Archive for August, 2009

Anyone who writes a regular blog knows about writers block. But no matter how much time you spend staring at that blank page, the article just never writes itself.

Pity.

So how do you overcome writers block?

Here are a few tips.

Topic Selection

It’s not that there aren’t plenty of topics to write about, the problem is we often feel we need to say something new. The reality is that not much is genuinely new. We all stand on the shoulders of giants.

Instead, try and find new angles on old ideas.

One good way of doing this is to combine two topics. For example, if you know a lot about SEO, apply this knowledge to a more conventional topic, like, say “How To Innovate” The article then becomes “How To Innovate In The SEO Business”. Not rocket science – or a particularly new angle for that matter – but combining two tried-n-true topics can create something new.

2. Just Write

Often called free-writing, there’s a lot to be said for just making a start.

Think of a question – any question at all – and start writing about it. Don’t worry if your produce gibberish, the aim is to get rid of that blank page.

Introduce an SEO twist by going through your keyword logs. Find any keywords phrased as a question, and free- write about that keyword. Put the keyword phrases into Google’s Keyword Research Tool, and see what word associations, and other questions, come up.

I’m getting self-reflexive and post-modern here, but that’s how this article started. I’m rewriting this article from a page of utter gibberish. Hopefully I’m making slightly more sense now.

3. Go For A Walk

One daily habit I’ve got into recently – and I can’t recommend it enough – is to go for a walk. There’s something about exercise, and being away from a computer, that clears your thinking processes. Try it for a few days and see if you notice the difference.

I’d be really interested to hear if your experience has been the same as mine.

4. Steal!

Well, not really.

Creatively borrow

There isn’t much that is genuinely new in this world, and there is even less new in the field of marketing theory. I loved the book “The Purple Cow”, but really, it’s a new spin on an old topic – having a unique selling point.

A lot of the books I’ve been reading recently have a “sameness” about them. That’s because a lot of marketing books rehash old theory using new terminology.

But hey – why not join them! What’s old to you might be new to someone else. And if you can put your ideas in a contemporary setting, then that will bring something new to the table. Grab some old books or magazines and rewrite articles. Bring them up to date. Put them in a new context. Redefine terms. Add a new spin. Do some keyword research on the key themes and integrate.

The good thing about writing from existing pieces is that you get over the blank page effect. You’re already starting from a finished piece. Your job is to rewrite, expand, take it into new territories, respin and create something new.

5. Chunk It

Chunking is a method of writing where you split concepts into small pieces.

• Create bullet-point lists of things you want to say – write the conclusion first
• Create headings
• Write a paragraph of one sentence under each heading

Can you scan the document and understand it?

Although sparse, the article is complete in terms of structure. You then dress up the bare bones by expanding the sentences under the headings, thus turning them into fully formed paragraphs.

6. Write Something Unrelated

Ever get the feeling that everything that can be said about SEO has been said already?

It’s not true, of course, but it feels that way sometimes.

Try researching and writing about a completely different topic area. You might not publish the piece, but by immersing yourself in new areas and concepts, you might gain new insights on your chosen field.

Unfortunately, the SEO niche has become an echo chamber, so try to read outside the area of SEO as much as you can. How about looking at areas such as future gazing, trends, history, economics, business, politics or personal development? Can you relate any of these fields back to SEO and marketing?

7. Don’t Write At All

A lot of people feel the need to publish, even when they have nothing to say.

You often see this on blogs. Some arbitrary decision has been made that the writer must make one post a day, or must Twitter five times a day, or else, or else….

….or else what?

People will leave and never come back?

No one is that important.

I think it’s more likely that readers will appreciate something that is worth their time reading. Time is a scarce thing, so I don’t think writers do readers any favours by churning out, well, typing. Sure, the golden rule of blogging is to keep a blog regularly updated. A good thing, if you can manage it. But this can create a pressure to churn something – anything – out. The reality is that few people can write killer pieces each and everyday.

So rather than write something substandard because you’re not really feeling like it, why not just do something else instead.

I’d be interested to hear your strategies for beating writers block.

Professional SEO Blogger

If a person is a public SEO and their only gig is writing a blog about SEO (and selling client services to newbies) then it can be quite easy to share and not care. If they destroy a technique or someone else’s business to earn a bit of attention who cares? They got the attention, and that can be converted into currency as herds of newbies flock to where the crowd and controversy are.

Which is why some of the sleaziest SEOs publicly promote SEO outing.

They understand that justifying their own business actions helps to legitimize them, even if they are hypocritical scumbags who use their blog to threaten and bully around people with a smaller platform. If you are doing effective SEO but are not paying them on retainer look for them to go out of their way to try to out you and harm your business.

Real SEO Professionals

But if a significant portion of your revenues comes from affiliate and/or ad driven sites which just happen to be ran by SEOs (which Google generally hate, in spite of some claims to the contrary) the care with which you give out information increases. And competition is not always above board.

Business Can Be Dirty

About a month ago a person contacting me about how they were an honest Joe wanted more tips from me, and about a week earlier I noticed that the same person stole something from one of my sites and was trying to compete directly against me using my own content!!!

About a year ago a “friend” claimed he wanted to invest in some of our businesses. He came up with an offer, got most of our information about some of our business ideas, grabbed a hold of some of our business relationships, and is now creating a similar business model competing head on. He claims that his capital was illiquid as for why he did not complete the deal, but he does not realize I know how much he spent on some other assets at the time. And a case of inadequate resources is never an adequate excuse when the person who approaches you names their offer price. They burned 100% of the trust I had in them to the ground. How could I ever trust them again?

A couple years ago one of my sites got dinged with a penalty. While that penalty was in play, another “friend” working on building other businesses told a friend of mine “clone Aaron’s site,” not expecting that sleazy advice would come back to me.

I think about a week ago someone asked me a blog comment along the lines of “what affiliate offers should I promote right now.”

At that level the person…

• is not a paying customer
• is valuing my time at nothing
• is trying to take away time I could spend servicing our paying customers (or attention I could spend promoting our other money making sites)
• AND they want me to give them advice which would increase the competition we faced in our other publishing projects, sacrificing our future revenues

When I wanted to be well known there was value to popularity, but the people who are paying you $0 for your time AND who are asking specific specialized questions about what you are doing are only going to harm your business interests. And so you must say no thanks to answering those types of questions.

Real SEOs Become Guarded – or go Bankrupt!

After a few years of being constantly screwed over by a bunch of snakes and liars you simply decide to share less. Either you do that, or you are simply commoditizing the value of your own time (past/present/future) with each advanced tip you share publicly. Who wants to work harder to lower their current (and future) wages?

The internet marketing field is branded in part as being sleazy largely because a huge segment of the marketplace is. Even if 90% of PPC affiliate marketers were honest, the sleaziest 10% of the market will get 90%+ of the ad impressions because they are willing to go the extra mile to promote scams, bundle reverse billing fraud, use fake celebrity endorsements, create fake brands, etc. Given that search engines are willing to compete against their top advertisers and ad networks are how many internet marketers make their money, it is quite hard to build a sustainable business model unless you create and sell your own products.

And in the SEO market, if you are open and honest you set yourself up for Google penalties, competitors outing you, getting hate from envious competitors, and former “friends” trying to marginalize your business. Let alone contemplating how other third parties might use your public information against you. Not only is Google going out of their way to promote brands, but many of the big brands are further compounding that effect by heavily investing into SEO…and Google typically won’t penalize the brand for doing the same thing that a smaller publisher would get penalized for doing.

Free Specific SEO Advice Worth Thousands of Dollars

Here is a ranking chart…let me tell you how to boost rankings for a site from nowhere to in the game on a bunch of keywords for only a few hundred bucks.

Well if I actually did that, it would just get burned to the ground.

Real SEO Goes Underground

Lots of other smart people have came to the same conclusions, which is why SEO has gone back underground. Yes some of the public information is decent, but more and more misinformation and hype are polluting the industry.

It is just like people writing about social media, but giving you a half-truth about how it organically spreads rather than mentioning what they really do to seed it…and where one rats out the next while selling himself to the highest bidder. As the market matures and SEO returns go from x hundred/thousand percent to y percent you can only expect competitors to act sleazier to gain any competitive advantage they can. After all, who wants to go back to having a regular old job?

Alex Payne, Ryan Sarver myself, and a whole bunch of Twitter enthusiasts ranging from businesses to celebrities will be gathering at a Twitter conference in Los Angeles later next month. If you’re interested in joining us, check it out. The exact date is September 22nd-23rd, 2009, at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. Alex and Ryan work on our platform team without which all the cool Twitter apps we use and love would not be possible. We’re looking forward to sharing information, discussing ideas, and hanging out a bit. If that’s not enough, there’s an open bar on the first night.

Does brand matter? That seems to be a question Google wants to challenge. Eric Schmidt offers quotes like “brands are how you sort out the cesspool”. Google’s search algorithms this year have put more weight on domain authority (which is often associated with brands).

But while Google is telling everyone else to build a brand, Google might be looking to compete head on with brands in many large verticals. According to the NYT:

“LendingTree recently learned that Google imminently plans to launch a loan aggregation service in late August or early September of this year that would compete with LendingTree,” the complaint says. “Lending Tree has also learned that Mortech intends to make its pricing engine services available for use with Google’s new service and will send information related to mortgage loan offers to be displayed to consumer on Google’s Web site.”

The complaint further says that LendingTree has obtained screen shots of a trial version of Google’s service that further indicate that it plans to “provide customers with conditional loan offers in addition to lenders’ contact information.”

Google made a similar test in the UK last year. This is just more reason to develop longtail content and try to build distribution channels outside of search. It seems if you are too successful with search Google may do some self-serving to compete directly against you.

• How many of these services can Google offer before it erodes their Google brand?
• Is your business model easy for Google to clone? What do you do if Google clones it?

 We’re happy to announce a new engagement component for apps: Notification Alerts.  When users receive notifications, they will see a “New App Notifications!” alert on their user home page.

 New alerts are shown just below the main profile image when a user first logs in. Below is a screenshot of how indicators look:

 Clicking the alert takes the user directly to the app notifications section of the mail center:

 Notifications are a great way to keep users engaged (we’ve already seen good numbers for apps using them!)  

 Are your apps using notifications? To learn how to implement notifications (and start showing these indicators,) see our documentation on how to get started with notifications.

 Any feedback?  Let us know below.