MaineBusiness.com

Verizon Shows Why We Need Net Neutrality

Verizon gave us a sneak peek into what the US and the state of free speech might look like in a few years after we've all forgotten that Net Neutrality has been done away with.

In a New York Times article, Verizon Blocks Messages of Abortion Rights Group, it was reported that Verizon has decided not to allow an abortion rights group "to make Verizon’s mobile network available for a text-message program."

Now, although you may not be a supporter of abortion rights, please see if you can put those feelings aside for a moment. Imagine, if it helps, that this was a anti-abortion group, or an anti-smoking group, or a republican group, or a freedom of religion group, or whatever group you may sympathize with.

The NYT went on to say:

In turning down the program, Verizon, one of the nation’s two largest
wireless carriers, told Naral that it does not accept programs from any
group “that seeks to promote an agenda or distribute content that, in
its discretion, may be seen as controversial or unsavory to any of our
users.” (emphasis mine)

What topic under the sun isn't going to be controversial or unsavory to any of Verizon's users? Isn't the point of free speech to protect controversial ideas, and not to protect us from them? Isn't this what the first amendment provides us?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press; or of the people peaceably to assemble, and to
petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The problem is that, as the article points out, "the First Amendment limits government power, not that of private companies like Verizon." And this is why we need to bring back Net Neutrality so that the freedom we enjoy in a free flowing of ideas over the Internet is protected under the first amendment, and not dictated by shareholder value.

And now, for the rebuttal....

Reptetition, Repetition, Repetition....

"I'm concerned that I'm repeating myself."

That's what a new client told me the other day as she worked on the Content Intake Packet (CIP) that we provided her. We developed this CIP as a way of helping clients organize their content and make it as powerful as it can be, especially with an eye towards search engine friendliness and readability.

For each page of the prospective Web site, there's a field for Title, Header and meta-description tag.

Title: The title tag may be the most important variable for the search engines, yet many people have never noticed it until I point it out. It appears outside the browser window, in the -- duh -- title bar. On the Mac it's right up there next to the red, yellow and green buttons. On Windows you'll find it next to the minimize, maximize and close buttons. (Still can't find it? Check out this post on Web page anatomy.)

Title tags should be descriptive, unique to the content on each page, and use the keywords people are searching for when looking for a product or service like the one you offer. It's also the big blue text on a search engine's results page, so it may be the first impression that a prospect has of you.

Headers: Headers appear within the page. For you HTML monkeys out there, it's everything between the <H#> tags. Because these are structurally more important on the page, search engines pay attention to these tags as well. They should reiterate the theme of the title tag as well.

They're also important because people don't read on the Web, they scan. Headers let them quickly find the information they're interested in.

Meta-Description: Meta-tags used to be extremely important to search engine optimization, but that was about 8 years ago. Now they have little to no impact on your search engine ranking, depending on who you talk to. However, it's a good idea to have a unique meta-description for each page, as search engines often use these descriptions on the results page. Think of it like free advertising. Here's an example:

Otherwise, the search engines may just grab some random text from your Web page that matches up against the search words used. This meta-description does not appear on your page, but rather on the underlying code only.

Repetition, Repetition, Repetition....
Since the title appears outside the browser window, the header appears within it, and the meta-description appears only in the source code and on the search engine results page, it's OK to repeat the same text or reword it in a similar way.

Each of these serve a different purpose, but they all build upon each other to help the search engines understand why your site should rank well when a prospect is searching for what you have to offer.

It's a good idea to go Google yourself -- don't worry, you won't go blind -- to see what your prospects see when they search. If you don't like the results, you can change your title tag and meta-description and a few weeks or even days later, see your improved result.

Rich Brooks
Search Engine Optimization

Overcome Your Fear of Blogging!

If you struggle with ways to fill your blog with interesting, compelling content that your audience will respond to, you're not alone. In fact, creating blog posts and the time it takes is probably the biggest hurdle people erect to avoid blogging.

If this does describe you, be sure to check out this great post at ProBlogger titled The Top 5 Uncommon Timesavers for Bloggers. It was written by Tim Ferriss, author of The Four Hour Work Week.

Rich Brooks
Maine's Business Blogger

Last Nag Chance for Web Marketing Course at USM

Just a quick reminder that Web Marketing for Entrepreneurs and Small Businesses starts this Thursday night at 6pm.

It's a four week course I'm teaching over at USM for small business owners and entrepreneurs who want a better understanding of how to utilize Web marketing to improve their online business. We'll tackle:

• search engine optimization
• email marketing
• blogging
• web traffic reports
• building a Web site that sells
• and much, much more!

Well, not that much more. After all, it's only eight hours total. For more info and to register visit the USM Web site.

Rich Brooks
Edjamacator

How to Rank Better at Google in Three Easy Steps

Yes, it's a few days late. (If by "few" you mean "seven.")

However, we've been busy wrapping up current projects and signing up quite a few new ones, plus kindergarten started last week so I'm still in a state of shock. At least she's looking up to Disney princesses and not Lindsay Lohan.

But I digress....

We just published the latest issue of flyte log, our award-winning email newsletter (BTW, do awards from your mom count?) with a featured article entitled Increase Your Search Engine Visibility: Three Things You Can Do Today.

Enjoy.

Rich Brooks
Search Engine Optimizer

Blog Workshop Handouts Available for Download

Yesterday I spoke at the Northeast Winter Sports Summit, a two day conference for the ski industry in the north east. The topic, as is often is with me, was "How to Plan, Build and Promote a Business Blog."

Since blogging seems to be changing all the time I also updated my slides and my talk. I've also posted the handouts from the presentation in our super-exclusive flyte log subscriber area.

With the exception of two ski resort-specific slides, the handouts should be helpful to anyone preparing to start or improve a business blog. All you need to do is:

• sign up for our free email newsletter
• confirm your interest by clicking on the link in the confirmation email
• click on the link in the welcome email.

Once you've downloaded the handout you can of course unsubscribe from the newsletter, but if you're interested in the handouts, you'll probably benefit from our monthly articles on blogging, search engine optimization, email marketing and other Web related strategy.

If you are interested in learning more about Web marketing and blogging in particular, check out the Web Marketing for Entrepreneurs and Small Business course I'm teaching later this month at USM.

Rich Brooks
Business Blogging Consultant

Do Blogs Work For Small Business?

Almost a month ago I posted Can Blogging Help Maine's Tourism Industry? One commenter questioned whether blogging makes any impact on a business, while another said he had experienced a lot more business because of blogging. The bottom line is, results differ for a number of reasons:

• Frequency of posts
• Search engine visibility
• Competition
• Time of year
• Audience
• and so on.

Although I've found blogging to be the most rewarding of all the Web marketing activities we do, it can be time consuming. (Here are some tips, courtesy of Copyblogger, for those of you who have trouble finding the time to blog.)

More than once, I've seen business bloggers with the best of intentions slow their posts down to a crawl because they aren't seeing immediate results based on the amount of work they are putting in. Unfortunately, at the beginning, you'll be doing a lot more work and getting a lot fewer results than you would like. (But isn't that how everything rewarding is?) However, over time, those two results will begin to reverse.

I'd like to share with you an (unsolicited) email I recently received from Gray Cabaniss who writes the Agatha and Louise Blog, a blog that supports his retail and online shops that sell gifts and products for dog owners and dog lovers:

Do You Know WordPress?

If you've got some mad WordPress skills you may want to check out the freelance position we're looking to fill.

Specifically, you need to be comfortable building WordPress blogs and pages build on the WordPress platform. If you do, and you can show us some sweet examples, head on over to our Web site and fill out the job application form.

Rich Brooks
Hiring