media landscaping

Building Search Rank Through Links

One of the best ways to build a sites search traffic is through links.  The more links you get into your blog, the higher your blog will show up in search results.  One interesting nugget that I recently learned is that the 'Anchor Text' for the link is critical. 

You might remember when 100's of bloggers all linked to George Bush's bio page with the anchor text 'Miserable Failure'.  Before long, any search in google for 'miserable failure' would pull up GW in the top result.  Google is trying to prevent this behavior (commonly known as Google Bombing), but the principle is key to how search engines rank sites.

A great campaign utilizing the concept of Anchor Links is being led by John Chow.  He is calling it the 'Make Money Online Review' and it is getting huge results for him.  He is the champion of link strategies and this could be the grandaddy of them all. 

Basically, if you link to him with this anchor text Make Money Online then he will link back to you in a post with whatever anchor link you want him to use.  This strategy has already boosted him to the #2 spot in Google under the search "make money online" so it is clearly working.  If you want to participate, here are the rules.

Passion Blogging

You might remember a post I did back in January about the "How To Be a Power Blogger" panel at the Always On Conference in NYC.  Peter Rojas of Engadget made some profound statements that I have been tossing around in my mind ever since.  He said,

Pick a niche to focus on.  Pick the smallest you can find and own that niche.  You will become an expert over time, even if you aren't now.

This wasn't the first time I had ever heard this, but it really hit home.  I am very passionate about the subject of this blog, but by no means is new media and advertising blogging a niche.  It is flooded with tons of very high quality blogs and I certainly don't have my hopes up of becoming a "power blogger" on this subject.      

So what am I passionate about?  Outside of the family, which is the # 1 priority, I would say I have two main passions.  I love playing hold'em with the fella's on Friday nights and I love fishing.   The blogosphere is saturated with poker blogs...maybe more so than media and advertising...mainly due to the thousands of wanna be pro's looking to make a name for themselves.

A lot of our friends own kayaks and have been trying to get us to buy one.  We finally gave in and bought one.  There is a great resevoir near where we live, so we took it out on Sunday and had a blast. 

So I have chosen my niche and launched a new blog on Kayak Fishing.  Its titled HookABigOne.com and is officially my passion blog.

Media Landscaping is not going away.  In fact, it will be even better.  I plan to use this blog to chronicle the growth of Hook A Big One.  From nothing blog to super influential power blog on all things kayak fishing.   Even if you are not into this subject,  I hope that my experience growing this will be educational for anyone interested in growing a blog.  If you have ever read Johnchow.com, that is the sort of thing I am thinking of.

I hope you will visit the site, subscribe and best of all GIVE ME A LINK!!!

Is There Any Money in Creating a New Browser?

Just ask Mitchell Baker of the Mozilla Foundation and you will have the answer.  He just wrote a long post about the financials of the Foundation and it seems that they are seeing some good growth on the revenue side.

2003  -  $2.4M
2004  -  $5.8M
2005  -  $52.9M

Thats 812% growth year over year!  They do have a few other small sources of income, but the bulk of it all comes from Firefox. 

So where does this revenue come from?  The browser is free.  Well, it all comes from that little box in the upper right hand corner that has the pretty little "G" in it.  Thats right...it all comes from Google.

The Big G not only created its own revolution, it has enabled other revolutions like Firefox. 

Whats next?  The Google PC?  The Google Mobile Phone?

(via John Chow)

Google Exposes Patents To The World

This is absolutely unbelieveable.  Google has launched Google Patent Search and it is incredibly addictive.  I just ran a search for 'advertising' and could spend all day in here looking at all of the crazy gadgets that people have patented.

Here is an image from a patent on, as the lawyers say it:

A method of advertising on a motor vehicle having a substantially transparent window including steps of providing a holographic film with a holographic image, and adhering the holographic film to the window, where the holographic image is substantially transparent to an operator of the motor vehicle from within the motor vehicle so that operation of the motor vehicle is not impeded, but the holographic image is visible to an observer outside the motor vehicle

A Free Cellphone From Google?

According to this article on CNN Money, Eric Schmidt forecasts that one day Google will subsidize the purchase of your next cell phone if you agree to accept targeted ads from Google.

"Your mobile phone should be free," Schmidt told Reuters. "It just makes sense that subsidies should increase" as advertising rises on mobile phones.

Google is experimenting with delivering text, brand-image and video ads onto small-screen mobile phones. It is enjoying early success in its strategy to win phone network allies in Japan, where TV viewing and shopping on phones is advanced, he said.

Schmidt acknowledged that mobile phones may never become totally free to the consumer. Newspapers are still not completely free a hundred years after they started relying on advertising, but they certainly are inexpensive, he noted.

(Via Textually)

Micosoft Offers Billboards in Virtual World

Microsoft ratchets up the pressure on Google Earth by launching Virtual Earth, a 3D add on to their mapping application. 

The MIT Ad Lab points out that they have also integrated virtual billboards to the landscape that look like what you would see in Second Life. 

The Billboards are clickable just like a standard web display ad and are served through Massive Technology, a company they bought in May.

Some Local Mojo Coming Soon

I am very interested in the ways that internet companies are attempting to tackle the challenge (and huge opportunity) that the local marketplace offers.  Today, I read about a new company called MojoPages.  Looks like they are attempting to Web 2.0ify the Yellow Page directory concept.  I am curious to see how different it will be from Yelp, which is currently my favorite player in this space.

Mojo is utilizing a lot of the social media techniques to get the buzz out about their launch, including a blog, conversational video (episode 1 is embedded below), an Alpha launch and a design preview open for comments.

I have to admit and am excited to see how this turns out and did sign up for the alpha.  I'll keep you guys posted.

Amazon's AdSense

Battelle points out a new pay-per-click  ad platform launched by Amazon.  Its called Clickriver Ads.  It allows advertisers to bid on placement next to search results while shopping on Amazon, making Amazon a more open marketplace. 

Its a very bold move that will allow you to find items on Amazon that aren't sold by them.  They are basically inviting the competition inside of their walls.  I think this will move a lot of people from other engines like Google to Amazon for shopping searches.  One more paper cut on Google's finger.

A Customized Advertising, Marketing and PR Search Engine

Continuing my fascination with Google's Custom Search Engine, I have added a bunch of sites to what I'm now calling the "Advertising, Marketing and PR Blog Search Tool."  Give it a try and bookmark it if you find it useful.

It now searches ~50 great ad/mrkt/pr blogs and I hope that you will participate and add your favorites to it.  Here is the list of blogs that are included so far: (in no meaningful order!)

sethgodin.typepad.com
adpunch.org
burk504.typepad.com
micropersuasion.com 
adrants.com 
adjab.com 
jaffejuice.com 
mariosundar.wordpress.com 
moblogsmoproblems.blogspot.com 
mpdailyfix.com 
customerevangelists.typepad.com 
socialcustomer.com 
notetaker.typepad.com 
experiencecurve.com 
coolhunting.com 
bloombergmarketing.blogs.com 
h20325.www2.hp.com 
ownyourbrand.com 
tenayagroup.com 
beingpeterkim.typepad.com 
exitcreative.net 
ck-blog.com 
thebrandbuilder.blogspot.com 
blog.b-k-g.com 
leighhouse.typepad.com 
gregverdino.typepad.com 
threeminds.organic.com
wheresmyjetpack.blogspot.com 
copyranter.blogspot.com 
ducttapemarketing.com 
marketingshift.com 
eschenck.typepad.com 
brandspankin.com 
buzzmachine.com 
heehawmarketing.typepad.com 
beyondmadisonavenue.com 
americancopywriter.typepad.com 
adverblog.com 
adweek.blogs.com 
adpulp.com 
aisforadvertising.blogspot.com 
caffeinegoddess.blogspot.com 
brandautopsy.typepad.com 
digitasbuzz.blogspot.com 
darmano.typepad.com 
blogs.forrester.com 

This by no means is a complete list of the blogs that belong...but is where I am stopping.  Sorry if I didn't add yours, but I can only do so much on my own.  If your favorite ad/mark/pr blog isn't on here then please add it.  Thats why google called it co-op!!

Custom Built Google for Advertising Searches

I just stumbled across Google Co-op, a "build your own" search engine.  Initially, people were pretty down about the service and how difficult it was to use, but 5 months later it seems easy to use and I really like it so far.  It just a few minutes I created a search engine customized for advertising information.

All that you do is create a co-op account, select the sites that you want to be in your searches and then embed the engine on your blog.  I started with about 10 good ad blogs and some traditional Ad publications and can easily add more sites as I surf with Google Marker.  Its a button that you can embed in a browser and anytime you want to add a site to the engine you just mark it.

The engine I created is very creatively named "Advertising Search"and I hope that you will try it out and contribute to it to make it better. It also lives in the sidebar on the right of this page.  In the true spirit of "co-op" I set this engine up so that others can contribute to it.