Bum Marketing Ideas

How to create a sitemap

November 30th, 2008

Sitemaps are used by search engines to help with the discovery of web pages. The complexity of a sitemap can vary based on how it is built and the amount of trouble you want to go through to build it. A sitemap can include data such as the frequency of updates, the last time the page was updated, and the relative importance of a page. All the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, Ask, MSN) make use of sitemaps.

You can create a sitemap by hand or use of number of free sitemap generator tools. Most of these tools limit by the total number of pages.

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SEO using MicroFormat

November 9th, 2008

MicroFormat is a way of using standard HTML tags to encode additional information into the page. This could be Geo data, calendar data, etc…

Example

In this example, the contact information is presented as follows:

<div>
<div>Joe Doe</div>
<div>The Example Company</div>
<div>604-555-1234</div>
<a href=”http://example.com/”>http://example.com/</a>

</div>
With hCard microformat markup, that becomes:

<div class=”vcard”>
<div class=”fn”>Joe Doe</div>
<div class=”org”>The Example Company</div>
<div class=”tel”>604-555-1234</div>
<a class=”url” href=”http://example.com/”>http://example.com/</a>

</div>
These specs are evolving all the time, google around to find the latest.

Posted in SEO | 2 Comments »

Does the code to text ratio matter?

October 20th, 2008

Does the amount of code in your web page matter? Well some debate it, but let face it, if content is king, then shouldn’t it be a large portion of the page?

If you only have one sentence of text on a page, well obviously you are going to have a very low Code to Text Ratio, but if not, you should be running around 50% text or better.

Here is tool to check your code to text ratio

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How to find how many pages are indexed in google

September 13th, 2008

Sounds like a simple thing. Everyone knows the good old “site:” command for google. For example

site:www.attheboard.com

shows “about 29,900 pages”

Well, that my be “about” due to status in indexing and possible duplicate content being weeded out.

but there is more…

try putting the site command with some minus random jiber… such as site:www.attheboard.com -lkskjdfkjd

shows “about 31,300 pages”

WHY???? no idea… Maybe more complex queries touch other servers or part of the google data center that give different results. Try it with different lengths of jiber. The results will vary.

Try adding and removing the www in front and the results will also vary. Remember, if you track this on an ongoing basis, to use the same method for generating the counts. You still might get variance day to day, but that is the luck of the draw with the datacenters.

Posted in SEO | 1 Comment »

Where to submit Bum Marketing articles (part 2)

August 21st, 2008

For those that like to submit Bum Marketing articles by hand, I got another list for ya. Doing it by hand enables you to “SPIN” the articles to reduce the chance of a search engine Duplicate penalty could have.

from http://www.wilsonweb.com/linkin/wilson-article-marketing-1.htm

iSnare.com *

ExcellentGuide.com/article

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Where to submit bum marketing articles?

August 17th, 2008

There are several answers to this question…

The first option to explore is a great service called isnare. This company submits your article to a huge number of article directories. It is a great tool for getting huge distribution of your material.

There is some debate about the impact of duplicate material… It is thought that some search engines will penalize sites for duplicate content. Some people prefer the strategy of manual submissions to many individual sites instead of using a service.

Posted in General Info, Tool | No Comments »

First version of the tool is available now

August 10th, 2008

Right here at http://www.bumideas.com/bum-ideas-search-tool/ is the first version of my phrase search tool. This first version is focused on the start of phrases. So if you were to type in “what is” then the results is phrases from the database that start with “what is”. The next version will be a bit more free form, but I need to do some analysis before opening that section up.

enjoy

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Tools of the trade

August 6th, 2008

There are several common tools for finding information on keywords to use in bum marketing. To name a few there is Wordtracker, Google Adwords Keyword Tool and Niche Inspector. One tool, Keyword Dig, gets its search data from Wordtracker and shows you how much competition there is for each keyword in Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Of course there is a draw back to this, everyone is using the same tools. Unique ideas require unique thoughts and tools.

In the next couple weeks, we will be launching our new tool. A new way of looking at some real search data.

Posted in General Info, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Self Centered on Bum Marketing…

August 3rd, 2008

People are self centered…. well not really, but people tend to ask questions about themselves.

am i haveing a boy or a girl
am i having a boy or a girl
am i overweight
am i ovulating
am i pregnant
am i pregnant quiz
am i pregnant spotting during first month
am i pregnant with twins
am i pregnant with twins quiz

Take any phrase and change it up to the form of a question.

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“Why” marketing is childs play

July 22nd, 2008

WHY, WHY, WHY… a marketings dream, a parents nightmare.

Every marketer has to answer this question if they are going to make the sale.

Every parent has to answer a million WHYs from their child when they learn to talk.

why a unified healthcare plan for america
why alcoholics have affairs
why alcoholics walk away from the family they love
why am i just dying to live when i’m living to die
why am i lured by a married woman
why am i mean to my mom
why am i measuring 10 weeks if im only 8 weeks pregnant
why am i measuring 3 weeks ahead at first prenatal appointment

One of the great uses of the internet is to answer questions. Use this to provide answers to people. Good answers can lead to good traffic. Good construction of keyword phrases is WHY your page will be at the top of the search engines.