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Monthly Archives: April 2011

AOL, Huffington Post Can Not Be Trusted as Journalists

Posted on April 29, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Business Change & SEO Consultant — No Comments ↓

Kara Swisher, at least for today, is my hero. Click her link. Follow her on Twitter. Kara Swisher has jumped into the ranks of people I trust, and if you read this piece, you’ll see why.

In that piece, Ms. Swisher, a long-time technology journalist who counts among her personal friends Bill Gates and Arianna Huffington, opens up. Kara talks about her finances, her sexual orientation, her relationship with her partner, and a problem at AOL and The Huffington Post that’s just so mind-shatteringly horrific and so absolutely reveals Arianna Huffington, Tim Armstrong, and AOL as being untrustworthy that I had to share it with you. ... READ MORE of this article, AOL, Huffington Post Can Not Be Trusted as Journalists from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (597 words, estimated 2:23 mins reading time)

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Posted in business change

Reuters Fights Spam and Your SEO Efforts, But Does it Right.

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

This morning I found myself reading a post about Search Engine Optimization at Reuters. You know a topic has hit the mainstream when a news service like Reuters picks it up; I suppose the JC Penney SEO debacle mattered even more than I realized.

I decided to comment. I believe in adding value to others’ web sites by adding comments, and while that position might be cynically viewed as self-serving (it adds to the SEO juice pointed at us, and is part of the strategy we employ for our clients as SEO Consultants), well … I truly believe in it.

I’ve been outspoken about this issue. Going back as far at when the Managing Editor at C|Net scolded me for leaving a signature on a comment, I’ve told anyone who listens that if I add value to your web site it’s reasonable to get credit. Lately, I’ve taken an even stronger position, expanding on that statement to add that if I comment and don’t tell readers who I am the value of the comment is reduced for everyone. ... READ MORE of this article, Reuters Fights Spam and Your SEO Efforts, But Does it Right. from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (488 words, estimated 1:57 mins reading time)

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Julien Smith ROCKS, Redux (Happy Birthday To Me)

Posted on April 27, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Business Change & SEO Consultant — No Comments ↓

Julien Smith Rocks. I’ve said it before: The writing partner of how-come-he-gets-all-the-credit Chris Brogan has a knack for telling a story in just the right way, and somehow this just-31-years-old Trust Agent has done it for me. Again.

Read This (not completely safe for work) Piece. Julien Smith just plain makes sense, and although I maintain that swearing in print just isn’t necessary, nor a good long-term big-picture choice, there’s an important message here. It’s one I could do well to follow, and today being my birthday, I’ve decided to gift myself—and you—the opportunity to think about Julien’s words:

Sometimes, You Just Shouldn’t Give a *&#$*!

This isn’t an excuse to be rude, by the way. There are rules that we all need to follow, and neither Julien nor I are suggesting that you should simply go all hard-core about everything or stop paying attention to what other people think. But you can must learn to disregard the noise that starts running through  your head when you spend too much time listening to the noise that originated in everyone else’s. ... READ MORE of this article, Julien Smith ROCKS, Redux (Happy Birthday To Me) from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (230 words, estimated 55 secs reading time)

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USA Today: The New Bastion of Business Change and SEO

Posted on April 26, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Business Change & SEO Consultant — No Comments ↓

It was fully nineteen months ago that I told you about the Washington Post writer who lost his job because his blog wasn’t getting read enough. In Internet time, nineteen months is an eternity. So with suggestions that USA Today is about to start paying their writers more if they get lots of page views on the Internet versions of their columns starting to circulate, it’s time to re-examine the way Internet traffic drives business change.

When the Washington Post story broke, I was mostly critical of the firing. My objection wasn’t a high-and-mighty, pro-labor stance; if anything I went out of my way to chalk it up as business change running its natural course. But because the writer A) probably wasn’t trained in or employing Search Engine Optimization techniques and B) was at the mercy of the Washington Post (not) having done SEO to help determine how much traffic his work received, the firing struck me as unfair. ... READ MORE of this article, USA Today: The New Bastion of Business Change and SEO from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (442 words, estimated 1:46 mins reading time)

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Posted in business change, Search Engine Optimization SEO

Howard Stern, Divorce, and “I Just Want Out” Business Change

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

I’m a big proponent of drawing on your personal life to make the things you say and write in business more “real”. I learned that lesson a long time ago, and although it can sometimes scare people away it serves me well when I do business with folks who know they’re getting the real me.

One of my influences, believe it or not, is radio personality Howard Stern (and he was actually on my mind when I wrote this story about Customer Service at Nissan of Manhattan).

Please don’t get me wrong; Mr. Stern was so honest and so open about his home life while on the radio that it contributed to his divorce. And despite that, given how successful Mr. Stern is I’d be hard-pressed to say he’d done things the “wrong way”. But being open and honest works. It helps get deals done. It helps make business change happen. The difficult task is figuring out just how open you can be every day. ... READ MORE of this article, Howard Stern, Divorce, and “I Just Want Out” Business Change from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (512 words, estimated 2:03 mins reading time)

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I Just Became The Owner of AOL, Google, and GawkerMedia!

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

I am now one of the richest and most powerful men in the world. Watch out Zuckerberg; I’m coming for you.

In the wake of the Huffington Post / AOL merger, creating the biggest content farm in the world for Tim Armstrong to work with, a lawsuit has been filed by freelance journalist Jonathan Tasini on behalf of all the bloggers who have contributed to the Huffington Post without being paid. Not surprisingly, Arianna Huffington says the suit is without merit.

You’d better hope she’s right.

As a guy who deals with employment regulations all the time, both for the company I work for and for our clients, I feel like I have some basis to address this matter. Yes, people have the right to be compensated when they work for you, and yes, it’s true that just because you write a document saying that there’s no employer/employee relationship between you and the people who “add value to your property” doesn’t mean it’s true. But there’s a limit. ... READ MORE of this article, I Just Became The Owner of AOL, Google, and GawkerMedia! from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (388 words, estimated 1:33 mins reading time)

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Posted in business change, Search Engine Optimization SEO

CardCloud: Finally (Almost) the End of Business Cards

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

Jeff Yablon Business Card on CardCloud

This is my business card.

Not terribly fancy. Not customized with a logo or pretty fonts. And it exists only in electronic form.

It’s been about fifteen years since IBM excitedly announced that they were working on technology that would let people exchange business cards automatically, just by shaking hands. That would require that each party have a little device in their pocket to make the exchange of “business cards” happen, and while the technology was developed far enough to make it a reality in a lab, no consumer product ever materialized.

There’s an app for SmartPhones called Bump that sort of does this, by the way. The problem with Bump, though, is that it only works if you and the person you meet are both running the App on your Android or iPhone. No good; business cards need to be device and situation agnostic. ... READ MORE of this article, CardCloud: Finally (Almost) the End of Business Cards from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (326 words, 1 image, estimated 1:18 mins reading time)

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Think All Crappy Internet Content is The Same? Turns Out Not

Posted on April 20, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Business Change & SEO Consultant — No Comments ↓

For a guy who’s written hundreds of software reviews and the occasional piece on theater, I don’t talk very much about reviews. IYM Software Review was a seminal player in on-line content, and I love playing with software, but my duties as a business change agent and Search Engine Optimization Consultant greatly reduce the time I have to play with minutiae.

A couple of months ago, I did have a chance to talk about reviews when I told you about my experience at one of New York City’s many “hot brunch spots”. In this piece on Penelope, I asked whether you could pay Yelp for a good review. ... READ MORE of this article, Think All Crappy Internet Content is The Same? Turns Out Not from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (464 words, estimated 1:51 mins reading time)

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My Thumbs Hurt, But My Psyche Hurts More. STOP TEXTING!

Posted on April 19, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Business Change & SEO Consultant — No Comments ↓

As you know, I Hate Texting.

But I text. I text with my sons, my girlfriend and her daughters, my clients, a couple for whom I play landlord, and pretty much anyone who has my mobile phone number. I’ve gotten to a point where I’m more comfortable getting messages across in 160 characters than I ever thought I would be (feels huge next to Twitter‘s 140, huh?). Nevertheless, I hate texting.

I’ve learned to embrace the positive side of a medium that has always felt like yet another intrusive time and attention waster. Texting has its place.

But this isn’t it:

Last week, an article ran in The New York Times talking about how texting has become not only pervasive, but an excuse for what’s best described as rude behavior; many people have begun texting with others while holding an in-person conversation with someone else. ... READ MORE of this article, My Thumbs Hurt, But My Psyche Hurts More. STOP TEXTING! from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (419 words, estimated 1:41 mins reading time)

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Video Draws Traffic. Should You Use It? Probably Not.

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

I’ve mentioned before how much information I need to process each day. The word “overload” applies, and I suspect you have a similar problem. It raises the very real question of whether blogging is worth the effort.

The answer is “yes”, but you need to understand why you’re blogging. If you aren’t a media outlet with a huge following it better not be about aggregating traffic or selling ads based on the hits to your web site. And besides, The Content Farm Wars are going in an ugly direction.

If it’s purely about satisfying your ego, well, that’s OK, but your ego better not need a huge following; there are an awful lot of blogs out there. ... READ MORE of this article, Video Draws Traffic. Should You Use It? Probably Not. from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (596 words, estimated 2:23 mins reading time)

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Long Tail Marketing: It Keeps Working While You Sleep

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

This is only my second post in the last eight days.  Normally, I speak here five or more times per week. Due to some personal-life changes I’ve had a crazy busy schedule over the last few days, and while the discipline I use to keep writing here hasn’t waned, I simply have not had the time to weigh in very much lately.

It made me nervous. Would my readers disappear? Would the phone stop ringing? Turns out not; traffic to Answer Guy Central is up almost 19% this week compared to last week. Why? Because Search Engine Optimization and Long Tail Marketing work.

Click that Long Tail Marketing link and follow the path it sends you down. You’ll see a disparate collection of articles, all of which are written in such a way as to increase overall traffic and make Answer Guy Central score for a multitude of search terms. How well does that work? As of this morning, Answer Guy Central is made up of 468 articles and 25 website pages, and yet in the last thirty days we’ve attracted search engine attention based on 2600 different search terms. ... READ MORE of this article, Long Tail Marketing: It Keeps Working While You Sleep from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (480 words, 2 images, estimated 1:55 mins reading time)

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Did Ya Hear The One About The Lasek Eye Doctor & The Hooker?

Posted on April 12, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Business Change & SEO Consultant — No Comments ↓

I’ve been too busy to write for a couple of days. This makes me sad.

Not, however, as sad as it made me to hear that I might be responsible for any illegal things my clients do if I handle their Search Engine Optimization. A judge in the US District Court for South Carolina recently ruled that being an SEO Consultant for a company that sells counterfeit merchandise makes you essentially a co-conspirator.

I’m not going to comment in an outraged manner about the legalities of this ruling. In fact, while it’s astonishing that the SEO Consultant was fined twenty times what the company selling the bogus goods had to pay, I think the basic idea behind this ruling has some merit; the Search Engine Optimization company knew it was helping perform an illegal act, and helped, anyway. Sounds even worse than “my buddy robbed that convenience store; I was just in the car and knew nothing about his plans”. The SEO Consultant knew … plenty. ... READ MORE of this article, Did Ya Hear The One About The Lasek Eye Doctor & The Hooker? from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (625 words, estimated 2:30 mins reading time)

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Google To Reign In Android Fragmentation—Maybe

Posted on April 7, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Business Change & SEO Consultant — No Comments ↓

I’ve been an Android user since Verizon, Motorola, and Google got together and released the original Droid. While my SmartPhone has begun feeling slow and bloated as it’s aged and I’ve added app after app to my mobile arsenal of tools, I love my Droid, and I’m a real Android fan.

The problem with Android, though, is that there are too many versions of the operating system in use. Android comes pre-installed on SmartPhones, and while the geeky among us can make changes, the version you get from your carrier is what you’re stuck with.

There’s a piece of this that’s OK. As SmartPhones become more and more powerful and the apps we install on them need more and more of that power, it becomes impractical for people using older phones to run Android operating system updates. I may not be a fan of the way Apple does business or the iPhone, but iOS is iOS, period, and your iPhone just plain works. With Android, there’s plenty of opportunity to make that last statement false. ... READ MORE of this article, Google To Reign In Android Fragmentation—Maybe from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (469 words, estimated 1:53 mins reading time)

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How’s Your Reputation Looking? Do You Want To Fix It?

Posted on April 6, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Business Change & SEO Consultant — No Comments ↓

This week, an article about Reputation Management ran in Nick Bilton’s “Bits” Blog at The New York Times. The article said almost nothing, and I pointed that out.

Ironically, my comment was removed. Here it is was:

Problem is, so far the “reputation management” firms don’t actually manage anything. Reputation.com is a prime example; the good news is that they’re inexpensive, but the bad news is that they do little more than those companies that used to sell you “credit card loss protection”, which when you lost your wallet and needed them to help they’d basically tell you that you would need to contact all your credit card companies.

Bottom line: the information about you that lives on the Internet ABSOLUTELY needs to be managed. But you’re much better off being more proactive a la SEO than reactive in the way that the early reputation management services offer. ... READ MORE of this article, How’s Your Reputation Looking? Do You Want To Fix It? from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (587 words, estimated 2:21 mins reading time)

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Posted in Customer Service, Search Engine Optimization SEO

Are You Blogging? Is Your Competition? Does It Work? Why?

Posted on April 5, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Business Change & SEO Consultant — No Comments ↓

I read a lot.

In fact, it often feels like I read too much, and that there are way too many “experts” clamoring for my attention. I receive hundreds of articles each day in the news reader app I use in my Droid, and many of them are redundant. Hundreds of tweets fly by me, too.

The problem is wading through all that noise. And it’s become such a large problem that often I find the 140-character musings of the 40-odd people I follow on Twitter to be more useful than the more fleshed-out information in my news feed.

This would be the perfect place to tell you about a new service called Summify. Summify looks at all your information sources, applies a software filter, and spits out a short daily digest of what it believes you’ll find important. I’ve been testing Summify for about a week, and if I trusted it a little more it might save me a lot of time. Ironically, thus far Summify is just adding to my information overload. Yikes. ... READ MORE of this article, Are You Blogging? Is Your Competition? Does It Work? Why? from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (606 words, estimated 2:25 mins reading time)

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