Link Love Monday with Cory B.
So it begins. Welcome to the inaugural installment of Link Love Monday™ (alright, so it’s not really trademarked — is that illegal?) where I’ll pass along links I’ve found particularly stimulating. Unfortunately, I’d like all of the links I post to have actually been born last week, but monitoring industry blogs could be a full-time job and I already have one of those. So, some links will be a bit aged as they’ve been perched in my bookmarks for awhile, but they will taste that much better, while others might be born on the morning of Link Love Monday. Either way, it will be an evolving weekly post — which is to say it will likely be more organized, better branded (logo in the works) and more robust. So without further adieu:
Link: Using Analytics for Local Search Optimization
Love: The emphasis on selecting the proper keywords for your local search campaign. This is always important, but particularly important for small businesses where getting it right the first time can save time (a.k.a. “money”) on redoing a keyword list and the subsequent on-page changes.
“In this attorney’s case, they might quickly find that while “family law” is a formal term more preferred by their profession, more of their potential customers are likely searching for the term ‘divorce.’ And, in most cases, consumers are searching for ‘lawyers’ when trying to find listings of this type of business, rather than ‘attorneys.’”
Link: The Seven Deadly Sins of Social Media
Love: The use of the seven deadly sins to drive home the importance of partaking in social media in a responsible, authentic and sinless way. Remain outwardly focused with your social media — focused on the user. Don’t spam him, don’t ignore her, don’t clam up, open up. Each foray into the social media sphere is entirely different according to your business. Again, remain outwardly focused and adapt.
“7. Sloth: Ahhh the deadliest of all sins. Wanting it all but being too lazy to do what it takes. You have to connect with people, you have to write good stuff, you have to stay current and you have to be willing to show up and put the effort in.”
Link: Introduction to Microformats
Love: Google’s decision to extend microformats into search results — the Internet will be better served with more and more structured data. What are microformats? Basically, information about information, metadata. This sort of markup language allows you to tell search engines and other programs that the information contained in this HTML is, without a doubt, the name of my business, its location, phone number, fax number, et cetera. One of the more widely used microformats are called hCards — think of them as your business card for machines. Would you like to make one? Try this hCard Creator!
Link: In Pursuit of Elegance: 12 Indispensable Tips
Love: Simplicity. Why? It’s important to your business — specifically your business as a website. People are on the Internet looking for information. Scavenging. Scanning. Scoopering. Your website does not need to mimic the hustle and bustle of Times Square. If users liken finding information on your website to finding Waldo, then you’re losing out.
“Study the best: Google, Apple, Lexus, and Ferrari. They understand that complexity is their best friend, not an enemy. They understand it, so they can exploit it. The Google interface is clean and simple though the algorithm is massively complex. Even Einstein understood this. E=mc2 has an easy and immortal ring to it.”
Link: Apture
Love: Tools and their ability to make your work easier. In this case, the work we’re talking about is adding multimedia to your blog posts that can entice users to keep coming back to your blog because it’s chalk full of awesome information whether text, images or video. I took Apture on a test drive with my personal blog and found it worked well. It’s this simple: sign up, head to a blog post, highlight a word and an interface pops up that returns music, videos, maps, slideshows, Tweets, news and more related to the highlighted word.
Link: Twitter Evolves
Love: thought provoking posts – who doesn’t? And seriously, what would a link repository be without Oprah’s favorite social media platform Twitter? If only this post were about Oprah’s use of Twitter to disseminate fashion advice. Instead, we’ll go with Twitter and copyright laws.
“There are only 27^140 possible tweets, can I just copyright them all and then sue anybody who uses Twitter?”
