Social marketing offers so many advantages, however Scott Goodyear points out not to get carried away and become a spammer, however unintentionally

Scott Goodyear offers a great take on social marketing, Digg and Sphinn and what may look like spam to others.

Scott says in opening “While it is important to get the word out about your site or service far and wide, there is a fine line between submitting something interesting and spamming social sites like Sphinn, Digg, and others. Some are surprised to find out that some of their self promotional efforts may be construed as “spam”. In this post I want to point to an example that I saw over at Sphinn.”

I want you to go there and read the whole thing, Spamming Sphinn, Digg, and Others… as he did this well.

Spammers are turning their attention to social networking sites to hawk their products, according to Cloudmark, a messaging security company. As email antispam technology has improved, spammers have branched out to other areas, said Adam O’Donnell, director of emerging technology at Cloudmark. “The social networking side provided a fertile ground for spammers,” he said.

Also for anyone that delivers any email the Comast Feedback Loop is now active.

Digg You Suck!

I work my ass off on my stories.

They are well researched, laden with great links, up to date and usually only have a few typos and misspellings.

But just because I write about SEO, Social Marketing or EVEN worse I dare to write about sending legitmate email your readers FRAK me.

This is how many of our articles end up looking because of the FRAKIN LITTLE KIDS called the Digg Mafia, also known by other names I cannot print here.

If you dare to write about email delivery your readers bury the articles because they are SO FRAKING STUPID they think anybody that sends any email is a spammer.

If you dare to write about SEO your readers bury the articles because they are SO FRAKING STUPID they think that anybody that builds pages to rank a little better than the rest is a search engine spammer.

If you write about getting a few more Diggs by doing it the right way and not spamming Digg then then your readers are SO FRAKING STUPID that they obviously think that I must be out to abuse Digg.

You think I am wrong? Try these searches. They include buried stories. “avoid spam filters” or how to get more diggs. Now uncheck the “include buried stories” and see how many are there, it’s not just me guys, it’s anybody that DARES to write about the mighty Digg or anything else that your readers ARE TOO FRAKING STUPID TO UNDERSTAND.

Read this post, The hypocrisy of digg and spam about getting banned on Digg for writing about SEO.

Or this about Diggers Can’t Handle The Truth (About SEO).

Digg users ARE SO FRAKIN STUPID they friend Kevin Rose thinking he will friend them back. Or Zaibatsu, or MrBabyMan or Saleem.

So last night I gave Digg readers just what they want.

The largest piece of crap ever submitted to Digg.

http://thelongestlistofthelongeststuffatthelongestdomainnameatlonglast.com/

500 pages of the Biggest pieces of crap you can find anywhere. Things like the worlds largest hole, the world’s largest bagel, the world’s largest ball of paint and of course, NOT TO BE MISSED is the world’s largest wad of spit.

You see since I take the time to write great articles and because YOUR FRAKIN READERS ARE SO STUPID I thought that this kind of thing is what your Digg readers really wanted.

So I decided to create The World’s Biggest Piece of Crap Digg Submission.

So I submitted the Whole Site!!!

Page by page.

One entry at a time.

500 pages.

500 Pages of crap.

It took FOUR hours.

But like I said, judging from what your readers maliciously do to my stories I figured this is what they wanted to read about because……..

THEY ARE SO FRAKING STUPID that they maliciously bury anything else that I submit and lots of other good articles.

Update:John McGowan is #1 on Google for “World’s Largest Shout.”

The Bottom Line

The submission of all these pages was the attempt to make some kind of statement that the overall mentality of Digg has gone so far down hill that this is all I could think would be interesting to most Digg members.

Now I am going for being listed as The World’s Largest Digg Submission of crap. So Long, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodnight.

How to get more Diggs and not destroy your SEO at the same time because Google can see your shout history

How to get more Diggs and spamming Digg is more what most Digg articles are about. While I have been putting together evidence to support my theory that we are hurting our search rankings by shouting our own articles, I have been tracking it to the T! I have times, datestamps and 20 screen shots to document everything I believe is happening here. This is part 3 in a series, part 1 and part 2 are here.

How to get more Diggs - Day One 4/25/2008 10:24 Arizona time.

I wrote my second How to Get more Diggs Part 2 article and published it via Wordpress. For some reason Google did not index my blog on Friday and the articles appeared at #1 in Blogsearch on Saturday 10/26/2008 7:39 AZ time. Wordpress pinged the pinging services, Google and Yahoo immediately listed my RSS feed in their readers but the article did not appear in blogsearch or websearch until Saturday morning.

Friday 4/25/2008 12:30 AZ time the article was submitted to Digg and shouted to a list of 100 mutual friends. Neither the submitter or the shouter are in my friends list, nor am I in theirs. This way it is impossible for Google to align me with any of the activity on the Digg item for testing purposes.

How to Get More Diggs - Day 2 - Saturday 4/25/2008 6:30am AZ time

The new How to Get More Diggs Part 2 article here on my social marketing blog shows up at #1 on Blogsearch.

It kicked my original “How to Get More Diggs” off after 6 straight days at #1. Everything I have read on the subject has always said that the post will age and go down the list. Even Charly’s blog post never outranked it, but hers is still number 4.

A few hours later the How to Get More Diggs Part 1 Digg item on first article is has now reappeared at #2.

Can you see how using many forms of social media marketing can take over the results of an niche term? Right now I own #1, #2 and #4. Just because it is Charly’s post at number four does not mean that it is not another form of social media referencing my blog and setting Chris Lang as an authority figure. Not to mention I have a two page comment on the page. LOL

At the (same time noon on Saturday) under how to get more diggs Websearch I am #6 for the Hot to get more diggs Digg item part 2 (the new article we are testing).

Now the original article is back at #8 and the part 2 article is in a sub heading at #9.

Now I own 6 top ten spots in Google at the same time under the same phrase.

At 12:30 Az time Diggs were at 104, the Michael Lofton post on Ning showed up at #3 and Chraly is at #2.

My How to Get more Diggs part 2 at #1 in blog search.

Both of my blog posts were at #6 and #7 and the Digg part 2 articles were at #12 in websaerch.

4:30 AZ time and Michael’s post is at two and charly’s post is at six.

How to get More Diggs Day 3 4/26/2008 5:30am AZ time

On Sunday morning How to get More Diggs part 2 was at #5 in Websearch.

How to get more Diggs part 1 was at #6 (it’s back) and the Digg item (more diggs part 2) was #9, more diggs part 1 (original digg item) was #10.

At #11 is a Propeller submission of the “Hot to get More diggs part 2 article.

In blog search the “more diggs part 2 KWD article was #1 for the second day in a row.

Michael Lofton’s post from SMC on the Digg thread has moved into #2. The Digg more Diggs part 2 item is #2. Charly’s blog post on my first “more diggs” article is at #10 with three days in the top ten.

So much for my theory that copy and pasting the original title and description directly from the article when you submit it creates duplicate content. Obviously since so many Digg users do this it has no effect, or it is minimal.

So far, more Diggs part 2 has been way more successful that Digg 1. The only varible we did not account for was the propeller item. Also the fact that all the articles link to each other is a variable that I did not account for.

Let’s see if the article stays up past the three day point. Also my search engine rankings have been very stable for the last three days. No major changes up or down to report and my incoming search traffic is also stable at 50%.

Day 3 Chris Lang has a chat with Digg

Sometime Saturday afternoon someone clicked the “bury” button on the part 2 article on Digg citing “inaccurate content.”

I looked for a contact email address on Digg and decided the abuse desk would get the fastet response.

After 2 emails asking why my shout history in appearing in my public profile, I emailed Digg a third time.

Chris Lang said:

Digg relpies fast on this one…

They emailed me back in about 5 or six hours, from an live person.

I emailed the address from Digg support and I told them their party line was full of crap. I have not heard back but we did pick the weekend to do this on. Another variable I did not consider.

Right now I am going to screen shot my account, John’s and Sexy’s so that Digg cannot correct their problem and then refuse to address it. Yes John and sexy are real, they are not fictitious accounts. I also have permission form them both to screen shot their accounts.

How to get More Diggs Day 2.5 Sunday 4/27/2008 5:30 pm

Now I decide to run my search engine reporting software, this comes free as part of Social Marketing Search Engine Tactics eBook and is worth the price of the book alone.

I have been watching Google, Google UK and Yahoo slowly delist all my main search terms little by little each day for two weeks and it has been killing me. Since I quit shouting my own items that eventually link back to my site for the last four days I have been watching my rankings closely.

WOW that is so cool I cannot even believe it. Suddenly Google stopped degrading my rankings, Yahoo and Google UK moved me back up as may as 45 items and re listed me under terms that I had been kicked out (less than #100). I just wasn’t sub top 100 I disappered all together.

http://www.keywebdata.com/images/digg-google-uk.gif

http://www.keywebdata.com/images/digg-yahoo.gif

http://www.keywebdata.com/images/digg-yahoo.gif

As you can see the items I am listed under are extremely varied and have nothing to do with Digg.

I have come to believe that Google and Yahoo are not so much judging the shouts to your own sites as spam. They are simply finding repetitive links, just like if you were constantly submitting and Digging your own blog posts.

After constantly watching my Google and Yahoo rankings sink while I was shouting my own items and now looking at the sudden success of my new rankings I am convinced. This article you are reading now should confirm it. If it does as well or better than the first two articles and I see my ranking stabilize or improve, then I will definitely be correct on the shouts issue.

Chris Lang’s shout theory and screenshot evidence

So we all agree that continually submitting and Digging our own items will make you look like a self promoting Digg spammer. Right?

So if you have multiple entries in your history tab in your public profile with links to Digg items that also link to your site or the same site repetitively, how is this different from numerous Digg submissions and Diggs, by yourself all leading to the same site?

Digg you better wake up, read this article and disable the bad coding that allows what I am going to show you next in these screen shots. I have permission from all 3 Digg users screenshotted below to reproduce the content from their public profile.

Digg actually suggested I was stupid enough not to be logged out of my account so I logged out, closed all the broswer windows and restarted the machine.

Let’s start with my own acount, ChrisLang.

You can see that I am logged out.

Here is the history tag….

Here are the shouts I sent under my history tab in my public profile. http://digg.com/users/ChrisLang/history/page3

Next I browsed to Sexy Social Marketing’s profile who I cannot possibly be viewing logged in because it I don’t have access.

Once again I am not logged into my ChrisLang profile and you can see that I am truly on Sexy’s profile.

Here is the tab on Sexy’s profile where I screenshot the next image from.

Here you can see her shouts in her public profile and in the live URL here: http://digg.com/users/SexyMarketing/history/page2

No I browse to John McGowan’s public profile and you can see I am logged out.

Now under his history tab…

You can see his shouts and here is the live URL where you can find them. http://digg.com/users/Ashmadai/history/page7

The bottom line

Here is the results of my article rankings for Google Blogsearch Monday 3/28/2008 7:00 am AZ time.

I am listed at #1 for my How to Get More Diggs Part 2 article.

I am listed at #2 for the How to Get more Diggs Digg item.

We believe that this path in Digg is highly listed because the Digg user has a small friends list, did he shout the item and in not in any other friends list that shouted them.

Charly’s post is not back at #3.

Here is the results of my article rankings for Google Websearch for Monday 3/28/2008 7:00 am AZ time.

I am at #5 with the propeller article.

I am #6 and #7 for my blog posts.

I am #10 for the Part 2 Digg item.

Can you see how using Social marketing can create multiple entries all pointing to your content?

This is what Social Marketing Search Engine Tactics is about. Creating multiple forms of social media all linking back to your site, all carrying your original content and highly ranked in Google.

I could have crammed this Google result full of so many different form of media, all pointing to my site. However for the purpose of testing the shouts issue I let the thing run it’s natural course.

Open Letter to Kevin Rose and Digg:

Digg: I hope that you fix this issue. I could care less about spamming the crap out of poor Digg users that just want to enjoy using the Internet. In fact I now rarely send shouts at all. But come on here Digg. You are allowing my personal private information to leak out on to the internet.

You even cite that shouts can be set to private and they are not. How big of a privacy violation class action law suit are you setting yourself up for? I don’t want to sue anybody, I just want to not have my search ranking destroyed by your security vulnerability. Fix it!!!

Acutally I am trying to help you here Digg, I love using Digg and would really like to help you improve your users experience.

kind regards and still awaiting your reply,

Chris Lang

There is more How to Get More Diggs evidence in and I may have really screwed up!

How to get more Diggs has been a hot topic over at Social Marketing Central in a thread I started. In case you missed the first article it’s How to Get More Diggs.

While we have beaten “How to Get More Diggs” to death one question remains and I think we may have cracked a vulnerabity in our Digg marketing. Stay with me here, this is a little convoluted. It concerns the shouts.

Shouts are access to your friends list. They get an email on the other end with a link to your shout, usually asking to “Digg this.”

I theorize that Google lessens the validity of content from your own site. In your profile you have the ability to set up links to other networks your are on, your own sites and maybe affiliate programs.? Tell me Google does not discount any Digg items that are from these URLs.

We already all agree not to:

• Submit your own content to Digg.
• Digg your own stuff.

Wait for it… Wait for it…. Wait for it….

DO NOT shout your own Digg items!

Gotcha didn’t I. We are not sure yet but look at your Digg profile.

• Log in.
• Click on your profile.
• Copy the url.
• Log out.
• Now paste your profile URL back in.

This is your public profile. If you have your shouts set to private you don’t see your outgoing shouts in your profile. Right? Wrong!

Click the history tab and then click on “shouts sent” in the left navigation bar. There are all your outgoing shouts right there for everyone to see. Right there for Google to see.

What Chris Lang thinks: Shouts hurt!

Now if I were writing the Google algorithms for Digg I would bury any domain that is continually shouted again and again by the same person. Especially if it was submitted by that person and if they were stupid enough to Digg their own articles. Why add one measly Digg to your item when it hurts you?

If you are continually shouting your own Diggs, even if you didn’t submit them, the Digg item URL is right there. On the Digg item is the link to the original content source. I sent 7000 shouts in the last week. Many of those had my content URL in the page to be Dugg.

Now I was on page 2 of How to get More Diggs in Google. I did not submit my own content. However I asked all my friends to Digg the item when it was sumbitted by someone else. The blog post quickly rose to #4 on Goolge Websearch in an hour. The Digg item was at #8 and I was #1 in Google Blogsearch for How to get More Diggs. Sounds pretty good don’t it?

As I shouted my other items to my 150 mutual friends all my listing in the SERPs rose, many went from the second page to the top 10. WOW I rock, or so I thought. The next day Google kicked me out of many of my terms, downgraded all my listings and removed the original blog post about more diggs from Websearch. As I remember I cried a little when I saw this.

However I am still #1 on blogsearch which is odd to me because blogs are supposed to sink as the post ages. If you do not understand how Google ranks blogs your need to read the article.

Update: Very Very Important Digg information:

From: The Digg Algorithm - Unofficial FAQIf you have a LOT of friends (50-100 or more) you will need 2X or 3X as many diggs as a new user, to reach the frontpage. This is proven and 2 of the top10 users confirmed it to me. It’s natural that Digg implemented this for powerful users, because their friends dug their articles, so they have an advantadge over a usual starting user with just a few or NO friends. So if you are a very new user with no friends, you can still get to the frontpage with 30-40 diggs.

The Bottom Line

So here is the test and you are reading it right now. I will not submit or Digg this article. It is optimized for “how to get more diggs” so there is no variable there. What I will not do this time is shout this article from my Chris Lang Digg profile.

If this post stays in Websearch then it was the shouts. If it gets delisted after a few days then maybe it is not the shouts. We shall see. I have much more Digg strategies in the link below.

How to Get More Diggs? Start by getting more friends

So, you want to know how to get more Diggs. You are going to need 20 to 30 mutual friends. Mutual friends are friends that friend you back. Digg will show them now as a “mutual friend”. Mutual friends allow you to send them a shout and that is what makes mutual friends important.

You are going to send a shout to each of these mutual friends and ask them to Digg your submission.

They are in turn going to ask you to Digg their posts. That is how it works.

Also you are going to need to tell them to Digg a few other submissions as well. There is some evidence that users that only Digg one post at a time are deemed irrelevant by Digg.

DO NOT Submit Your OWN Stories Day after Day and DO NOT Digg your own posts. There is also some evidence that Digging your own posts has a negative effect on the popularity of your blog post.

Having a really attractive picture is a key strategy in it self. Take a look at SexySEO or SexySEO Blog. Need I say more?

There is also evidence both positive and negative that Digg power users who have large friends lists have way more effect when Digging a post.

Neil Patel on how to get dugg on the home page has some great tips as well.

Neil says:

In most cases you need 51 diggs within 24 hours to get to the homepage. It is more like 300+ Diggs now.

Do not submit your story during at odd hours. Stories should be submitted early in the morning PST. This way the story gets more eyeballs and usually more diggs at a quicker pace.

How get more Diggs and how to make the front page of Digg

randfish, SEOmoz’s CEO, and co-founder and primary blogger has this to say about Digg power users.

“These Top 20 have contributed a total of 5257 stories that have reached the frontpage out of a total of 25,260 stories to ever reach that page - 20.81% to be exact. Many of these top users have, as Digg terms it, a popular ratio of 30% and higher, meaning that almost 1 out of every 3 stories they submit will reach the homepage. Several users (specifically DarkHack & OsterMayer) have popular ratios of over 60%.”

“A logical extension shows that the top 100 Digg Users have contributed 14,249 stories to the homepage, or 56.41%. At Digg, a very select group of users is dominating the popular homepage content. Far from being a mass of opinion, Digg is instead showing, primarily, the content opinions of just a few, select folks.”

Top 100 Digg Users Control 56% of Digg’s HomePage Content.

How to Get More Diggs from Power Users

So after you have a 30+ mutual friends list now you are now part of the club. No friends on Digg is like having no friends in the real world. Everybody wants to hang with the popular people.

Cameron Olthius points out that Digg’s front-page algo favors submissions from historically successful users and that those users frequently have large bases of friend groups, helping to make their submissions more visible from the start.

Also your Digg history is very relevant too. The earlier you Digg an item that goes to the front page the more relevant your your Digg is considered.

Find Digg power users (300+ mutual friends) and add them as a friend. Don’t feel crushed when they do not friend you back. Here is a little strategy I am trying out right now.

Search your main topic (mine is social marketing) and start looking at the results.

Look for posts that pertain to your topic.

Go to the “made popular” link at the bottom of the post.

Right click the link and open it in a new tab. (saves hitting the back button to death)

Look at how many Diggs, friends and the number of submissions the user has.

Now add them as a friend.

Next look at their new submissions that relate to your content.

Now scroll to the bottom and add a very intelligent comment about their post or a link to (hopefully your site) good additional complementary content.

Now this power user will get a copy of your comment in their email with a link to your profile. Right next to it will be a copy of your friend request. This may well get you added as a friend by a power user.

When I say power user I do not mean the top Digg 100. They, for the most part are untouchable. I have two Digg top 100 users as mutual friends and I had to work hard to break the ice. I commented on their submissions with intelligent useful information. I only shout pertinent, targeted, useful Digg items to my list. I friended their friends, it goes on and on.

One way to lose powerful Digg friends is to send shouts all day long about “Look, it’s the worlds biggest pizza ever!”

When you see “You have a shout from Chris Lang Social Marketing Genius” you know you should open it because it is not some funny your tube video.

You can also create a post reviewing the soon to be power friend’s product, website or blog post.

Now add this link to a comment on one of their submissions.

You can even go so far as to blog a post that is geared toward a Digger’s sense of humor. As an example I just posted How Ipods are going to network and take over the world targeting the quirky sense of humor of a certain Digger. Can you tell who it is?

Just in, blogger Phillip Lenssen wrote How NOT To Get On The Digg Homepage. Oddly enough I found this in the #2 spot on Digg’s homepage. Yeah, it got a digg from me.

The Bottom line

You can waste your life away trying to get Dugg and adding friends. You can get lost all day on Digg and get nothing done. Remember this and it took me a long time to learn it. Do you know what Internet marketing millionaires do when they write an article. They don’t write articles. They write about a problem that you have and at the bottom of that problem page is a link to one of their products, affiliate programs of at least a web form to join their newsletter list or subscribe to their RSS feed.

Real Internet marketers don’t do anything that does not somehow create a profit. Be a REAL internet marketer.

Ipods are taking over the world, Danger Will Robinson!

I predict that soon it will be Ipods who take over the world rather than networked PCs.

Ipods will network thru their bluetooth connections, become sentient and take over the world. Will John Conner be there to save us or will he be playing with his new iPhone?

Destroy your Ipod now while you can. Throw it out the car window, stomp it to death on the pavement. Run it over with your car, give it to your girlfriend, but do something now. Only you can save us from an Ipod future.

Why you should not care if your double opt in rate is crappy and what to do about it if it sucks

This article came about from a response to a social marketing central forum post complaining about double opt in rates and since I am fairly lazy today I am just going to copy and paste the original post.

I get a few people that spend their time arguing with in forums and that is OK. But when it comes to email delivery DO NOT MESS WITH ME. I am the expert here so if the post seems kind of ranting at times, so freaking be it.

Begin Chris Lang rant from the post….

Right off the bat I want to state that everything I am going to say here is absolutely true. Do not waste our time trying to refute what I am going to say about email delivery. If you want to deliver email believe this.

AWeber delivers 97% of the email they send to the inbox. Most others are at 80%. 20% more delivery = 20% more profits. Do the math.

Next AWeber is an autoresponder not just a list manager. The ability to set up preset marketing delivered at the rate you choose is priceless. Search “autoresponder tips” if you do not understand this.

Double opt in prevents spam complaints. Spam complaints are the result of a recipient clicking the “this is spam button” and will get you blocked faster than anything else. A visitor cannot misspell their email address and send someone else your emails with double opt in.

Double opt in also saves your email reputation because you are not bouncing emails to bad addresses. Those same misspelled emails that get the spam button clicked can bounce when the recipient does not exist. ISPs keep track of bounced emails and the server it is sent from. The more bounces, the lower your email reputation score.

The very first time someone clicks the “this is spam” button on an email you sent without double opt in can get you banned by the receiving ISP. Your host may delete your domain and you are going to definitely get listed on RBLs (real time blacklists).

Sure you can triple your opt in rate by not using double opt in, but all it takes is a five or six spam complaints and you are history! NO site, NO domain, GONE. Forever.

The bottom line here is still that any email service that uses single opt in is just not going to have high delivery rates especially to Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft and that is probably 90% of the email inboxes these days.

Now let’s consider this: If they won’t confirm their address will they open your emails that you send in the future?

Will these readers that wouldn’t double opt in click thru to your site from emails?

Will these same people enter their credit card in your forms when they wouldn’t even double opt in?

Now let’s talk about increasing your email delivery and double opt in rate

When someone signs up via a AWeber form you have a hidden field named “redirect”

Here you can enter a url on your site that a lead is sent to rather than a AWeber page.

Here you need to have an irresistible incentive to get the lead to open your email and click the link.

Stuart, I am sure your content rocks but don’t be insulted here, content just ain’t goona do it.

Here is the page I use on my site: email delivery ebook and the four chapter incentive.

Next to stay out of the spam folder you need to get you subscriber to whitelist you.

Email whitelist generator will generate these instructions for you.

Finally when your lead clicks the AWeber confirmation link there is one more page that you can send your new subscriber to.

This page is configurable in the AWeber console.

Don’t just send them to some lame thank you page, surprise them with an unannounced bonus or at least send them to some good content that is new and worthwhile.

If your sales letter has a good conversion rate and content in addition to the sales process, send them there on the clickthru confirmation. But whatever you do the whole process should brand you as an authority on your subject.

Hope this helps,

Chris Lang

P.S. If you are sending any type of email from your server; blog updates, sales confirmations or even refer a friend updates most of your emails never arrive for reasons you do not even know. Get 4 Chapters FREE from “Get it to the Inbox”!

Big Brother is not just watching your blog. Big Brother is watching what your visitors DO on your blog

I have maintained that Google is not nice for some time. More and more evidence is coming to the fore front that Google knows all and uses it to rank your blog.

In my Saturday post How Google Ranks Blogs I taked about how Google does collect data on the number of click thru’s from SERPs. Today I go a litttle deeper in my quest to get my blog ranked well in Google.

Google Analytics - Google’s #1 Dataminer

There is major evidence that Google uses Google Analytics in three ways.

• The Bounce Effect Percentage
• On Site In Session Visitor Clicks
• Time Spent Per Visit

1st Search Engine Rankings did a little independent research “Google bounce factor research data is in.” They concluded that both the bounce percentage and the number of clicks during a visitor session could increase your placement in SERPs.

From the study:

“It took about 2 weeks to see a significant change, also not all participants entered at the same time which I believe helped keep the experiment looking natural.”

At first we only saw a change of one or two positions so the site stuck around positions #10, 11, 9 and 8. But after about two weeks the site started improving much more considerably, moving up to position #4 and even reportedly #2.”

The bounce effect

If your visitors clicks thru to your site without loading a second page this is called a bounce. It is a major metric in Google Analytics. It seems that the lower your bounce rate the higher your blog or site maybe ranked. It also seems that the more in site clicks you get during a visitor session the better off you are.

Of course if they are using your bounce rate and click rate as part of the algorithym, the time per visitor spent on your site, most popular pages and the most highly converting pages all play a part.

By no means expect that this is a major part of your Google rank. It does however play a small part.

Feedburner Use and Subscribers has an effect too

While not quoted in the Google patent there does seem to be evidence that using Feedburner helps your Google rankings. Since Google aquired FeedBurner just using Feedburner analytics seems to increse your SERPs position.

Oviousily if the more subscribers you have in Google reader helps your rankings then the greater the number of subscribers that Feedburner tracks has an effect too.

Our blogs have never ranked well in Google and I am going to tell you why!

I have been chasing Google for months. Adding social bookmarks, requesting links, optimizing posts, titles and incoming links. It finally dawned on me in the wee hours of saturday morning what I have been doing wrong and I have been up all night changing my ways.

Now I am going to share it with you. This is good stuff stay with me here.

If any part of this article has mispellings, bad coding or just sounds like I have been up for a day and a half it’s because it is true. I have been implementing everything I have learned here. And this is POWERFUL!

Here’s how Google ranks blogs, they call it “popularity of the blog document”.

Here is how Google ranks blogs….

• By the number of blog readers you have in Google Reader and Technorati.

“The popularity of the blog document may be a positive indication of the quality of that blog document. A number of news aggregator sites (commonly called “news readers” or “feed readers”) exist where individuals can subscribe to a blog document (through its feed). Such aggregators store information describing how many individuals have subscribed to given blog documents. A blog document having a high number of subscriptions implies a higher quality for the blog document. Also, subscriptions can be validated against “subscriptions spam” (where spammers subscribe to their own blog documents in an attempt to make them “more popular”) by validating unique users who subscribed, or by filtering unique Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of the subscribers.”

You may want to read how Technorati ranks blogs here.

• By how many blogrolls you are in and the quality of the linking blog.

“Simlarly, the existence of the blog document in a blogroll of a well-known or trusted blogger may also be a positive indication of the quality of the blog document. In this situation, it is assumed that the well-known or trusted blogger would not link to a spamming blogger.”

• How many times your Google search engine listing is clicked.

“An implied popularity may be identified for the blog document. This implied popularity may be identified by, for example, examining the click stream of search results. For example, if a certain blog document is clicked more than other blog documents when the blog document appears in result sets, this may be an indication that the blog document is popular and, thus, a positive indicator of the quality of the blog document.”

• Social bookmarketing posts and the nember of times you are Dugg ect.

“Tagging of the blog document may be a positive indication of the quality of the blog document. Some existing sites allow users to add “tags” to (i.e., to “categorize”) a blog document. These custom categorizations are an indicator that an individual has evaluated the content of the blog document and determined that one or more categories appropriately describe its content, and as such are a positive indicator of the quality of the blog document.”

• The number of times your URL appears in conversations, think Gmail.

“References to the blog document by other sources may be a positive indication of the quality of the blog document. For example, content of emails or chat transcripts can contain URLs of blog documents. Email or chat discussions that include references to the blog document is a positive indicator of the quality of the blog document.”

I wish I could say I wrote this, but the quotes are from the Google patent and the article is actually How Google Blogsearch ranks your Posts… In their own words!

What Chris Lang thinks Google does…

The quality of the links in a blog aritcle and the quantitiy of links.

I am also thinking that the quality of blogs that you link to in the body text has a lot to do with your blog and your posts’s ranking. I feel that Google thinks if you are unwilling to link to blogs better than yours then you are not sure of your own content.

It is also possible that the number of links in a blog document (or lack of) says to Google that you are just building landing pages that are worthless rather than writing a well researched article using a number of authorative sources as background.

Feedburner and Google Analytics are data miners.

There is also some evidence that Google uses Feedburner stats and Google Analytics metrics as indicators of a blog’s quality. Since Google own’s both services I expect that they do. I will investigate this in my next post.

The number of comments overall and the number of comments for each post.

I am only guessing at this point, but wouldn’t it seem that if all these other things factor into the quality of the document, wouldn’t comments as well?

If I had learned this two years ago I would not know what I know about SEO. The bad news is I would have quadrupled my traffic long ago.

I would not have learned what I know about social marketing.

I would not have forged strategic alliances with major marketers.

I would not have completed and marketed two ebooks that have done well.

I would not have devoured everything Eban Pagan has had to say.

I would not have taken Eban’s advice and gone out and done one on one social marketing consults.

I would not have celebrated the most personal success I have ever had on the Internet.

This is pretty off topic but I have quit chasing money and while I could have rolled this into my social marketing eBook I am passing on information that I feel is extremely powerful and valuable. Either that or you all already know this and I am a jackass.

If that is the case I am ONE HAPPY JACKASS.

Thank you Eban Pagan. I am on the golden path.

Free Social Networking Software That I use Every Day

5 Things I learned at Pipl

By analyzing their members profiles from November-December 2007, Pipl came uppon some interesting facts. These can provide you with a glimpse into the Demographics, Trends, Size and Growth of the different sites.

• The Women Are Younger, The Men are Older.
• Bebo and Xanga have the Youngest Crowd.
• MySpace is still the largest, by far.
• European, Asians and South American Members are getting Younger.
• More Women on MySpace, More Men on Hi5.

http://www.pipl.com/statistics/social-networks/age/

Tube Mogul

TubeMogul offers analytic technology and correlates video-viewing data to give publishers improved understanding of when, where and how often videos are watched.

• Track and compare what’s hot and what’s not.
• Measure the impact of marketing campaigns.
• gather competitive intelligence.
• share the data with colleagues or friends.

http://www.tubemogul.com/

Social Meter

Social meter scans the major social websites to analyze a webpage’s social popularity. Currently we scan Del.icio.us, Digg, Furl, Google, Jots, Linkroll, Netscape, Reddit, Shadows, Spurl, Technorati, and Yahoo My Web.

Mostly it promotes Sphere or at least I think so.

http://www.socialmeter.com