Up, Up And Away!

Earlier this year, I wrote a post entitled “Why I Didn’t Jump Off The Lighthouse“.  The premise of this piece was that I was too complacent and needed to challenge myself to take more risks.

Well this month we embarked on a major project to improve our company.  It’s something which I have thought about for months but only recently was I ready and willing to pull the trigger.  Specifically, we ditched our Microsoft Outlook and Exchange server in favor of a Google Enterprise cloud system.  In just a few days our email, calendar and contact were all moved into the clouds.  By the phrase “cloud computing”, I mean that these functions were all made web-enabled.

The Google Enterprise system looks like and works similar to Gmail so it is a pretty easy transition.  More importantly, it is totally free.  As I am learning, it is a powerful tool with many bells and whistles.

The benefits from the switch were immediate.  A large part of my firm’s infrastructure was made easily and directly available on any computer with a web connection.  No more need to GoToMyPC.com.  Google’s built-in spam filter also allowed me to cancel my anti-spam vendor.  Finally, we no longer need to pay for a third party to back-up our data.  These benefits represent a huge upgrade in convenience and a substantial monthly savings.

Further, I no longer need to create folders, sub-folders and file away emails.  Instead, I simply Archive any email worth savings, and use the “Search Mail” button if I need to find an email.  You can search anything such as a date, word, sender’s email, etc.  While Outlook has a search feature, it is way too slow to be routinely used.  Google Search works much better, similar to using the Google search engine but it’s limited to your archived emails.  I cannot over-emphasize the time-savings from this one feature.

But our flight upward was not without turbulence.  First, when my emails, contacts and calendar were migrated from Outlook to Google, I ran out of space.  Google only gives you 7,498 mega bytes and you must pay $50 per year per user for extra storage (25 mega bytes).   More importantly, when you use up your Google storage your ability to send or receive more emails is suspended.  For two days, many of my emails were rejected which, as you can imagine, caused me heart-burn.  Lesson:  Check out how much data your migrating prior to doing so.

Another issue involved my website.  We needed to change our server location as part of the transition and, as a result, emails from my website’s “contact us” form got lost.  People send me emails got an “un-deliverable” message.  Again more heart-burn.  I fault my vendor in part for not checking my “contact us” form when he “flipped the switch” opn our server location.  Lesson:  Test your “contact us” form when making this change.

Fortunately, these issues were resolved relatively quickly.  Overall, my whole office is very excited about the new functionality and has been embracing the change.  But we’re not done yet.  More upgrades are planned which I look forward to sharing with you.

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Link Exchanges & Why They Don’t Work

Too often other website owners ask me to exchange links with them.   They hope that multiple reciprocal exchanges with many website owners will improve their natural search engine rankings.  Despite their best intentions, this strategy does not work.

Obtaining relevant links to your website is the single best way to improve your natural search engine ranks.  The boost from an inbound link is called “link juice”.  However, when you place a link on your website (i.e., outbound link), you actually are giving away link juice.

So who wins?  The website with the lower Google ranking wins.  That is, if your website has a 3 Google ranking and the other website has a 5 Google ranking, then you gain link juice from the exchange.  Of course, the owner of the 5-ranked site should know this information and, as a result, should not enter into an exchange arrangement.  If the websites have equal ranking, then there is a zero-sum gain from the exchange.

Further, a website owner can include a link but add in its code NF for “no follow”.  If this code is added, then the inbound link is rendered worthless for search engine optimization.

There is a criminal attorney directory called Criminal Defense Lawyers Nationwide.   It is a pretty nice site and it has allowed me to add Weiss & Associates, PC, my law firm, to their directory for a small price.  The cost?  That’s right, you guessed it, a link back to their site.  Criminal Defense Lawyers Nationwide has a Google rank of 1 while my WordPress blog has a ranking of 4.   So they did get better in the transaction.  Can you guess why I don’t mind?

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Surrounded By A Sea Of Infringement

If you regularly provide content online (and, by the way, you should be doing this for SEO and marketing purposes), you are being bombarded by infringement and may not even realize it.

Doubt me?  I can tell you that, at least, once a week (if not more often) I find a website or blog which has cut and pasted one of my articles and used it as its own.  Addressing infringement is like taking out the garbage.  It is annoying and time-consuming but must be done so your house doesn’t stink.

So the first question you probably have is “How do you find this out?”.  With millions of web pages with all types of content, how can I find infringing pages?  The answer is simple.  You need to set up Google Alerts for key terms and phrases in your industry (or other topics which you write about).  Google Alerts is free, easy and quick.  Setting this up will “push” links to articles which should be of interest to you anyway.  More importantly, in the short blurbs emailed to you, I bet that you will find infringement.  Indeed, most often the title of the piece alone will be enough. Click on the link to be sure but your initial reaction will often be right.

So how should you handle an infringement?  I found a good article on this topic called “5 Steps For Dealing With Stubborn Plagiarism Cases ” and, by all means, please read it.

Candidly, due to bandwidth and ROI issues, I usually 0nly perform one of these 5 steps — report it to Google. By virtue of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Google has to address it and they do a very good and prompt job doing so.

For me, submitting complaints is so commonplace that I created a “Google Infringement Form” which I make available below for you to plagiarize, er, I mean copy.

Complete and submit this form and Google will investigate  the infringement and, then, remove it from their index. That is, it will not appear if anyone does a search of your article title or of a key phrase from it.  If you don’t think being removed from Google’s index is a powerful weapon, read “Blacklisted:  The 5 Stages of Death By Google “.

Further, often the un-scrupulous plagiarists are using the content to try and generate Adsense monies (i.e., that is, getting paid by Google for each click to a Google ad which runs on their site).  If so, your complaint will also remove that page from Google’s content network thereby hitting them where it hurts, their pocketbook.  Similarly, if the offending content is posted using a Blogger platform, Google will remove the offending blog post.

While not exciting work, the above is important to protect your intellectual property and avoid dilution of your brand.  Now go get ’em!

Google Infringement Form

___________ (date)

VIA FAX (650) 618-8507

Google, Inc.

Attn: Adsense Support, DMCA Com plaints

1600 Amphitheatre Parkway

Mountain View, CA 94043

Notice Of Infringement

We hereby furnish notice of infringement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The original copyrighted work which has been infringed upon is the text that appears on:

_________________________________________________________

The material which is infringing upon my original copyrighted work appears at:

_________________________________________________________

My email address is __________________________

I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above on the allegedly infringing web page(s) is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.

I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

___________________________

(signature)

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Blacklisted: The 5 Stages Of Death By Google

Before I share my harrowing tale, I need to tell you that I love Google.  I love that it “pushes” me qualified prospects who are looking to buy.  I love that it rewards those that provide helpful and valuable content.  And I love that the time and effort I spend mastering Google Adwords and search engine optimization gives me a competitive advantage.

My love affair with Google is so strong that I worked for months on getting a tour of its Meat-Packing District offices for me and my Entrepreneurs’ Organization colleagues, just so I could peak behind its curtain (and of course ride a Google scooter).

With that background, you can imagine my reaction when, last Tuesday, I got a snide email from an online marketing company that’s been courting my business saying:  “Hey Matt, you’ve been doing too much SEO.  Look’s like Google has blacklisted you.”

Needless to say, this was not the way I wanted to start my morning.

Denial

Initially, I thought “No way, this can’t be true”.  I immediately ran various searches of phrases that I “owned” the 1st or 2nd organic position, and saw that my website was no where to be found!  I had almost no pages even indexed with Google (just a few obscure pages).

Anger

My initial reaction of denial changed to anger.  “How could they do this to ME?”.  I don’t infringe on other’s content and don’t engage in online trickery such as duplicating content, hiding text, buying links, or stuffing keywords. I had been stabbed in the back by my best friend and it wasn’t even the Ides of March.

Bargaining

My anger turned to a resolve to work this out.  I’ll contact Google and make a deal.  I submitted an email to help@google.com and relatively quickly got the following response:  “Due to a high volume of email, we currently respond only to messages submitted through specific forms in these Help Centers.” Of course, Google doesn’t have a specific form for blacklisting or disappearing websites so this response was un-helpful.

Depression

With no one with which to bargain, I became depressed.  How can my business survive without Google?  I’m screwed!  I  might as well just close up shop.  I had sent out various pleas for help but had lost all faith that their responses would help.

Acceptance

I started coming out of my depression when I realized that being blacklisted by Google apparently doesn’t affect your pay-per-click campaign.  That is, while you can be removed from Google’s organic search results for violating its terms of service, Google apparently will still take your money to promote the same website via pay per click.

I’d just have to accept the idea that my Google presence would be limited to Adwords, the online version of crack (i.e., Adwords gets you high but you need to continually feed your habit to stay there).  C’est la vie.

Salvation

But wait … the winds of change blew again.  Like a passing storm, the sun came out and I no longer had to accept my fate.  A search on Saturday morning revealed that I was back in Google’s good graces.  Apparently, it was just a glitch in Google’s crawling system and when its spiders re-crawled my website, my prior organic positions were restored.  My grieving was over.

They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder.  Well, after just 4 days without it, my love for Google couldn’t be any stronger.  I ♥ Google.

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New Social Media Book Helps Me Upgrade My Blog

It seems like I’ve been working weeks on making my blog better with minimal improvement. I have been researching extras, installing (or at least trying to install) widgets, and otherwise making writing and using my blog a better experience.

Fortunately, I recently purchased a new book which helps clarify a lot of the clutter and makes sound recommendations to upgrade my blog. I haven’t finished it yet but the book contains all types of social media recommendations including how to improve your Facebook page, how to Twitter effectively, etc.

The book is called “Everything You Want To Know About Social Media” by Hilary Topper. Hilary is a marketing and social media expert and her blog (which garners 15,000 hits a month) was even nominated for a Stevie last year. This is a great read for anyone interested in social media (beginner or experienced).

Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Social Media

I will discuss here some great blogging things that I learned (but the book contains much more).

The first tip I want to discuss is a program called Zemanta. This application makes it easier to locate and include images, links and related article links to your post. It also supposedly enhances your search-engine friendliness for Google, Yahoo, etc. Once installed (it works with most blog sites), you just click on various suggestions that Zemanta provides.

Hilary uses and now I do too. I honestly didn’t like the images which were suggested (and therefore added my own). There give you 32 suggestions but, in my view, it is “hit or miss” regarding whether they capture the essence of what your blog is about.

I was impressed by the tagging and related article suggestion features. Zemanta suggests tags and related articles to include and you can add each one with just one click. What do you think?

I also followed Hilary’s recommendation and added a stat counter to receive more metrics about my blog than WordPress currently provides. Other than a stat counter tag, I made these metrics only viewable on the administrative side.

Finally, the easiest and potentially most impactful addition I made was using Pingomatic which updates various search engines that your blog has been updated. By “pinging”, you get greater exposure for your blog.

Thanks Hilary for all the great tips.

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Too UberTwitter, Or Not To UberTwitter

It’s hard to keep up with the many Twitter applications and support sites which attempt (with varying degrees of success) to enhance the Twitter experience.

One such site which intrigues me is UberTwitter. Some pretty well known Twitterers (Is that a word?) are using it. UberTwitter works with a Blackberry device and essentially adds a GPS component to your tweets. When you send a tweet, a Google map with a virtual pin marking identifies your location at the time you made the tweet. This site is interesting to me because it is similar to an idea which I submitted on Idea Blob some 5 months ago. I called it Auto-Twitter. To read the specifics, go to Idea Blob/Auto-Twitter. The only difference is that your locale would be automatically added to the tweet including what you were doing. So, for example, if you were tweeting from the Mets game, Auto-Twitter would know you were at the Mets game and might even add the score and inning.

Anyway, UberTwitter doesn’t add much other than the Tweeter’s location. Seeing it in action, however, makes me think differently about it. First off, what is the benefit of knowing where the Tweeter is located? If that significant, surely the Tweeter will include that information anyway (and vice-a-versa). Second, what if you don’t want people to know where you are located? You may forget that it is being added to the message and unwittingly reveal that you are someplace that you aren’t supposed to be.

I am still open-minded. If you have any thoughts about whether this is a good or bad product, I’d love to read your comments.

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