Kansas City SEO and SEM

Sponsored Tweets, do you do them? Are Sponsored Tweets OK? In my opinion, sponsored tweets are good if you take time to review the advertisers landing page before you submit your authorization to tweet.

IZEA announced the completion of their initial public offering today (IPO) and I say, get on it! I’m saying this because I’ve danced in affiliate marketing for years and finally I’m actually making some money. I’ve been using IZEA Sponsored Tweets for a couple of months and I’m slowly growing advertisers to pay for my tweets. Following is my account statement:

As a publisher on Sponsored Tweets you have discretion to say yes or no to advertisers and this makes the sponsored tweet more acceptable in my opinion.

But know there are advertisers with landing pages using Lorem ipsum (could be a test not sure yet)

I’m making money tweeting and it feels good because I decide which advertiser to share with my followers. If I keep my average up, I will have $750 by the holidays

I remember when Groups first came out with Facebook and this was “The Feature”. I’ve been on G+ for a week now and I like the Hangout concept; similar to a group, but better, it’s REAL TIME!! It reminds me of 1995 when I would hangout on a CU-SeeMe reflector (server IP Address) named “The Biker Bar”. All my friends would be there and we would broadcasting black and white video using a 14.4 modems. It’s crazy the technology has always been available, but the infrastructure has lacked. I think I see a light and history will repeat itself, but this time with speed.

by: Anne Haynes

We are seeing strong Linkedin and Facebook integration daily. Here is the deal. If you receive a request for BranchOut on Facebook and you think, why should I ever duplicate my data from Linkedin to Facebook? You are correct and don’t copy and paste from Linkedin to Facebook. Soon enough you will see a Linkedin integration button on Facebook and I clicked that button tonight.

What’s not so great is the recommendation import feature on Linkedin. It doesn’t exist. In my opinion it seems like a milestone missed, but for other’s it may be a feature worth never seeing. Follow me here; some people are very different in work lives in comparison to personal lives. And for this type of Facebook users I would not want to add the BranchOut application to my portfolio of apps. But for professionals who are transparent and have nothing to hide, BranchOut is a blessing. So which one are you?

Social Media is a filter for integrity, truth and moral character. If you decide to behave in your life or your career in an inappropriate way, you can’t run from it. So, do the right thing and know the internet is our digital police.

As for Linkedin being fully integrated with Facebook BranchOut, I give it another quarter for a full integration.

How big are the millions? It’s interesting to see the dynamics of the recent issues with schools. People learn in different ways and it’s clear that learning with video, audio, and virtual workbooks works. It’s not about where you live or how much money you make, you can give your children an education online. But you need to be online!

I’m a lifelong student with a technical degree from SJSU and it’s amazing the resources students have now at their fingertips. I really don’t understand why there is an issue with our schools. I went through grade school and college sifting through microfilm. Now, the students have information a click away with the internet.

If we are fighting to make the unions more accountable I agree. But how bad is it really?

Check it out the KhanAcademy.com, you can become the Genius if you put in the time!

How many ideas can we come up with using a symbol? As an SEOer I’ve always said NO to FLASH. But now with Social Media and people demanding stickiness, I see a new use for FLASH using Augmented Reality. This video will remain in my favorites forever because it shows how a symbol can create a reality! Thank you Matt Dickman!

I was on Matt Dickman’s website today and on his home page is the following video on Augmented Reality. These are digital holograms that bridge the gap between the real world and the digital world using FLASH. As a search marketer I don’t promote using FLASH to build an “entire” website, but FLASH definitely has a place in marketing. It will be interesting to see new ways companies use this technology in future campaigns.

John Barker, a brightkite developer is working on making brightkite more intuitive by using Ubiquity. August 28, 2008 Mozilla Labs introduced Ubiquity; “Ubiquity, is a Mozilla Labs experiment into connecting the web with language in an attempt to find new user interfaces that could make it possible for everyone to do common web tasks more quickly and easily.”

You mean the days of having too many browser tabs open will end? I won’t need to copy and paste links into email messages anymore? The web will actually save me time? Oh ya – sign me up! read more on Ubiquity

John authors inspiredmind.net where he is dumping all of his ubiquity brightkite command source code. I’m looking forward to watching his progress and I enjoy watching his tests in the brightkite threads! Following is a video about Ubiquity:

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

by: Anne Haynes
I’ve been spending allot of time on Brightkite.com (if you need an invite I have 3 left). What I like about brightkite.com is it’s not just text communication – you create a connection with images. Additionally, the geographical “sign-in” feature allows you to connect with people in your area or people traveling in your area.

There are a few ways that I’ve been able to make brightkite more useful than twitter, facebook or friendfeed; I can watch someone cook and take pictures from my mobile using details in the subject, I can post pictures of my flowers and ask people to help me figure out what is eating on the leaves, when painting a room I can ask for feedback on colors. The number one reason why I like brightkite more than other social media services, brightkite feeds into twitter which feeds to friendfeed and facebook. Yes this was my number one reason for loving brightkite, but now the connection is true love. It’s the simple old saying – “a picture speaks a thousand words” – and it does!

What I see happening with brightkite is a video extension – and let’s face it as much as we like video it’s kind of a pain unless you live breath and sweat your productions. You need to have a true want to broadcast yourself on the YouTube. When you do the YouTube you need to think things through and well, I don’t have that kind of time. I just want to go the brightkite route, more personal not so much broadcast. I don’t want to be the LisaNova or the Freds in the video world; I just want some help with my daily projects; the things I make decisions on every day. Finding out I need to call 800-dig-rite before I started dropping electricity into my backyard was huge for me! I had no clue I needed to call someone – I just trusted the contractor, but my friend from brightkite @benneplex helped me navigate through my project. I seek the personal touch within the video world – I want someone to speak to me. I feel this personal experience is months if not years away because it’s only the young and tech savvy that are onto this medium now. Yes, eventually I will be doing video, but I want it to be personal and meaningful. What happened to all the video emails that were supposed to happen in our industry? I haven’t received one! Just links in emails that point streaming video on websites. Was it too expensive? Oh you can bet it was and still is…. Who has the secret codec?

Anyway, I love brightkite and again, if you need an invite, I have three left, just shoot me a message.

by:Anne Haynes

A client called me today and asked me if I’d heard of Cuil the new search engine created by ex Google engineers that claims to be better, faster and cheaper than Google. While I was taken off guard because I was clueless about Cuil (how embarrassing), I was curious if this new search engine would become the next NUMBER 1 search engine. So, I decided to conduct some research and a quick test.

Cuil Goal located on the website states, “The Internet is getting bigger and more disorganized every day. Cuil’s goal is to solve the two great problems of search: how to index the whole Internet—not just part of it—and how to analyze and sort out its pages so you get relevant results.”

The Cuil Internet Information Philosophy:
Size matters
Popularity is useful, but not always important
Organization is fundamental
Cuil analyzes the Web, not its users

Based on the philosophy alone it looks like Cuil could be the ideal place for researchers and students to find different information that is unbiased to Google’s popularity filter. It will be interesting to learn more about how Cuil ranks websites and what it takes to get in position one.

As my first test, I used my name as a search term because I study “Anne Haynes” regularly. While the amazing 13,305,408 indexed pages using the term Anne Haynes was impressive, how was the quality on the first page. As we all know the first page means everything and capturing the end-user within seconds is essential to a successful search engine.

If you’re interested in seeing a picture here are Anne Haynes results in Cuil But let me tell you there really isn’t much there….three of the top results were from my VMIX account and 100% of those results were displaying pages that no longer exists. The images that are embedded within the results, while very cool or Cuil, they do not correspond with the pages being displayed. I find it interesting that VMIX is all over the first page for a few reasons; one I know the founders and the lead engineer [shout out to Greg, Ed and Ian], and two, I created that account last year and haven’t logged in for several months. Why is VMIX tied to Anne Haynes in Cuil’s eyes? I don’t know that’s for the geniuses over at Cuil to figure out. It will be interesting to watch this search engine, plus it will be nice having something else to play with besides Google. As a SEOer, it’s time to read about the engine and learn its likes and dislikes – in the hopes that “If” Cuil is the next NUMBER 1 search engine, I’ll have an advantage and so will my clients.

Check out Cuil.com.

by: Anne Haynes

Today on FriendFeed, using my trusty iGoogle set-up, I noticed a link from Matt Cutts about Knol. So, I clicked on the link and poof I was in the new knol world. Knol can be thought of like About.com meets the Wiki. But it also has a global blogging feel to it as well. Many of the successful blogs out there are built with multiple authors and contributors and knol makes this happen very quickly. Following is my review of knol and my initial thoughts on the usability. Understand that my review could contain user errors, so if you find something incorrect please send me a message and I’ll fix this post. I’m sorry you can’t comment right now, I’m dealing with updating my WordPress and it’s not on the top of my priorities right now.

So when I arrived at knol I screwed up immediately because it wasn’t clear where I should be writing my content. It took me a few times to realize that the beginning content field was for a summary of the article and not the article.

Once I figure this out I was cruzin. The editor is sensitive to MS word documents and prefers article written in a txt editor – duh. I “published” my article and then searched on my name and the keyword “SEO” and there were no results, so there is a lag from writing the article to seeing the article in the knol search results. I few hours later I found my knol article in the search results and I feel pretty special to be right next to Danny! Please note, I’m logged into my iGoogle account so the search results vary. Continue reading and see the new results after knol was update.

I then took it one step further to verifying my name. Well this feature is tied to a phone directory database, so if you are like me and only have one number (private) this feature won’t work. The other way to verify is by credit card and ATMs won’t work, so if you’re only source for paying for things is using your ATM, this won’t work either.

Then there was the cool AdSense feature that gives me control over who’s AdSense is where and of course I want my AdSense. This could get tricky with the co-author model.

All-in-all knol is a cool product and with it’s recent launch there are some bugs

Update: Same Day -Different Time

I just received an email from and anonymous knol user that is reviewing my article. The only people I invited are in my gmail account. I’m no longer in the search results. I love “the” Google!

So I just tried to login to my knol account and I got this cool update:

So in the previous search results my article was published and now it’s gone and only Danny Boys is left:

SEO Overview by Anne haynes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at knol.google.com.