One of the best posts I’ve read all year: The Future of Communications – A Manifesto for Integrating Social Media into Marketing by Brian Solis. Yes, it’s long. Yes, it starts a bit slow. But you’ll be glad you read the whole thing very carefully.

And on a somewhat related note, but this one specifically as it relates to blogging, David Meerman Scott tells How to convince your boss to let you start a corporate blog.

I’ve had the pleasure of chatting with Larry Sullivan via e-mail a few times in recent months, often about local search issues. So, it’s nice to see his blog is up and running and going strong. Have a look at Local Biz Bits and subscribe to the feed. (Larry: may I be so bold as to suggest you drop the Snap.com link previews?)

This is pretty creative, and I’m willing to bet it works, too. On copyblogger, Michael Stelzner writes How to Improve Your Image by NOT Delivering. If you do any white paper or similar type of subscription-based lead generation, it’s worth your time.

Here’s something practical: Search Engine Journal shares a couple coupon codes to save money when submitting to the Aviva Directory and Best of the Web directory (both of which are on my directory submission list).

Two good ones this week from GrokDotCom: Start with Holly Buchanan’s Why Testimonials Do (and Don’t) Work, and then check out Start Multivariate Testing: 7 Critical Questions from Bryan Eisenberg.

I liked Stoney’s “Small is Beautiful” column on SEL this week: Stepping Stones Of User Conversions: A Step-By-Step Guide. I’ve got the next two weeks in that column and hope to come up with something as good.

I know a lot of small businesses are doing PPC, but I’m not sure how many here in the U.S. are doing PPC in other countries, or considering it. If you are, have a look at Pat Schaber’s Tips for Launching Paid Search Campaigns in Different Countries.

I’ve done a couple posts recently about the sometimes negative impact the Internet and technology has on some small businesses. Anita Campbell writes about The Trend of Small Retail Moving to the Web — how some small retailers are surviving by going to a Web only business arrangement.

That’s all for this week.

Now playing: “In My Place,” Coldplay (my Last.fm profile)

This is a post from Matt McGee's blog, Small Business SEM.

Friday Night Link-o-rama

Let’s start with a couple from one of my favorite topics: Local Search. First, Greg Sterling has an interesting write-up about an interesting search tool called “Palore” that can add a lot of valuable information to local search business listings. It’s worth watching. And second, Paul Jahn noticed Yahoo going out of its way to encourage more user reviews on Yahoo Local. I bet that kind of thing equates to an immediate 10-20% increase in reviews.

Eric Enge has a good checklist post with 17 Poor Quality Signals Your Site May Be Sending. You’ll have to fill-in some of the details yourself on any items you may not understand, but the list is a good place to get yourself started on what not to do.

I’m not sure I agree with “most underrated,” but information architecture is certainly close to the top of the list. Aaron Walls says it’s the most underrated component of effective search marketing.

Comprehensive resource lists make such good linkbait. Here’s one from Daniel S. on the Sponsored Reviews blog: Giant List of Blog Directories.

And speaking of directories… Deb Mastaler lists a few in her SEL column this week about starting your linkbuilding with “foundational links.” The article is Foundational Links Don’t Split, Crack Or Get Dugg Up.

Lastly, here are two pieces that aren’t directly search-related, but still caught my attention: On Small Business Branding, Steve Woodruff writes How to Be Unremarkable. And over on Marketing Profs, Allen Weiss asks Is Price *Really* the Most Important Factor in Consumer Loyalty? He answers it, too.

That’s all for this week. Hope you have a great holiday weekend! See ya next week….

Now playing: “Mr. Jones,” Counting Crows

This is a post from Matt McGee's blog, Small Business SEM.

Friday Night Link-o-rama

But, the language in their bCentral transition FAQ is more than a bit confusing.

Effective May 18th 2006 at 3:00pm Pacific Daylight Time, the bCentral™ Small Business Directory will be retired. In its place, we are offering existing Submit It! customers and others who currently have a bCentral Small Business Directory listing a free, grandfathered listing in the new Microsoft Small Business Directory. While we will be preserving the current directory’s link friendliness and search ranking value, slight changes will be made in the way the directory appears to the public and how you may alter your listing.

That makes it sound like a new directory will be coming along to replace the bCentral SBD. But if I’m reading it correctly, “Microsoft Small Business Directory” is just a new name for this same directory, but it’ll be read-only (as it’s been since November), and perhaps most importantly, there’s no guarantee it’ll be online beyond the end of 2008.

If you read that differently, please speak up in the comments….

Technorati Tags: sbd, microsoft

This is a post from Matt McGee's blog, Small Business SEM.

MSN Finally Announces Closure of bCentral Directory

Hot off the presses is a good post from Loren Baker within the last couple hours titled Link Building : Measuring Directory Value. He sums up another discussion on the topic and adds in a few additional ideas and resources.

Lee Odden, one of my former interviewees, has a short and sweet list of 10 ways to use press releases as marketing tools.

Most folks have been saying for a long time that Alexa stats are about as valuable as a $3 bill. Google’s Director of Research, Peter Norvig, proves it.

Lisa likes to talk about how she never posts anything that has actual search value on the Bruce Clay blog, but I caught her breaking that rule this week: Which Is Better For SEO: Shared or Dedicated IPs. Look at her tossing all those percentages and stats around just as casual as can be….

How about 15 helpers to spruce up your blog with images? Philipp (one L, two Ps) shares Tips for Using Images in Blogs. I’ll get Philipp’s first name right the more I link to his posts….

And finally, a real timely post (for me, at least) from Neil Patel, with Let Friends Help You Get on Reddit. I just created a Reddit account about a week ago, so I’ll gladly take all the help Neil (and others) can give.

That’s all for this Friday night - hope you have a great weekend.

Now playing: “A Month of Sundays,” Don Henley

This is a post from Matt McGee's blog, Small Business SEM.

Friday Night Link-o-rama

She’s also trying a lot of new things to market her web site, like writing a real estate blog and trying to market it and make connections via MyBlogLog.

Getting links has been a challenge. Her site has a DMOZ listing, but we never paid for a Yahoo Directory listing. We will now, thanks to Yahoo’s addition of a NOYDIR tag, which was finally announced today.

The tag prevents Yahoo’s natural search SERPs from using the title and description from a Yahoo Directory listing. It may not be something that every business needs to use, but in a list of real estate web sites, I’d rather be able to control how the listing looks with our own page title, rather than just having her name show up.

So, for us, this was the last hurdle. Now that we know the directory listing’s title and description won’t start showing up in the natural SERPs, we’ll pay that $299 and hope to benefit from having one more trusted link, not to mention any direct traffic it might bring. Of course, we’ll do this as soon as I finish the new site…….

More discussion about the Yahoo announcement is available on Search Engine Roundtable, where Barry isn’t sure he’ll use the tag or not. Danny also has lots of details and background at Search Engine Land.

Technorati Tags: yahoo, yahoo directory

This is a post from Matt McGee's blog, Small Business SEM.

Yahoo Removes the Last Hurdle to Paying for a Directory Listing

Current: For some reason, this is not getting much “big picture” attention in our industry. But here’s why it matters: Within the last couple months, we’ve lost two of the three most trusted directories on the web.

You want trust?

• Both date back to 1999.
• Yahoo counts more than 10 million backlinks for DMOZ and more than 19,000 for SBD.
• Both traditionally have PageRanks in the 7-9 range.
• DMOZ is referenced more than 2,000 times on Wikipedia.
• Google has, for a long time now, recommended the Open Directory/DMOZ in its Webmaster Guidelines material.
• About a year ago, Andy Hagans listed both DMOZ and SBD as two of his “gimme” directories for listing a new site…
• and then listed SBD as a highly trusted link just a couple months ago.

So, yeah, no matter what you think personally of directories, the fact is we’re all losing a couple sources of trusted links.

Impact? I imagine there are smiles on the faces of the Yahoo Directory team right about now. That $299 submission fee suddenly seems a lot more reasonable expense, and necessary, than it did before.

Beyond the Yahoo Directory, the loss of DMOZ and SBD should also impact directories that are at the next trust level down. Business.com, Best of the Web, GoGuides, JoeAnt, Skaffe.com, and the Starting Point Directory all become more important and worthy of consideration.

Where before we could rely on a couple well-known directories for trusted links, now there’s Yahoo … and everybody else.

Related: Directory listings and trusted links aren’t the only things impacted by what’s going on now. Donna at SEO Scoop posted yesterday about the DMOZ situation: Trickle down effect of a dying DMOZ? Great food for thought there….

Technorati Tags: seo, directories, dmoz, open directory, msn bcentral, small business directory

This is a post from Matt McGee's blog, Small Business SEM.

The Impact of Dying Directories

Here’s the Add Your Site page, which details the costs and benefits, and has a link at the bottom saying Sign Up & Get Your Small Business Listed Today! But when you click that link, you end up here:

http://www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness/online/services-transition.mspx

And that page says certain MSFT Small Biz Services stopped accepting new signups as of November 15th. One of those services is SubmitIt!, which is how the directory submissions were processed.

Now they invite new signups to sign up for one of a trio of business web services, none of which appear to include a directory listing. (And to no one’s surprise, the new services have very stringent and limiting system requirements.)

Weird all around. It would be a shame for the SBD to go away. That’s a well-trusted directory and a good place for a new site to start building quality inbound links.

Technorati Tags: directories, microsoft, small business directory, sbd

This is a post from Matt McGee's blog, Small Business SEM.

MSN Small Biz Directory closed?

If you’ve been reading SBS long enough, you may recall my suggestion back in July that small business owners/webmasters take advantage of the “NOODP” tag in order to stop Google and MSN from using your web site’s listing data from DMOZ - the Open Directory Project.

So it’s good to see Barry’s post yesterday on SE Roundtable with news that Yahoo! will also (finally) support the tag, too.

And count my vote with Barry’s (and Danny’s) in favor of Yahoo! also allowing businesses to not have their Yahoo! Directory listing used in natural SERPs. Tim Mayer may think they don’t need it; I think he’s wrong.

This is a post from Matt McGee's blog, Small Business SEM.

Yahoo to support NOODP tag

As I describe on the Directories page, Google and MSN might show your DMOZ info. in their SERPS, and Yahoo might show your Yahoo Directory info. in its SERPs. If you don’t understand how this might be a problem, consider my employer; here’s what our DMOZ listing looks like:

One World Telecommunications - Offers Internet access via dial-up, broadband, or wireless connections.

When someone searches for web development or search engine marketing, that listing in Google’s SERPs won’t get a single click. We don’t want Google using our DMOZ listing — we want them using content from our web pages.

And now we can control that, thanks to Google’s decision to join MSN in supporting the NOODP meta tag. You can see how to use it in Google’s Webmaster Help Center.

If you’re a small business owner or webmaster who’s been frustrated over the use of directory info. in SERPs, make the change to your code pronto — and then be patient while waiting for it to take effect.

Now if only we could get Yahoo to support a tag that lets us control whether our Yahoo Directory info. is used in their search engine. Yahoooo? Anyone home?

This is a post from Matt McGee's blog, Small Business SEM.

Ditch the ODP title

The entire 2nd section, Why Submit to Directories is new and includes discussion of the “nofollow” usage by directories, and how it might impact a small business’s decision whether to pay for a directory listing.

This is a post from Matt McGee's blog, Small Business SEM.

Updated Directories page