29 replies to this topic

[RPS Inc.]

Hi All,

As our SEO continues on our website, I am looking at different ways to bring in more traffic and popularity to our company pages.

Obviously a blog can be very beneficial for SEO and traffic purposes if done correctly, but what I am seeing is that it is very easy to develop popular (mind if i use the term, high page rank, which i know doesnt mean much) through myspace and other established sites like blogger.

Does anyone here create business profiles on these types of sites to help create additional links to their company pages? At this point, we dont have the resources to continously be blogging, but we can always start something that is updated weekly.

Thanks

[qwerty]

A blog doesn't have to be updated on a daily basis, although I guess it's fair to say that if you can keep the quality of your posts on a high level, more posting is better. I don't have any experience with MySpace yet, but I think I will soon. They have a special section there for the field of one of my clients, so we're going to be setting him up there soon.

[Michael Martinez]

Using a third-party blog service almost guarantees you traffic, since they send visitors to their own bloggers on a random basis.

I have found some very creative blogs on both services. MySpace probably allows you to personalize your site more easily than Blogger (which I use) but I think that Blogger has a more professional demeanor.

[RPS Inc.]

Thanks for the replies.

Is there a strong business community on MySpace? I would think if you could create a "friends network" of businesses, you would be able to increase your pages popularity. With your myspace page optimized for your own services (or that of a client), the links u put on the Myspace back to your own website should pass as a quality link would you think? Do you think Google has made special restrictions for website's like myspace?

Is there any other websites with similiar services you would suggest?

[SearchRank]

I set up a MySpace profile for our company a couple months ago and am currently testing to see what kind of marketing possibilities it might bring but haven't been on the space long enough yet to confirm anything.

This and I also feel that all businesses will eventually have a MySpace in the same way other entities are doing such as musical artists/groups, movies/television shows, etc.

[RPS Inc.]

I think MySpace has alot of potential. I see some member pages sporting a PR of 7. Once google indexes you, i cant see why links to your home page would not help boost you in some way.

You can build your page up in popularity but participating with comments etc in the community.

[Michael Martinez]

It's not the PR that matters. It's the quality of traffic you get.

What could screw things up for all MySpace users is if the service sells out to someone. I think that will probably happen.

[MrPenn]

NewCorp already owns myspace. Who else could they possibly sell out to?

[RPS Inc.]

Who else.

Google

[torka]

From what I've read, the demographic of the typical MySpace user is primarily teen/young adult (18-24). I would think if that's your market it would be important to be there, given the reach and WOM the site has in that group.

Otherwise, I'm not so sure. Not that I think it's bad to be in there; I'm just not sure the benefits are a sure thing if you target, say, a more (ahem) "mature" demographic. For me, the jury is still out on that one.

--Torka

[Michael Martinez]

I think Microsoft would get a bigger boost out of MySpace. But basically you have three players in a buying game like that: Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Rupert Murdoch (don't count too closely).

[webbpdx]

Gah MySpace! What a bunch of mindless garbage. The target audience is the problem with this marketing avenue. Unless your audience is a bunch of disenfranchised high schoolers. Sorry to be so harsh, but I tried being active in their forums and was quickly turned off by the atmosphere.

I went over to tagworld and have been doing marketing there with more success. They even got a nice little ebay-esque auctioning system thats pretty active over there. Since it uses a Web 2.0 approach, the members seem to be more tech/web saavy, and usually an older crowd as well. Nearly 2 million members and growing every day.

With all the drive-by message spamming and bad press surrounding MySpace along with how buggy the system gets sometimes, I think it's days might be numbered.

[arteworks]

RPS I highly recommend blogger. Google owns it, and they spider all the blogs frequently, so it's one of the quickest ways I know to get indexed by Google if you are a new site.

Also, I believe that regular blogging satisfies google's hunger for fresh content. I call it the "freshness algorithm". I know I'm setting myself up here, but that is what I call it when I sell it. Makes it seem really important and technical.

Again, as the others have said, it is important not to fill it with useless ramblings. If you can write once a week on topics which are of general interest in your field, you are creating rich, quality content that users will want to link to.

Many people say "I'm not a writer", but the fact of the matter is that most any successful business person is an expert in something - namely, the field in which they do business. People are hungry for content, so if you write about it, this is a great way to build a community of interested individuals and relevant links.

Also, blogger comes with an Atom XML feed ready to go, which can be easily converted to RSS as well.

[Michael Martinez]

It takes Google anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes to start showing my blog entries in the blogsearch results. It takes 2-3 days for them to show up in the main search index.

I use blogger.

My partner is setting up a blog for me on one of our domains, so I'll get to see how quickly Google and Ask track that one. Ask doesn't index my blogger posts as fast as Google, but it still does a pretty good job of finding them.

[qwerty]

It takes Google anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes to start showing my blog entries in the blogsearch results. It takes 2-3 days for them to show up in the main search index.

I use blogger.

We're getting similar results using Movable Type. Of course we send out lots of pings every time we publish, but I think that at this point it's the fact that we're posting a couple of times a day on average that explains why Google's picking up our content so quickly.