I need some help.

One of my longtime readers and frequent commenters is reporting that she’s unable to login to SBS and share a comment. She says that the attempts to login are being recognized, but on returning to the post, she keeps being asked to login time after time.

If you’re registered on this blog, would you mind trying to login and leave a comment on this post, please? (If you’re not registered, feel free to register and help out if you feel like it.)

If you can’t login and/or comment, please email me to let me know. If you don’t know my email address, use this handy contact form which is working.

Thank you in advance!!!

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

Are You Able to Comment on This Post?

In the early days of this blog, I used the CLIPPINGS feature inside Bloglines to save articles of interest. Now, I save all that stuff in my del.icio.us account. This seems like as good a time as any to take the old Bloglines clippings and move them over to del.icio.us. I’m going to keep using the latter exclusively — no more Bloglines clippings.

So you’ve been warned.

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

Heads Up to My Feed Subscribers

Even though I suggested people vote otherwise, readers of Search Engine Journal voted Small Business SEM the Best Local Search Blog of 2007. Incredibly honored by this, especially since I feel there are more deserving writers. Thanks to all who voted.

As if that’s not a good enough day, my annual post, Top 21 Signs You Need a Break From SEO (2007 version), picked up the “Judges Choice” for 2007 “Columbo” Humorous Blog Post award. And congrats to Sandra Niehaus for winning the People’s Choice. Thanks to the judges who cast a vote for Small Business SEM. I’m honored. I hope the 2008 version is just as funny….

Your Turn To Win

Now, time for you to win some serious schwag: Dan Perry is giving away one of those ultra-cool Google Refreigerators, and all you have to do is write a post explaining what you’d do with it if you win. I’m one of four judges in the contest, which kinda stinks because I think that means I can’t win. (Shoulda thought about that before agreeing to be a judge, eh? Yeah.)

In any case, go to Dan’s blog to get all the details on the contest, see more photos, a video, and start checking out the competition. Then start writing.

Maybe Google will send me a fridge someday, especially since I’m winning all these awards.

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

I Won Some Awards … You Can Win a Google Fridge

What Happened in 2007

Feed Subscriptions
I do know one area where I fell short of goals: feed subscribers. Here’s a screenshot I made at the end of last year (notice the date highlighted in the yellow box):

I had 159 feed subscribers at the end of 2006, and set myself a goal to reach 2,000 subscribers in one year. The Feedburner chicklet in the upper right of the blog has been ranging between 1,700 and 1,800 over the past couple weeks, and I think the high was about 1,820. It’s a huge jump over last year, but some of that is also the artificial increase from when Google Reader subscriptions were added to Feedburner’s numbers.

I may have been able to reach 2,000 subscribers if not for the fact that I spent the past six months writing a book 5-6 nights a week. From about July onward, my posting level was about 50% of normal, and I’ve held several major posts back (one of which should appear here next week).

I may have fallen short of the overall goal, but the growth chart is pointing in the right direction and I’m pleased with that. Here’s 2007’s feed subscriber growth:

Blog Traffic
Alright, time to look at Google Analytics.

This blog began in April, 2006, so I don’t have a full year of stats for 2006 to use for comparison. I do know, though, that my average visits per day was 89 in 2006, and jumped to 240 this year — that’s about a 250% increase. Works for me. I’m pleased with the 26% bounce rate because this blog attracts some very off-target traffic. The “Top 21 Signs You Need a Break from SEO” post always gets traffic from people searching for “signs you need a break from your girl/boyfriend”, and the “SEO Industry Look Alike” post gets all kinds of “lookalike” search traffic from people not interested in SEO/SEM discussion.

Traffic Sources
Search engine referrals made up less than 1/3rd of my overall traffic. I like that. I’m not a fan of being beholden to Google, Yahoo, etc., to bring eyeballs to SBS. On November 26, I started using Dean’s Permalinks Migration plugin to make my URLs more SEO-friendly, so I’ll be curious to see if there’s any impact from that in 2008.

As far as individual referring sources go, I’m not at all surprised to see that social media sites are the primary drivers of traffic here. StumbleUpon, Sphinn, and Yahoo Answers are all in the top four. Nice. And all ten of these have bounce rates lower than the site average (26%), which I like. However, it would be nice to see those big SEO sites at the bottom of the list moving up in 2008 — that would mean my articles and blog posts are being recognized more by the premier industry sites. (BTW, the “Google.com” in the #3 spot is Google Reader and iGoogle traffic.)

As far as search referrals go, I’ll spare you the chart and just write it out: Google sent 91% of my search traffic, MSN sent 3%, and Yahoo sent 2.2%.

Most Popular Content
Here are the ten most popular posts of 2007 based purely on traffic. And please don’t Sphinn any of these; remembe, I changed my URLs six weeks ago so the Sphinn button will make it look like these were never submitted, but they were.

1.) 10 Likely Elements of Google’s Local Search Algorithm - I’m surprised by this. I would’ve guessed Top 10, but not number one.

2.) How to SEO Your Site in Less Than 60 Minutes - Not surprised by this one. It’s the only post I’ve ever written that’s been translated into different languages. At least the only one I know of. I’m going to update and expand this one in 2008.

3.) Strange goings-on with Merchant Circle - The post that keeps on giving, more than a year later. It goes like this: Merchant Circle cold calls small businesses to get them to sign up to see reviews of their business. Business owner finds no reviews on MC’s web site, so goes to Google and searches for their business name to learn more. My article above is one of the top listings for their name. I get boatloads of traffic. Did you know? The phrase “merchant circle” is the top referring keyword to this blog. It’s true. Number two isn’t even close.

4.) Top 21 Signs You Need a Break From SEO (2007 version) - No surprise here. It’s the #2 all-time post on Sphinn at the moment.

5.) Google Maps at the Gas Station? No, Thanks - Here’s where it gets weird. A little rant I threw together in about 10 minutes and this thing caught fire on StumbleUpon. Maybe I should rant more often…

6.) How Amazon.com Became the SEO-Smartest Retailer Online - One of my favorite posts because Amazon is such a throwdown to any retailer who complains about not being able to develop content around their products.

7.) Top 21 Signs You Need a Break from SEO - The original post from 2006 still brings in traffic in 2007. That’s what good linkbait is supposed to do, isn’t it?

8.) 8 Things the Search Industry Can Teach Small Businesses - I think this is the most recent post to crack the Top 10.

9.) What Apple’s Marketing Can Teach Small Businesses - Huh. I’m surprised to see this here, but I guess any post that even draws a comment from Mrs. McGee must have some merit.

10.) YouTube Marketing Tips - Never would’ve guessed this one in a million years. It must rank well for “you tube marketing” or something along those lines.

So that’s it. I’m left with this feeling: It was a good year, but could’ve been better if I’d really worked hard at it for the full 12 months. Now it’s time to start thinking about realistic goals and plans for 2008.

A sincere thank you if you’ve read this far :), and thank you to everyone who visited, left comments, and/or linked here during 2007. I hope I give you reasons to do more of that in 2008!

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

2007 Small Business SEM Blog Stats

With that out of the way, I’m quite happy to drop a quick non-SES note here on the blog: Small Business SEM has been added to the AdAge Power 150, a list of the “top media and marketing blogs” that was originally created by Todd Andrlik and recently moved under the AdAge name. The list is a total misnomer, since there are now 419 blogs on the list! And SBS has somehow managed to come in at (tied for) 112th. That’s pretty cool, if you ask me….

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

SBS in the Power 150

I’m arriving at about 8:00 PM Sunday night, so if anyone wants to split a cab with me (I’m staying at the Hilton next to the convention center), or if anyone just wants to come to San Jose Airport and pick me up … let me know! (I’ll pay you back with a link, howzat sound?)

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

Headed to San Jose

How about some mid-week housekeeping? Here ya go….

1) If you need some help with search-friendly URLs, you may want to read through Mary McKnight’s interview with yours truly on RSS Pieces.

2) My How to SEO Your Site in Less Than 60 Minutes from a couple months ago is now available en Francais thanks to Marie P.

Now time for a nap…..

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

Interviews and Translations

The following week is SES San Jose. I’ll be there all week, so light posting will continue because I’ve decided not to blog the sessions I attend. I’m sure I’ll do a recap post at the end, and I might post during the week as news/events catch my eye. But I won’t be doing the live-blogging thing for this one. Seems to me there’s enough of that happening, so you won’t miss anything if I’m not involved.

In lieu of the time you would normally spend reading Small Business SEM over the next couple weeks, let me encourage you to introduce yourself to these fine blogs which, for reasons beyond my comprehension, aren’t as widely read as they should be:

E-Marketing Performance - Stoney de Geyter and his team

The Lonely Marketer - Pat Schaber

SEO Igloo - Miriam Ellis

Techipedia - Tamar Weinberg

Search Engine Tigers - Simon Heseltine

Apogee Weblog - Richard Ball

Cornwall SEO - Lyndon Antcliff (AKA Lyndoman)

Karl Ribas

(I could go on, but I’ll stop there. I’m on vacation, after all…..)

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

Note to Readers: Light Posting Ahead

Let me start by stating the obvious: I love getting comments from readers. I’ve taken a number of steps over the last 15 months to encourage comments — like giving you recognition on prime real estate in the right sidebar — and I’m always looking for more ways to get more readers to share your wisdom, questions, ideas, etc., here on the blog, despite the registration requirement.

So, with that in mind, here’s an overview of the comment policy:

1.) Comments are not no-followed.

If you leave a comment, you get credit for the link in your comment or on your username. This has been in place for about 2-3 months now, and the amount of comment moderation I’m doing is still reasonable. I think this has been a big help in increasing comments, and I want that to continue.

2.) You must register and be logged-in to leave a comment.

This is an anti-spam measure, of course. I don’t do this on a U2-related blog I manage, and it’s a hassle to have to delete the junk comments that Akismet doesn’t catch.

If I was online all day, always in front of a computer, and able to keep an eye on SBS, I might consider changing this. But the fact is I’m in meetings a lot, I travel a fair amount, and I sometimes spend 8 hours at a time on location with clients. That’s not really conducive to free-for-all commenting on a blog with a reasonable amount of traffic/readers.

3.) Your first comment will be moderated by default.

Another anti-spam measure, done simply to stop the register-and-run spammers. This happens more than you might think: I have 30+ domains on my registration blacklist at the moment, all spammers who registered and tried to comment.

4.) Any comment with a link in it will be held for moderation.

I wish there was a way to indicate that certain readers can include links in their comments without being moderated. But until that’s possible, I’m gonna play it safe with links in comments. It would be easy for Joe Spammer to come in and have his first comment approved, then start spamming on comment #2 while I’m away from the blog.

5.) Frequent commenters are rewarded with pretty stars.

This has also been in place for a couple months. You can read the post that explains how it works.

I don’t know how much it encourages comments, but I like to be able to see who’s commenting a lot … you know, just in case I ever find myself with an extra iPod Shuffle or something like that. Just sayin’ is all, don’t read anything into that, or anything.

So, to sum up… You have to register, you have to wait for your 1st comment to be approved, and after that it’s clear sailing — all your comments go straight on the blog, unless you have a link, which means I have to approve it. (I hope you’ll agree that’s a fair trade in exchange for having links followed.)

Now that you know how it works, I hope you’ll speak up more often!

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

Comment Policy on SBS: How, Why, etc.

(By the way, I did have a chance to talk to Kevin N. at Search Engine Watch for his article, What Does Universal Search Mean for SEM?)

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

Light posting / back soon…