Posts on State of Search about ‘Strategy’

Can you buy your visitors?

Money is what makes the world go around. And money could also be the trigger for many to take a step they otherwise might not have taken that easy or to get the attention of those who are otherwise hard to reach. So if you want traffic to your website, but it isn’t going fast enough, why not throw in some money?

Its a concept which many sites have tested, with different success. Some ‘bought’ traffic by paying for advertising, others have tried to give away stuff to get visitors to come back to their sites. Microsoft is probably the best or at least the biggest example of a site, in this case even a search engine, trying to ‘buy their way in’ by throwing in hard cash for every search with their cashback program. The most recent one going this way is real time search engine Leapfish, where you can win $100,000 in cash and prizes if you help the search engine reach the 20 million searches they want in 2010. (more…)

7 tips on running a group blog

As you may have noticed State of Search is a group blog. Which means that its not just one person writing all of the content, but many more. On this site we have a few of the best bloggers in the business producing great content just for you.

There are many group blogs out there and running a group blog seems easy. After all, you don’t have to produce all the content yourself, and with a bloggersteam like we have it should be easy as hell.

Well…: wrong! Yes, the fact that great content comes from the different bloggers is the absolute plus for this website. It makes or breakes the success. But to get to that success you need to lay a good foundation. And if you are blogging for business it can even be hardere. In this post I’d like to share with you some tips on how to run a group blog. Based on my experience here and on Searchcowboys. I know, it’s not about search, but I hope it will benefit you. (more…)

All flights cancelled because of volcano: how can you help?

Europe has been ‘hit’ with a natural disaster this week. In Iceland a volcano burst leaving not only about 700 people homeless, it also left people stranded all over Europe with flights being canceled all over the continent.

As you can expect this event has been discussed all over the Internet. Several websites are down, others (like the Schiphol airport) have put up a plain html page because they can’t handle the traffic. A lot of activity on the web, all for a sad reason. The information people are looking for is also very difficult to filter and to find out the right answers to your questions. A quick look around the web also showed that not many are actually using the situation for their own benefit. Is it because its not ‘decent’? Or are many out there just not paying attention?

Lets take a look at a few opportunities which you have to gain from the situation and how you can help those looking to go home at the same time. (more…)

Brand SEO: Tips for building equity off-site

We’ve all heard how important it is to “own your page one” and “lock out your brand SERP” and suchlike. I am a big believer in brand SEO myself, as from my perspective the plus-sides are not just limited to the ability to dominate a few pages of Google for a search on your brand name. Numerous additional benefits can be had, from the SEO benefits of citation/link matrix – to the traditional marketing benefits of brand and message ownership; most are pretty simple to achieve… (more…)

Step away from your site, I dare you

Not too long ago Search Engine Optimization was all about optimizing your site. Getting the right title tags, writing the right content and using the right techniques. The only thing you were doing outside of your own site was trying to get links to your site.

Things have changed. Of course optimizing your pages is still important, important to get your own site ranking. But what about those nine other results on the first page of the SERP? They are interesting too. And theoretically they can all be yours. And for that you have to step away from your site.

Anyone who has been paying attention at SES Amsterdam and SES New York knows what I’m talking about. Stepping away from your site can mean dominance of the SERPS. Using social media together with clever usage of news-sites is the key to the success. And no, I’m not just talking about Twitter. (more…)

The future of publishing, or is it?

Last week the Times announced that in June readers will have to start paying for content. Is this the start of a new era in publishing? It might be. Many are very much opposed to the steps Rupert Murdoch is planning to take when it comes to paying for content. Still, there are not many who have an answer to Murdoch’s problems: how do you make money with newspaperwebsites? We now know that advertising won’t give us the answer, but what will?

The video below is a brilliant video, which does not give us the answer to the big question, but it does point us in the right direction: Listen to your target audience. Be sure to watch the entire video, it really is brilliant.

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