SEO 2.0

Can’t Fail Cafe - image by pbo31.

Recently I wrote a guest post that took me a long time to write and was well crafted timely pillar content which nonetheless failed miserably on social media, even the site I targeted directly. OK, I may be biased, maybe it was just “great content”, or rather a great article as I do not like the fuzzy term “content”. It was a how to that grew to be a small tutorial in fact. As this was a guest post and it targeted my favorite community Mixx I was really disappointed. After I overcame the ensuing suicidal tendencies I started analyzing what happened and comparing it to other posts both successful and not.

Now I present you the outcome, the top 10 reasons why great content fails on social media:


The Headline
The headline is crucial, without a proper, intriguing, kick-ass headline the best content will fail. Take a look at this post at SEO ROI which also failed miserably: “The Biggest, Baddest, Resource Bonanza Bar None!“
What the heck is it about? Nobody knew and thus it failed even on Sphinn where otherwise it would have ruled the homepage. I was silly enough to submit it without changing the headline. I should have called it something like “111+ Most Important Online Marketing Resources of All Time” instead.
Basically the original title just does not give you a clue what the post is about and why anybody should care for it.


The Submitter
Now this is something most social media mavens already know and most bloggers hate, being submitted by a nobody. It’s often as bad when someone submits who will describe your post as “good post about blogging” where all other posts are outstanding, amazing or must-read, a post that is just “good” will fail. So if you’re a blogger and you just provided the best list post of you blogging career make sure someones submits it who can get it the attention it deserves.


The Target Audience
You should know beforehand who you target with a post. Bloggers? Webmasters? The social media crowd? Which social media site? Just today I noticed someone who submitted a post to Digg that used a title targeting web developers. Now the submission to Digg included the word “SEO” instead which equals to self-annihilation on Digg. No story that contains “SEO” in its title makes the Digg front page. So study your audience at least a little. You won’t enter the Indian market selling beef either! Each site has specific topical preferences you must take into account.


The Time Submitted
This one is really important. If you write in English, and you should if you want to succeed on social media, you basically write for the US. I have more than 50% US traffic, 10% Canada etc. although my English is far from perfect. So you have to take time zones into consideration and not submit at night but in the morning or during day time.

Also a post submitted on the weekend might get overlooked by many, especially if it’s dealing with business stuff. Most other business people also have business hours Just recently a great post of mine failed miserably after it was submitted on Friday evening to Sphinn. It had 21 votes on Monday when the 3 day “upcoming” phase ended.


The Appearance
Most people decide whether they leave your site in seconds or rather milliseconds. So you have to grip them by their throat. You really need an eye-catcher. Lidija of Blog Well understood it very well when she posted her legendary b00bs/resources post. My guest post which failed had it’s images downsized so drastically that they were unintelligible. You couldn’t discern anything. They were meant as illustration of the tutorial. A tutorial with useless images is no tutorial.

Of course if the only thing above the fold/scroll are Google or banner ads I will leave immediately. Last but not least: If the page copy is one huge piece of text I won’t torture my strained eyes either.


The Source
Now this might not be obvious, but some sites will never succeed on some social media. SEO 2.0 will never ever get to the front page of Digg as the Digg bury brigade does not read SEO posts (posts about SEO) at all, they hit “bury” right away when spotting the term “SEO”. The same post might succeed being published elsewhere but not here.

Also some people are persona non grata on some sites, like Jason “SEO is bullshit” Calacanis e.g. on Sphinn. An a-list blogger might succeed even with rather poor content. An unknown blogger must be twice as good to be successful.


The Me Too Factor
Some topics are hot as long as they haven’t been covered by dozens of others days, weeks or months earlier. When people are tired of some kind of content it can be the best but it will fail anyways. So not write another me too post when the topic has been already covered to excess.


The Genre
In literature we have poetry and prose and everything inbetween. We also have drama, comedy and horror movies. At the box office or on social media weird experimental mixes won’t succeed as people will be confused. So decide if you write a list or a tutorial. If you write an analysis do not make it opinionated etc.


The Categorization
I see this mistake every day on StumbleUpon. SU is very dependent on it’s categories/tags. Without adding the right categories nobody potentially interested will even see your post. Just recently my “Flagship Blogging” post has been submitted in the “Internet” category to SU. This is a very broad category which deals with many topics, but just because blogs are part of the Internet does not make this category the right one. StumbleUpon has the weblogs/blogs category for this, also writing is fitting in this case. This is just one of dozens examples of miscategorization at StumbleUpon.


The Initial Push
The initial push means making your friends and peers online aware of your post. Did someone submit your post? Now you have to contact people of your social network on the Web to ask them to vote for you. Without the initial push of a 12 votes by your peers you won’t even get noticed at most social sites. You will end up as a bleep among thousands. So rally for your post if you truly believe it’s worth it.


So by now you may already sense that it’s not just about content is king on social media. It depends. A king is nothing without a kingdom or an army. The good news is: You can overcome most of these 10 reasons why great content fails on social media. So try not to make these mistakes next time.

Ironically I published this post on a Friday night so any submission will fail

Nonetheless, do not wait, submit it, it’s my bad this time. Also I need some proof for my theories.

Classics in Lego by Balakov.

Starting and maintaining a flagship blog is not really easy. You need perseverance and the will to keep on blogging no matter what happens. You need passion.

You need to fall in love with blogging!

I have it, so I don’t need extra motivation or something. What I need though, like other bloggers, is a strategy or simply put adjustment to the 3 phases of blog growth.

You just can’t blog the same way for a completely new blog as for a blog which already has a significant audience or an established blog.

What is a flagship blog? A flagship blog is a blog created upon the premise of unique content of high value able to boost your online reputation. A flagship blog is a resource people will link to, subscribe and recommend to others on social media.

I want to outline the 3 main phases of flagship blog growth and how to deal with them in terms of

• content creation
• posting frequency
• topical relevancy
• social media engagement
• guest blogging

What are the 3 main phases of blog growth? These 3 are embedded in a holistic SEO 2.0 strategy including true blue social media participation.

1. Initial Frenzy
The initial frenzy is a hilarious phase of blogging. It’s like a new love affair. You’re agitated all of the time and can’t sleep well.

• You blog daily or at least as often as you can.
• You write guest posts for more popular blogs
  
• You try everything, several social media, widgets, Plugins and maybe even WordPress Themes.
• You create highly relevant topical content geared towards the social media of your choice audience
  
• You link out generously and you praise other established as well as new bloggers like you who you admire.
• You watch your first social media submissions eagerly
• and you are are glad about the first 100 visitors daily, then the first 100 subscribers
  

2. Establishing Mode
The establishing mode phase is a cool down phase. Like in a love affair you now discover whether you truly love blogging. You take a step back and analyze. You take a look at your audience and the workload of blogging. Now you need a focus and some lasting benefit of blogging.

After the initial frenzy ends there comes the establishing mode. It may be after 3 months or after 6 but it will come. You will notice it by the fact that you are posting less without really knowing why. You will more often take a look at your watch to find out how much time you spend with blogging.

• You blog less often but write longer posts
• You elaborate on topics you already covered
• You concentrate on your existing audience, you may have 300-1000 feed subscribers
• Your social media traffic either tends to become lower or you stop caring that much
• You think twice before you guest blog, some people might offer you money already for guest blogging
• You already have a significant network of like minded peers across several social media and people know your name or recognize your avatar
• You think more often about making money with your blog to justify the time spent on it
• People you never heard link to you in best of lists or as a source (”via”)

3. Final Boost
The final boost is in a love affair the equivalent of marriage. Now you decide whether you abandon your beloved one or if you’re really in it whatever it takes. You can do it you just need to want it. If your heart jumps each time you start typing a blog post you can really become one of those exceptionallysuccessful bloggers.

• You want to reach new heights each time you start a blog post, you want to write a short one but it does not work, you have so much to share
• You are the first or one of the first to cover or uncover topics others haven’t t thought of yet
• Your traffic is higher than in the initial phase even without being submitted to social media
• The no referer crowd becomes the biggest traffic factor in your stats on days you are not on social media
  
• Your blog posts get submitted to different social media just minutes or hours after you published them
• People you never heard of admire you or ask you questions
• Once you submit something to social media you get an initial boost of 10 - 20 people recognizing it’s you and checking out your submission because they trust your choices
• You get job offers via or because of your blog regularly
  

Now to reach the final boost phase or whil in it you can go pro for instance, and/or you create immensely valuable posts that will go bananas on del.icio.us, you can create an ebook or you just venture into other media like audio or video or even start a second flagship blog. You can start speaking at conferences. You will consider a professional custom blog redesign.

You want to keep inspiring people forever. You want to empower the people, you want o evangelize them and you even believe it because you made it so far. It’s wonderful!

Now I’m not yet at #3 or final boost, at least not entirely. I assume being in the final boost phase means having around 1000+ subscribers but I already experience the ramifications of it to some extent. I recognize the things others wrote about, like content creator Skellie, web designer Steven Snell or internet marketer Dosh Dosh.

Now will I get the final boost that will propel me to the next level? How will I do it? I’m not sure yet, I already see phase 3 unfolding. Maybe it’s not about doing anymore but watching it happen by now. Anyways, blogging is my true love!

Findability is a seemingly new term that has become a buzzword recently due to a book called Building Findable Websites by Aarron Walter (not to mix up with Aaron Wall, author of SEO Book). Now as a true SEO 2.0 I’m always on the lookout for new concepts and innovation. So I took a little time to find out more about findability, it’s meaning, roots, who coined the term and when.

The first thing I found out was that neither Aaron Walter nor renown usability expert Jakob Nielsen used the term findability first. It appears that the term findability and most notably ambient findability was coined in 2002 by Peter Morville who even published a book of the same title. First things first though, so let me explain what findability is about.

Website findability is the new and better SEO so to say or, on-site SEO without the bad rep of the SEO industry if you adopt the definition from Building Findable Websites.

Basically Aarron Walter says that building websites for findability encompasses not only SEO but a holistic approach with usability and web standards etc. in mind, a position I can fully support. One thing that Mr. Walter attempts to tell us though is:

SEO is bad, findability is good.

This is a good move from a marketing perspective as nobody likes SEO of course, the term is a stain in itself or at least is perceived by the majority as such.

When we go back to what Peter Morville wrote in 2002 we discover that findability and SEO are not contradictory but basically twin brothers. He acknowledges how

SEO contributes to a websites findability along with usability and other important aspects of information architecture.

Now that might be the problem of it not generating enough hype so that Aarron Walter took a more aggressive approach.

Also Walter reduced findability to websites build with web standards while Morville’s definition extends to the real world. Morville uses examples like looking for long term parking or restrooms on an airport which strike home very convincingly. Jakob Nielsen used the term in 2006 for the first time as far as I can see. Nielsen also limited it to website findability without denouncing SEO though.

Now am I angry at Aarron Walter for being explicit about SEO? No, I’m glad, glad someone makes a strong point on renaming the “whole problem”. In this sense I took the wrong approach with attempting to redefine SEO and having to deal with it’s reputation problem. Using another, better term is the by far more effective way of redefining something. Sadly it’s mostly used by political think tanks to manipulate the public usually. In this case the outcome of the manipulation is a positive one. People will acknowledge best practices and put them in use.

I don’t care how do you call it, SEO, findability or like myself probably SEO 2.0 as long as we have the same goals. Our goals match while the methods do just partly as findability refers in web development only to the on-site or on-page factors of SEO which is not enough to be found, especially in the Web 2.0 environment, but they match.

The single most positive aspect of website findability the teaching aspect:

Findability teaches designers, web developers and information architects what they condescendingly ignored for years, making websites findable.

Now as I am the garbage man of all these lazy designers, web developers and information architects and had to fix crap websites for years, I’m sick and tired of it. I want to do the real thing, the content, the SEO 2.0 the fun stuff.

So clean up your websites yourself guys and don’t rely on the poor Mexican migrant worker wit a sombrero to do it.

That said, I still prefer the approach of Peter Norville. So do not only read Aaron Walter book but also, or at first Norvilles “Ambient Findability”.

Btw.: Building Findable Websites only covers the on-site SEO basics, adding some microfomats and the likes, if you really want to do web design for findability you need to read the Web Design for ROI, a book that will change your professional life forever.


Findablity resources:

• The Age of Findability - Boxes and Arrows: The design behind the design
• Ambient Findability
• Digital Web Magazine - Ambient Findability
• O’Reilly Media | Ambient Findability
• findability.org - by Peter Morville
• DonnaM » Blog Archive » Usability testing for findability
• A List Apart: Articles: Ambient Findability: Findability Hacks
• Use Old Words When Writing for Findability (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox)
• A List Apart: Articles: Findability, Orphan of the Web Design Industry
• Building Findable Websites: Web Standards, SEO, and Beyond
• Findability Bliss Through Web Standards | An Event Apart New Orleans April 2008
• SEO and Findability blog: LJ Banks — findability expert

From now on please refer to me as findability expert, maybe this way I can outsmart the SEO haters

This post has been sponsored by Nstein*

[Update May 15th, 2008: New image added]

Image by Kevin Rosseel

You think on-page SEO is dead? It hasn’t even begun! To be clear, your website is a goldmine and you haven’t even started to dig for the gold.

In my SEO 2.0 blog I have covered blogging, social media and the likes to the point of excess. At the same time I have dismissed most of on-page SEO as obsolete or as built in basics of even the simplest CMS software.

Do you think on-page SEO is just about h1 tags, meta descriptions or enhancing website copy with keywords? Now think again.

Consider using the term on-site SEO referring to the whole site not just each page for itself. Now add the adjective “semantic“.

The semantic web (often called Web 3.0) and its search are about meaning.

Google matches phrases without knowing what they mean. Semantic search is based on understanding what the search query is about. What if you could use software to determine the meaning of your own content and categorize it in topical clusters?

You could:

• Make users stick with your website as a reader would always find related articles to the current one he just read
• Serve contextual advertising like Google does
• Automatically improve indexation with “internal links” cross-linking related content
  

Doesn’t sound revolutionary? Well, what does it mean then? Nowadays you will typically structure news by location and topics. For instance Europe or business are used as categories. So a story about fuel shortage in Great Britain could be found in Europe and business categories. Now what about other relations? What if the story is related to another one from outside Europe or one that is not about business directly? A reader keen on reading the latest energy and fuel news would not find anything of interest anymore amidst bizarre stories from Europe about a father hiding his daughter in a cellar for over 20 years or singer Amy Whinehouse and her legal problems.
Yes, these stories have been been put together in Europe on CNN (April 28th, 2008). The reader will leave.

With semantic SEO implemented on your website you can make the reader find several stories related to this one, automatically.

Using this example: There are a few related stories out there right now: In Brazil president Lula speaks out about bio fuel , in Singapore the oil price reaches a new height, Venezuela and Iran plan to work more closely together (thus limiting western access to oil). Also there is another story about pirates freeing hostages near Somalia. Now the first three are obvious. The fourth one is related too but how? Pirates and other militants are also increasingly a problem in Nigeria where they attack oil tankers.

How did I find out? I used a news aggregator that uses semantic web and search methodology to determine which articles and news are related.

• So instead of reading just one article or page I read 5 increasing page views per visit or stickiness
• The website could show contextual ads about alternative energy or energy saving
• Older news about the same topic could have been directly linked to the latest news automatically. Google could spider them and rank them up as relevant again.
  

Now this means

• an increase of 500% in page views per visit for this example
  
• serving highly relevant ads with most probably high click-thrus
• new crawling and better ranking for several articles resulting in more targeted search traffic
  

All this just with semantic SEO implemented on-site. Nowadays most of your content gets wasted. You can let machines dig for the hidden gold in your archives instead. So how do I do that or rather which solution can do it for me?

I do not know myself yet. I was aproached by Nstein, a company that is “powering online publishing” for large publishers across the globe to help them spread the word about their latest webinar. This free webinar is about “Semantic Tagging & Automated Discovery Strategies: For SEO, Editorial, Contextual Advertising and more“.

Now as even I needed some explanation what this really means I decided to write a sponsored post* for them. It does not make sense to advertise for something that nobody understands.

I was approached by potential advertisers in the past but never conceded to run the ads due to the lack of credibility of their products or companies as well as lack of focus at my audience or value for my readers.

Now the Nstein representative could convince me on the phone that this latest webinar can really be of use for my readers. Especially he cited the above mentioned news aggregator as one example where Nstein has already successfully implemented semantic methods for on-site SEO I just call semantic SEO.

Anyways, you can be sure that any method that looks like SEO 2.0 to me and that allows to potentially double, triple or even increase the number of page views by 500% in my case will make me want to cover it.

Now as I feel a little uneasy about this first sponsored post* and wonder if it’s too sneaky to write for an advertiser about something I want some feedback from you if this post was useful or not and if it’s acceptable to write posts I was asked for on my own blog and getting paid for them. Until now I only got paid for guest blogging on other blogs.



*This is a sponsored post. It’s not an ad. Also it’s not a sponsored review. It just introdocuces a topic I was asked to write about by the sponsor. The text is written by myself and only reflects my opinion so it’s not even an advertorial. It’s not automatically an endorsement of the above mentioned offer.

Give. Image by Mr. Kris

Personally I hate the term “marketing” as well as combinations like search engine marketing. Even more than that I despise the term social media marketing which is an oxymoron in itself. I wonder why I forgot to add to this list of despicable terms.

In fact I do search engine and social media optimization instead of marketing.

In SEO 2.0 you do not sell to people, you inform, but they want to pay you anyways to get more.

The difference between social media marketing and optimization is like that of shareware and freeware. Marketing means selling the people stuff, optimization giving it away for free. In SEO 2.0 you get one step further: You give it away for free to get something else in return without tying both. So you do not just give away a freeware version to sell your professional software package.

SEO 2.0 is more like creative commons or open source: You give away everything to get something else: Reputation, attention, authority etc.

With these you can sell to other people while you do not take away anything from the people who have received from you.

So in SEO 2.0 you do neither sell not trade. You practice true altruism. Many people know already: Altruism is the better egoism. The more you give away the more you get back.

This is a fundamental rule of humanity ever since. Just think of your family or friends. The more love you give to your children the more you will get back. The more time you spend your friends the more friends you’ll have. Of course this rule has some limitations as you can’t just give everything to your children out of love as well as you need to identify who your real friends are and not feed people who start to exploit you (like most employers do). Nonetheless it works.

So how does this make sense for blogging, also regarding business blogging, especially to make social media marketing superfluous?

Let me tell you a little more about Germany: Here you do not have social media that really bring visitors to your site. Imagine no Digg, Reddit, Propeller etc.
The biggest German Digg-like site will bring you as many visitors as the still nascent Mixx community or a niche social site like Sphinn. Also you can’t submit most of the German content to international social sites.

So how the hell can you get traffic for your blog without targeting social media at all? Yes, it’s possible. I do it for my blogging clients as well as for my private blogs.

Here is a short list of actions you can perform to get more visitors without social media marketing:

• Look for other bloggers who write about the topic of your post, link to theirs and ping or trackback them this way.
• Comment on blog posts that cover a topic you already posted about explaining what is missing or why your perspective adds some crucial info. Add a link to the particular post. Bloggers and their readers appreciate that alike.
• Find a topic everybody speaks about and write a resource or overview post with deeplinks to the posts. Do not trackback everybody, pings are OK, but people will notice anyway.
• Look up Technorati and your referer stats to find out who linked to you and submit them to social media, of course only if the posting are more than just “look what I’ve found, click here”
• Check which popular media support trackbacks and use them as your favorite news sources, refer to and trackback them once in a while (not daily)
  

As you see it’s basically about two things: Commenting and linking out. Becoming a part of the blogosphere. Your blog is not an island.


Blogging without using social media yourself for marketing purposes and the frowned upon self-submission has some major advantages. Just look at all the time you spend on social media while most of them even don’t respect you for doing it, either by their own policy, their hostile users, or both. So the ultimate goal should be to be able to stop using social media for SMM reasons at all.

The zen of SEO 2.0: Succeed on social media without self-submission.

As a proof of concept we do not submit our own stuff at the SEO 2.0 on Mixx although Mixx allows this. It works fine. In fact I almost never submit my postings, sometimes I won’t even vote for it. Still my blog posts have been submitted over 40 times to Mixx.

I use social media as they were intended: for fun, sharing and news filtering and get popular anyways. People know me and even vote for my stuff across different social media.

So skip social media marketing, do social media optimization. It’s not about what the blogosphere and social media can do for you, it’s about what you can do for them. The more you give the more you get.

Did you ever see a-list bloggers submit their own postings?

Whatever you do, you need passion, image by fatboyke

What exactly is business blogging? To me, at least in this post, it applies to any blogging attempt that is motivated by the advance of any business or marketing endeavour. It may even apply to blogging for a cause what many green bloggers do.

Business blogging does not have to be blogging about business as some people apparently assume. This is not my understanding of the term.

Business blogging might be done by an individual who is a freelancer like I am a freelance SEO consultant in Germany but to me it sounds more like the blogger is part of a larger business or a company. Also you have to differentiate: Business blogging is not necessarily corporate or problogging but might be one of the two or both.

In the search industry bloggers Matt Cutts and Rand Fishkin are probably the best examples of business blogging I refer to. While Matt Cutts’ blog makes me stay away from it for several reasons it is along with SEOmoz nonetheless a good example for blogging semi-privately for a business, thus for business blogging that is neither really private nor really corporate as there are many “real” Google corporate blogs.

So while business blogging is used very successfully not only in the search industry there seems to persist a large amount of uncertainty about the nature of it to the point of some spectacular failures of business blogs.

So to establish a few guidelines for proper business blog behavior there arises a need for a set of “social values” especially in connection and to deal with social media. These are indeed fairly simple and self-evident once written down. I just did it: So take a look at the 10 commandments of business blogging and also make sure to read my introduction called the 10 simplest ways to boost your social media credibility right from the start:

1. Use your real name
If you want anybody to take you seriously you have to use your real name for your blog.

2. Disclose what company you are working for and what exactly you do there
Do not blog under false pretenses, disclose from the start who you are, whom you work for or who pays you, why you blog, what your exact position is, it’s a big difference whether you’re from the PR department or you’re the CEO.

3. Blog yourself
Do not use ghostwriting under your name. If you have not enough time do not blog. Blog for yourself in your own name not for your company, people will cite you and not the company. Above all be yourself, not solely a CEO, entrepreneur, engineer or consultant. Make people feel that you’re there as a person. Shoot pictures of your cat or dog. Do not cover your family though, that might be even dangerous.

4. Do not sell, inform
Do not attempt to sell your products via your blog posts. Inform people. Make your readers aware of them but mainly inform your audience on the issues of your trade or industry, not solely your own business.

5. Do not “blog” press releases, tell stories
Well, this is kind of evident although many people will do it anyways. Press releases are for the press, blogs are your interface to social media. You might even employ social media press releases but keep your blog clean.

6. Engage your audience
Blogs are defined by the conversations of real people. It’s about dialogue. Again, if you do not have the time to reply to comments, do not blog. If you start a monologue your business blog will fail.

7. Use casual language not corporate newspeak
Everybody hates corporate newspeak. Also many people do not even understand the meaning of it. Use normal casual language, but do not swear or ridicule yourself too much. Wearing oversize sombreros is OK though.

8. Do not demean others, especially competitors, but deal with criticism and other issues of your company
Positivity and honesty is key for a successful blog, even more for a business blog as people are wary of being lied to by corporate or business entities. So do not tell people how bad your competitors are or the rest of the world. Also deal honestly with issues, especially criticism regarding your work and company. Do not feed the troll though. React if it’s not slander. For the latter call your lawyers, but do not call your lawyers in cases of decent criticism!

9. Do not make your employees vote you up
Well, ever wondered why Apple stories are daily on the Digg frontpage? Well, voting up your company’s blog is vote fraud on social media. If you have more than 5 - 10 employees you should forbid it altogether.

10. Do not hide facts when you describe something
Telling only half the truth is like lying on blgs and social media. People will tell you anyways. So try to anticipate what others think and take a proactive stance. Show them your unique selling proposition like saying “we’re the first to introduce these features”.


Now will following these 10 commandments make you a great business blogger? No, they most probably won’t on their own, but without them your business blog will fail. To stretch my commandment metaphor: It’s not enough to play by the rules, you need faith. With blogging it’s more about the enthusiasm or the passion.


Disclaimer: While I’m a Christian myself I do not want to hurt anyone’s religious feelings. The metaphor of the commandments is not meant to disrespect the real ten commandments, in contrast, it’s to highlight the need for ethics in every discipline even such a worldly one like blogging for business purposes. To my Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, agnostic and other readers: This is also not a way to disrespect any other religion as inferior. It’s just a way of explaining things.

Nowadays we use terms and expressions daily which not only bury the real meaning of the phenomenon they try to describe, they also misguide yourself and others.

Some words simply change your intentions to the negative by adding the wrong meaning or meaninglessness to some things.

I used most of them myself mistakenly without really thinking about the ramifications. These terms infuse hidden negativity into your approach. You have to purge them to change your mindset.

Check out these 7 examples of words or expressions that you should abandon:

1. Traffic: I wrote a whole article about that. In German you never say “traffic” you always say visitors. Your visitors are not cars or numbers. If you view them like an amorph mass you will never meet their expectations. Treat your visitors like guests. Offer them some tea and crackers. Also traffic reminds me of drug trafficking and such.
   
2. Link bait, Internet users are not fish and link baiting sounds like tricking people to swallow the bait. Why not speak about link incentives? I have come up with 3 different terms naming all aspects of what you call link baiting nowadays
3. Web 2.0 SEO: What could this be? SEO for AJAX apps? Social Media Optimization? It’s confusing. Use SEO 2.0 instead: Here it’s clear that this means a new phase of SEO and web 2.0 is implicit in it.
4. Blog monetization: To be honest, this sounds like “sell out”. It reminds me of going to the flea market or pawn shop. Why not “earn a living blogging” instead which sounds 10 times as decent? Or just blog advertising?
   
5. Make money online, yeah, make money online or blogging is the new “get rich quick”. It sounds like make money talking or sleeping. It’s one of the reasons people hate this. It’s bling, bling all over. Again “earn a living blogging” or “earn an income online” sounds 100 times more decent.
6. Black hat SEO - Let’s face it, what is black hat SEO? It’s search engine spam also called spamdexing. SEO stands for optimization, you do not optimize, you fool search engines, circumvent filters, you find loop holes in “black hat SEO”. It’s in no way an “optimum” afterwards, only for your pocket probably. Get real.
   
7. White hat SEO - By using this term, you acknowledge that all other SEO is not white hat, as well as acknowledging black hat SEO. It’s like saying there is good optimization (to make sth. better) and bad optimization (to make sth. worse), if it’s bad it’s not optimization at all, that’s an oxymoron. It’s either fixing or breaking things. SEO is fixing, spam breaking things.
   

Did I already tell you that I was a poet and linguist once? Language transforms reality. Master the language, do not use words that skew reality in the wrong direction and misrepresent things.

I think there are more terms like these that misguide you and others daily. Do you know some? Add them in the comments.

While StumbleUpon traffic is not really reliable and I strongly advise you not to depend on it for your blog StumbleUpon is still one of the most valuable places to get attention on the Web. To show you how a succesful submission can generate overwhelming buzz I will take apart a recently hugely popular stumble I did myself. This is an article that was chosen out of 10 by my readers. People power is SEO 2.0!

So: How to get a StumbleUpon submission reviewed 200 times in 2 weeks?

Take a look at this image first:



The submission I am talking about is an somewhat artistic work of the “us” design studio titled “Free range workers“. It deals with “the similarities between many office work conditions and battery farmed hens”.

While it is a really weird piece and I submitted it because it deserved attention by the people interested in radical art (I am an art blogger for over 5 years in Germany, I even organized a whole festival in 2004) I would never have expected the huge amount of attention it got on SU. Why? I submit strange artworks all the time. Some of it gets some attention, some other stuff gets ignored altogether.

So when I discovered that the “Free range workers” had received 200 reviews after a mere 2 weeks I decided to take a closer look at it and compare it to other similar submissions. Moreover I tried to find a pattern comparing it to other wildly popular submissions.

I have come up with some characteristics that these have in common. While this is not a recipe to repeat this success whenever you want you surely can deliver a better suited type of content for the StumbleUpon community after reading this.


The right topic. A popular one
This is crucial for success on StumbleUpon: You have to offer a potential audience what it wants. In sports stadium the people want to watch a football game, in a movie theatre people prefer to watch movies, in an art gallery they want guess what? So what kind of content do people on StumbleUpon prefer? Well, art is not bad but you need to get more exact in your research. How can you determine the preferences of stumblers? it’s simple. Just take a look at which groups are popular. My submission fitted at probably 3 of the most popular groups of SU users “Awesome Pictures“, “Bizarre Hunter” and “Photography“. Of course not the groups themselves made it go big, but the groups can be used as an indicator at what kind of content will perform well on SU.
Similarly, one of the most popular submissions of mine was one about Firefox. It wasn’t something really important but the huge attention it got was due to Firefox being one of the most popular topics on SU. In fact the Firefox group is the single most popular group at SU.


Zeitgeisty but timeless at the same time
StumbleUpon is not social news like the infamous Digg or the bright upstarter Mixx. Nobody wants to read news there as it takes too long from sender to recipient. You might get served the news by SU long time after they were originally posted. Thus the events have probably unfolded in a different direction already. So StumbleUpon sumission must be timeless. the information must still be valid or make sense in a few days, weeks , months or years. What stumblers do want is that the submission reflect the current zeitgeist.

So here again: Timeless art but the currently popular Firefox come to mind. When I started using Firefox a few years ago (it was called Phoenix back then) it was a really light weight, fast and underground browser. By now it’s a monster which will eat up all of your memory. So I often use Opera for certain tasks. It does not matter. People are used to FF by now and they want their preferences to be respected. So you can’t post something about there being better browsers than Firefox which would fatal for your submisson. You have to accept the zeitgeist of the time which says that Firefox is the #1 to succeed on SU.

The free range workers are timeless in their attempt to make life worth living for both humans and animals alike while they are reflecting on the current zeitgeist of the webgeneration, living in offices without much daylight.


No bullshit
This is something more savvy users already know. If you use tons of distracting ads, widgets and there is portal like clutter on your page, social media users will hate it. If you take a look at the Free range workers page you notice that there is nothing beside the single work, not even a link. Basically it a frame based site so that I had to open the frame content to submit it. So it was done accidentally exactly right for the StumbleUpon audience. In fact I will “thumb down” submissions that have more ads and clutter that actual content.

So remove everything that is not necessary to get more stumblers to vote for you. Social media users do not click on ads anyways so using Adsense and other CPC ads does not work anyways. Correct me if you have different experiences. I don’t use Adsense at all so I only rely on what others wrote here.


Controversy
This in fact surprised me a little. Many people report that bad reviews result in less visitors etc. Not here or at least not if there is a good mix of both. At the beginning several people voted the Free range workers down, sometimes for no other reason than me submitting it as some people just vote down everything just because I submit it, “the evil SEO”.

It seems that negative reviews of this misguided kind motivate others to write a review of their own when they disagree. After a while only positive reviews followed suit because most stumblers think for themselves and do not take bullies seriously. So while it does not make sense to submit crap it works fine to submit stuff not everybody agrees on.


The fitting categories
I already made you aware that it is very important to submit a post to the fitting category. As tags and categories are mixed on StumbleUpon you can submit to several fitting categories by adding tags that match categories. I see the same mistakes on SU with categories over and over.

For instance most people fail to see that the Science/Tech category is not about “tech” in the sense of “everything about computers and Internet” but about science and thus technology related to real life, like in engeneering. Also “computers” is used for all types of content while it is in fact about, surprise!, computers… yes, the boxes with chips in them you use to access the Internet.

So if you have a post about Firefox it’s neither about science nor is it about computers. It really depends on what exactly you write. It could fit in “web development”, “software” or even “marketing” (Firefox plugins for affiliate marketers) or search (SEO plugins for Firefox).

In the case of the Free range workers I chose “bizarre”, “arts”, “food” (it was at about chicken wasn’t it? ) “vegeterianism” (Boys just wanna have fun!) and design. The category was later changed to “satire” which I didn’t realize existed before as SU some far too many categories to know them all.

Do not miscategorize. StumbleUpon is like watching TV. You do not want sports on the discovery channel do you? So people will switch off their TV set.
Now I hear you crying out:

My website is far too “boring” it has nothing to do with bizarre arts or Firefox!

• Do I have to dress like a jerk,
• make ridiculous photos
• or make a list of the best Firefox plugins for plumbers?

Well, it sure would get some attention. You don’t have to though. It’s like in real life, banks and companies sponsor artists or art fairs, even have their own galleries.

• Sponsor an artist or simply pay him to be able to display hers/his works,
• hire a programmer to create a Firefox extension everybody needs etc.
• or do not take yourself too seriously, make something ridiculous, the people love exploding iPods and the likes.

While doing all that always remember that social media is not a direct response channel, it’s about long term reputation building.

Need some killer headlines for tremendous online success via social media and beyond? Try some of these formulas that have worked numerous times:

1. Top 10… [something everybody needs or craves] [some superlatives]
2. How to… [something everybody needs or craves]
3. The Ultimate Guide to… [something everybody needs or craves]
4. 100 Ways to… [something everybody needs or craves]
5. 101 Resources… [something everybody needs or craves]
6. 10 Habits of… [some superlatives]
7. How * Made Me… [some superlatives]
8. The Secret of… [something everybody needs or craves]
9. The Zen of… [something everybody needs or craves]
10. Meta-List: Top 10 Lists of… [something everybody needs or craves]

Of course the article must deliver what the headline promises! Use “ultimate guide” if it really is the ultimate guide. Don’t call it a secret if it’s widely known etc.

Some possible examples:

1. Top 10 Killer Headline Formulas for Tremendous Online Success
2. How to Write Headlines that Make Women Fall in Love with You
   
3. The Ultimate Guide to Killer Headlines that Will Flood Your Blog With Traffic
   
4. 100 Ways for Lethal Headlines to Kill
   
5. 101 Resources for Bloggers to Write Killer Headlines
   
6. 10 Habits of Copywriters Who Get Paid Thousands Just for Headlines
   
7. How Using Killer Headlines Made Me a Superstar
   
8. The Secret of Becoming an Internet Celebrity by Killer Headlines
   
9. The Zen of Headline Writing
   
10. Meta-List: Top 10 Lists of Killer Headline Formulas
    

Be cautious. Don’t use killer headlines irresponsibly. They might kill! Especially if you refer to chocolate.

Did somebody say “keyword stuffing“?

While I enjoyed my short vacation on Easter I couldn’t resist to think about SEO 2.0 with all its major parts Web 2.0, social media and blogging. I want to share with you a saying that kept popping up on my mind:

Do not put all your eggs into one basket.

This is an idiom that is used very often on the Net in the realm of SEO or marketing at large. Why? All of them may break at the same time. It can be applied on many different levels:

a) Social media participation
Users who have been banned on Digg for no reason after participating for years can tell you a whole lot about that. Do not contribute solely to one social site because you can lose all your authority any day. A site can even go bankrupt. It can break down, ban you or become otherwise useless. Thus I am actively participating at 3 sites and from time to time at 3 more.

In short it means:

Do not put all your time and effort into just one social medium or UGC site.

Rather use the triangle strategy by combining 3 to 5 social media.


b) Traffic sources
While in Germany most webmasters and worse business owners are often highly dependent on Google traffic in the blogosphere by now lots of people rely on StumbleUpon as the main source of traffic. I quickly found out how this might backfire and from then on concentrated on providing value for regular visitors or those who subscribed to SEO 2.0. If they already know something I won’t write another post about it just to suit the lowest common denominator of StumbleUpon. My posts get nevertheless submitted to SU each and every time but on many days the direct visitors outnumber the casual stumblers. SEO 2.0 has at least 3 to 5 major traffic sources:

1. Core audience coming via type in traffic, Google Reader, Netvibes, Bloglines and the likes
2. Community and niche sites I contribute to like Sphinn, CSS Globe or Mixx.
3. Also I get more and more traffic via blogs and sites that link to me, where I guest posted or even commented. Thus the success of others is also my success.
4. StumbleUpon, where I get submitted by my readers, I rarely review myself (only if I think I have been misrepresented)
5. Oh, yes, Google long tail search queries but I don’t care for these enough.
   

In short it means:

Do not rely on one major traffic source, be it Google search or StumbleUpon.

Diversify your traffic sources and concentrate on a core audience of fans, subscribers and returning visitors.


c) Revenue or income streams
I already mentioned this very important aspect of freelancing or doing business. You need to have several income sources. If you are just working for one client you can end up broke very quickly. I had to learn this the hard way. Also being dependent on client work itself is a mistake. You need to find ways to earn money while you are asleep via selling products, ads or affiliations. If you get sick and you can’t work for clients… The same applies to small businesses and companies. They don’t get sick but they might lose their clients. If the have no profitable side projects that yieldsubstantial revenue they will fail.

In short it means:

Do not depend on one client or client work at all.

Diversify your income. Try to establish your won scalable projects which will run on autopilot if necessary.


All in all, do not let any medium monopolize you. SEO 2.0 is about using Web 2.0, social media and blogging without being enslaved by them. It’s the declaration of independece online.