Seriously Google WTF is a Content Farm?

March 24, 2011 by

The Google Farmer Update has been in effect for a few weeks now. Many new and relatively unknown sites seemed to have seen an increase in traffic while a good percentage of sites that are older and established (aka more broad) actually lost traffic.

This update was apparently designed to penalize content farms – the problem is that the web is one giant content farm according to the current definition. One could argue that AOL, CNN, Yahoo and many authority bloggers pump out just as much low quality content as Demand Media.

I’m sure that Google understands this, which is probably why they’ve avoided using the phrase content farm to officially describe this update. Considering the catastrophic amount of collateral damage that has been done to many prominent blogs I expected that the big G would have had some more information for those effected by now.

Instead however many site owners are left scratching their heads. I think it’s fairly obvious by now that the “quality” of a sites content actually had very little to do with this recent update. Just look at askthebuilder.com, a site that was hit very hard by the farmer update. Tim Carter has built a phenomenal site, and become an authority in his niche.

AskTheBuilder has even been featured on the official Google Adsense site as a case study and example of how to build a quality site and monetize it with Adsense correctly.

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Save Time Monitoring Your Site Traffic With Google Intelligence

March 23, 2011 by

Many website owners get in the habit of checking their stats religiously hoping for a big spike in traffic. The amount of time wasted checking stats collectively could probably put a man on the moon 5 times over.

The solution to this major time sink is a fairly unknown feature of Google Analytics currently in beta called “Intelligence” Google Intelligence allows you to set up alerts that will automatically notify you via email or text message when you have a spike in traffic (or a major decrease) as well as changes in visitors, bounce rate, etc..

If you have an e-commerce site you can automatically receive alerts for an increase or decrease in sales, and if you have Google Adsense linked to your Analytics account you can set up alerts to monitor changes in revenue.

Setting up custom alerts with Google Analytics only takes a few minutes and will free up many hours over the course of a year.

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Social Media & the Appreciation of Meaningful Content

March 23, 2011 by

image credit: Stallio

My social media story begins almost four years ago when I was given the assignment for a company where I was working at the time, to explore the implications of social media on businesses. While there was a fair amount of resources online, I found what I was looking for in a book that I’d read about and hunted down at my local Barnes & Noble store. The book cost almost $60 and not having a budget to purchase, I spent a few hours sitting in the cafe at the store, reading and absorbing.

I regret that today I don’t even recall the title of the book because I would have liked many times to have reached out to the authors and thank them for their work. What was clear to me that day was that social media was a must for my firm to explore on behalf of our clients and also for our own marketing communication efforts. I don’t know if I would have reached that conclusion had it not been for their superb content.

Since that day in June 2007, I’ve written hundreds of blog posts and have used a number of social media channels e.g. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc. in my work and personal life. Needless to say, I continue to learn something new every day.

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The Starbucks Experience: 19,000,000 Likes on Facebook and Counting

March 14, 2011 by

Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong are singing “They Can’t Take That Away From Me.” The music is the perfect compliment to the big comfy chair I’m sitting in while sipping on a tall latte. I’m by myself but not alone. I’m surrounded by a number of green-aproned Barista’s and thirty of my closest friends, well not exactly friends in the traditional sense. They’re other Starbucks customers.

This is my local Starbucks. One of a few in my neighborhood, the one I have the most affinity to. I’ve been coming here since they opened the doors fifteen or so years ago and have seen the store and the brand change considerably in that time. It was a few logos ago. Before wi-fi. When all they sold was coffee, mugs and pastries. But today’s shop is filled with sandwiches, salads, assorted granola bars, CD’s, iTunes cards, gift cards and more. Most striking too is how one side of the place looks like a room at my local library with long tables and countless electrical outlets where people come to plug in. Students. Business people. A cup of coffee could buy you hours of time. Not just any time. Digital time. A digital network to be precise.

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Why Companies Need Authentic Social Media Experiences

March 10, 2011 by

image credit: Jonas Boni

When I started writing about social media in the Spring of 2007, the field was still relatively new. Many of my early blog posts explained what social media was and educated on the reasons why businesses of all sizes should create presences. Over the past four years, we’ve witnessed a huge jump in businesses who have joined in the conversations. Large companies with well-known brands jumped on board. And, slowly but surely, medium and small businesses started to follow suit.

The Super Bowl saw an unprecedented use of social media marketing this year, and the predictions about the 2011 Oscars have been split between who will take home the award and what companies will be streaming live, and posting updates to Facebook and Twitter. From the local brick and mortar businesses to the big online giants, companies have been embracing social media.

So the question I think we have to ask ourselves now that every Tom, Dick and Harry have created social media presences, has it made a difference? Do you really care that your local bakery has a Facebook page? Or, that the Mom & Pop corner store is sending out tweets? Or that Coca-Cola has the most fans on Facebook?

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The Complete Guide To Google’s New Search Algorithm

February 25, 2011 by

This story is still breaking and we will be continuing to update this article with new information when it becomes available.

Google’s war on content farms and low quality websites has officially been launched in the form of a major update to the search engine’s algorithm. The changes, which went live this week, impact 11.8 percent of all search results, meaning that this will have an impact on most site owners, for better or worse.

The blogosphere was buzzing this morning with many site owners complaining about a major decrease in traffic from Google search. Some have seen search traffic decrease over 50 percent, essentially overnight. When Google first announced their war on content farms I suspected that the changes would have a negative effect on many bloggers as well. However I did not expect the changes to hit authoritative sources as hard as they have.

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