Monthly Archives: February 2011

Search Engine Optimization: One Reason On-Line Reviews Stink

Posted on February 28, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Business Change & SEO Consultant — No Comments ↓

I wonder how much Penelope has paid Yelp for good reviews?

OK, I don’t know whether that’s happened. I mention Penelope paying for good reviews on Yelp only because Yelp’s been accused of some underhanded business tricks, and a year ago I went so far as to ask whether Yelp might be in the extortion business. But after the experience I had at Penelope NYC this weekend it’s hard for me not to believe Penelope is doing something dirty with her on-line reviews.

In New York City, one of the sports residents undertake regularly is the search for the perfect brunch. This weekend, my girlfriend and I decided to look for a new place to great the day, and Penelope made the short list of finalists. They sounded pretty and cozy (and they were!) and Penelope was well-reviewed on Yelp (four stars out of five over 500 reviews), well thought of at New York Magazine (nine out of ten, albeit for just four reviews), and Penelope had done well at TripAdvisor (four of five on 70 reviews). Penelope even managed that four-of-five rating by over 800 people on Google. ... READ MORE of this article, Search Engine Optimization: One Reason On-Line Reviews Stink from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (639 words, estimated 2:33 mins reading time)

Tagged with: "search engine optimization", penelope, SEO, yelp
Posted in Search Engine Optimization SEO

Google Unveils The Ultimate SEO Penalty: Invisibility

Posted on February 25, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Business Change & SEO Consultant — No Comments ↓

Yesterday Google turned the Search Engine Optimization world on its head. I had been all ready to write about Axl Rose today, as the erstwhile Guns N’ Roses front-man is the subject of a great article on Business Change in the latest issue of a major business magazine. But Google has changed those plans for me. I’ll be talking about the former ~~Bill Rose~~ … umm … ~~Bill Bailey~~ next week.

Instead, today’s business change is all about Search Engine Optimization. Google has changed the way they process information in their index yet again, and the results are great for users . . . and could spell the end of content farms like Tim Armstrong’s AOL.

As Google’s Matt Cutts outlines in the official Google Blog Post on the matter, unscrupulous SEO Consultants turning out or re-purposing content for no reason other than to drive search engine traffic need to be stopped. Last week’s JC Penney debacle was just the latest and most egregious example of a problem that Google’s been trying to deal with for years. ... READ MORE of this article, Google Unveils The Ultimate SEO Penalty: Invisibility from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (432 words, estimated 1:44 mins reading time)

Tagged with: "search engine optimization", content farm, Google, Matt Cutts, SEO
Posted in business change, Search Engine Optimization SEO

Business Change, Fifteen Pennies At a Time [Square Deal]

Posted on February 24, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Business Change & SEO Consultant — No Comments ↓

I have this little device in my bag of tricks. It’s called a Square, both because that’s its shape and because Square is the name of the company that manufactures The Square.

Oddly, although there’s no web site to be found at square.com, Square the company is at squareup.com.

The Square lets me accept credit cards. In and of itself that isn’t such a big deal; the days when you needed a special merchant account to take credit cards are long passed, with anyone being able get get paid via credit card just by directing people who owe you money to PayPal. What’s great about the Square, though, is that it plugs into the headphone jack on your SmartPhone (Android or iPhone), and with the help of a simple app lets you scan a credit card, anywhere. ... READ MORE of this article, Business Change, Fifteen Pennies At a Time [Square Deal] from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (543 words, estimated 2:10 mins reading time)

Tagged with: Android, business change, credit cards, fifteen cents, iphone, smartphone, square
Posted in business change

“Do What You Promise” Will Make Your SEO Work Better

Posted on February 23, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Business Change & SEO Consultant — No Comments ↓

Last week I talked about a simple way to deliver superb customer service: just do what you promise. I write about customer service quite a bit, and I’m passionate about it; customer service is what makes your business the right one to do business with, and this has only become more true as the Internet has grown in importance in our business lives. And hey, you don’t want to end up on The Answer Guy’s Customer Service Wall of Shame, right?

This morning, I was looking at some of our search engine optimization results, and noticed that the post about doing what you promise has already taken a position of prominence in Google:

I point this out both because, yes, I take whatever opportunity I can to let you know how good a choice it is to let us manage your Search Engine Optimization, and also to teach you a couple of lessons, free. ... READ MORE of this article, “Do What You Promise” Will Make Your SEO Work Better from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (594 words, 2 images, estimated 2:23 mins reading time)

Tagged with: "customer service", "do what you promise", "search engine optimization", SEO
Posted in Customer Service, Search Engine Optimization SEO

When “The Only Bad Press Is No Press” Marketing Becomes Easy

Posted on February 22, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Business Change & SEO Consultant — No Comments ↓

So I look down at my Droid one night last week, and there’s a nasty Tweet directed at me by Nick Denton. Nick is a famously-cantankerous (and very successful) blogger, and owns the Gawker Media family of blogs. Gawker includes in its stable Gizmodo, one of the more influential geek/gadget blogs around.

Or maybe it wasn’t actually Nick Denton, but because the folks who follow the @not_nicknotned Twitter account are Nick Denton’s peeps, I presume that the nasty note I received really was from Denton or someone on his payroll.

The anger I provoked in Nick Denton or someone close to him seems to have been based on my “You Have Been Warned” post from a couple of weeks back. In that post, I called out Gizmodo employee Tony Kaye for his position regarding a comment I had left at Gizmodo. ... READ MORE of this article, When “The Only Bad Press Is No Press” Marketing Becomes Easy from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (367 words, 1 image, estimated 1:28 mins reading time)

Tagged with: "long tail marketing", "search engine optimization", gawker media, marketing, Nick Denton, SEO
Posted in Search Engine Optimization SEO

Don’t Anger Twitter. They Own You. Or Your Words. Or Not.

Posted on February 21, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Business Change & SEO Consultant — No Comments ↓

As you know, there’s this Twitter thing making the rounds of the Intertubes. All the kids are doing it. People have stopped blogging. 140 characters is the limit for most anything you have to say. Which of course means I’ve already gone too far here.

Yikes! Stay with me, please.

I’m not going to do a rant against Twitter. Twitter drives me crazy, but I use it, and I’ve suggested that you need to, also, more than a few times. But last week Twitter fired a shot heard across the Internet when they turned off the services of several of the companies that make Twitter “client” software. Coopetition? What Coopetition?

Maybe you didn’t even realize there was such a thing as Twitter client software. Million of Twitter’s users go directly to the Twitter website to use the Twitter service, and let’s face it; Twitter likes it that way. But Twitter has published an Application Program Interface (API) which is the software that makes it possible to use Twitter without going to Twitter.com. ... READ MORE of this article, Don’t Anger Twitter. They Own You. Or Your Words. Or Not. from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (587 words, 1 image, estimated 2:21 mins reading time)

Tagged with: business change, client software, coopetition, twitter
Posted in business change

Doing What You Promise: Customer Service Simplified

Posted on February 18, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Business Change & SEO Consultant — No Comments ↓

It almost doesn’t matter what business you’re in, what the price tag is, or which part of the business process you’re working on: the easiest and best way to make great customer service happen and happen well is simple: just do what you promise.

Of course, that still leaves the question of what your customers think you’re promising versus what you think you’ve promised, but that one’s beyond your control.

About a year ago, I told you about the way Panera Bread had been botching their free Wi-Fi at the Panera in Roxbury NJ. And I’ll repeat what I said then: I don’t care that Panera’s Wi-Fi is free, and I don’t care that it didn’t work; what matters is that Panera Bread completely mishandled the customer service angle.

Recently, I watched as a friend completed a multi-million dollar business deal through a broker. That’s good news for the broker and my friend; the deal got done and everyone made some money. ... READ MORE of this article, Doing What You Promise: Customer Service Simplified from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (399 words, estimated 1:36 mins reading time)

Tagged with: "business process", "customer service"
Posted in Customer Service

Does Google Forget? On Search Engine Optimization Penalties

Posted on February 16, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Business Change & SEO Consultant — No Comments ↓

With Search Engine Optimization more and more becoming the most important business change you can put in place, you know you’d better do it the right way. And although Google admits they even they don’t know the best way to do SEO, do SEO you must.

Matt Cutts, Google’s head engineer for ferreting out search spam, link spam, or whatever you call it, despite being the guy in charge of making sure that your web site isn’t doing anything dirty, does a series of videos where he explains how SEO works (and how SEO isn’t supposed to work).

In his latest video, Matt addresses “time out” penalties: when you do Search Engine Optimization in a naughty way, one of the penalties Google uses is banning you from search results for some period of time. Cutts doesn’t say what behavior equates to which SEO time ban penalty, but as I pointed out after we ran an experiment effecting Answer Guy Central’s own Search Engine Optimization, I’ve seen the 90-day penalty first-hand. ... READ MORE of this article, Does Google Forget? On Search Engine Optimization Penalties from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (523 words, estimated 2:06 mins reading time)

Tagged with: "search engine optimization", business change, Google, JC Penney, Matt Cutts, SEO
Posted in business change, Search Engine Optimization SEO

Surviving Valentines Day, Groupon And Great Customer Service

Posted on February 15, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Business Change & SEO Consultant — No Comments ↓

Valentines Day is in the rear-view mirror. You’ve spent an inflated amount on flowers, a similarly-inflated price on dinner, and moved on. Your life is the same this morning as it was a couple of days ago, except you’re a bit poorer.

And if you’re one of the many Groupon customers who bought that half-off flowers deal from FTD you’re a bit less angry than you had been.

Groupon is a pretty cool web site, where every day a deal that’s so good it’s hard to pass up floats into view. Aside from Groupon’s recent problems as they got accused of breaking consumer laws (they ought to weather that storm, by the way), things are going fantastically well at Groupon; they actually passed up a $6 Billion acquisition by Google recently.

But when Groupon did a deal with FTD for Valentines Day Flowers and FTD pulled a blatant bait-and-switch, Groupon looked every bit as bad as FTD. ... READ MORE of this article, Surviving Valentines Day, Groupon And Great Customer Service from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (259 words, 1 image, estimated 1:02 mins reading time)

Tagged with: "customer service", groupon
Posted in Customer Service

The E-Myth Revisited, and Revisited, and Revisited

Posted on February 14, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Business Change & SEO Consultant — No Comments ↓

About 18 months ago, my phone rang and on the other end was none other than Michael Gerber. OK, actually it was Michael Gerber’s assistant on the phone, but it turns out that Michael Gerber was requesting a meeting with me. A few days later that meeting came off; we spoke for about an hour.

In case you aren’t familiar with his work, Michael Gerber is one of the most successful business change authors in the world. His E-Myth series of books just keeps expanding and has sold millions of copies. Michael called me to investigate a joint venture with Answer Guy Virtual COO Services, and also to tell me that he hated the black theme of our web site. ... READ MORE of this article, The E-Myth Revisited, and Revisited, and Revisited from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (413 words, estimated 1:39 mins reading time)

Tagged with: business change, delegation, Derek Sivers, E-Myth Revisited, Michael Gerber
Posted in business change, Customer Service

Real World: The AOL / HuffPo / Tim Armstrong Debate Goes On

Posted on February 11, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Business Change & SEO Consultant — No Comments ↓

I was wrong. Twice. Tim Armstrong is a genius, and AOL buying the Huffington Post doesn’t represent the disassembly of journalism in favor of pure search engine optimization.

Just Kidding. I’ll stick with my statement that Tim Armstrong has redeemed himself by buying the Huffington Post, but I’ll also stick with my previous assessment of Tim Armstrong and The AOL Way. And as for the “journalism is dead, welcome to Search Engine Optimization” angle? We’ll stick with that one, too.

I promise to stop writing about Tim Armstrong, Content Farms, and Search Engine Optimization after this piece, by the way.^*

Yesterday, Jason Linkins, an employee at Huffington Post, stepped forward with this blog post, written as an explanation of the journalistic integrity and worth-taking-seriously status of the Huffington Post. As Linkins points out, he writes at Huffington Post, and is paid to do so. He’s hoping you’ll see that statement as logic to refute what I and many others have said this week: everything at Huffington Post is written by people who aren’t paid. ... READ MORE of this article, Real World: The AOL / HuffPo / Tim Armstrong Debate Goes On from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (463 words, estimated 1:51 mins reading time)

Tagged with: "search engine optimization", AOL, Arianna Huffington, business change, SEO, Tim Armstrong
Posted in business change, Search Engine Optimization SEO

Where Business Change, VC, and Piracy Meet: Fred Wilson

Posted on February 9, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Business Change & SEO Consultant — No Comments ↓

Fred Wilson is a very successful venture capital guy. He’s happy to pay for his music downloads and streaming. But Fred Wilson is a music pirate.

Follow that maybe-a-bit-inflammatory link and you’ll see why Fred Wilson is a music pirate. And as long as you aren’t an RIAA employee or working for a record label or other media business you probably agree with Fred on this.

I’ve made this point before here at Answer Guy Central. Make the conversation about music, movies, or whatever; we need better distribution channels.

Now let’s be clear about a few things:

When big companies do distribution agreements with other big companies, the dealings are complicated. They take time to work through and get rolling. So I understand that there’s very little chance of a magic wand being waved so that I never again encounter a rude Blockbuster employee telling me I’m asking for too old a movie (this actually happened to me when in a fit of nostalgia I went searching for “Broadcast News“; it’s all of twenty years old). ... READ MORE of this article, Where Business Change, VC, and Piracy Meet: Fred Wilson from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (273 words, estimated 1:06 mins reading time)

Tagged with: business change, fred wilson, media, pirates, RIAA, venture capital
Posted in business change

AOL + HuffPo = Salvation. But Only for Tim Armstrong

Posted on February 8, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Business Change & SEO Consultant — 2 Comments ↓

Tim Armstrong is starting to look a lot smarter. But he’s making me look smarter, still. Now that AOL has bought The Huffington Post, Tim Armstrong’s plan for World Domination via Content Farm is actually workable. But that’s a bad thing for everyone except Tim Armstrong.

OK, it’s a pretty sweet deal for Arianna Huffington too; the lady is now way-rich even for her, and as head of editorial at AOL is in a position to lead a charge into the new journalism.

Problem is, the new journalism looks pretty ugly.

First, props to Tim Armstrong. I mentioned last week that his plans for AOL’s content farming and making money just didn’t add up, and until the HuffPo deal they didn’t; 7,000 views per article on 55,000 articles per month? How could Tim Armstrong and AOL possibly afford to turn out that volume of content? Adding Huffington Post to the AOL content farm answers that question: the content is free; almost everyone who writes for Huffington Post does so sans compensation. ... READ MORE of this article, AOL + HuffPo = Salvation. But Only for Tim Armstrong from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (447 words, estimated 1:47 mins reading time)

Tagged with: "search engine optimization", business change, journalism, media, SEO, Tim Armstrong
Posted in business change, Search Engine Optimization SEO

“You Have Been Warned”

Posted on February 7, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Business Change & SEO Consultant — 24 Comments ↓

“You have been warned about this before. Please do not leave your link signature in all of your comments. I told you previously that it belongs in your profile.”

The words above belong to one Tony Kaye. Mr. Kaye, from what I can tell, is a low-level employee at Gawker Media’s Gizmodo. I’m happy to report that when you search the Internet for Tony Kaye, you’ll find lots of references for Tony Kaye the 1970s-and-later musician and Tony Kaye the film director, but nary a one to this Tony Kaye.

And that’s as it should be. The other Tony Kayes are far more important than Gizmodo’s Tony Kaye, and besides, Gizmodo’s Tony Kaye is a Search Engine Optimization bad guy and doesn’t deserve to be noticed.

Oh yeah. And I predict that in a few week, “Tony Kaye” is going to point right here, too. ... READ MORE of this article, “You Have Been Warned” from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (643 words, estimated 2:34 mins reading time)

Tagged with: "search engine optimization", "seth godin", business change, Tony Kaye, unreasonable
Posted in business change, Search Engine Optimization SEO