keep doing this every day for a week and see where it gets you.  Be sincere and be yourself.  Don’t spam people and re-tweet your message 30 times in 2 minutes.  Don’t sound like a car salesman trying to make his quota on Dec. 30th.  Just be genuine, provide useful or interesting content, and try to make the community a better place.  There’s a feel good aspect of Twitter where people really go out of their ways to help one another.  Try it, it might make your day.

If all goes well, you’ll have a graph showing this type of progress over 7 days (see above).  Just today alone, I added over 350 followers.  The more you gain, the more people follow you.  So it does get easier.  I’m going to keep it up and try to gain another 1000 by next week using the above methods.  Be sure to keep track of your group you set in Tweet Deck and contribute often.

Keep Tweeting, be sure to follow me and retweet my post, and ask me or comment if you have questions or something to add.  Finally, if you are or know a business who is in need of online marketing services, please do not hesitate to contact me.  Please let me know your results in the comment section below.

While reviewing some of the recent articles on TechHui, I read a post from one of the members suggesting not to submit your resume to Craigslist.  They sited a few reasons, but most can be avoided with the following five tips.  Below is my response on TechHui:

Some of my best position were jobs where the company found my resume on Craigslist. In particular, CL SF. In the largest cities of Craigslist adoption (like SF and NY), posting anything will get shuffled to the second or third page by the end of the day. A perfect example is trying to sell a laptop in New York; you basically only get an hour or so before your ad is buried.

Despite your resume getting buried, companies do look and search for keywords simply because it’s free. When I’ve hired for positions, I know that CL is the first place I go. Here are a few tips that have worked for me:

1. Repost your resume daily. do it at a time of day that you think the potential employer would be looking (9:00 might put you at the top of the list on a search ran at 10:00 AM)

2. Post in HTML format. If you are HTML savvy, you can create a web version of your resume which will stand out in the crowd of dull black and white CL resumes. Especially if you are going for something in the online arena, its nice to have a resume that’s formatted similar to your .doc or .pdf version.

3. Change the background color! This is a bit of a hack and ties into #2 but is very useful. You can put your HTML in a table and set the background color and borders so your post looks like a document (I’ve set my background to a manila color to resemble resume paper.) Here’s some code you can play with:

<!–Table to add bg color to Craigslist posting–>

<table border=”5″ cellspacing=”0″ width=”100%” bgcolor=”#FFFFCC”>

<tr><td>

[add your HTML resume here]

</td></tr></table>

<!– End of CL bg color table–>

4. “Anonymize” that e-mail address. Use CL’s alias e-mail so all those Nigerian Scams don’t scrape your e-mail and spam you for the next 3 months. What better place to build an e-mail list than pulling @xxx.com addresses from CL’s resume section? These guys just build scripts to spam you. The latest technique is they send a one line message to your anonymous e-mail and try to get you to reply like “Are you in debt?” Be smart and just hit delete on these messages.

5. Add your LinkedIn profile badge. LinkedIn gives you several options to create a small and non-intrusive button that you can put in the bottom of your resume. It looks slick and gives the potential employer a quick link to your profile which hopefully only says great things about you

With any luck you’ve made yourself more visible on CL and less vulnerable to the spammers. I’ve attached a snapshot of what my resume looks like on CL (Honolulu) as an example.

I’ve just started contributing to TechHui and hope to get more involved.  I’m the moderator for the WordPress group and would like to get some dialog going between the WordPress users here in Hawaii.  There’s a TechHui meetup at Sweet Thai Basil in Manoa from 6:30 – 9:30 PM on Friday April 3rd.  I’m going to try to make it, hope to see you there!

Our friends over at Plug in SEO wrote a quick review on this tool and included a video (for all you visual learners like myself).  You can use its basic features for free as well as advanced options ($) for changing titles and counting feeds etc.  Great little tool for creating a feed from a site that doesn’t support RSS.  When I saw this, a little light went on in my head (there’s a first).

Using RSS for SEO hasn’t been adopted widely, partly due to the difficulty of generating feeds from database tables and back office systems. Whilst blogs and some content management systems (CMS) provide feed support out-of-the-box, enterprise adoption has been slow.

Feedity allows a web page to serve as the feed source. It handles the conversion to RSS once it knows the HTML blocks it should look for on a page.

Using RSS/Atom Feeds for SEO

Where feeds can aid your SEO efforts is by syndicating your frequently updated content to other sites to stimulate inbound links, pinging crawlers to increase their visit rate, and making it easy for customers to keep up-to-date with what they’re interested in- equalling more repeat visits.

Feedity Introduces Feeds to Your Site

Feedity is very simple as it only allows linked item titles to be returned. A rich, engaging feed generally contains more than a single sentence title- it incorporates a description with images and multiple links to hook the reader into visting your site.

Additionally, as the feed is based on your HTML any code change could break the feed. These limitations shouldn’t rule out its use however.

Where Feedity is immensely useful is allowing you to trial feeds without the up-front investment in the feed server software development, installation and infrastructure. Once it proves its worth then develop richer, deeper feeds.

Verdict

A great way to get feeds up on your site fast, trialling them for SEO and customer experience.

Here’s a great read from a fellow SF consultant.  He really took the time to site his resources.  I connect with this post because the author elaborates on how SEO is the the union of technology and marketing which has typically been two completely different personality types in the work place:

Technology and marketing were formerly unique disciplines with very different types of people. SEO’s are the folks in between. In my mind, the reason SEO goes well beyond just search marketing into most areas of business is because search engine marketing IMPACTS many of the decisions that are made in a business. Marketing, infrastructure, customer relations, analytics, accounting, human resources can all directly impact search marketing and vice versa. SEO has become more and more of a strategic vision as top rankings become more competitive, and more valuable. SEO is in large part the communication gap between marketing and IT, combined with top level executive strategy (The only good SEO’s that leave the field at this point, do so to become CEO’s – visual illustration).

This excerpt brings me back to my days at LeapFrog toys when I was trying to “play nice” with the marketing ladies as I represented the engineering team.  That was an experience that definitely grew hair on my chest.

If you are interested in learning more about SEO, this is a good article.  Probably an SEO 201 level read.  Good luck, and let me know your opinion.

Before you hire someone to do your online marketing, read this article from Google:

If you’re thinking about hiring an SEO, the earlier the better. A great time to hire is when you’re considering a site redesign, or planning to launch a new site. That way, you and your SEO can ensure that your site is designed to be search engine-friendly from the bottom up. However, a good SEO can also help improve an existing site.

Some useful questions to ask an SEO include:

• Can you show me examples of your previous work and share some success stories?
• Do you follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines?
• Do you offer any online marketing services or advice to complement your organic search business?
• What kind of results do you expect to see, and in what timeframe? How do you measure your success?
• What’s your experience in my industry?
• What’s your experience in my country/city?
• What’s your experience developing international sites?
• What are your most important SEO techniques?
• How long have you been in business?
• How can I expect to communicate with you? Will you share with me all the changes you make to my site, and provide detailed information about your recommendations and the reasoning behind them?

While SEOs can provide clients with valuable services, some unethical SEOs have given the industry a black eye through their overly aggressive marketing efforts and their attempts to manipulate search engine results in unfair ways. Practices that violate our guidelines may result in a negative adjustment of your site’s presence in Google, or even the removal of your site from our index.

Working as a Product Manager at an online start-up was a fortunate opportunity (challenging but good).  I wore many hats and became a “jack of all trades” when it came to gaining widespread distribution online (with the exception of organic search) .  Basically, any online channel that my former company could spend money on, I got involved in.  Developing successful products and business units required these various channels and Search was essential.

In 2005, the company I was working for had established very close relationships with Google, Yahoo!, MIVA, etc.  These relationships were a function of their online spends; we spent a lot on PPC (Paid search).  The internal search team was comprised of about fifteen employees. Despite all the money that was being spent on the media buys and resourcing the team, and despite the money that was being generated, there was no natural search effort in the company whatsoever.  I guess I never questioned why back then, I just considered it was a “Dark Art” and something that only a few select individuals broke the code on.

Three companies later, I had still never met anyone who had strong natural search experience.  SEO/SEM companies were on the other side of the fence from Lead Generation companies in most cases.  Challenged by my executive team telling me that “…we just can’t do natural search,” and “…leave SEO to the search companies,” I began examining the few companies in the Lead Gen space that did SEO.  I contacted former co-workers and associates who went to work at these and other large SEO firms  (iCrossing and iProspect to name a few).  I interviewed search consultants who tried to sell me on the secret marketing tactics involved with SEO without being able to elaborate on anything past what I read on Google.  I burned the midnight oil sifting through articles on SEO and finally started to optimize my own sites as case studies.

After a few successes, I quickly realized that there is no secret sauce, no magic spell, no Jedi mind trick that you can perform to rank your site over another.  Granted, there are Black Hat techniques for short term gains, but those end up hurting a business in the long run and are not sustainable (watch out for anyone who says they can get you instant traffic). In online marketing, when Google changes their algorithm, you know it; companies who aren’t playing by the rules stop delivering traffic.  All the techniques that anyone needs to know about how to organically rank have been blogged about on thousands of websites.  Not to mention, Google has done everything but provide their actual algorithm on their site between their forum and webmaster tools.

I could easily sell the idea to my clients that SEO is a secret art and takes years to learn, but why would I want to start out a business relationship by lying?  Optimizing a site could be as simple as adding a few internal links and keywords or it can be as involved as re-coding an entire site.  After the site is bot friendly, the rest is up to how you link to and from the site.

What I am getting at is that I’m not afraid to reveal to my clients the steps they need to take to make their site search engine friendly because there’s so much more to ranking than how you code your site.  If my client managed to code their site correctly, then they saved us both a lot of time and energy. We can now focus our time and resources into driving traffic via other distribution channels which will only further promote the site’s natural ranking.  SEO is only one tool in an online marketers tool box and should be viewed as such.

To those new to online marketing, do your research.  If you don’t have time to research, be cautious how you spend your marketing dollar (This is a given considering the current economic state).   Don’t put all your eggs into the basket of a self proclaimed SEO expert.  Don’t buy into anyone who can guarantee the #1 slot on google or instant traffic to your site – these are all signs of unscrupulous search practices.

Excerpt from Google:

No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google. Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a “special relationship” with Google, or advertise a “priority submit” to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is through our Add URL page or by submitting a Sitemap and you can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever.

Be careful if a company is secretive or won’t clearly explain what they intend to do. Ask for explanations if something is unclear. If an SEO creates deceptive or misleading content on your behalf, such as doorway pages or “throwaway” domains, your site could be removed entirely from Google’s index. Ultimately, you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire, so it’s best to be sure you know exactly how they intend to “help” you.

Well, its official!  I have decided to move away from the mainland and leave the hustle and bustle of San Francisco to pursue my dream of living in paradise.  I’ve learned a great deal about all areas of online marketing while working in SF, arguably  the  new media capital of the World.  I hope to take my knowledge of online lead generation and brand advertising, through SEO / SEM, e-mail, CPC / CPM media buying, and viral and social media campaigns to Honolulu and apply it to the needs of local businesses on the islands.

My goal is to forge strong long term business relationships with my clients by helping their companies grow.  I strive to educate my customers about the different channels and technologies within the online space.  Unlike many of the other self-proclaimed “Online Marketers” out there, I have a long professional track record of successfully executing multi-tier strategic campaigns for the largest online advertisers in the US such as University of Phoenix, Netflix, The US Army, and Blockbuster.com.

In a nutshell, I leverage my experiences to simplify, devise, and deploy an overall custom marketing strategy for each of my clients.  Following this first post, I will elaborate on some of my experiences from the past six years as well as share articles and references that I have found useful.  Finally, I will include new topics and articles to keep my readers informed of the latest trends and technologies driving online advertising and new media today.  I hope you enjoy the read, and as always, please do not hesitate to contact me or leave a comment.

Aloha,

Ryan Hohnbaum