Paris Blog » Search Engines

Google is Skynet. Search Suggest Opinions

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 11:45:59 +0000

To know what the world is searching for must be amazing. Search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing are in that position but they’re not exactly sharing those insights. Well, except if you do a little guess work and leverage their keyword research or keyword suggest tools. For example, the suggest-as-you-type features that all the major search engines now offer can provide some interesting insight “on the fly” into what people are searching for. For quick keyword research, Aaron Wall has a Google Suggest tool for keyword suggestions that adds more options and insight. There’s some entertainment value to this as well. Start typing in “my girlfriend” or “my boyfriend” and you’ll see what I mean. Along those lines, let’s see some examples for each major search engine using the syntax, “Google is “: And what about Yahoo? Or Bing? So, we have “Google is Skynet”, “Yahoo is better than Google” and “Bing is not Google”. It’s amusing and insightful at the same time. As the clear market dominator, Google queries offer a peek into searchers’ perception of Google as a powerful force that can incite polarizing opinions. Yahoo as a long standing second in the market brings about more functional phrases and just one indication of passion for the brand. While Bing shows some negativity, the good news is that they are inciting reactions from people. Better to make friends and enemies than for no one to notice you at all. By the way, Google recently announced the addition of localized search suggest and spelling correction to the suggest features that searchers might find handy. © Online Marketing Blog , 2010. | Google is Skynet. Search Suggest Opinions | One comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

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Google is Skynet. Search Suggest Opinions

Top 5 Search Terms at Online Marketing Blog – Including Pirates

BlogPostman — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 12:00:15 +0000

Here on Online Marketing Blog , we post a tremendous amount of insight on organic search optimization and content marketing related topics each month. But how about the site search tool on our own blog? Who’s searching for what, and why? And what are they finding? Mining the site search report from Google Analytics can be very useful since it’s an indication of what our visitors want to read more of. Here are the six most popular site search terms for Online Marketing Blog including our favorite, “pirates”. 1. Facebook With Facebook taking off as a top channel for social media marketing, it’s no wonder that them comes up as our leading search query. Just consider the recent numbers : Facebook boasts more than 400 million active users 50% of Facebook users log on during any given day More than 20 million Facebook users become fans of pages every day A quick Online Marketing Blog site search for “Facebook” yields recent posts on tools for sharing microcontent , insight on social media advertising and how to leverage channels like Facebook to take advantage of real-time search . 2. Twitter Speaking of popular social media marketing channels, Twitter takes to No. 2 spot for most common site searched on Online Marketing blog. Twitter may only have less than 106 million users compared with Facebook’s 400 million. But consider how quickly Twitter is growing and how active its users are: New users sign up at the rate of 300,000 per day 180 million unique visitors visit the site every month Users post an average of 55 million tweets a day So what can you get with a search for Twitter on Online Marketing Blog? Learn more about the role of news in blended search or find ways to electrify your social network . 3. Books Who says print is dead? “Books” turns up as our fourth most popular search term. Here on the Online Marketing Blog, we’ve posted reviews of some of latest most intriguing marketing online marketing books like “The Art of SEO.” Plus, we’ve conducted exclusive interview with some of the hottest marketing authors out there, such as David Meerman Scott , author of “The New Rules of Marketing.” We’ve even polled our readers on the best available books on SEO . 4. Social Media These days, social media isn’t just a hot topic for B2C marketers looking to connect with consumers on sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. Social media is equally as relevant in the B2B world. In fact, 91% of business buyers read blogs, watch user generated video and participate in other social media, according to Forrester Research. A “social media” search on Online Marketing blog pulls up posts on setting and measuring goals for business blogging , which social media sites are the biggest time wasters and the risks of sponsored blog posts . 5. Email Marketing Contrary to predictions, RSS never did replace Email. Social media and network use and status updates or microblogging haven’t “killed” the popularity of email either. In fact, there have been reports that Email use is actually up. So it certainly makes sense that our readers are looking for more information on email marketing. A search for “email marketing” reveals some insight posts including, “ 5 Top Email Marketing Tactics for 2010 “, 5 Tips for Effective Email Copywriting ” and “ How Social Media & Email Marketing Boost Customer Reach “. And Finally: Pirates! Few things seem less relevant to Online Marketing Blog than pirates. Yet somehow it’s one of the most searched terms on the blog. So what do pirates have to do with Internet marketing and Web 2.0? There is an answer in this social media marketing post, we promise. Hint: It has to do with Dave McClure. Are you analyzing the top search phrases on your web site? Are you using that insight to guide your site content? © Online Marketing Blog , 2010. | Top 5 Search Terms at Online Marketing Blog – Including Pirates | No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

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Top 5 Search Terms at Online Marketing Blog – Including Pirates

5 Ways to Leverage Real Time Search in Your Online Marketing Mix

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 12:11:32 +0000

Since late 2009 when Google introduced real time search, the concept has gained a lot of attention. Today, real time search is at the top of the priority lists for all the major search engines – Google, Bing and Yahoo!. As part of the new technology, Google is combines live updates from sites like Twitter and FriendFeed with the latest news headlines and blog posts in search results. For web searchers, real time search means the ability to discover breaking news the minute it’s happening. For marketers, it presents a whole host of opportunities to increase online visibility. Here, we’ve provided five ways to leverage real time search in your online marketing efforts. 1. Develop the type of content that supports real time SEO With real time search, frequently publishing online content becomes a must. Try incorporating these three types of content to support both traditional and real time SEO programs: Tweets and Facebook fan page updates: Micro content from social sites now has the ability to appear in search results. It’s quick and easy to frequently post Tweets and Facebook fan pages updates, so both should play a big role in your real time SEO content strategy. Blog posts: Blogging presents the opportunity to help your content rank and show thought leadership at the same time – since blog posts can offer more valuable information than micro content. Optimized press releases: By optimizing press releases and submitting them through authoritative newswires, you can help your content achieve high rankings. 2. Mobilize your fan base Creating a core group of brand advocates is important for a number of reasons. They recommend your products and services to their friends and family, defend your reputation in times of trouble and are more likely to adopt future products and services you introduce. Now add one more benefit to the list: Brand advocates – particularly authoritative ones – can link to your content to help keep in the real time stream. In addition, brand advocates who are active on social sites like Twitter can create their own content about your company that can appear in real time search results. 3. Know what’s hot in the news With real time search, it’s important to recognize both what users are searching for online and what they’re discussing via social channels – at this very minute. Create frequently updated content that speaks to the latest topics and trends, and is optimized for the latest search terms. A variety of tools exist to help monitor search and conversation trends: Google Trends : Use this free tool to find the hottest topics and hottest searches in Google Social Mention : Determine the strength, sentiment and reach for terms used throughout the social web, including blogs, microblogs, social networks, video sites and news sites BlogPulse : Find the top blog posts, key phrases, new stories and more from across the search universe or related a specific topic Delicious : See the types of content that goes wild across the social web Trendistic : Learn trending topics in Twitter over the last 24 hours, week, month or more (see image below) Trendistic shows “online marketing” trends over the past 30 days. 4. Time your content promotion efforts wisely Give your content an extra boost by monitoring when blog posts, articles and other online content are indexes in Google News or Google Blog Search. Then ensure tweets, Facebook fan page updates and other social content promotions are timed right after the content is indexed. Doing so will help you take advantage of every opportunity to appear in real time search results. 5. Optimize your web site and online content for mobile technologies Real time search is relevant on many mobile devices, including Android and iPhone devices. So Web site optimization for mobile technologies becomes even more important. Consider these few mobile SEO tips: Limit the use of images Keep the design simple and clean Test to ensure your site appears as it should across various mobile devices The bottom line is, it’s crucial to take advantage of every real time search opportunity that comes around. Remember that these opportunities won’t stick around for long – presenting themselves quickly and then disappearing. It is real time, after all. Have you implemented real time SEO into your online marketing mix? Tell us what best practices you’ve found so far. © Online Marketing Blog , 2010. | 5 Ways to Leverage Real Time Search in Your Online Marketing Mix | No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

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5 Ways to Leverage Real Time Search in Your Online Marketing Mix

What will it take to make Twitter great?

Thu, 08 Apr 2010 14:46:50 +0000

It’s amazing how quickly our ideas of convenience change. Think about the early days of the Internet: Remember dial-up modem noises and sluggish connections? Remember those clunky, almost paleolithic Web pages? Remember how maddeningly useless early search engines were? I don’t know about you, but I was totally blown away by it all. Sure, it could tough to navigate, but using the Web was so much more convenient than heading to the mall, the library or the post office to run errands that I didn’t even notice all the technology’s many shortcomings. Would I go back to that world now? Not a chance. Now think about Twitter. Sure, it’s all kinds of convenient and useful, but it’s filled with little imperfections we’ve trained ourselves not to notice. In the lead story of today’s SmartBrief on Social Media , Fred Wilson does an admirable job of reminding us of all the little hoops we jump through just to make the service work the way it should. Wilson is calling for a killer app to take the network to the next level. But I think first we need to get a network that recognizes what level its users are actually on. We don’t need a killer app. We need a killer network. Friendster gave way to MySpace, which passed the torch to Facebook. Each of these services improved upon the stability, popularity and feature set of its predecessor. So how is that Twitter has stood unchallenged on the field of micro-blogging for more than three years? The platform is unreliable, ungainly and seems patently uninterested in making life easier for its users. Why is it still dominant? How much longer can that last? The obvious answer is say that Twitter’s user base is too large. But then, no one thought a college-only network would someday unseat MySpace. My guess is that whatever unseats Twitter will come from a similar niche market. Wherever it comes from, it will build on the mistakes and the omissions Twitter has made. Users shouldn’t have to rely on killer apps to get the most out of a platform; the platform needs to evolve to meet the users’ needs. If Twitter hasn’t addressed its own shortcomings by the time competition does pop up, it may never get the chance. What do you think? Is Twitter lacking a killer app? Does the network need a total overhaul? Would users be better served by a competing network? Image credit, kovacevic via Shutterstock

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What will it take to make Twitter great?

Social Media Seminars Sacramento CA Thunder Marketing Vince W Baker – The Sacramento Press

BlogPostman — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 00:10:49 +0000

The Sacramento Press Social Media Seminars Sacramento CA Thunder Marketing Vince W Baker The Sacramento Press These classes are designed to teach people how to use sites such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn , Naymz..etc...to dominate the search engines like ...

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Social Media Seminars Sacramento CA Thunder Marketing Vince W Baker - The Sacramento Press

SESNY: 5 Tips To Optimize Press Releases For Search

BlogPostman — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 11:58:48 +0000

TopRank Online Marketing has been working with PRWeb providing SEO consulting services starting in 2008. PRWeb was founded in 1997 to help small businesses and communications professionals leverage the web to share their news directly with the public. As part of this process PRWeb lead the way for the “direct-to-consumer” press release, enabling companies to communicate their news directly to customers, prospects, analysts and the media. During the past decade, PRWeb has reshaped the traditional press release and changed how companies large and small distribute news. Innovations of PRWeb over the years include: Search engine optimization (SEO) for press releases to increase the visibility of news in search engines like Google and Yahoo! Social bookmarking tools like trackbacks and bookmark links to take advantage of the explosion in social networking Really Simple Syndication (RSS) to increase the distribution potential of news and built the industry’s largest RSS network Allowing customers to include podcasts along with their news to increase the impact of their news release The “Feature Video” allowing customers to leverage the video content from popular sites like YouTube to bring their news to life Meg Walker, Director of Online Marketing for PRWeb lead a session discussing how to optimize press releases to gain the strongest visibility in both search engines and media. 1. Meet audience demand Prior to drafting a release, you need to understand what your audience is demanding. Meeting audience demand is integral to accomplishing your press release visibility objectives. There are many times you don’t realize there may be a hook in to reach your target, and understanding audience demand allows you to tap into it. The steps to meet audience demand include: Knowing your audience – what is it potential prospects and media are interested in? In what tone should they be spoken to? Do they appreciate a certain angle over another? Understanding is key and should drive the strategy behind the release. Be relevant – more than just understanding your audience, give them content that is both relevant and timely. By doing this, you’ll create the highest propensity your news gets picked up, shared and passed on. Satisfy customer demand – to know what the demand is, first research popular trends in search engines and stay on the pulse of your industry. By creating content that is related to hot topics you can create far more visibility for your releases. Staying up to date, informed and on the pulse of your customers is vital to connect with them through press releases. 2. Stay focused By keeping your keywords and topics focused, your release can rank better in search engines and resonate more with media. As you are writing releases, remember you are writing about one topic per release . By segmenting the message or trying to say too much at once, you dilute your key points and take a risk prospects and media will walk away without taking next steps or remembering the point. Keep it simple, focused and impactful. 3. Use images for search Images can increase the click through rate on releases in both regular and news search by 15 – 25%. It’s a simple step, but can’t be stressed enough. Additionally, using images creates more traction in media – journalists and bloggers both love images as it helps them tell their story. At PRWeb, we have seen releases that used 3 images generate more than 50 articles. We also find that many people are discovering images via image search, which then draws them back not only to the release, but to the customer web sites. Because PRWeb hosts press releases forever, your images can continue to receive both organic and image search traffic indefinitely. 4. Use videos to engage visitors By using video in news releases, we have seen up to a 500% increase in time on pages. As the web shifts to a rich media experience, bloggers, media and end users are becoming more accustomed to video. In the future, it may be common that video is included with releases. But since today it is not as frequently used, it’s a chance to make your news stand out. 5. Optimize your release Anchor text links – use 3 One to homepage – direct visitors directly to your company website. One to product page – send media and consumers directly to the product they are reading about. One to blog post – this presents an opportunity to speak to readers in a less formal fashion. With social web users and digital influencers continually expecting social content, a press release presents a great opportunity to spark interest in your social content. Alt-tag – an alt tag helps your images get discovered in search engines – all release images should be tagged appropriately. URL Keyword – top keywords can be used as part of the URL string, so be sure and include those during the release selection process. PRWeb allows you to customize this. Description Tag – add a keyword rich and compelling description tag (on PRWeb, that will become the meta tag). Title of release – the title of the release will become the title tag of the page, which is a vital element of your on-page optimization. If you have a target phrase, ensure your phrase leads the title of release. You can learn more about PRWeb at their website or follow them on Twitter . © Online Marketing Blog , 2010. | SESNY: 5 Tips To Optimize Press Releases For Search | 9 comments | http://toprankweb2.mn2.visi.com

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SESNY: 5 Tips To Optimize Press Releases For Search

5 Ways to Weave LinkedIn Into Your Marketing Mix

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:30:00 +0000

From Facebook to Twitter to You Tube, there’s no limit to the number of social networking sites that can be leveraged to interact with customers and prospects, and build positive brand awareness. LinkedIn , however, stands apart from the crowd. The roots of popular sites like YouTube and Facebook are founded on the entertainment side of things. But since its creation, LinkedIn has been geared toward the professional business crowd. If you haven’t already incorporated LinkedIn into your online marketing mix, consider the latest statistics: LinkedIn has more than 60 million members A new member joins LinkedIn approximately every second Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members Get started with a LinkedIn marketing strategy today with these five tips: 1. Build a Network, Then Start a Group Getting started with a LinkedIn marketing strategy involves two important steps, the second of which is dependent on the first: Create a personal account and build a network of contacts. Reach out to customers with whom your business has a solid relationship – those who truly know your company and its products or services. Ask them to write recommendations for your company, which will appear in your profile. And don’t forget to ensure all employees are part of the network as well. Once your personal account is setup, create a group for the brand. By creating a group for your brand, you’ll be able to maximize reach beyond your network. Within the brand group, you can start discussions, share news, post jobs and create subgroups. 2. Make the Most of Your Profile For the LinkedIn community, your profile will be this first item they see, so treat it as you would any landing page. To make the most of your profile: Hyperlink using keywords. Include relevant URLs in your profile, and use links with anchor text. For example, instead of “My Blog,” use a keyword to describe it such as “SEO and Online Marketing Blog.” (see image below) Use keywords in descriptions. That includes the summary, specialties, experience and all other description categories. Include an image in your profile. LinkedIn, after all, is a social networking channel. So add as many personal touches as possible to maximize engagement and put a face to the brand. Caption: Include blog or website links in your profile using anchor text. Include links in your LinkedIn profile using anchor text. 3. Leverage Third-Party Applications Today, there are a host of third-party applications available to help you make the most of your LinkedIn activity. For example: Box.net : Add links to files like resumes and marketing kits Slideshare : Share business presentations and demos with your network Company Buzz : Monitor messages sent out on Twitter about your brand or other subjects TripIt : See where members of your network will be travelling to and when you’ll be in the same city For an upcoming trip to Dallas, my contacts that will also be there are identified. 4. Update and Engage Frequently Think of LinkedIn marketing efforts as you would blog, Twitter or Facebook marketing efforts: The more activity and interaction, the better the results. To consistently engage with your network: Sync blog posts to your profile with tools like Blog Link or WordPress LinkedIn Application Frequently update your profile with the LinkedIn status feature, much like Facebook status updates Leverage the LinkedIn Question and Answer function – participate in others’ questions and ask your own 5. Promote Your Profile In order to expand your network, LinkedIn marketing efforts – like anything else – must be promoted in other channels. Include a link to your profile on your website and blog, in individual blog posts, in email signatures and even on business cards. Be sure to optimize your profile for important and relevant keywords. Allow enough of your profile to be public so search engines can rank that content accordingly. These tips, of course, are just the tips of the iceberg when it comes to LinkedIn marketing tactics. What specific tactics have you found successful for marketing on LinkedIn?

How to get the balance right – nebusiness.co.uk

BlogPostman — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:48:21 +0000

How to get the balance right nebusiness.co.uk We're talking blogging, Facebook advertising, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and more. Social media marketing is great because search engines love frequently ... Faster more convenient payment options in Malaysia with MEPS FPX for Google's ... ADOI magazine all 2 news articles

How Journalists Use Search & Social Media

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 16:22:29 +0000

TopRank ran a survey of journalists, reporters and editors on their use of search and social media in 2008. We found 91% use search engines like Google to do their job. 64% use social networks. Published in Jan 2010 , a George Washington University and Cision survey of journalists reports 89% use blogs and 65% use social networks to research stories. As prep for a presentation I’m giving Thursday at Online Marketing Summit on the intersection of SEO, Social Media and PR , I reached out to a few local journalists and industry news contacts and asked for examples of how they used search engines or social media to do story research. Newsrooms are cutting staff and reporters and editors are hard pressed to do more with less. Tools like search engines and social media make available a tremendous amount of information in real-time. The news world is a world of deadlines and it would seem the use of search and social networks to source experts or people/companies that fit a story angle would be ideal. Even respected news organizations like the BBC are encouraging their journalists to embrace social media . This kind of insight is very helpful to understand how companies can make their news content more easily discovered via social web participation, content and optimization. Why is that important? According to TV News Reporter Jason DeRusha , “Private business does a horrible job cataloging their expertise in a manner that’s search engine friendly. This is a real opportunity, as journalists become much more crunched for time, and use search as quick way to identify local experts.” Here are a few examples of how journalists use search engines and social media tools to connect with story subjects. Not all of them are business situations, but are helpful as feedback on where to spend time creating, optimizing and socializing news content. I begin every day at search engine. It doesn’t matter what story I’m working on, it always starts with a search. I work on a segment called “Good Question,” so I often type my question directly into Google, and see what comes up. When searching for local experts, I’ll often take the subject matter, tack on the word “Minneapolis” and add the word “expert.” For example, last week I did a story on whether cursive handwriting was vanishing because of e-mail. I typed “Minneapolis handwriting expert” into Google, and found several local handwriting analysts. Next, I searched for private schools (because public schools are often challenging to get permission to shoot at) and found the school we used for our story . For my story on whether we get enough Vitamin D in Minnesota , I searched “Vitamin D” “Minneapolis” and “expert.” If a local company showed up very high with their own expertise in those results, I would have called that company. Jason DeRusha, WCCO (CBS) TV News Reporter Often times, the use of search engines and social media sites intersect. Here is an example provided in our initial survey: I was writing a column about the planned partnership between Google and Yahoo. I tracked down potential sources first using Google and LinkedIn, and came across a white paper prepared by a senior fellow at the American Antitrust Institute. While I could not easily find an e-mail address, I went to Facebook where I located him, then sent a message. He replied and we followed up with a phone interview. Marketing Industry Journalist In some cases, news publications also run real world events. Example: iMediaConnection has ad:tech, MediaPost has OMMA, Search Engine Watch has Search Engine Strategies. Here’s some great insight from MarketingProfs on how they’ve used social media tools for finding writers, case studies and speakers: We do use social networks extensively to find key writers or speakers for our events or publications. I also use it to monitor key issues to cover in our newsletters, seminars, research, and so on: Social networks are a great way to take the “pulse” of a topic. What are people talking about? Is this a hot-button issue or not? For events: Social media is integral to programming the agenda. We always distribute the proposal form for potential speakers via various social channels (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn). Same for our case study collections: We mine for good stories by asking Twitter/FB/LI. For example, “Who has a good story on social media ROI?” We always harvest an abundance from this “social Google,” open-ended approach. Once we have harvested leads from those channels, our seminar programmer or writers can follow up via email or DMs, whichever. LinkedIn is a great place to mine client-side folks. It’s especially valuable for us as we try to include a significant percentage of client-side speakers at our events, and often client-side folks are harder to uncover/book. And obviously, our case studies always feature client-side folks. We also use Idea Scale to crowdsource topic ideas for our event agenda. We use Flickr all the time to find creative common graphics for use on the blog (or for the contributed pieces I do for AMEX Open Forum); we use YouTube and Slideshare to see possible speakers or presenters in “action.” Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs Sometimes the information found isn’t what companies or individuals would want a reporter to find: I routinely track down potential interviews by sending out a Tweet. Most recently, we came across a number of Toyota car owners who fell under the recent recalls. It would have been very difficult to find those people in a short amount of time without this type of technology. Just today I was feeding and getting information through Twitter on the house explosion in Edina that helped our crews navigate around the situation and get better pictures of the breaking news. Also, I used YouTube to find video of a man who is being investigated by a Ponzi scheme by the Secret Service. It turns out he had many videos of himself giving sales pitches to potential customers. We used the video on the air where otherwise we would have never known what the man looked like. We often use Facebook to get photographs of crime suspects and or victims. And police investigators tell me Facebook is one of the first places they check when investigating someone involved in a crime. Chris O’Connell KSTP (ABC) TV News Anchor/Reporter Sometimes it’s not your content that gets discovered, but a connection to someone else that leads to being found: This fall I was working on a feature about ethnic weddings in the Twin Cities, for our Weddings magazine. I was looking for recently married couples of various cultural backgrounds. I posted a query on Facebook to my recently married or engaged friends. Their responses led me to three of the five couples interviewed (via email contacts). After initial email correspondence, I interviewed the couples by phone and in person. Senior Editor, Mpls.St.Paul magazine I think this quote from Chris O ‘Connell sums it up nicely: “social networking has changed the way we do business and how we are able to get news and sources faster when deadlines matter.” We’ll be conducting a new survey on Journalist Use of Search soon and will be posting more detailed data on how stories are sourced, tools used, preferences of types of information and more. If you are attending #OMS10 be sure to check out our session on Social Media, Search and Public Relations at 3:15 . It will be a very informative and engaging set of presentations from: David “dk” Klein, Dana Todd, Rand Fishkin, myself and moderator duties handled by Sally Falkow. Does your company incorporate news optimization as part of your online marketing and content strategy? Do you optimize and promote news content differently than marketing content? Do you track whether the media finds your content via search or social media?

Open Letter to Blog Comment Spammers

BlogPostman — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 19:44:07 +0000

Photo credit: freezelight Dear “SEO Consulting Services New York” and you too “Starting A Home Business”, I have an admission to make: I don’t like comment spam. You are comment spammers. Our readers don’t like you. I don’t like you. You’re not welcome here. Our Akismet filter has been doing a good job of filtering out spam and our commenting filters within Disqus catch most of the non-automated spammy comments. But they still persist. Most people active online have real names (obvious I know, but stay with me). If they don’t use their real name, it’s popular to use a “handle”. I can see that it might be reasonable for some people to have a few different handles, but for the most part, singular identities are the norm. Where the “identity crisis” comes is the persistent and pervasive use of what I consider, spammy handles in blog comments. Doing this is as old as blogging itself. It started with legitimate beginnings though. For example, I used to put “toprank” in the name field when making comments on other blogs since that’s my handle. Today, I just use my own name. Apparently, there are a large number of people named, “internet marketing minneapolis” or “insurance leads”. I don’t think so. We “no follow links” within our blog comments due to abuse by SEO spammy types. Actually, most of them are not professional SEO’s at all. Pro SEO’s would not be so obvious and stupid as to blatantly use keywords as a person’s name when the links are no followed. It’s a waste of time. So, to “internet marketing india” and “buy viagra and ciallis here”, I’m pretty sure those aren’t your names or your handles. My position with this blog is that if you opt NOT to identify yourself as a person, then the comment has no place here. My preference is for readers to use real names. When people do that, their comments also tend to be more thoughtful, intelligent and useful to other readers. Additionally, when people use a handle or nickname to reference themselves online, it’s usually a good comment. However, with the popularity of Twitter, most people use their Twitter handle which is often a one-word name anyway. I simply draw the line with people (or bots) that insist on using keywords they want to rank for in search engines as their “Name” in our blog comments. Same goes for those that decide to use a two word name that then decide to link to a sales letter for some kind of “automate all your online marketing” software. We’ve published a blog comment policy several years ago, but after adding Disqus as our comment management system, we cannot link to it in the same way. However, there should be a link at the end of each blog post now so readers can our guidelines for commenting. After blogging for 6 years, I’m not ambiguous in my thinking about this. I’d be curious to know if readers think this is extreme, but I have no problem saying that I’m pretty firm in this policy and not buying in to the argument that there’s an implied reciprocation that should happen when people comment that involves a keyword link in exchange. If you’re a long time blogger, what decisions have you made about a blog comment policy?