IT Service Corporation
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Remanufacturing Toners: Good or Bad?
Published November 18, 2010 | 
Many are touting the supposed benefits of using services such as ink refilling, re-manufactured toners, but over time, you may find that it’s much more trouble and expense than what it’s worth.
Throughout recent months, we’ve seen more and more outfits offering services such as ink refilling, re-manufactured toners, and the like. The main selling point of such services is the significantly reduced price compared to buying new ink cartridges, and naturally, many businesses are attracted to these services in order to save on operating costs.
However, when you look on a deeper level, using refilled ink cartridges, re-manufactured toners, generic printer cartridges, and other similar products actually costs more in the long run. Here’s why:
- Generic and refilled cartridges produce lower quality prints, and in many businesses mediocre output is unacceptable. Many times you’ll have to reprint pages, wasting both ink and paper (not to mention time).
- Generic and refilled cartridges frequently cause alignment problems with your printer, and some may even leak. This type of damage to your printer can result in unexpected repair costs or even the need to completely replace the printer. Studies show that 40% of refilled/generic cartridges or toners result in some sort of problem with the printer.
- Some say that using refilled/generic cartridges is safer for the environment. This is NOT the case. Reprinting costs you wasted energy, productivity, and materials such as paper. On top of that, many brand-name manufacturers have a recycling program, as opposed to generic cartridges which end up in landfills.
On the surface, going for these “cheaper” alternatives might seem to be a great idea to cut costs, but over time it’s much more trouble and expense than what it’s worth. So it’s best to stick with using genuine ink cartridges and toners – you’ll enjoy better quality prints and less trouble in the long run.
Published with permission from TechAdvisory.org. Source.
Backup, Disaster Recovery, and Business Continuity: 3 Steps to Seamless, Fool-Proof Operations
Published November 18, 2010 | 
When disasters occur, unprepared companies suffer consequences ranging from prolonged system downtime to considerable revenue loss – and even going out of business. On the other hand, those who are disaster-ready can easily handle any type of crisis and survive, without much loss of productivity.
Small to medium-sized businesses usually think that disaster plans are only important for large enterprises. However, these days even small businesses can’t afford to operate without a disaster plan. Plus, recent technology innovations make disaster planning reasonably priced for virtually every business, regardless of size.
For any business owner, three objectives exist for disaster planning: 1) the assurance of never losing critical information, 2) reducing downtime when emergencies happen, and 3) quick recovery after a loss of data.
These three objectives translate into three IT services:
- Backups
The process of protecting your data by copying it to a secure device so that it can be easily and and quickly recovered in case of loss. - Disaster recovery
The process of reinstating crucial business data and procedures after a disaster happens. - Business Continuity
A carefully constructed plan that specifies exactly how your company will recover and re-establish disrupted functions after disaster strikes.
Of these three tasks, Business Continuity is the most comprehensive since it entails much more than a simple discussion of IT matters—it’s a thorough, systematic action plan. And though you definitely need to consider protecting your IT infrastructure and data, you must also consider what you and your staff should do if a disaster occurs. Is there a meeting place where your staff could gather in the event of a building evacuation? Do you have a plan to get in touch with all your staff and their emergency contacts to relay important information? Is there a way for you to communicate with customers to advise when you’ll resume operations? What will you do if one of your main dealers experiences a disaster?
The significance of these three services should never be taken lightly, but unfortunately many small and medium-sized businesses ignore them. Why? Simply because when people think about disaster, the first things that pop in their minds are earthquakes, floods, and fires, and they figure there’s a low chance of those happening. But remember that there are also human-induced disasters such as hackers, unhappy employees who sabotage, and employees who thoughtlessly erase important data. Any of these could easily happen to you.
You may already have a backup system in place, and perhaps, you have all three—backup, disaster recovery, and a business continuity plan. However, since business goals and technical environments constantly change, your plan requires regular assessment to ensure it’s still accomplishing all your needs. We can assist you in evaluating your existing disaster preparedness or suggest options if you don’t have plans yet. Contact us now for more details on how we can help you.
Published with permission from TechAdvisory.org. Source.
Posted in Blog, IT Technology | 
business, IT, plans, revenue, services, system, technology | 
Leave a commentHo Ho Ho, Go Google Go
Published October 29, 2010 | Some sites have seen pretty drastic drops in Google search traffic recently, related to indexing issues. Google maintains that it is a glitch:
Just to be clear, the issues from this thread, which I have reviewed in detail, are not due to changes in our policies or changes in our algorithms; they is due to a technical issue on our side that will be visibly resolved as soon as possible (it may take up to a few days to be visible for all sites though). You do not need to change anything on your side and we will continue to crawl and index your content (perhaps not as quickly at the moment, but we hope that will be resolved for all sites soon). I would not recommend changing anything significantly at this moment (unless you spot obvious problems on your side), as these may result in other issues once this problem is resolved on our side.
An example of one site’s search traffic that was butchered by this glitch, see the below images. Note that in the before, Google traffic is ~ 10x what Yahoo! or Bing drive, and after the bug the traffic is ~ even.
Not that long ago I saw another site with over 500 unique linking domains which simply disappeared from the index for a few days, then came right back 3 days later. Google’s push to become faster and more comprehensive has perhaps made them less stable, as digging into social media highlights a lot of false signals & often promotes a copy over the original. Add in any sort of indexing issues and things get really ugly really fast.
Now this may just be a glitch, but as Tedster points out, many such “glitches” often precede or coincide with major index updates. Ever since I have been in the SEO field I think Google has done a major algorithmic change just before the holidays every year except last year.
I think the reasons they do it are likely 3 or 4 fold
- they want to make SEO unpredictable & unreliable (which ultimately means less resources are spent on SEO & the results are overall less manipulated)
- they want to force businesses (who just stocked up on inventory) to enter the AdWords game in a big way
- by making changes to the core relevancy algorithms (and having the market discuss those) they can slide in more self promotion via their vertical search services without it drawing much anti-trust scrutiny
- the holidays are when conversion rates are the highest, so if they want to make changes to seek additional yield it is the best time to do it, and the holidays give them an excuse to offer specials or beta tests of various sorts
As an SEO with clients, the unpredictability is a bad thing, because it makes it harder to manage expectations. Sharp drops in rankings from Google “glitches” erode customer trust in the SEO provider. Sometimes Google will admit to major issues happening, and other times they won’t until well *after* the fact. Being proven right after the fact still doesn’t take back 100% of the uncertainty unleashed into the marketplace weeks later.
Even if half your clients double their business while 1/3 lose half their search traffic, as an SEO business you typically don’t generally get to capture much of the additional upside…whereas you certainly capture the complaints from those who just fell behind. Ultimately this is one of the reasons why I think being a diversified web publisher is better than being an SEO consultant… if something takes off & something else drops then you can just pour additional resources into whatever is taking well and capture the lift from those changes.
If you haven’t been tracking rankings now would be a great time to get on it. It is worth tracking a variety of keywords (at various levels of competition) daily while there is major flux going on, because that gives you another lens through which to view the relevancy algorithms, and where they might be headed.
Facebook Vs Google: No Contest
Published October 29, 2010 | 
So the conversation in tech media of late is that Facebook is set to become a bigger cash cow than Google.
Why?
People spend more time on Facebook. Facebook has users locked-in (kinda). Facebook “owns” the social map. Facebook is popular. Facebook is everywhere. Facebook is big.
Uh-huh.
Facebook may be all those things, but when it comes to translating “viewers” into revenue, Google currently wins hands down.
Google wins because Google’s advertising is closely aligned with the users primary activity, which is to seek topics and click links. The primary activity of a user on Facebook is to socialize. Translating this activity to a commercial imperative, in a way advertisers find profitable, is the challenge Facebook faces.
The primary user activity on Facebook isn’t yet as conducive to effective advertising as the topic-matching system used by Google. This shows up in the revenue data.
Google’s revenue, with supposedly fewer users than Facebook, is $23.531 billion – and rising. Facebook, with more users, who reportedly spend more time on the site, has estimated revenues around $1b. Admittedly a bit of an apples-and-oranges comparison, but useful to get the two entities in perspective. Facebook is nowhere near Google in terms of advertiser revenue.
In short, being popular doesn’t necessarily translate into revenue, or marketing value. Ask any popular blogger who is blogging on a non-commercial topic. It can be difficult to convert some audiences, and some activities, into revenue and advertiser value.
As a commenter, Chris Norstrom, on the TechCrunch page I linked to above pointed out:
500 Millions users does not mean those users want to accomplish EVERYTHING on your site. Facebook already tried their own version of “yahoo.Answers” and it failed. People come to facebook to lol with friends and waste time, nothing more. Not to check inboxes, not to ask questions, not to participate in groups, not to rate stores or check into places, not to send or receive money, not to edit documents.
Is he right, do you think?
Like Button Replacing The Link
Some commentators have suggested that the “like” button on Facebook will replace the link
Enter the Like button, the social solution to search, and the replacement of the link as a voting mechanism. The people as a whole are more effective at determining what content is relevant and most of those people are unfortunately not effective at creating links
A “thumbs up” system doesn’t say much. It may help people find out what is most popular amongst the heard on any given day, but as anyone can see from Digg, exploding pancakes doesn’t mean much, popular as the topic may be. I suspect Facebook users will use the Like button even less when they come to realise it’s a form of permission marketing.
Google, on the other hand, is oriented around topical queries. Relevance is decided by alorithms that measure over a hundred different factors. It’s fair to say that if a simple “Like” button worked as a means to determine relevance, Google would have implemented it years ago. They pretty much have one, but who really uses it?
In short, user voting is fraught with problems. It won’t replace sophisticated algorithms. The link, the basis of the web, isn’t going away.
Fit The Message To The Medium
Which, in a rather long-winded way, brings me around to my point.
The Google vs Facebook contest doesn’t really matter as far as marketing is concerned. Both environments are valuable to marketers. Both need to be approached in different ways.
As we discussed in Google Keyword Research Tool: Not Popular, search is suited to concepts and services of which the searcher is already aware. Facebook is better suited to distraction media, viral campaigns, and marketing targeted at specific demographic groups.
Facebook may be useful at introducing people to new concepts – especially if those concepts fit into an existing social activity, as defined by members of a specific demographic i.e. the group “Porsche Owners Club” may be interested in new Porsche merchandise, whether they’re actively seeking it or not.
Keep in mind the core function of Facebook. The Facebook user isn’t likely to be actively hunting for something. They are killing time, or socializing. As a result, Facebook is less suited to direct sales, as it is difficult to determine which phase the buyer is at in the sales funnel. Facebook is more suited to brand building and awareness campaigns. It is suited to relationship building. Adjust your marketing approach accordingly.
For further reading on the specifics of Facebook marketing, SEOMoz offers a great overview of marketing approaches on Facebook.
Interview with Tamar Weinberg
Published October 29, 2010 | Only on very rare occasions can you say that someone "wrote the book" on a topic of relevance and it jumps from metaphor to accuracy. Tamar Weinberg, a social media strategist and author of 2009's O'Reilly published text: The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, makes a wonderful exception to the rule. An expert trusted worldwide for her experience, opinions and guidance in all things social, Tamar's book on the subject remains a vital, comprehensive and important work on understanding how to consider social media in marketing efforts.
We recently caught up with Tamar. The following interview shares her thoughts on social media, privacy protection and other topics of interest for webmasters, SEOs, and business owners trying to make more of their social media and holistic marketing efforts.
What types of limits make the most sense when attempting to be active socially, yet still protect your privacy? What kinds of personal information are most commonly offered, in your opinion, erroneously?
Most people would say the following: don't post anything to a social network that you wouldn't want your mother or grandmother to see. I think this rule is especially applicable in the social space. Even if you have no friends or followers, someone might be watching.
Think twice before you post something. Would you want to remove it in the future? Some sites won't let you, and worse, your message may have already been shared with the rest of the world.
How do you, as a media-recognized individual, view privacy with respect to adequately protecting and distancing your family members? Is it sometimes better to be anonymous? Are you currently surfing invisibly very often, or do you trend to identifying yourself most often?
This is a good question. My parents are definitely a lot more traditional than I, but I suspect that my 16 month old son is going to be living a pretty public life. I think that being more open is simply a way of the future, whether many of us like it or not. We're seeing the gradual push in that direction.
I present myself as Tamar Weinberg almost 100% of the time. There are very rare instances where I will come across as someone else, and those are mostly under accounts I created more than 5 years ago when anonymity was the norm in the social media space. Slowly, the online world evolved and so did my behaviors and habits. I know I'm not alone.
What are the simplest things a business owner can do to protect their privacy when increasing their social media presence and activity?
It comes down to really using your best judgment and thinking twice before you do anything you might regret. It also comes down to common sense. Use a different password for your email account that isn't the same as your Twitter or Facebook account, especially if those are very frequently used. You'd think this isn't an issue but it becomes increasingly more important as social media interactions come trusted, so accounts are really in heavy demand. I can't tell you how many tech savvy friends in the SEM space have told me that they were stranded in England and needed a wire transfer or just scored a free iPad and that I could get one too.
I don't think any of this is specific to business owners versus the average Joe. If you really are a public face of your company, though, or if you're looking to get a job in the near future, you should either avoid associating yourself with images of your drunken nights out and/or you should learn and master privacy controls of the various social news sites. You should keep your tweets and blog posts purely professional or at least not convey anything that would raise red flags either among your customers or your prospective employers.
How strictly should you maintain the lines between personal and professional when investing in your social media presence? How is this distance likely to impact your effectiveness?
Thankfully, there's no "one-size-fits-all" answer for this. My @tamar Twitter account actually is a mix of personal and professional tweets. I share social media and small business information, and I also talk about my son. Heck, I even announced the birth of my son on Twitter less than an hour after he popped out. 
The answer is determined by who you want to be and what your followers expect of you. If you're blogging about technology and your entire blog is focused on tech – we're talking 50 posts a day here – and all of a sudden you blogged about how you were going through a divorce, it probably won't resonate with your readers. Then again, if that's all you blog about and built a community on that, taking on an unrelated theme may not really work for you either.
On Twitter, I actually think that having a healthy mix of personal and professional tweets is encouraged. If you're strictly professional, you're seen as a corporate drone. If you humanize your business approach, people will be enamored by what you have to say or do. A "blog" that is purely corporate speak isn't going to warm any of your prospects to you. Adding humor, avatars of the real people behind the posts, and giving more of a genuine human touch gives your customers a reason for doing business with you: because they want to do business with a person. They like dealing with people like them.
Social media has really fostered this shift of bringing people back in the picture. The last era that preceded this was devoid of emotion and it's about time that has come back.
Since it is such a young and emergent field of marketing, what are some of the criteria you use to decide to try a new socially-focused service or software? How does it earn trust and staying power?
There are now a zillion tools on the market. I'd love to try everything out but it's hard to really know them all and/or assess whether it would address my personal needs. I often represent the small business or startup and find that budget is a huge issue. Many people love social media because while it has a huge time commitment, most of the tools are free. For the smaller companies I work with, free does still take precedence. Of course, costly applications might be considered too if they boast great functionality, offer features that are not seen in the free solutions, and have an easy to use interface.
In this day and age, though, there are just so many people offering paid services for products that are already free. There better be a real unique selling proposition because trying to usurp the market leader isn't always going to be easy.
Sure, I pay for apps too, and usually I do so because the tool rocks. I love what it does, I love what functionality, and more importantly, I love the people behind the product.
How has early adoption paid-off or hurt you?
There's definitely a benefit to exploring the space before it gains momentum. You can get deep insights into the community before it gets saturated by spammers and those looking to make a quick buck. Plus, there's simply the competitive edge you get out of it. Having knowledge of a new community and knowing how to benefit from it gives you the opportunity to boost your own visibility. There will need to be some effort made on your part, though, to study the landscape and make some assessments on how to proceed. As an early adopter, you're probably going to be learning as you go along. You won't be able to wait for someone to spell it out to you in a blog post.
In the meantime, though, being first helps you build your own presence and become a leader in the space. That's what made Twitter beat-out Pownce. That's what helped some of the Twitter rockstars you'd have never heard of outside Twitter.com become so visible. That's what helped the folks in the Apple iTunes store build applications that actually earn the developers money, especially in a sea of hundreds of thousands of applications all vying for some attention. Being first really does have its benefits, but being first usually entails extra effort and attention to detail. If you're willing to go for it, I strongly encourage it.
What do you see as the long-term impact of mobile on social media? Is it happening already? How can you be more proactive in mobile social media?
It's funny you ask this on the day I finally bought a mobile phone that is finally catching up with the times. (I had a 3 year old Palm Treo with PalmOS. Yes, PalmOS was decommissioned last year. It's a long story.) While I held onto the phone, it wasn't because I love old gadgets; it's quite the contrary, actually! Today, with such widespread adoption of social networks, it proves that there's a much more compelling reason to go mobile. We love interacting online, but it's hugely powerful to put two and two together and meet an online friend face to face.
Mobile social media is all about doing more outside the convenience of your home computer or office PC. It's about networking face to face, which ultimately translates to greater successes as people who love you share all the great reasons why they do.
Mobile social media is also really in its infancy, but taking advantage of meeting persons of interest on sites like Gowalla, Foursqaure, and even Facebook Places can help build those strong relationships that are critical of social media. Plus, it's the early adopter mentality. You have an edge if you start now.
What are some of the warning signs that it is time to rethink or restructure a social media effort? What makes a clear point-of-no-return?
A lot of different factors could be the cause of a social media effort that isn't yielding favorable results. It depends on the goals you've set. If you're looking for followers and aren't getting any, you might need to reassess how you're going about it. If you're looking for traffic but none is coming, you may be using the wrong approach or targeting the wrong communities. If you're trying to get sales and are working at a social media strategy but see no movement after several months of effort (this isn't an overnight process), there's something to be said about the approach you're taking and it's time to try again.
Make sure you have some strong goals in place. Take a look at the landscape and see if there are untapped communities or influencers you have not been able to reach. See if your messaging is solid. Speak to other people in your community to see how receptive they are to your content. Just try again and keep working hard. Every business is social – but you might not be doing the right things to get what you're looking to achieve.
Sometimes it helps to fish where the big fish already are. Yes, it's great to be an early adopter, but it's even better to go where you know your customers are and where you're already hearing of success. You'll still need to work at it and revise your tactics if there's not much coming out of it.
But don't give up if you're at least getting some traction. Nobody said it will be easy. It is a process, and it will take lots of time.
You have a bit of a background in programming – so how much do you attribute this basis for your obvious agility through multiple social media platforms? Do you need to be a semi-programmer today to be able to stay in-tune with gadgetry, software and effectively balance all of the leading programs of social media?
LOL, my computer science programming background was…well, it ended after my very first class in college. I actually did graduate with a major in computer science, but I can't say I understand a thing about programming!
Therefore, while I programmed in a few classes in school, my background isn't reflective of where I am today. I've been living in the social media space since I got my first Internet-connected computer in 1992. I was using AOL when it was called Promenade and cost $9.95 for 5 hours (plus $5.95 for each additional hour). I thrived on local message boards. I actually went into computer science because I fell in love with the social media space before it was called social media, and I figured that computer science was going to get me closer to whatever it was that I wanted to do with myself! The schooling didn't, but I found myself where I knew I belonged after connecting with some great folks who introduced me to SEM right around the time that social media marketing started building momentum. The rest is history.
Agility might be a characteristic of programmers, but I think that once you really get involved in this space, it's a byproduct of your activities. Five years ago, I definitely wasn't multitasking as much as I do today. Now, I can't envision my life any differently. I can't see myself working at an office again because I do my best work at crazy hours with "breaks" that let me focus on other projects. I'm writing this at midnight. It's what I do and I flourish in this kind of environment. It can be learned and has nothing to do with a computer science degree.
I think a big reason for success in this space for me is that every action I take online is out of a passion for social media and being as effective and productive as I can possibly be. I wake-up every day with the goal to accomplish big things, and I try to explore the space as deeply as I can.
If you come into it with a passion for what you do, everything will come easy to you. If not, fortunately, there are so many people who are comfortable enough who can walk you through the tools and teach you how to get the most out of it all.
You've said that at a minimum, businesses need to be proactive and listening to social media. Do you believe that brands not yet established are able to sustain momentum simply by listening and reacting in an "appropriate" manner – or will they get lost in the shuffle without the aid of something more colorful and (occasionally) dramatic? Has social media become necessary for smaller business success?
Social media is absolutely necessary. I work with extremely small businesses in addition to companies in the Fortune 500. Sure, small businesses may not necessarily have much drama to act upon, but there are a ton of insights you can glean from the social media space. You can see what your larger competitors are doing and figure out how to run with your own campaign or see how to do it better. You can monitor your industry and find out what is happening that you should act upon in the social space.
The big concern comes to businesses who are so small who realize that they're not seeing much traction or conversion in a week's time. That's not abnormal. Social media takes time. Build the relationships first and then they will come when they need you.
With social media, ongoing communication is critical. Furthermore, small businesses especially have more flexibility to do it because they aren't restricted by their legal departments. The key, though, is to work at it. Social media isn't called social media for no reason.
In your book, you offer the study of how a Comcast rep used Twitter to find and recruit a Verizon customer. Is this type of scenario happening or even likely on other platforms, or is it the real-time response that has made Twitter such an effective customer outreach tool?
I actually once blogged about an online service I was disappointed with. The founder of a competing service wrote a comment on my blog post and I actually checked out the site. If they didn't reach out, I probably wouldn't have bothered.
Real-time response, though, is golden. If you reply immediately when someone is angry with your competitor, they may be more compelled to check you out while they're angry and thinking about how much they hate the competitor. Plus, what if this prospective customer doesn't know who you are? That's a good opportunity to build brand awareness.
What is the main thing people misunderstand or overlook about Twitter?
I think people still don't get it. Twitter's mission is to get people to answer the question of "what's happening?" or "what are you doing?," but at the end of the day, most people don't understand that Twitter is a social network. They hear that it's all about people sharing what they ate for dinner and don't realize that they can connect with people they know or admire and even engage with them.
What are 5 social media tools that you simply won't live without anymore? How does this list differ from the one you had one year ago?
As much as I love new tools, I also am pretty steadfast in my ways especially when something really works. My top 5 tools are:
- Google Reader, which I have been using for about 2 years (I was a Bloglines addict before that, though)
- HootSuite, but before that, it was all about the Twitter web interface and Twhirl. I also use Seesmic Desktop occasionally.
- Skype and Digsby, because basic communication is still at the core of social media interactions. I used to hate Skype, but now I tolerate it mostly for video chat. J Digsby is a great all-in-one IM client. It just doesn't have Skype support. Before Skype and Digsby, I was using AOL Instant Messenger with the DeadAIM logging program (the last DeadAIM-supported version of AIM stopped working last month, so I'm bummed) and Pidgin. Yeah, I am a PC.
- WordPress. Yes, I did use MovableType once upon a time, but years ago, I moved to WordPress because it was easier to install (the cgi-bin requirement of MT always threw me off!). WordPress has tens of thousands of plugins that help enhance the blog and make it feel like a real site.
- Rapportive: This is an amazingly useful social CRM that integrates with Gmail (I run my dozen email addresses through Gmail's interface, so this really works for me) and gives me information about the people I am corresponding with. I can get their LinkedIn bios, locations, avatars, social networks, and more without having to manually look them up. As for what I used a year ago, well, there's nothing else quite like it!
Being active socially on the web is, or can be a full-time occupation. How does a lone, small business owner's participation differ from that of the lone, successful multi-site webmaster? How does one effectively scale social media efforts?
Don't spread yourself too thin. Try to build your presence where you know you can really make a difference, and branch out slowly if you want to experiment. Hopefully your marketing tactics will pay off to the tune of more business, more money, and the ability to hire more people who can help further your marketing message in the world wide open. 
Tamar Weinberg is a social media enthusiast and strategist who helps businesses boost their visibility on the social web. As the author of The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, Tamar cuts through the nuances of social networks and tells you exactly how to succeed online. She is also Mashable's Community Support & Advertising Manager.
Marty Lamers owns a Freelance SEO Copywriting company you can visit at Articulayers.Com. Since 2001, Articulayers has been fixing the world, one word at a time.
SEO (Usually) Does Not Create Demand
Published October 29, 2010 | At a recent SEO conference there was a question asked about getting a geo-local page to rank better for their own specific brand + the location (where they were competing against resellers & aggregators in that vertical). I was a bit tired at the end of the day, so I am not sure if I got my point across well enough there…so I figured it would make sense to follow up here.
When the above question was sussed out more fully it turns out that the core issue was not that of rank, but rather one of demand. Even with them + all the aggregators that particular branch was simply not profitable, especially when compared against other branches in neighboring towns.
The core issue here is this: SEO fulfills demand, but SEO doesn’t create demand.*
* There are some exceptions to that, like in complex long B2B purchase cycles & people selling abstract products & services like art, but generally its true for most businesses.
Where SEO is Exceptionally Valuable
If you are selling a commodity product that is similar to other commodity products (or you are 1 of 1,000 similar reviews on the web – like an affiliate) then ranking a bit better for the brand you are targeting will lead to more conversions for you the affiliate.
But all of that opportunity is built on the back of arbitraging existing brand equity & consumer demand, it doesn’t really create new demand in and of itself. Sure some sorts of reviews can make certain products seem more compelling than others, but the sort of demand creation needed by the above organization has to come from broader generic search queries and/or arbitraging competing brands.
How to Create Demand
If someone ranked just below us in the search results for “seo book tools” with reviews of our exclusive domain finder tool, our competitive research tool, and a few other tools we offer then they might make a limited number of incremental sales for us, but if we wanted to create significant incremental sales we have 3 options 
- build our brand
- cross market
- try to gain exposure on broader related generic keywords
Brand Building
There are many ways to build brand, from public relations to offering additional products and features to interacting at more events to writing more frequently on our blog to advertising, etc. etc. etc. The good thing about building brand exposure is that branded keywords tend to be the keywords with the highest conversion rates…so when you build your brand you create a surge in traffic and a surge in conversion rates.
When I lived in State College, Pennsylvania the guy who owned StateCollege.com mentioned that at one point he put a huge blimp up in the parking lot of the football stadium advertising his domain name. He was fined for doing it, but it was just a cost of doing marketing…a cheap source of exposure.
As a regional office you might not be able to do that much with brand though: you may lack the budget for branded advertising & there might be some types of restrictions on the types of things you can do to gain awareness.
Cross Marketing
This is an area where the people asking the question at the conference could have done well. They could have done more aggressive cross marketing within their organization and with other organizations.
Part of what created demand for this whole region / area was a huge theme park of sorts. So in theory they could have also ran special promotions with that theme park offering discounts to frequent visitors. Perhaps they could have found out who went to that theme park and sent them mailers with seasonal discount offers.
If neighboring branches were frequently sold out and this branch was not then what they could have done is find out who amongst there customers are frequent customers and who amongst those people are budget conscious…promote the concept of saving a lot by being a bit further away amongst those who value money more than time.
Further segmentation could be done separating out business functions from tourists. Offer businesses that are holding meetings a discount on meeting room rentals at the cheaper spot that is further away & try to load most of the tourists into the venue with higher demand. Beyond that, demographic targeting can be a strong option. Some areas hold yearly festivals for certain alternative lifestyles.
In the online sense of cross-marketing, both SEOmoz and Raven have been aggressive at running conference discounts and/or offering free conference passes when you set up at one of their higher tiered account levels.
Coupons and loyalty programs can also help on this front. One could also petition the local chamber of commerce to create some sort of seasonal celebration or promotional hook for the town, which would help almost all the local businesses. Is your town the home of the cranberry? There has to be some type of hook or angle.
The world is full of unique places & there is something interesting in your back yard if you look close enough.
Exposure on Broader Related Keywords
The above company which thought they needed to rank better for “their brand name” + “their location” could have driven some additional incremental volume by ranking better for the related query stream, like: 
- “their product category” + “their location” (putting themselves in front of more of the generic related traffic stream … they can also run direct ads on other sites that rank well and have relevant traffic streams)
- creating a page focused on “their product category” + “near popular local attraction” (coming up with alternate ways people search with the same intent … there are boatloads of options on this front for those who create content focused on solving specific business problems)
- running ads on competing local brands stating things like “free ___ feature” or “up to _% cheaper than brand x” (arbitraging competing brands … this can be effective, but can easily be misplayed & lead to blood + tears)
Anita Campbell Interview
Published October 29, 2010 | Since 2003, Anita Campbell is perhaps best known as the Founder and Executive Editor of Small Business Trends, a website bringing over 1 Million readers annually a clear focus on small business news, trends, advice and everything small business. A multi-award-winning site (including a 2010 SEMMY Award), Small Business Trends has remained a dependable and provocative resource of relevant, small business-related content where expert opinions fuse into passionate, intelligent user discussions.
Anita's journey includes a variety of senior executive positions in the corporate world, as well as being an executive and associate counsel for a regional bank working on lending, credit cards, bankruptcy, real estate, large contracts and financial transactions. Her move into several successful years online could easily be seen in many ways as a model of entrepreneurial success. An outspoken, passionate advocate of all things small business, Anita Campbell has an opinion that has been widely recognized and celebrated by her peers, colleagues and the various pillars supporting the small business community.
We were recently lucky enough recently to get Anita's thoughts on a few things surrounding her success, the current state of small business, and what it takes to make a website meaningful and effective…a powerful force that commands attention.
Daily, you are having one-to-one communications with business owners around the world. This allows you a uniquely intimate perspective. Kindly share your general thoughts regarding:
- How do you see prime-time media's perspective differ from the way conversations trend on your web sites? On which topics do they tend to be more in-synch? The media tends to portray the economy and the condition of small businesses as more negative than they are. If you only watched TV news, you might get the sorry impression that the typical small business owner is some sort of loser who couldn't possibly succeed in business without government "help. " We portray business owners as being in control of their own destinies. The people who participate at Small Business Trends are for the most part optimistic (entrepreneurs are the world's biggest optimists!). They're much more self-sufficient and "can do" in attitude. We give them advice and tips they can use to solve their own problems.
- How do you see the general confidence level of business owners today, compared to five years ago? What are the short-term factors that offer sway? It's hard to tell, because the media colors our perceptions so much. And the media tends to focus so much on the negative – they emphasize 7 out of 6 problems. How much is truth? How much perception? I would say that throughout this recession the small biz experience has been mixed. I've heard everything from "this is the worst we've seen it in 30 years" to "business is booming. " Why such vastly different confidence levels in this recession? In part it depends on how strong the business was before entering the recession – the strong were better equipped to ride it out and even grow…no surprise there. It also varies by industry. For instance, online businesses and service providers to online business are doing well, or have experienced only a small drop in results from 2008-2009 and are bouncing back already in 2010. That's largely due to the growth of the Web as a business channel. Example: online advertising and publishing are growing in 2010, even as their print counterparts are declining rapidly. So ask a print publisher how business is doing and you hear a tale of woe. Ask an online publisher and you hear a different story.
- What, if any, is the common cry among business owners regarding:
- Finance: There's a lot of lawmaker blather about the "credit crunch" being a huge problem for small businesses. Some give the impression that there's nothing ailing small businesses that a loan wouldn't cure (whether we need a loan or not!). Here's the reality: only a minority of small businesses need or want loans. Sure, for those who do need loans, conditions are tight and some businesses will fail if they don't get desperately-needed credit. But loans are hardly a silver bullet. Take, for instance, SBA loans. I'll be the first to say SBA loan programs have been good for the small business community. But remember that they touch a small percentage of businesses – last year there were fewer than 100,000 new SBA loans made (and 27 Million small businesses). What would help the majority of small businesses far more is for consumers and B2B customers to have the confidence in the economy to buy from small businesses and pay them promptly. But it's much harder for lawmakers to convey leadership and inspire confidence than to simply spend the people's money on another banking bill.
- Opportunity: Capitalizing on opportunities has a lot to do with your attitude. Even in difficult economies enterprising entrepreneurs spot and seize opportunities. Some quick examples: recently we saw TechCrunch, a 5-year old blog-based business, being acquired by AOL for anywhere from $25 to $40 Million, depending on which report you believe. In other words, an entrepreneur created 8-figure value in 5 years, part of which was during a recession. It was during the recession that Zappos, a 10-year old company, cracked $1 Billion in sales. So far in 2010, Google has made 24 acquisitions of small companies – meaning 24 startups have created enough value to get a big payday at the tail-end of a recession. Success stories are all around us – especially in the online space.
- Government relief programs: Being of a free-market capitalist bent, I am not a fan of most government programs, for 2 reasons: (1) Someone has to pay for them in the form of taxes, and the tax burden usually hits successful business owners hardest. (2) Government programs are contrary to the entrepreneurial mindset. Successful small business owners aren't looking for government help. They just want the government out of their way.
Small businesses generally tend to be the most limited in terms of resources. What made you decide to focus on helping that market?
I have always kept my ear to the ground, and could tell that large companies were increasingly interested in the small business market, so I took a risk that would be great advertiser support – and it has paid off. Plus, I myself am proud of being a self-sufficient, responsible business owner. We Americans dream of being entrepreneurs. It's a high calling – who better for me to serve?
You have had years of success with your business-related podcasts and audio downloads, but the market is continually changing as computers can handle larger bits of information, faster. There is now a veritable cornucopia of loosely related, potentially strategic media buys. What would be your general advice for someone looking to invest in broadcasting business information in 2010, and perhaps having it go beyond? What type of format has been the most cost-efficient, and/or scaled the best for you so far, when measured over time? Any new ones you are trying?
Text-based information forms the bulk of our published content, and in the future will constitute 80% of our content. I think that's true for most B2B sites. Text is easy to consume quickly. It's easy to quote and cull statistics or other biz info from, and is capable of getting readily indexed and ranked in the search engines.
We do podcasts but find that only about 10% of our audience who read information will listen. Not everybody has the time to listen – it's faster to read. And some people simply don't absorb information in an auditory fashion – they have to SEE it. However, people who listen to podcasts download them to their iPods and take them with them while working-out, on trains and planes, while driving in the car – in short, away from their computers. So you are reaching people well beyond their computers, and you get more of their mindshare during those times. For that reason, some of our most rabidly loyal audience are our podcast listeners. With podcasts you exchange breadth of audience for depth of attention.
We haven't done as much with video up to now. We plan to do more. It takes more technical know-how to create quality videos, than write an article. And there's a bit of a learning curve we haven't made time for, to figure out how to optimize online video for YouTube and search engines. But video certainly deserves attention by entrepreneurs in their content strategies.
You have a variety of guest authors, and it keeps the content on SmallBizTrends and your other sites fresh, unique, and diverse – and perhaps most importantly, relevant. How would a smaller player attract any level of talent or look to fill a website without resorting to a "content-mill" approach of adding semi-legible filler to try to compete? To avoid staffing, how have you found it effective to generate unique, user-generated content? Is it volume, depth of expertise, or unique style that seems to be the biggest and most consistent draw?
To attract contributors you have to first create a credible site people want to be seen on. If you fill it with "content-mill" type content, what person would risk their good reputation by guest posting on your site? Webmasters and site owners may not want to hear this, but it takes time and a bit of money to create a credible site. To jump start the guest posting, try recruiting paid authors who already are known in their fields – find some good ones, especially those who also amplify their own articles on social media – and make them an offer they can't refuse. Emphasize quality over quantity.
Also, make sure you have the infrastructure and staff to support guest authors – they need a lot of care asnd feeding. You won't notice this with just a couple of guest authors, but as your site scales up, it will eat up more and more time.
It's a misperception that guest posts are a free source of content for your site – nothing is truly free in business, and you pay one way or another. I am not blowing my own horn when I say we could have 50 times the number of guest authors as we do – after 7 years on the Web with a laser focus on the small business space, it's the truth. But we don't have the internal capacity to answer their questions, get them set up in the CMS system, review and copy-edit their submissions, find and add images to their posts, etc. All of that takes time, and you have to have staff to handle that. Some sites let almost anyone post – as in "if you have something to say, say it on HuffPo." But few sites have the wherewithal of a Huffington Post to pull that strategy off. For most sites, quality will inevitably slip and it becomes a race to the bottom. Your most loyal audience fades away, your best guest authors get disgruntled because quality is going down, and advertisers don't want to pay premium rates to be seen on a low quality site.
We deal with this issue via a multi-tier strategy to include as much of the community as possible to share their content, yet still maintaining quality control. We have different levels/types of sites. On Small Business Trends, we accept a (relatively) small number of guest authors – right now around 100. There, we focus on original articles of roughly 500 words. Then we have a smaller blog that takes guest posts from those who we don't know as well. If they get a good response, we invite them to post on the larger site. We also run a social bookmarking site, BizSugar.com, that anyone can share their small-business related blog posts on – that site is tightly moderated by a global team of moderators 24/7, but as long as your content is relevant and informational in nature, anyone can post there. Finally, we do a hand-curated (by our editors) recap of 10 small biz news articles and high-quality blog posts, daily M-F, from around the Web. This way, we keep control over quality, but highlight as many voices of the small business community as we can. Our motto is: be INclusive, rather than EXclusive – but still maintain quality.
How much is visibility worth? At some point, the traffic and credibility of your site increased, and likewise I assume, did your negotiating power with both content producers and advertisers. Was there a specific point when you recognized your traffic stream and potential as a meaningful bargaining chip and realigned your thinking and negotiations?
Visibility is priceless for marketing – you just have to remember that it's not a business model. Visibility (brand recognition, followers, traffic) is much more critical to actively go out and seek when you're first starting out. A lot of entrepreneurs barter services in exchange for visibility. But at some point you should start scaling back on the bartering as your visibility grows, and make sure you're not spending all your time trying to get visibility, but rather are making money. So think of your efforts in two stages:(1)early on, do guest posts, appear at events, etc. in exchange for visibility, without expecting to be paid. (2) Later, as your brand gets its legs, scale back on the barter activities, and start reaping the benefits. This is when you can command money for speaking engagements and require payment for your writing.
How much of the success you've measured fits into any original plan you had for it? What is the best thing that happened to you (in this regard only) that you never saw coming?
I knew the small business market was hot. What pleasantly surprised me was the level of advertiser interest, which has only grown during the recession. The single best thing that happened was getting recruited by Federated Media, which brings blue-chip advertisers and sponsors. It's been a strong partnership that I value. That partnership has funded the hiring of staff and numerous independent small businesses as service providers. Looking back it seems like a no-brainer to have signed with FM, but at the time FM was an untested startup and I agonized for two months before signing a contract.
According to Alexa.com regarding SmallBizTrends.com, "Search engines refer approximately 17% of visits to the site." Given your knowledge of SEO and the contextual depth of the site, this number seems rather small. Care to comment on its relevancy? How do most people find the site?
The Alexa number is off – the search traffic is higher than that. But I can tell you that search accounts for less than 50% of our traffic. Much of our traffic comes from:
- RSS feed
- direct referral (people typing in the URL or coming from bookmarks);
- social media (Twitter is our single largest social media referrer, with Facebook, LinkedIn, OPENForum, Business.com Answers, BizSugar and BusinessExchange following);
- third-party newsletters and syndication (we're in a traditional B2B space where a lot of information is distributed via email newsletters and private intranets);
- and other sites including other business blogs.
While search traffic is important, having multiple sources of traffic de-risks your business – you won't be driven out of business if some Google change cuts your search traffic.
You are an outspoken advocate and user of social media, and were recently recognized for your Twitter influence. Which 4 tools do you now find essential for managing an active social media presence? Has this changed much over time?
I must be different from most, because I prefer the experience of actually visiting the Twitter site. Tools like TweetDeck to access Twitter have a lot going for them, but I find they immerse you too deeply into the stream of your tweets, and isolate you with tunnel vision. I tend to graze sporadically during the day, on Twitter – jump in, jump out. Plus, I like to click through links that people share on Twitter, so it brings me back to the Web anyway. That said, I do recommend some tools:
- SocialOomph.com to schedule tweets in advance – sometimes if I come across something I'd like to share on Twitter, but it's 10 pm, I will just compose a quick tweet and schedule it for the next morning so I don't forget. Or when I know I'll be tied up in meetings or traveling, I will schedule some tweets in advance. SocialOomph does a lot more, but I use it mainly for scheduling. Hootsuite is a similar tool.
- Postling.com is a tool I am playing around with right now. It sends a daily email roundup of social mentions.
- Twitter search – use the Twitter search function to find like-minded people and information relevant to your business. This is the tool I use most often.
- Bit.ly – I have the Bit.y URL shortener button on my browser so I can quickly shorten a URL in one click, to share on Twitter or another social site.
How much SEO infuses into your strategies today when compared to two or three years ago?
For one thing, I appreciate the power of SEO much more today – and it's all because I know more. I still use an outside SEO consultant and an SEO copywriter (both are members of the SEOBook Forums). But together we get more done as a team, because we speak the same language, without too wide a knowledge gap. And I just feel more confident with more knowledge. Confidence is such a huge part of success. Lack of confidence makes you slower to jump on opportunities and hesitant to take calculated risks. As far as our publishing business, we do some things differently today as a result of understanding SEO better:
- create better titles for articles, with better use of keywords
- target niche content so we can leverage long-tail searches
- use more text along with individual podcast recordings to help them get found better by people searching in Google or Bing
Even writers and editors now need to know a little about keywords and how they affect traffic. Bloggers tend to be savvier about the how social media and search can bring a bigger audience for their writings. Professional journalists, on the other hand, tend to think their job is done when they submit their article for publishing, and tend not to think about how a publisher gets traffic (although they should).
In your experience, is content truly king, or can algorithm knowledge routinely trump quality?
There's a glut of content on the Web today. It's much much harder today to attract attention to good content than it was just 2 or 3 years ago. I've heard other small publishers say they are publishing more content than ever before, yet their traffic has barely increased. I just think the competition is greater – so you have to work harder just not to lose ground. What that means, I think, is that if you want to grow a website and keep competing strongly and attract more clients/customers, you can't just "create it and they will come. "
Bloggers especially got a little spoiled thinking SEO was easy. Many got used to thinking that if they just put up a routine blog post they'd attract traffic. That strategy worked better when there weren't as many blogs – but as the number of blogs and content sites exploded, more than content is necessary.
When competition is tough as it is today, you have to have more arrows in your quiver. What's the answer? Today it's 2 things. Search is one. I'd add social media as the other. If you don't at least know the basics of SEO and social media, you'll have a harder time growing your website and your business, especially if you have the itty-bitty marketing budget most startups have.
I see a lot of ads around the web where fortune 500 brands are paying to market you. How did you build into those types of relationships?
These are relationships built on mutual respect and benefit. The advertiser, quite honestly, is leveraging off of my name and site's recognition and our following in the small biz space, as much as we are leveraging off of their sponsor support (which is what pays our many talented service providers who do a great job keeping the sites going).
We (and in particular, I) had to first build-up visibility and a reputation in the small business space before we could even think of those kinds of relationships. That was not an overnight thing. First, I'm a bit older than some Web entrepreneurs and bring a lot of business experience to the table, having been a senior executive in a publicly-traded company. Second, I've also owned businesses with my husband, so I experienced business ownership before I started the site and could speak with authority. And third, Small Business Trends has been around for 7 years, with me working 12 hours a day on it most of that time (I admit to being a workaholic). The first few years I toiled in blissful obscurity. It wasn't until 2005 that things started to pick up, and then they ratcheted-up another notch in roughly 2008, and they are now ratcheting-up yet another notch, here in 2010. I am glad I stuck with it – persistence is vastly underestimated as a success driver!
Anita Campbell is the Founder of Small Business Trends which has been following trends in small businesses since 2003. She is host of the weekly Small Business Trends Radio Show, with over 300 interviews logged; and owner of BizSugar, a social media site for small businesses. Reach her over at Twitter: @smallbiztrends.
Marty Lamers is an SEO Copywriter with a Freelance SEO Copywriting company you can visit at Articulayers.Com. Since 2001, Articulayers has been fixing the world, one word at a time.
Influence Finder Review
Published October 29, 2010 | 
Influence Finder is a new link analysis tool that aims to make link research more targeted and less time-consuming while producing better results.
Despite how SEO has evolved over the years one aspect remains crucial to the success of any SEO campaign, links. So just about any tool that claims to make the process faster, smarter, and better quality is worth taking a look at.
Starting a Project
Influence Finder is a web-based tool which has a clean interface and is pretty easy to use. When you log in the first thing you’ll see is the project dashboard, where all your current projects are located.
The projects you see there are some templates they provide, however you are free to choose a custom project and name it whatever you’d like. The project options are:
- Understanding Your Brand – here they recommend you get an index of your own link profile
- Competitor Profiling – this is where they suggest you get the profiles of your competition
- Narrow Keyword Targets – this is the recommended report to identify sites that are ranking for a broader keyword associated with your targeted keyword (think “credit cards” if you are targeting “low interest credit cards”. So you can get some potential competitor data here as well as additional linking opportunities from sites that link to these sites or these sites themselves.
- Vertical Media – here they suggest to target influential media sites related to your keyword. This is where you would search for blog and news sites related to your keyword. These sites can turn out to be potential link sources and you can also look at their backlinks to see which sites are linking at them for those core keywords, which can be potential targets for your as well.
- Interested Media – interested media would be sites or blogs which cover topics related to your topic but are not direct competitors. If you are targeting hybrid cars you can look up sites related to things like renewable energy or sites and blogs which cover environmental topics.
- Custom – a report you can name anything you want.
It’s important to note that the report creation interface is exactly the same whether you choose Competitor Profiling, Vertical Media, or Custom. These initial report types are just there to give the user an idea of what they might want to cover in their research.
We ran through a report as if we were running a “Brand” report so you can see how the system works.
Brand Report
Let’s say we work for Waste Management, a leading provider of trash removal and recycling services here in the US. So we selected the first project type in the image above and clicked “go to step 2″.
The interface is simple to work with. You can do the following in this screen:
- Name your project (we named it Brand Report – Wm.Com). Again, you are free to name it whatever you’d like
- A box to the right gives you the ability to leave notes about the project
- The next field is where you’d add a URL for Influence Finder to index
- Once that is added it will appear in the gray highlighted area where you can select the domain links, links to the page (if you have a sub-page), or links to the sub-domain if you are dealing with a sub-domain. You can add as many URL’s as you want but since this is our “Brand” report we are just adding ours
- The last options are whether you want to include or exclude expired links and no-follow links
- Once you are ready and the URL has been indexed just click “step 3″.
Once you move on to step 3 you are presented with some more options. Here you can add keywords manually or via the anchor text they found when crawling the targeted URL’s. They will look for occurrences of these keywords in the following places:
- Anchor text
- Page title
- Folder name
- Body copy
- Page names
You can choose whether they are brand or non-brand keywords. As of this writing actual anchor text is not available, however I have been told that this will be an enhancement in version 2.
So basically if you choose “trash removal” as a non-brand keyword and “recycling” as a non-brand keyword, then they will be grouped under the “non-brand” keyword data point in the results section.
The second place you can add them is via the keywords found during the initial crawl by Influence Finder’s bots (over Majestic SEO’s data). They are sorted by frequency.
When they are looking for these keywords they are looking based on phrase match and not exact match. The idea here is that you are looking for link opportunities around a keyword or phrase rather than for specific data about an exact match keyword. So if you have a site about auto insurance you’ll get results that will show linking opportunities based on auto insurance, online auto insurance, dirt cheap auto insurance, and so on.
It is based on phrase match and I think the addition of the actual anchor text will be helpful in making this tool both a link opportunity research tool as well as a competitive research tool with respect to competitor backlink profiles.
When you are ready to begin the full index simply click “create index”. Above the “create index” tab you can show more keywords from the initial crawl if you want. This can take anywhere from a hour to a few hours depending on the size of the backlink profile.
So here is the results pane for this report. There are 2 panes, the left pane which is for Link Sources and the right pane which are Page Level details related to the domain you highlight in Link Sources (we’ll get to the numerous data points in just a moment):
Here is the right pane. When you highlight a source in the left column (Link Sources), the right pane (Page Level) contains the pages within that site that reference either the brand or non-brand keyword (note, these are sites that do and do not have links to the current domain which can be filtered as discussed later on in this review):
When you highlight a page you can see a screenshot and open it in a new tab, as shown above.
For the left-side pane, Link Sources, you have the following data points available:
- Max Authority – a scale of 1-15, being the highest, that measures the site’s authority via PageRank, Alexa data, and link data from Majestic
- Blog – based on site data gathered by Influence Finder, this shows whether the site might be a blog or not
- Heartbeat – checks to see if the site or blog is publishing content on a regular basis, bigger publishers show up with no heartbeat and will be given their own category in the next update
- Traffic Rank – based on global Alexa Ranking
- Traffic Country – the country that drives the most traffic to the site per Alexa
- Non-Brand Keyword in Title – percentage of pages where the non-brand keyword appeared in the page title (on pages relating to the non-brand keyword)
- Brand Keyword in Title – percentage of pages where the brand keyword appeared in the page title (on pages relating to the brand keyword)
- Non-Brand Keyword in External Anchor Text – percentage of pages where the non-brand keyword appeared in an external link (on pages relating to the non-brand keyword)
- Brand Keyword in External Anchor Text – percentage of pages where the brand keyword appeared in an external link (on pages relating to the brand keyword)
- Commission Junction Network – checks to see if the site or page is an affiliate of Commission Junction (or any of the following networks)
- Trade Doubler Network
- AWin Network
- Affiliate Future Network
- DGM Network
- Web Gains Network
- Linkshare Affiliate Network
You have the same options within the Page Level area in the right pane. Both sets of options are available from the Change Filters -> Link Source or Page Level Filters options within the tool.
Customizing Your Results
The left pane (Link Sources) of the application is where your results are populated, where the right pane is domain or page specific information (Page Level) based upon what is highlighted on the left (more on that in a moment). The left side has the following options, as shown below:
- A dropdown for easy switching between projects
- The next drop down is where you can show domains which link to the chosen domain, or domains that do not currently link to the domain but are good linking prospects based on the brand and non-brand keywords
- A .CSV export option
- Change Filter options are where you can deeply customize the output of your data, this populates in the right. Covered in more detail below
- Custom Sorting options with lots more data points to choose from
They also have a flagging system, which is purely optional:
Flags are color coded, with the following colors available. Use them for whatever system you devise :
- Checkmark
- Black
- White
- Yellow
- Red
- Blue
Custom Sort Options
In addition to the data points mentioned earlier (Max Authority, Heartbeat, Affiliate relationships, etc) The custom sorting feature gives you these additional options which you can include in the dropdown referenced above, but in case you missed it here it is again
(click the more button to add additional sorting options)
The additional options include:
- Influence Index
- Relevance Index
- Achievability Index
- Brand keyword or Non-Brand keyword in internal link anchor text
- Average Authority
- Inlinks Count
- Brand keyword or Non-Brand keyword in H1 tag
- Brand keyword or Non-Brand keyword in Body
- E-Commerce Site
- Brand keyword or Non-Brand keyword in body, first 100 words
- Brand keyword or Non-Brand keyword in heading
- Brand keyword or Non-Brand keyword in folder name
- Brand keyword or Non-Brand keyword in page name
- Brand keyword or Non-Brand keyword as first word in H1
- Brand keyword or Non-Brand keyword as first word in title
- Brand keyword or Non-Brand keyword in root domain
- Brand keyword or Non-Brand keyword in subdomain
- Majestic ACRank of homepage
- Links to homepage
- Domains linking to homepage
- Unique IP’s linking to homepage
- Percentage of direct links to page
- Percentage of redirected links to page
- Frequency of feed update
Clearly lots and lots of options here. Just one usage example could be that you wanted to see sites that are currently not linking to you, but talk about your brand on their site (in key areas like title tags). These could be good link prospects. First thing to do is change the link display option to “no target links found”.
The next thing is to change the sorting options to have the Brand keyword in the H1 and the Body, these should be good link targets. They do not link to us, they have our brand keyword in the H1 and/or Body copy.
To show those columns you have to go to “Change Filters” as shown below, so they will show those columns in the Link Sources (Left Pane) if you click the checkboxes on the right as we did with Brand keyword in H1 and Brand keyword in Body:
And here you can see the new columns, noted with red dots:
We can see that Earthtimes.org appears to be a worth link prospect with a Max Authority of 12, possibly being a blog (guest post), has a strong heartbeat, and not only has pages with our brand name in an H1 tag but also has it within the body copy.
When we highlight a domain in the Link Sources area, the right pane populates the Page Level data like so:
What’s great here is that now you have pages that are targeted to your content which (most) use your brand keyword in the H1 tag and Body copy. Remember too that there are many, many other filters available as mentioned above. This is just one example of what you can do. It certainly is a pretty targeted way of building links. Now, you know the following:
- You do not have a link from the domain
- They have pages specifically targeted to your brand
- The relative strength of the site
- How they are using brand and non-brand keywords
You have a whole host of other filters available as well, but this makes for a fairly targeted link prospect.
In order to get custom columns, like we did with Link Sources, you have to go into Advanced Page Filters on the right to select those custom columns (Brand keyword in H1 and Body in this example):
Change Filter Options
We have discussed some of these already as it is used in the normal flow of how you would use Influence Finder. There are an enormous amount of data points available to you within this tool and it’s likely that you will not use all of them on every report you run.
The interface for this part of the tool looks like this:
You have 4 options here:
- Link Source Filters – for the default data points located in the left pane of the interface
- Page Level Filters – for the default data points that come with the information on the pages of the selected site, these results are in the right pane (Page Level)
- Advanced Link Source Filters – all the additional data points for your Link Sources
- Advanced Page Filters – the additional data points available for page level data
These are essential tools for slicing and dicing the data to suit your report needs (link research, competitive research, link prospecting, and so on).
How Does Influence Finder Compare?
Influence Finder has a lot of features. Chances are you have a link tool or two already. As more and more tools enter the online marketing space it’s important to consider the overlap and unique features of the tool you are considering and the tool(s) you might already have.
Influence Finder, as we have outlined for you, has a seemingly endless array of filters you can use to target link prospects. The 3 bigger players in the link research and/or management space are typically thought to be:
- Majestic SEO
- Open Site Explorer
- Raven SEO Tools
When comparing tools in the same space it’s important to make sure they are designed to do the same things, in this case Influence Finder is unique in its stated purpose. Influence Finder is much more about finding worthwhile link prospects in a very targeted manner.
These other tools are much more about pure backlink research (like Open Site Explorer and Majestic) or backlink management, tracking, and workflow (like Raven, which also has Majestic functionality baked into their research features).
Majestic SEO
Influence Finder runs off of Majestic’s data. When you run a report in Influence Finder, their bots re-crawl the Majestic data to make it a bit more fresh and to customize it to your chosen parameters. The key points of differentiation on Majestic’s side are
- Majestic provides strong historical data which can be very useful when doing competitive research
- Majestic’s minimum analyzable backlinks are up to 1,000,000 (on their lowest plan). This illustrates Majestic’s position as more of a pure link data tool whereas Influence Finder tends to be more of a link acquisition tool.
- Majestic does have some strong filtering capabilities which are great for analyzing a domain’s backlinks. However, it not as strong in terms of finding link partners across the web which is, of course, due to the fact that these tools mostly serve 2 different purposes (remember, Influence Finder uses Majestic’s data).
Open Site Explorer
Open Site Explorer is a solid link research tool from SeoMoz. It doesn’t quite have the size that Majestic does but it’s certainly big enough to be a worthy link research tool. The UI is top notch and it is very easy to use. Some of the cool things you can do with Open Site Explorer:
- See linking domains with a variety of filtering options (followed, no-followed, 301′s, etc)
- See top linked to pages on a domain, with domain link counts and http status codes
- Quickly see a targeted display of the external anchor text distribution for the domain
- A whole host of other link metrics like mozRank, mozTrust, percentage of internal/external and follow/no-follow links
- You can compare 2 URL’s as well
So much like Majestic, Open Site Explorer is more of a link research tool/competitive analysis tool. Though, with either, you can certainly find worthwhile linking partners off of a competing site and you can look up sites of “influence” and check backlinks that way too.
Influence Finder’s core benefits are finding linking partners which are relevant to your brand and non-brand keywords so they are naturally much stronger in this area than Open Site Explorer and Majestic. Conversely, Open Site Explorer and Majestic are much stronger in the area of competitive link research.
Raven SEO Tools
We recently reviewed Raven and Raven certainly sets the standard for link workflow, management, and reporting at the moment. Raven uses Majestic’s data in their link research feature set.
Raven is kind of in the middle here. They have Majestic built in so they are part competitive research plus part link management plus part link building workflow.
While Influence Finder is planning on introducing reporting and workflow into an upcoming version, their current tool combined with Raven’s link building and monitoring tools make for a powerful link building toolset. So with Raven:
- You get access to Majestic’s data as a competitive link research tool
- Top notch reporting options
- Deep, time-saving link workflow management options
- Affordable pricing
With just about anything you buy, generally you’ll get features you either don’t need or are just a bit beyond what you need them for in terms of depth. The nice thing with Raven is you get access to a bunch of tools in one spot for a fair price.
Do they have all the features? Nope but do you really need every single option on every single tool? There’s something to be said for managing most aspects of a campaign in one spot.
So if you take Influence Finder’s unique core features and combine it with Raven for reporting, workflow, and research and/or with another link research tool like Open Site Explorer then you’ll have a really strong set of tools.
The point is, none of these tools do everything the other does so it’s a good idea to take a look at each of them and weight the features, benefits, and costs against what you “need” for your campaigns.
Workflow and Final Thoughts
Lots of data here, so we’ll outline how it all ties together.
You can use this tool for many different purposes and they even give you some guides as to what you might want to use the reports for. I just want to stress that those reports are only exclusive of each other in naming only, the functionality of the tool after you select the report “type” is the same irrespective of which report you choose or if you just go with custom.
We talked about left pane and right pane a lot, here’s a condensed screenshot of the interface:
- (Left pane) Link Sources are located in the left pane, these are domains (even if a subpage is listed, they will show the main domain) matching your initial search parameters
- (Right pane) Page Level Detail shows the pages associated with the selected domain and the data points you’ve chosen to show
The left pane also houses the Custom Sort data when selected while the right pane houses the Change Filters options as mentioned eariler.
So this was an example of a report on your domain for one core keyword and some brand related keywords. This is a pretty powerful tool and if they add the actual anchor text where a link exists as well as some stronger work flow (assignments, notes, etc) and reporting features then I think this will be a tool well worth a look for you or your company.
They did tell me the features I mentioned above will be a part of version 2 which they are working on as we speak. When that comes out, we will certainly take a look and post that new information as well as our thoughts. As it stands now this is a really comprehensive tool for link prospecting and link building.
You can find out more at InfluenceFinder.Com.
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