Seth Godin has a new ebook, yours for free. What’s the catch? Getting the value out of it is going to take work.
There’s an enormous amount of superstition about what makes some pages rank high while others languish. When you look at the actual figures, though, much of that fades away.
It turns out that the new playing field enforced by the search engines is eliminating many of the shortcuts that used to be effective. In other words, the best way is the long way.
The long way is to create content that is updated, unique and useful. Again and again we see that sites that do all three manage to get more than their fair share of traffic. So, I guess the title of the ebook is a bit misleading. The clicks don’t cost money, but they do take effort. That’s good news for people who have more talent than cash.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing, technology
Ken Montville says:
I like Seth. I read his Blog. I own and have read a couple of his books.
That being said, he does a lot of promotion for his brainchild, Squidoo. Yes, I have a lens on Squidoo and like a lot of templated sites it has some severe limitations. My guess is that it’s one more way to get your name into the cyber universe…or one more way for Seth to convince advertisers that they should shell out some case to be noticed on the site.
Unique, Useful, Updated? Sure. But you don’t necessarily need Squidoo to accomplish the same goal.
December 19, 2007 — 2:45 pm
Ken Montville says:
Oops. Sorry for the typo..
“…shell out some case [cash] to be noticed on the site.”
December 19, 2007 — 2:47 pm
Bob in San Diego says:
Not sure I would go to Seth for advice on search engine rankings since Squidoo is a completely neutered entity when it comes to Google.
The simple truth is that no one can manipulate a search engine who doesn’t have access to the search engine controls. No one can get a page to rank that the search doesn’t want to rank. They are simply algorithms at play.
What you can do is give the algo what it wants, which isn’t the same as what a SE engineer says they want.
Seth’s “long way” is not the best way, because it isn’t complete.
December 19, 2007 — 3:19 pm
Greg Swann says:
> Unique, Useful, Updated? Sure. But you don’t necessarily need Squidoo to accomplish the same goal.
I agree completely. That’s why I clipped the copy the way I did. The point — for me, at least — is that putting in the time and effort will do more for your ROI — search results plus viral benefits — than any SEO games.
December 19, 2007 — 3:23 pm
Missy Caulk says:
Time=Money, the question is which do you have more of. I try to do both. PPC for immediate results, and blog for SEO, but it is not free. Back to Time=Money.
December 19, 2007 — 4:12 pm
Carson Coots says:
“That’s good news for people who have more talent than cash.”
Thats not good news… thats GREAT news. I see first hand daily how a marketing team is hooked on throwing money at problems… spending money for the sake of spending. It’s about time a person gets what they put in, and a small business gets a chance beat the big boys.
December 19, 2007 — 4:23 pm
Greg Swann says:
> Back to Time=Money.
Check. The difference is that time spent building permanent value on a weblog or web site is leveraged: It will continue to pull results, potentially forever.
December 19, 2007 — 4:26 pm
Bob in San Diego says:
Not true. Not even close.
Except it isn’t working that way. The big boys are no longer sticking their heads in the sand. They have more content than the little guy will ever have. Choosing to believe that if you write it, they will come, only serves to emasculate those who listen to this.
December 19, 2007 — 6:43 pm
Ken Montville says:
OK. I did what Seth Godin wanted. I went to his site (increasing his relevance) and I downloaded his “eBook” (I bet Google loves that!).
13 pages of PDF.
3 pages of full page graphics (i.e., no meaningful content),
1 page of a full page aphorism (i.e., somewhat meaningful…but a full page for one sentence?),
1 “dedication page” (an ad for his new book and Squidoo).
a) not even close to being a “book” e or otherwise
b) lots of links to Squidoo pages
So, here’s the Seth Test
1) Unique — possibly but it could have been a longish blog post just as well and it really is just common sense, isn’t it?
2) Useful — OK, sure. It passes this test.
3) Updated — only in the sense that he put it in the form of and “eBook” and that it is posted recently. The concepts seem to have been around for awhile.
All in all, just a big ad for Squidoo.
Don’t get me wrong. I like Seth but sometimes he gets a little bit on my nerves when he pushes this “I am the marketing guru so you must use my products/buy my books”. It seems to be working well for him. Very well.
Can I use “Nothing succeeds like success” as a UUU blog post? 🙂
December 20, 2007 — 6:36 am