You will need to first download the SEOmoz toolbar for Firefox.  This toolbar has a function that shows “No Follow” tags on page links.  Using this tool will allow you to determine which blogs are worth commenting and interacting with for links and track-backs.

Most everyone with a blog has visited or even pursued Tecnorati… (if you haven’t you will after reading this.)  Within Techgnorati, you have access to blogs that are separated by category and relevance.  There are other blog index sites that maintain a strong list of blogs by content, but Tecnorati tends to be the most reliable for the search engines.

Once you are on the site, search for a blog that resembles the topic of whatever page you wish to link to.  If you are choosing to link to your main page, choose a blog that is closely associated with the Keywords of your entire site.  If you are using the link of a specific page, search for a page that has that specific topic.  Tecnorati has a ranking system that allows the user to comb through different levels of relevance. Obviously, you want to get links from the most relevant site to the topic being covered.

Using this method, you’ll want to start by performing a “Time Honored Blogging Tradition” RTFA!!! Read the article people.  Seriously, if you don’t know what the topic is, it will show in what you’ve written. Once you read the article, then it’s time to interact.

Make sure that the comment you leave is more than the following junk:

“nice post”

“I agree with the points you made”

“good thoughts but I take issue with your points”

These comments are common and quite annoying pieces of spam.  These statements will likely be caught in any filter and removed from any site that cares about their relevancy.   It would always be suggested to be Part of a conversation.  If you’ve read a post, use enough of the material within it to make a valid statement.

Here’s a list of other rules that will avoid negative treatment for blog comments:

• Only leave comments that are a full, comprehensible sentence.
• Sign up for updates on future comments.  This can ensure many links and a future relationship between your site and the site you are commenting on.
• Leave only on link on the site, the one in your name description.  Leaving tons of links in the content of your comments makes it strongly resemble an unwanted communication, leaving many to list your comments as spam.  If your site links or email addresses becomes associated as spam, it’s very likely that your future comments on other blogs will be filtered as well.
• Leave the auto commenting software to those who don’t mind being banned from the search engines.  It’s just not worth it.
• Read the articles!!! There will always be a better exchange of ideas when you do and you’ll likely receive more convertible visitors to your website if they believe your communication to be respectful.

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While linking structure has always been an important piece of the SEO equation, it seems that a more intuitive linking structure is becoming more and more necessary for modern SEO development.  The day of submitting to random directories or commenting on unrelated blogs is long gone.  Spam comments and unrelated directory listings cause damage to website relevance and search engines are constantly looking for ways to counter their effects. That being said, there are highly effective methods of getting related backlinks, they just require more work than the spammers and scammers are likely to give.

If you’re wondering, “is Christian about to rail on the Spammers again?” the answer is always, yes!  Spammers not only made the system harder for all of us, they’ve caused themselves to become endangered.  Yes, you can still find tons of affiliate websites offering their “Link Building Software”.  This software is usually some form of Blog Spamming software.  While these sites can be found all over the place, they’re owned by only a small group of spam-jockeys who and are becoming marginalized by people becoming more aware of affiliate scams and MLM’s.`

Ok, now that we got that out of the way, blog backlink software is going to do nothing for your site but possibly get it banned from Google.  Not only is the software disastrous for your reputation with the SERPS, they almost always have a very short and mitigated list of sites to choose from.  They claim that their program makes searches through Google, but this is only a half truth, they are most often pre-rigged with a select amount of search criteria.  The resulting searches leave the user with the same tired group of blogs that were used 1,000’s of times before by other Spammers. Most of these sites and pages that have been bombarded by spam are already flagged by Google.  Add your link to this page, and you risk being considered spam as well.

That out of the way, the question of how to get the quality links and avoid being all spammy is going to be asked.  Unfortunately, the answer will have to wait until tomorrow. We’re out of coffee.

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If you’ve played with even half of the major names, you’ve likely run into and identified one major problem… they all give different numbers.  Many find themselves wondering which ones to trust and what to make of the numbers they’ve received.  Here is our take on the top 6 site Analytics and why we use them.

1. Google Analyticor- OK,  To those who always wish to bash the resource, I start by agreeing with you that Google looses a lot of information when scripts are blocked.  That being said, the number of people using script blockers is still not that high, so it’s really a moot point.  Google Analyticor is the most widely used website traffic index and is at least one must for web traffic monitoring. -to avoid the debate, that’s all we’re saying about Google today-
2. Majestic SEO Tools-  While Majestic has been around and has had a major resource for a few years now, the past year has offered a lot of new and useful tools within the site.  While it requires an account to gain access to some of the better tools, they are well worth the free account and the ten minutes it takes to set it up.  After a month of indexed tracking, Majestic provides a complete  breakdown of all your website backlinks.  This is quite useful in determining and targeting where to make more backlinks and what anchor text to use with them. Granted, there are plenty of costly and buggy forms of software that will perform this function, but most of them accompany an affiliate scam or someone’s get rich quick “Pyramid Scam”.  While the data for the links may be lagging, it’s fairly respectable in determining the  needs of a backlink campaign.
3. Quantcast -  Same as below…
4. Compete-    Do they help? Honestly, not so much.  What they do offer is valued information for those considering advertising on your website.  While many would argue, and often I’d agree with them that the information in both sites is a random guess, they are free and offer a strong form of traffic evidence when looking to sell ad-space on your site.  Whether you like them or not, it would be suggested to get listed within their database.  While you may not like or trust their services, most advertising groups are going to want to see their numbers to put ads on your site.
5. SEOmoz Free Tools-  These are an incredible assortment of custom tools designed for and by SEOmoz.  The SEO tools and link structure tools provided here are much stronger than most of their competition offers.  While we have yet to try their Pro Tools for review, we will soon be putting it to the test.  All I can say it that if the pro tools excel well above the free tools, we will likely remain a customer and refer our clients.  The free tools include several strong tools, but the best one and most unique is the “Trifecta Tool”.  This tool gives a full breakdown of a site in Page, Domain, or Blog format.   The information given here is usually free in it’s individual formats, but the way that they collate and arrange the data makes for a clean and valuable view of a websites performance.  It’s well worth signing up for a free account to try it out.
6. HUBSpot Grader.com Program – What can’t be said for the brilliant strategy of Inbound Marketing that HUBSpot has highlighted with this and many of its other websites.  Websitegrader.com is one of the most widely used website evaluation websites in use today.  With over 2.6 Million sites graded to date and an Alexa ranking around 2,000, they are becoming the most widely use “quick check” for determining any websites effectiveness.  We, like anyone else who has received it, value the 99% grade we were given by websitegrader.com and view and updated score from them on a weekly basis to see what adjustments need to be made.  If you have yet to run your site through their system, give it a try.  The information given will only serve to increase the reach and effectiveness of your website.

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Here’s a description of PrestaShop from the core site:

“PrestaShop e-Commerce Solution was built to take advantage of essential Web 2.0 innovations such as dynamic AJAX-powered features and next-generation ergonomy. PrestaShop guides users through your product catalog intelligently and effortlessly, turning intrigued visitors into paying customers”

PrestaShop began as a network and community maintained e-Commerce Software. The script is maintained in much the same way WordPress is.  The most up to date version of PrestaShop can be downloaded here.

It offers the Following:

Front-office

• Featured products on homepage
• Top sellers on homepage
• New items on homepage
• ‘Free shipping’ offers
• Cross-selling (Accessories)
• Product image zoom
• Order out-of-stock items
• Customer subscription & user accounts
• Payment by bank wire
• Google Checkout module
• Cash-On-Delivery (COD)
• Preconfigured for Paypal

Back-office

• Unlimited categories & subcategories, product attribute combinations, product specs, images, currencies, tax settings, carriers & destinations
• Real-time currency exchange rates
• Inventory management
• Unlimited languages & dialects
• 100% modifiable graphic themes
• Newsletter contact export
• Alias search
• SSL encryption
• Visitors online
• Customer groups

Our first site built in the platform (fr mainstream anyway) will be Malloys Finest. – the site that we are preparing for them can be found here-

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TemplateMonster.com, the Internets largest templates provider, introduces brand new PrestaShop Themes which are basically a brand new eCommerce solution designed specifically to provide the customers with the speedy and very lightweight tool in setting up their own PrestaShop stores.

PrestaShop is a new feature-rich and open-source eCommerce software which has a very powerful back-end for its size. Combined with decent and affordable designs PrestaShop is an efficient eCommerce shopping cart solution available for small and medium-sized online businesses. PrestaShop multilingual eCommerce system is fully customizable, quick and simple to install. And the site owners will appreciate its flexibility as it supports unlimited categories, sub-categories and image pictures. Besides, the store admins can manage the inventory, customers, orders, and payments easily.

According to companys authorities, PrestaShop themes provided by TemplateMonster are developed to take advantages of this new shopping cart system. The themes are HTML/CSS Validated and optimized for fast page loading, plus they support all major browsers and have built-in jQuery elements for even more spectacular design.

David Braun, CEO of the Template Monster, said, “Our customers have been asking us to launch PrestaShop themes for many months now. And today we can proudly claim that TemplateMonster now offers innovative PrestaShop themes brushed and polished by our website design pros. Dedicated to providing unbeatable functionality for customers online eCommerce presence, our PrestaShop design solutions ensure youll fully enjoy fantastic functionality of PrestaShop. Not to mention that the themes are extremely easy to modify. And of course we are eager to extend our PrestaShop selection by adding more and more new designs into this product type. So be sure to check back for more premium quality PrestaShop templates!”

Previously the company has launched the Free PrestaShop Theme for cell phone store. This template is still available for download at Free PrestaShop Theme download page.

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We recently posted some correlation statistics on our blog. We believe these statistics are interesting and provide insight into the ways search engines work (a core principle of our mission here at SEOmoz). As we will continue to make similar statistics available, I’d like to discuss why correlations are interesting, refute the math behind recent criticisms, and reflect on how exciting it is to engage in mathematical discussions where critiques can be definitively rebutted.

I’ve been around SEOmoz for a little while now, but I don’t post a lot. So, as a quick reminder, I designed and built the prototype for the SEOmoz’s web index, as well as wrote a large portion of the back-end code for the project. We shipped the index with billions of pages nine months after I started on the prototype, and we have continued to improve it since. Recently I made the machine learning models that are used to make Page Authority and Domain Authority, and am working on some fairly exciting stuff that has not yet shipped. As I’m an engineer and not a regular blogger, I’ll ask for a bit of empathy for my post – it’s a bit technical, but I’ve tried to make it as accessible as possible.

Why does Correlation Matter?

Correlation helps us find causation by measuring how much variables change together. Correlation does not imply causation; variables can be changing together for reasons other than one affecting the other. However, if two variables are correlated and neither is affecting the other, we can conclude that there must be a third variable that is affecting both. This variable is known as a confounding variable. When we see correlations, we do learn that a cause exists — it might just be a confounding variable that we have yet to figure out.

How can we make use of correlation data? Let’s consider a non-SEO example.

There is evidence that women who occasionally drink alcohol during pregnancy give birth to smarter children with better social skills than women who abstain. The correlation is clear, but the causation is not. If it is causation between the variables, then light drinking will make the child smarter. If it is a confounding variable, light drinking could have no effect or even make the child slightly less intelligent (which is suggested by extrapolating the data that heavy drinking during pregnancy makes children considerably less intelligent).

Although these correlations are interesting, they are not black-and-white proof that behaviors need to change. One needs to consider which explanations are more plausible: the causal ones or the confounding variable ones. To keep the analogy simple, let’s suppose there were only two likely explanation – one causal and one confounding. The causal explanation is that alcohol makes a mother less stressed, which helps the unborn baby. The confounding variable explanation is that women with more relaxed personalities are more likely to drink during pregnancy and less likely to negatively impact their child’s intelligence with stress. Given this, I probably would be more likely to drink during pregnancy because of the correlation evidence, but there is an even bigger take-away: both likely explanations damn stress. So, because of the correlation evidence about drinking, I would work hard to avoid stressful circumstances. *

Was the analogy clear? I am suggesting that as SEOs we approach correlation statistics like pregnant women considering drinking – cautiously, but without too much stress.

* Even though I am a talented programmer and work in the SEO industry, do not take medical advice from me, and note that I construed the likely explanations for the sake of simplicity

Some notes on data and methodology

We have two goals when selecting a methodology to analyze SERPs:

1. Choose measurements that will communicate the most meaningful data
2. Use techniques that can be easily understood and reproduced by others

These goals sometimes conflict, but we generally choose the most common method still consistent with our problem. Here is a quick rundown of the major options we had, and how we decided between them for our most recent results:

Machine Learning Models vs. Correlation Data: Machine learning can model and account for complex variable interactions. In the past, we have reported derivatives of our machine learning models. However, these results are difficult to create, they are difficult to understand, and they are difficult to verify. Instead we decided to compute simple correlation statistics.

Pearson’s Correlation vs. Spearman’s Correlation: The most common measure of correlation is Pearson’s Correlation, although it only measures linear correlation. This limitation is important: we have no reason to think interesting correlations to ranking will all be linear. Instead we choose to use Spearman’s correlation. Spearman’s correlation is still pretty common, and it does a reasonable job of measuring any monotonic correlation.

Here is a monotonic example: The count of how many of my coworkers have eaten lunch for the day is perfectly monotonically correlated with the time of day. It is not a straight line and so it isn’t linear correlation, but it is never decreasing, so it is monotonic correlation.

Here is a linear example: assuming I read at a constant rate, the amount of pages I can read is linearly correlated with the length of time I spend reading.

Mean Correlation Coefficient vs. Pooled Correlation Coefficient: We collected data for 11,000+ queries. For each query, we can measure the correlation of ranking position with a particular metric by computing a correlation coefficient. However, we don’t want to report 11,000+ correlation coefficients; we want to report a single number that reflects how correlated the data was across our dataset, and we want to show how statistically significant that number is. There are two techniques commonly used to do this:

1. Compute the mean of the correlation coefficients. To show statistical significance, we can report the standard error of the mean.
2. Pool the results from all SERPs and compute a global correlation coefficient. To show statistical significance, we can compute standard error through a technique known as bootstrapping.

The mean correlation coefficient and the pooled correlation coefficient would both be meaningful statistics to report. However, the bootstrapping needed to show the standard error of the pooled correlation coefficient is less common than using the standard error of the mean. So we went with #1.

Fisher Transform Vs No Fisher Transform: When averaging a set of correlation coefficients, instead of computing the mean of the correlation coefficients, sometimes one computes the mean of the fisher transforms of the coefficients (before applying the inverse fisher transform). This would not be appropriate for our problem because:

1. It will likely fail. The Fisher transform includes a division by the coefficient minus one, and so explodes when an individual coefficient is near one and outright fails when there is a one. Because we are computing hundreds of thousands of coefficients each with small sample sizes to average over, it is quite likely the Fisher transform will fail for our problem. (Of course, we have a large sample of these coefficients to average over, so our end standard error is not large)
2. It is unnecessary for two reasons. First, the advantage of the transform is that it can make the expect average closer to the expected coefficient. We do nothing that assumes this property. Second, as mean coefficients are near to zero, this property holds without the transform, and our coefficients were not large.

Rebuttals To Recent Criticisms

Two bloggers, Dr. E. Garcia and Ted Dzubia, have published criticisms of our statistics.

Eight months before his current post, Ted Dzubia wrote an enjoyable and jaunty post lamenting that criticism of SEO every six to eight months was an easy way to generate controversy, noting "it’s been a solid eight months, and somebody kicked the hornet’s nest. Is SEO good or evil? It’s good. It’s great. I <3 SEO." Furthermore, his twitter feed makes it clear he sometimes trolls for fun. To wit: "Mongrel 2 under the Affero GPL. TROLLED HARD," "Hacker News troll successful," and "mailing lists for different NoSQL servers are ripe for severe trolling." So it is likely we’ve fallen for trolling…

I am going to respond to both of their posts anyway because they have received a fair amount of attention, and because both posts seek to undermine the credibility of the wider SEO industry. SEOmoz works hard to raise the standards of the SEO industry, and protect it from unfair criticisms (like Garcia’s claim that "those conferences are full of speakers promoting a lot of non-sense and SEO myths/hearsays/own crappy ideas" or Dzubia’s claim that, besides our statistics, "everything else in the field is either anecdotal hocus-pocus or a decree from Matt Cutts"). We also plan to create more correlation studies (and more sophisticated analyses using my aforementioned ranking models) and thus want to ensure that those who are employing this research data can feel confident in the methodology employed.

Search engine marketing conferences, like SMX, OMS and SES, are essential to the vitality of our industry. They are an opportunity for new SEO consultants to learn, and for experienced SEOs to compare notes. It can be hard to argue against such subjective and unfair criticism of our industry, but we can definitively rebut their math.

To that end, here are rebuttals for the four major mathematical criticisms made by Dr. E. Garcia, and the two made by Dzubia.

1) Rebuttal to Claim That Mean Correlation Coefficients Are Uncomputable

For our charts, we compute a mean correlation coefficient. The claim is that such a value is impossible to compute.

Dr. E. Garcia : "Evidently Ben and Rand don’t understand statistics at all. Correlation coefficients are not additive. So you cannot compute a mean correlation coefficient, nor you can use such ‘average’ to compute a standard deviation of correlation coefficients."

There are two issues with this claim: a) peer reviewed papers frequently published mean correlation coefficients; b) additivity is relevant for determining if two different meanings of the word "average" will have the same value, not if the mean will be uncomputable. Let’s consider each issue in more detail.

a) Peer Reviewed Articles Frequently Compute A Mean Correlation Coefficient

E. Garcia is claiming something is uncomputable that researchers frequently compute and include in peer reviewed articles. Here are three significant papers where the researchers compute a mean correlation coefficient:

"The weighted mean correlation coefficient between fitness and genetic diversity for the 34 data sets was moderate, with a mean of 0.432 +/- 0.0577" (Macquare University – "Correlation between Fitness and Genetic Diversity", Reed, Franklin; Conversation Biology; 2003)

"We observed a progressive change of the mean correlation coefficient over a period of several months as a consequence of the exposure to a viscous force field during each session. The mean correlation coefficient computed during the force-field epochs progressively…" (MIT – F. Gandolfo, et al; "Cortical correlates of learning in monkeys adapting to a new dynamical environment," 2000)

"For the 100 pairs of MT neurons, the mean correlation coefficient was 0.12, a value significantly greater than zero" (Stanford – E Zohary, et al; "Correlated neuronal discharge rate and its implications for psychophysical performance", 1994)

SEOmoz is in a camp with reviewers from the journal Nature, as well as researchers from MIT, Stanford and authors of 2,400 other academic papers that use the mean correlation coefficient. Our camp is being attacked by Dr. E. Garcia’s, who argues our camp doesn’t "understand statistics at all." It is fine to take positions outside of the scientific mainstream, although when Dr. E. Garcia takes such a position he should offer more support for it. Given how commonly Dr. E. Garcia uses the pejorative "quack," I suspect he does not mean to take positions this far outside of academic consensus.

b) Additivity Relevant For Determining If Different Meanings Of "Average" Are The Same, Not If Mean Is Computable

Although "mean" is quite precise, "average" is less precise. By "average" one might intend the words "mean", "mode", "median," or something else. One of these other things that it could be used as meaning is ‘the value of a function on the union of the inputs’. This last definition of average might seem odd, but it is sometimes used. Consider if someone asked "a car travels 1 mile at 20mph, and 1 mile at 40mph, what was the average mph for the entire trip?" The answer they are looking for is not 30mph, which is mean of the two measurements, but ~26mph, which is the mph for the whole 2 mile trip. In this case, the mean of the measurements is different from the colloquial average which is the function for computing mph applied to the union of the inputs (the whole two miles).

This may be what has confused Dr. E. Garcia. Elsewhere he cites Statsweb when repeating this claim. Which makes the point that this other "average" is different than the mean. Additivity is useful in determining if these averages will be different. But even if another interpretation of average is valid for a problem, and even if that other average is different than the mean, it neither makes the mean uncomputable nor meaningless.

2) Rebuttal to Claim About Standard Error of the Mean vs Standard Error of a Correlation Coefficent

Although he has stated unequivocally that one cannot compute a mean correlation coefficient, Garcia is quite opinionated on how we ought to have computed standard error for it. To wit:

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We have all been there once or twice, maybe a few more than that even. You just launched a site or a project,  and a few days pass, you login to analytics and webmaster tools to see how things are going. Nothing is there. 

WAIT. What?!?!?! 

Scenarios start running through your mind, and you check to make sure everything is working right. How could this be?

It doesn’t even have to be a new project. I’ve realized things on clients’ sites that needed fixing: XML sitemaps, link building efforts, title tag duplication, or even 404 redirection. The right changes are made, and a week later, nothing has changed in rankings or in webmaster consoles across the board. You are left thinking "what did I do wrong?"

A few client sites, major sites mind you, have had issues recently like 404 redirection and toolbar PageRank drops. One even had to change a misplaced setting in Google Webmaster Tools pointing to the wrong version of their site (www vs non-www). We fixed it, and there was a drop in their homepage for their name.

That looks bad. Real bad. Especially to the higher ups. They want answers and the issue fixed now … yesterday really.

Most of these things are being measured for performance and some can even have a major impact on the bottom line. And it is so hard to tell them this, even harder to do, but the changes just take …

Patience

That homepage drop? They called on Friday, as of Saturday night things are back to normal. The drop happened for 2-3 days most likely, but this is a large site. Another client, smaller, had redesigned their entire site. We put all the correct 301 redirects for the old pages and launched the site. It took Google almost 4 weeks to completely remove the old pages from the index. There were edits to URLs that caused 404 errors, fixed within a day, took over a week to reflect in Google Webmaster Tools. 

These are just a few examples where changes were made immediately, but the actions had no immediate return. We live in a society that thrives on the present, immediate return. As search marketers, we make c-level executives happy with our ability to show immediate returns on our campaigns. But like the returns on SEO, the reflection of changes in SEO take time. 

The recent Mayday and Caffeine updates are sending many sites to the bottom of rankings because of the lack of original content. Many of them are doing everything "right" in terms of onsite SEO, but now that isn’t enough. The can change their site all they want to, but until there is relevant and good content plus traffic, those rankings are not going to return for long tail terms. 

There has also been a recent crack down on over optimized local search listings. I have seen a number of accounts suspended or just not ranking well because they are in effect trying too hard. There is a such thing as over optimizing a site, and too many changes at once can raise a flag with the search engines. 

One Month Rule

Here is my rule: Make a change, leave it, go do social media/link building, and come back  to the issue a month later. It may not take a month, but for smaller sites, 2 weeks is a good time to check on the status of a few things. A month is when things should start returning to normal if there have been no other large changes to the site. 

We say this all the time with PPC accounts. It’s like in statistical analysis, you have to have enough data to work with to see results. And when you are waiting for a massive search engine to make some changes, once they do take effect in the system, you then have to give it time to work. 

So remember the next time something seems to be not working in Webmaster Tools or SERPs:

1. If you must, double check the code (although you’ve probably already done this 15 times) to ensure it’s set up correctly. But then,
2. Stop. Breathe. There is always a logical explanation. (And yes, Google being slow is a logical one)
3. When did you last change something to do with the issue?
4. If it’s less than 2 weeks ago, give it some more time.
5. Major changes, give it a month. (Think major site redesigns and URL restructuring)

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Earlier this week Facebook announced its ‘Open Graph’ at F8. There was all sorts of hubbub (much of it the bye-product of well-orchestrated buzz) about Facebook finally making strides to kill Google’s dominance of the web.  So should you hangup your white hat, your black hat, your grey hat, and trade it all in for a blue hat?  Much as we love Facebook, the answer, dear reader, is no: SEO is not dead. 

Watch this week’s video to hear Rand’s take on how Facebook’s ‘Open Graph’ will impact web marketing and all the ways it won’t.  There are all sorts of opportunities that will likely emerge out of this new technology, so you should pay attention. So go ahead and keep an eye out for a nice fitting blue hat in the near future, but don’t plan to throw away your white hat anytime soon.

The sticker we received

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When it comes to marketing your brand online there is just so much to do. We spend our days researching, creating, implementing, and then measuring the success of our efforts. There are dozens of channels to participate in, and obviously thousands of ways to go about marketing your brand, but however you slice it—online marketing comes down to introducing new audiences to your brand, keeping your current brand users happy, and evolving the brand/company itself.

Unfortunately I think the first two steps often overshadow that third step to the process—evolving the brand/company itself, probably because to grow as a company you really need to take a pause and evaluate where you are currently standing. As marketers, the idea of pausing is equated with losing momentum which scares the hell out of us all. This industry moves too quickly, and pausing to reflect on where your brand is compared to your competitors seems like time poorly spent.

I am here to argue just the opposite. A few weeks ago I gave a presentation at PubCon South on “Competitive Intelligence on the Social Web,” and I wanted to extract a few of my key arguments and offer them up the SEOmoz audience both as thought provokers and for feedback. In my opinion competitive intelligence is one of those marketing steps we all say we did, but few of us rarely do. It’s true. Most of us are big fat liars when it comes to “doing competitive intelligence.”

For example, competitive intelligence IS NOT:

• Sitting in a room and ranting about your competitor’s latest marketing move
• Grabbing lunch with your Product Manager and creating a roadmap based on what your competitors have that you don’t.
• Putting together a grid of you and your competitor’s website’s traffic stats, never to be looked at again.
• Googling your competitor’s brand name to see what latest things are noted in the SERP’s

Sorry friends that is not competitive intelligence.

However, competitive intelligence IS:

• Understanding what direction your competitor’s are headed & how that might intersect or parallel your own
• Knowing what products you are pushing out and how they match up or differ from your competitor’s
• Mapping out a list of key differentials and attributes for your biggest competitors and yourself
• Researching & monitoring a variety of platforms to better understand your competitors

Okay now that we all have a better sense of what it is, let’s talk about how to do it.  Instead of throwing a 20-slide PowerPoint at you I thought I would dilute it down to a few key steps toward understanding your competitive landscape, and perhaps more importantly I want to tie those into how you can use this information for company gains.

The Grid of Awesomeness:
Okay maybe that name is a bit of an exaggeration, but either way, the first key step toward understanding your competitors is getting them all down on paper and forcing yourself to research key attributes. I have included below an example grid that you can use to get you started.

You might ask yourself—how do I know which competitors to include? This can differ depending on the size of your company and the scope of your industry but a great place to start is the “3-1-1 rule”. I usually suggest you pick 3 brands that are often grouped with yours, either in roundup articles, or in conversation. Those are your primary competitors. Then choose one “dreamer,” which would be the brand in your vertical you hope to be one day. Lastly, I suggest including one “newbie” in your competitive analysis, this is assuming that isn’t you of course. By picking a newbie in your industry you can often gain perspective into where your industry is moving, and key marketing channels to consider since they tend to operate pretty lean.

After you have chosen your competitors I suggest filling out the following for them: name, size, products, features, price points, affiliate program description (do they have one? What are the key attributes?), playing grounds (what channels, platforms, communities are they dominating?), advocates/influencers (who is lobbying for them?), notes. Don’t forget to fill this out for your company as well!

Example Grid:

Product Growth & Benchmarking:
This is perhaps the most time consuming element to competitive intelligence when it is done well. There needs to be someone in charge of competitive intelligence maintenance. This person should subscribe to your competitor’s blog so you are hearing about product launches as they happen, and all company announcements in real time. You can also gain a lot of insight from reading the comments to those posts.

In addition to this you should set up Google Alerts for your competitor’s brand plus the words “launches” and “announces.” We all know that Google Alerts are limited and somewhat unreliable, but you should have a daily digest set to notify you of any big moves your competitor’s are making. You never know which could be a real momentum changer.

The last step to this is really to keep a pulse on the traffic growth to their sites by checking Alexa or Compete monthly. While it may seem a strain on your time and resources it’s beneficial for you to know what momentum trajectory your competitor’s are on.

Monitoring Mentions:
This is what most people think competitive intelligence is. While it’s not the only piece to the competitive intelligence puzzle, it certainly is an important one. There are so many tools available to us (most free) that help us keep an eye on what our competitors do…it’s actually a bit creepy how many tools and sites are out there to help us be shady. I personally support this shadiness.

Some examples would include sites like: Whostalkin, SocialMention, Backtype, etc. All of these allow you to search a competitor’s brand or products and find out the latest things said about them. These social web aggregators search a number of channels like images, videos, blogs, new feeds, etc. They are great for understanding how a product launch might have gone for a competitor or how any other announcement was received.

Other ways to spy on your competitor’s in the social web—create private twitter lists and monitor their brand and employee’s feeds, sign up for competitor’s newsletters, etc. The key is know where they are pushing out the most crucial information and then making sure you have someone dabbling in that space.

Hiring Espionage:
Now that you have a sense of where your competitor’s currently stand and what they are doing right now, it’s time to spy on them and try to figure out their next moves. Hiring espionage is a great way to do this. You can gain a great sense of where your competitors are moving by looking at who they are investing in from an employee perspective.

A great way to do this is to keep an eye on their company job listings, and occasionally throw their brand into a job meta-engine. The best possible place to spy on hiring moves is by going to LinkedIn and finding their company profile page. There is a section down at the bottom that shows recent hires. You can defer tons of information from this section—are they hiring a bunch of sales people? Top-level engineers? Whatever team they are stacking up is probably the team they are focusing on.

The Takeaway:
The important thing to remember is that competitive intelligence isn’t something you do once and never revisit again. It also isn’t something that you can base on intuition or informal conversations with coworkers. Competitive intelligence is a key process that can be used to inform instrumental decisions you make. The better you understand your competitors the clearer perspective you have on your industry and audience as a whole. Competitive intelligence enables you to better speak on your strengths, brainstorm ideas for quick gains, and make more data-driven decisions all around.

Plus you get to pretend you are a spy which is just all sorts of fun (please note trench coat and night vision goggles are optional).
 

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Never before has it been easier to reach potential customers. Using digital technology, you can reach your audience for pennies. But as it turns out, inexpensive marketing is a double-edged sword because it attracts more competition. This is because the technology that makes production of media inexpensive, also creates a low barrier of entry.

As a result, the market is flooded with products, and the consumer is overwhelmed. The range of products and brands to purchase has become numbing to the customer. Proven strategies of the past are being abandoned, because they clearly no longer work.

That being said, brand-building is one strategy that will never go out of date regardless of technological advances. And the good news is that building a brand has never been more feasible than it is now—if you are willing to use social media and use it well.

Simply blogging or having a presence on Facebook is not enough.

Viral marketing needs four things to work properly:

1. An offer (preferably free) that has value
2. An easy way to distribute the offer
3. An incentive to get consumers to pass the offer along to their friends
4. A way to make the campaign profitable

1. An offer (preferably free) that has value. When thinking about viral campaigns, many people think of funny videos. Funny videos do have value, but I would encourage you to consider something different. There are just too many companies trying to do funny videos and it is hard to stand out. Rather, come up with an offer that has more legitimate value. For example, I offer free online piano lessons for church pianists. I have also offered free downloads of CDs and printed piano arrangements.The key is that whatever you offer has to have real value, and it probably needs to be free. People will not jeopardize their relationships by promoting an offer that has no value, and they will usually not promote offers that are not free (unless the brand is already very strong). Think hard about an offer you can make available that is inexpensive but has great perceived value to others. Be creative; there are numerous possibilities, particularly if you create digital media.
2. An easy way to distribute the offer. You must provide an easy way for people to get your offer, and ideally, it should be delivered automatically without requiring your involvement. For many of us, our offers can be distributed digitally on our websites. If you can host your offer on your own website, that is the best scenario. If you cannot, there are other websites that allow you to do these kinds of campaigns. For example, musicians can use BandCamp to deliver their music offers to consumers.
3. An incentive to get consumers to pass the offer along to others. It is critical that your consumers are “reimbursed” to pass along your offer. Sometimes, their payment can be as simple as the thanks they get from their friends when they pass along funny videos. But, I would not count on that being enough. Try to find a way to offer something extra to people who will post your offer in places like their Facebook status or on their blogs. These are the people who are critical to your viral marketing success.
4. A way to make the campaign profitable. Viral marketing is primarily about brand-building. But it is also a great way to sell other products, build a fan base, obtain concerts and speaking engagements, and much more. Don’t make your offer something that you can’t afford to give away. Also, set goals for what you hope to obtain from your campaign

Don’t go into this just to be the next Great Orator. Paid speaking engagements are far fewer than those seeking to host them.  They’re also limited to those who are truly qualified to deliver a strong message and have something so innovative that no one else will bringing it to market.  I myself will not being doing that, as there are four different post of other offers combined into this one to make a stronger thought.  The main goal is to bring your brand, products and clients to the top of their markets.

Execution is the key to all types of marketing. Plan and experiment before you launch. When you start something virally, there is no way to stop it and no way to fix mistakes; so make sure the message is the one you wanted. When you are ready to launch a campaign, you simply have to send out a short email to your fan email list. After that, if it is going to work, you simply manage which direction it needs to be steered(you won’t have much influence to provide, but can turn it to the next hit you have in waiting).

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The following is a list of free or inexpensive Press Release Services:

PrWeb PR7 (small contribution)
PRUrgent PR3
PR Newswire PR7
PR Web Direct PR6
The Open Press PR5

• Plain text ONLY throughout.
• Appears below Public Relations Firm releases and paid releases or “below the fold”
  Free Press Releases will remain on the site for six months.
• No PR passed

Free Press Release PR5
Press Box PR5
PR Free
Soft Press Release
Market Wire
URL Wire
Webwire
eMediawire
Business Wire
PR9
Newswire
Press Release Network
i-newswire PR6
Newswire Today PR5

• Highly recommended
• PR given to releases
• basic service is free
• advanced $300/year

Openpr PR5
PR9 PR4
Press Radar PR7

• Highly recommended

PR-Inside PR4
PR Log PR5

Web Designers and Developers are strongly encouraged to get in the habit of using these tools with all of their customers as a basic portion of the site build.  Developing a website that already has a strong SEO footprint helps the client progress quickly and ensures that your portfolio will have higher relevance.

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In recent weeks, Google policies have begun taking on different characteristics.  While these characteristics are still in keeping with their stated terms of use, they are coming across as uncaring and condescending to the very people that keep them in such a powerful role. Google has powered itself into a leading position with it’s free applications, strong search engine, and history of good service.hidden links

• While no one ever really knew how to work the algorithm completely, there was enough information released so that those willing to work would have a reward.
• The free applications and universal documents offered by Google made it an easy choice when considering where to go for free, work related utilities.
• Up until recently, their service was understandable, good intentioned, and at least reachable through the chat board.

The days of the last bullet appear to be gone completely. Below I’ll share with you why I see the end coming for a company that has based it’s business model around online advertising.

I recently had a client working on his own to place ads on Google AdWords. He had made the mistake of using a GoDaddy-Website Tonight build to begin this campaign.  Google rejected this initial build because of the “landing page requirement”… as they should have.  The Website builders offered by hosting companies are usually based only in the visual and don’t have the required portions needed for proper keyword relevance.

Where he messed up was trying to fix this.  He thought it was a mistake on his part(other than using Godaddy) and continued to try to make the account work.  At no point would customer service contact him, so he did the unthinkable… He created another account… and another… and another…

Those of you familiar with Google AdWord policies are now either laughing or empathetic and scratching your heads.  This is a major violation to the AdWords policy.  The problem is that for a novice, this wouldn’t be known or considered.  “Google’s getting money, all’s good, right?”

I’ve since rebuilt his website for American Crawlspaces Corp. And made multiple attempts on his behalf to contact Google.  There’s been no reply.  The Chat option for AdWords has disappeared in the last week.(Had nothing to do with him, but just proves what’s going on lately).

I’m not sure if Google is low on employees because of the down economy, or if there is some greater reason that they’ve virtually cut off their customers; either way, the implications are dire for a customer.  Customer care and understanding is prime to any business format and setting.  This client was likely to spend over $5000.00 every month for basic ad space and would have continued service with Google for an extended period of time.

The loss of revenue from this one client is obviously not going to break Google, but think of its implications on a larger and more broad spectrum.  As businesses are tossed by Google, one by one, the search engine will become known as a decision maker for which businesses succeed and which ones fail.  This is an enormous amount of power, that if handled irresponsibly, can lead to a lot of buyers remorse.  The forums at Google are already flooded by people making attempts to register this complaint to the search engine giant.  Here is just one example.  People are trying to become compliant with the requirements of the Terms of Service, but with no response or assistance available from the support members.  Even the forums are maintained by volunteers who are good enough to share their experience with the public.  Barely ever do you encounter an actual Google member within the thread who is willing to impart some form of assistance(this thread was an exception to the rule).

Because of the recent disruptions and continuing lack of support, I’m now referring my clients to purchase ads only through Bing and Yahoo.  While some of you may think this absurd, there is a method to my madness.  Bing and Yahoo combine to have the same reach as Google, they both have less expensive ad space and they have customer support.  While it may seem trivial, client support is needed for a full and strong working relationship between advertiser and ad service.

It can only be hoped that Google will see where they are causing serious harm to small businesses and where they are thinning the heard at the worst of times.  With businesses struggling as much as they are now, it places an added pressure that the strongest search engine refuses to offer support to the virgining businesses that may not know how to play by the rules.  At this moment, they could have more of an impact on an economic recovery than Congress or the President could even hope for.  With more competing business able to produce work driven employment, a recovery could actually be spurred by Google.  The jury is out at this time on what fate will be held in the search engine wars, but for now, it would seem that Google is willing to give up this market share to Yahoo and Bing.   Added support would ensure for the truly “democratic” title that Google continues to propagate, and ensure that it remains the top search engine.

UPDATE!!!

After a lot of searching.  I found a chat link that is active for the Google Adwords team.

Go here.  It worked today 2-24-2010

This was the most needed link, and I didn’t find it on Google’s site, but at least it was found.

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While looking through the site index of our business listing, I came across several negative remarks that were coming from a group of people who were also commenting positively about a similar business within the local area.  As a web designer, I always make it a point to not speak negatively of our competitors, and in most cases, I’ll not comments at all on their business unless they are the very best in the field.

After reading a few of the comments, it was apparent that they were coming from someone associated with the business and from the same individual.  This persons business had roughly 20 “positive” comments about their business, but had not made the effort to ensure that they weren’t noticeably written by the same individual.  Inevitably, another web designer began making fun of the scenario.

This is where the self serving positive comment become a nightmare for multiple businesses.  For reasons unknown, this business owner began raging against his competitors, Naper Design included.  Since we focus on both Web Design and SEO, he assumed that all of the joking statements must be coming from our team.  Admittedly, we did have a few clients who were less than kind with their responses to his form of deception, but he only took this to mean that we were involved.  His response was to post this laundry list of negative statements about our company to the point that he’d committed slander and defamation of character.

The situation was resolved with the assurance of our strong legal teams ability to sue him,  and the comments were removed within just a few minutes(proving they had been written all by him).  He still maintains a large list of fake comments on his page, and assuredly, others will likely continue to make light of the shady business practice.

I referred to it as “shady business practice”.

I did son because that’s exactly what it is.  When afforded the chance to have clients give feedback, both positive and negative, some businesses will immediately begin writing comment after comment about their own business to appear more user friendly.  While this is not one of the more hanus actions a business can commit,  it is one of deception and can be easily dtected by those reading the responses. If the comments are written in the same style and manner, if they are written in a way that shows the same character, and if they are in the same vernacular, it becomes obvious to the reader that they have been forged by one single individual.

While this situation has been resolved, multiple businesses have sustained damage to their credibility and are working hard to repair the damages made by these actions.  As a web designer, credibility is something that has to be earned, not self stamped within a comment field.  If found to be untrue or being decptive in ones actions, a web design company can lose all of its business and clients from just such an action.

I don’t wish for this competing business to go under and hope for their recuperation after these recent events, but I do hope that they learn to not make such blatant attempts at manipulating the system.  The web design community may be competitive, but that doesn’t prevent us from being both civil and cooperative.

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“When I first heard about search engine optimization, I was given a set of CD’s and tasked with learning how to bring traffic to a website from the search engines. While those CD’s helped educate me in the basics, it wasn’t until I stumbled across an SEO forum that I really started to learn the methods and tactics that produced results. Since that time, SEO blogs have become increasingly popular as the default place to learn the discipline.

However, as search engines takes a more and more active roll in the community and SEO bloggers continue to publicly discuss previously untapped link sources, little known but effective methods, and conversations held in private, I’ve found myself asking a recurring question:”

Is SEO blogging worth it?

That question may seem obsurd, especially since it’s being posed on an SEO blog, but I think it’s an important question. Obviously blogging allows us to communicate with others in the same industry or profession. It allows us to share our knowledge with newcomers (as I said, this is essentially how I learned what has become my profession). And for some SEO bloggers, it attracts clients.

Unfortunately, all of those benefits are not without their costs. Every time a blogger posts about a new place to obtain a free clean link, or reports a site selling links, or demonstrates how one of the search engines is being gamed, they are making every other SEOs job that much harder. The link source closes the loop hole, or the links are devalued by the search engines. The site selling links receives a penalty and the buyers lose value. The site being used to illustrate the point loses rankings, loses authority, or loses it’s competitive edge.

The next time you come across a great source of free links, wouldn’t you be better served by using that information to improve your site’s or your client’s site’s rankings? Sure blogging it might bring you some attention and maybe even some links, but will a few extra subscribers benefit you as much as increased rankings would? Do you really get enough business from your blog that it would be more valuable to expose that link source than to use it to improve the quality of service you’re providing to your current clients?

I realize many of these types of posts are written with the best of intentions, to achieve all of the benefits we mentioned earlier, but many times that’s not the end result. In this age of social media, interactive SEO courses, and cheaper and more frequent confrences or events, do we really need SEO blogs to achieve the benefits we’re seeking?

Someone once told me that with every decision I need to ask myself whether or not the juice would be worth the squeeze. So I ask you, all you SEO bloggers out there, is SEO blogging really worth it?

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1. The majority of search engine users (as many as 75% by some estimates) ignores the sponsored ad listings and only trusts the unbiased Organic Search Results.
2. A business listed in the sponsored listings is paying to be there—as much as $5 or $10 or$25 per click—and there is no guarantee those clicks are from legitimate customers.
3. By contrast, a natural result can be clicked on unlimited times by unlimited numbers of users at no cost to the site owner.
4. A high natural ranking means that site is really popular (at least that is the implication) and people like to be part of the most popular anything.

So top natural listings attract 80% of people searching, and cost nothing to be clicked, while sponsored advertisers compete for the remaining 20% and pay for every click—whether the new lead is qualified and ready to buy, or a six year old playing with her mother’s computer. Natural is naturally the place to be.

But how does a business get there?

Begin with these thoughts: “Size Does Matter and Bigger is Not Always Better”

A large company can completely lose track of the small businesses because their eyes are set strongly for taking up large contracts.   The larger businesses are also far mre likely to overprice and charge for unneeded services.  Pay-Per-Clicks are still more likely in the larger companies than the smaller groups that work local and small businesses.  When searching, it is always advisable to choose a local group that doesn’t have a load to heavy to handle.  If they are overburdened, it’s very likely that some of their clients are going to fall through the cracks.

If you have ever tried SEO and gotten poor results, you might conclude it is a waste of time and money to even try.  You may have even spent a massive amount of capital on building a site, on;y to realize that the method used was not adequate for your business model.  SEO is not the same for every website or business.  Many SEO companies tend to try the same tricks for every client, regardless of their individual needs.

Of the thousands of SEO companies, you can bet that not all can really deliver meaningful results. And what is meaningful in a business sense? First page placement on relevant keywords is critical. The majority of users never go to page 3, and of those that do, almost none make it past page 4 or 5. So improvement from page 50 to page 5 might look good on an SEO progress report, but it means almost nothing in increased business results. Page one is the grail, but if promised by a company that is not there themselves, it’s likely a scam.

So how does a business owner separate the myth from the grail? When selecting an SEO company here are some key questions to ask:

1. How long have you been in business?

2. What is your guarantee? (Listen for page one is usually a dead giveaway for a scam!)

3. What is the SEO campaign plan for the site?

4. Will you be shown how to improve and maintain your own score after the promotion period?(this one is crucial.  Do you wish to be elevated to a point of maintenance, or to be trapped and addicted to the cost of their services?)

Locating an SEO company is easy. Search “(your location)SEO ”.   Check the natural results. If the SEO Company is ranked well you know you have one that has been around a while.

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This list includes both the site link and the Page Rank of the directory:

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Fancybox For WordPress- Seamlessly integrates FancyBox into your blog: Upload, activate, and you’re done. No further configuration needed. However, you can customize it from the Options Page if you like.

Featured Content Gallery – Featured Content Gallery is a plug-in for WordPress which lets you to pick a few posts from a specific category or via post IDs and then display them in a slide show. The slide show is very cool which displays an image in background and description of post in a fading gray box in bottom of this widget.

Thumbnails For Post – Thumbnail For Excerpts search the post for the first image. If exists, than it will search for the thumbnail created by default by WordPress for the image, if it was uploaded from WP administration area. If not, it will show the image itself, but of course, scaled (IMPORTANT: since version 1.2, there is an option to let the plugin to automatically generate the thumbnail where it do no exists.)

SEO Friendly Images – Images can be a great source of traffic as people search for images of various subjects, and this plugin helps you with making sure that you have “alt” and “title” tags on all of your images so that the search engines can properly index them.

Lightbox 2 – Plugin used to overlay images on the current page into neat Javascript-powered overlay pop-ups.

Flickr Photo Album – This Flickr plugin for WordPress will allow you to pull in your Flickr photosets and display them as albums on your WordPress site.

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-enjoy-
hidden links
Search engine optimization, or SEO, has become a huge online “industry”. It’s an accepted fact that if your website ranks higher in the search results for a given keyword then there is a better chance that it will get more visitors. The best part about this is these are considered “organic” visitors, meaning that you don’t have to pay for advertising to get them to your site. In the online business world, this translates into huge earnings with very little advertising costs. In other words, the ultimate goal of any online business owner.

So being able to figure out exactly how to get that 100% guarantee that your site will end up on top of the search results is basically the Holy Grail of SEO. There are people out there that dedicate their careers, even their life to figuring this out. Because they know that if they did they would become overnight millionaires. It would be like cracking the code that nobody else in the world could do. Some people may get parts of it figured out, but no one has been able to give that 100% guarantee.

The problem is a lack of consistency. If you asked anyone who has a website how they were going to get on top of the Google search results, 99.9% would agree they would need the highest PageRank possible. Now it is no doubt that a high PageRank is important, but is it a guarantee that your site is going to make it on the first page of the results. A lot of people would say yes, and when Google announces that they are going to update the PageRanks most website owners are on pins and needles wondering if they are going to move up or down. But what if it didn’t really matter?

There is an internet marketer (probably one of the last truly honest ones out there) by the name of Jonathan Leger who has spent a great deal of time testing out the theories that the SEO experts or “gurus” have been selling to website owners for years. One of which is the “PageRank theory”. He ran a very intensive case study and came up with some interesting results. He found that up to 1/3 of the time websites with lower PageRank actually ranked higher in the search results than those with higher PageRank. Some time a great deal higher. Consider a website with a PageRank of 4 ending up 5 steps above a website with a PageRank of 7 or 8. It actually happens!!

But the problem is that this isn’t the only theory that SEO experts have been preaching that doesn’t stand up under Mr. Leger’s study. He has found 7 (yes, 7!) different SEO theories that don’t always hold true in the real world. That’s why if you are at all interested in getting your website to the top of the search results then you have to read Jon’s report. And of course, he surprises us all again by the fact that he isn’t charging a single dime for it! All you have to do is go to his website below and get ready to download the free report. This whole thing could end up making some people very angry, but I have a feeling that the rest of us will be very happy!
Original article from webdesign.org

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You’ll see lots of advice about “SEO” or Search Engine Optimizing, or “using keywords.” Much of that advice can actually hurt your Google rankings, especially “keyword stuffing,” or deliberately over-using the terms you think will bring your page to the top ranks in a search. Google and other search engines are constantly changing the way they calculate search rankings, and they’re getting smarter about figuring out ways of rewarding quality sites. That means that the best way of making sure your pages and posts have top search engine rankings and appear in the first few results when someone does a search is to write well.

Really. Good writing trumps all the deliberate use of SEO keyword techniques.

But what, you ask, is good writing? I’m glad you asked, Grasshopper.

To begin with, good writing means being as clear as you can about what exactly you’re writing about.

Use a very clear and specific title for your page or post. Remember that a lot of readers will only see your title in their RSS feed, and the title has to be clear enough that they click to read the post. You want to be accurate, descriptive—and brief.

Don’t use the same subject phrase over and over—that’s called keyword stuffing, and it’s not only repetitive and boring, it’s down right obnoxious. Overusing a keyword or phrase can suggest to a search engine that you’re a spam site, and your ranking will suffer accordingly.

Do use the most appropriate descriptive and specific language. Being specific means that your reader doesn’t have to guess what you mean or what you’re talking about. SPecificity makes your work easy to find.

Remember that just because you call cats kitties, doesn’t mean that your readers will; so think about synonyms, and likely search phrases. What will help a reader find your post? You might choose to use cats, kitties and felines—and you might also deliberately choose to avoid using pussies, since you don’t want to attract porn spam.

Google offers some tools to help you write good posts. One of them is the Google keyword tool. This helps you figure out what your readers might search for, in terms of using the best terms for our post or page. There are also some helpful .pdf guides from Google. The Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide is exactly what it looks like; a basic how to in terms of writing that makes your content easy to find.
Original Article by by:Lisala at helpmeblogger.com

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Now for the featured post written by

Paul Sloane

Leaders have more power than they realize. They can patiently create a climate of creativity or they can crush it in a series of subtle comments and gestures. Their actions send powerful signals. Their responses to suggestions and ideas are deciphered by staff as encouragement or rejection. If you want to crush creativity in your organization and eliminate all the unnecessary bother of innovation then here are ten steps that are guaranteed to succeed.

1. Criticize

When you hear a new idea criticize it. Show how smart you are by pointing out some of the weaknesses and flaws which will hold it back. The more experienced you are, the easier it is to find fault with other people’s ideas. Decca Records turned down the Beatles, IBM rejected the photocopying idea which launched Xerox, DEC turned down the spreadsheet and various major publishers turned down the first Harry Potter novel. The same thing is happening in most organizations today. New ideas tend to be partly-formed so it is easy to reject them as ‘bad’. They diverge from the narrow focus that we have for the business so we discard them. Furthermore, every time somebody comes to you with an idea which you criticize, it discourages the person from wasting your time with more suggestions. It sends a message that new ideas are not welcome and that anyone who volunteers them is risking criticism or ridicule. This is a sure fire way to crush the creative spirit in your staff.

2. Ban brainstorms

Treat brainstorming as old-fashioned and passé. All that brainstorms do is throw up lots of new ideas that then have to be rejected. If your organization is not holding frequent brainstorm sessions to find creative solutions then you are not wasting time on new ideas. Instead you are sending a message to staff that their input is not required. If people insist on brainstorm meetings then make them long, rambling and unfocused with lots of criticism of radical ideas.

3. Hoard problems

The CEO and senior team should shoulder the responsibility for solving all the company’s major problems. Strategic issues are too complicated and high-level for the ordinary staff. After all, if people at the grass-roots knew the strategic challenges the organization faces then they would feel insecure and threatened. Don’t involve staff in serious issues, don’t tell them the big picture and above all don’t challenge them to come up with solutions.

4. Focus on efficiency not innovation

Focus solely on making the current business model work better. If we concentrate on making the current system work better then we will not waste time on looking for different systems. The current business model is the one that you helped develop and it is obviously the best one for the business. After all, if the makers of horse drawn carriages had improved quality they could have stopped automobiles taking their markets. The same principle applied with makers of slide rules, LP records, typewriters and gas lights.

5. Overwork

Establish a culture of long hours and hard work. Encourage the belief that hard work alone will solve the problem. We do not need to find a different way of solving a problem – rather we must just work harder at the old way of doing things. Make sure that the working day has no time for learning, fun, lateral thinking, wild ideas or testing of new initiatives.

6. Adhere to the plan

Plan in great detail and then do not deviate from the plan regardless of circumstances. ‘We cannot try that idea because it is not in the plan and we have no budget for it.’ Keep to the vision that was in the plan and ignore fads like market changes and customer fashions – they will pass.

7. Punish mistakes

If someone tries an entrepreneurial idea that fails then blame and retribution must follow. Reward success and punish failure. That way we will reinforce the existing way of doing things and discourage dangerous experiments.

8. Don’t look outside

We understand our business better than outsiders. After all we have been working in it for years. Other industries are fundamentally different and just because something works there does not mean it will work here. Consultants are generally over-priced and tell you things you could have figured out anyway. We need to find the solutions inside the business by working harder.

9. Promote people like you from within

Promoting from within is a good sign. It helps retain people and they can see a reward for loyalty and hard work. It means we don’t get polluted with heretical ideas from outside. Also if the CEO promotes people like him then he can achieve consistency and succession. It is best to find managers who agree with the CEO and praise him for his acumen and foresight.

10. Don’t waste money on training

Talent cannot be taught. It is it a rare thing possessed by a handful of gifted individuals. So why waste money trying to turn ducks into swans? Hire our kind of people and let them learn our system. Work them hard, keep them focused on our business model and do not allow them to fool around with crazy experiments. Workshops, budgets and time allocated to creativity and innovation are all wasteful extravagances. We know what we need to succeed so let’s just get on with it.

Ten Great Ways to Crush Creativity

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Already, this site is scoring in the low 70′s and will be within the top of the local limo services before Google even issues the next round of page-ranking.

Here are some before and in progress pics, but more are on the way.

If you enjoy this remodel, please feel free to contact us.  We are looking to improve the Chicago Web Design Community, and add whatever benefits we can to the Web Development of Illinois.

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Do you really care if people think you’re a jerk?hidden linkshidden linkshidden links

A Tweet can consist of as little as you pasting your url in a post and sending it on.  While this method is viewed more as a SPAM act than any, you’ll find that many people simply pawn their site through Tweets up to 50-100 times a day.  The choice is up to you on how you wish to be received.  Obviously if you’re only doing this once a day, there won’t be nearly the humor and snide statements made of you like the ones who are hitting up 20 an hour.

The last sentence was not to assume that all of the Super-Tweeters are simply over-posting jerks.  The fact remains that they create inbound links on a constant basis.  While using many other SEO techniques, Twitter directs traffic to your sites and can in turn lift your rankings in many systems that effect search engine visibility.

Who are you really wanting to reach?

With Twitter, who are you after?  If you’re trying to push traffic to your NSFW site, it might be a good idea to set up an account with people who would be willing and able to see that content.  In turn, you wouldn’t want to send invites to a corporate team that would abhor the content of the site. (if this sounds to stupid to be possible, you have not visited fark often enough).  There may be a need for several Twitter accounts for each business or site. There is no reason to keep you reach small, and each individual account can aim for a different target market.

The best way of getting like minds to follow you is to begin by following people of a like mind.  When setting up each account, consider your site definition.  If your site is built to target designers, following designers would be your goal, if you paint, following people associated with painting…ect. This method will result in the people you follow usually following you in response.  By this method, you should receive a fairly strong and targeted market.

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RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is an XML-based format for content distribution on the Internet. It’s an excellent pipeline for Internet users to get updated news content and online articles — the stuff you want — without having to search for it.hidden linkshidden linkshidden links
When a new article is posted or a change made to a webpage, RSS keeps track of the changes and delivers them to you. RSS feeds are most often attached to text, images, podcasts and video, but they can be used with any document (word processing and spreadsheets) that has content that changes.

If there are web pages you visit daily or regularly – let’s say you always read the front page of The New York Times and your best friend’s weblog – RSS eliminate the need to check for updates. Every time something changes on the page, it comes to you. RSS always shows the most-recent changes.

One of the original uses for RSS is the ability to create a unique newspaper with new content waiting for you every morning. Beyond that, on the short list of things RSS can do is make it easy to search for and organize information about a particular topic, keep up with your kid’s homework, track packages, find cheap airfares or follow e-Bay auctions and sales. You can get your horoscope, search for jobs, read your favorite comics, get software updates, keep up with other people’s schedules and follow calendar listings for your favorite clubs and venues. You can see what others are saying about your favorite sports teams or keep up with what others are saying about your favorite (or least-favorite) celebrity. All without surfing through pop-up ads, slow downloads and poorly navigated sites. RSS saves time. It’s as simple as that.

With WordPress, RSS functions are automatically built into the page.  Having a feed available to your viewers makes the page more responsive to them and search engines.   This is on of many tools available to help bring more traffic to your site.

-site- whyrss.com

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