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Jan 22, 2013

YouTube compilation – winter wonderland

The power of YouTube compilation videos.


YouTube compilationsThe last YouTube compilation I posted was two years when I shared the BBC Wildlife voiceover clip. Since it’s been below freezing for the last week in the UK, and it’s snowing heavily outside right now, I thought I’d add a bit of humour with this YouTube compilation video of pratfalls in the snow and ice.

What’s so special about YouTube compilation videos?

YouTube compilations have the possibility of going viral. The one I’m sharing here only has 1310 views so far but could blossom into an online hit. Which means that you can get some reflected glory from Google by posting it on your blog from YouTube. All you need to do is click on ‘Embed’ under the video, copy the code it gives you and post this into your blog post. (This was a secret shared by one of the top internet marketers in the US!)

So I’m not only sharing something that might make you laugh, wince or stay indoors until the ice goes. I’m also giving you a heads up that sharing a top YouTube compilation video could help your blog get some exposure.

Of course it would be better to produce your own viral YouTube video like Dave Carroll’s brilliant “United Break Guitars”. This video has had almost 3 million hits and propelled its maker into fame and fortune. So much so that he now does the speaking circuit talking about complaint resolution.

So with all the technology available to you it’s not too difficult to get creative and produce something a bit ‘off the wall’ which catches on. Who knows. You could be the next big thing on YouTube!

Warning – some people were hurt in the making of this YouTube compilation!


By Andy Britnell YouTube 9 Comments Tags: , , ,

May 26, 2011

Social media traffic

Google search ranking and social media profilesIf you look closely at your your website or blog traffic figures you will notice that social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, deliver much more loyal, targeted and engaged visitors. That is they spend more time on your site, search deeper and are more likely to comment on your blog or buy from you. I call them ‘sticky’ visitors as they don’t bounce away from your website easily.

For my site and other sites I look after they make up to 25 – 30% of all monthly traffic.

The other aspect is that if you have a presence on social media sites you get an extra tick in the box from the search engines. The search robots recognise that your blog or website is associated with a high ranking site and you get kudos because of that.

Although you may feel that writing yet another online profile is tedious, they do help you to dominate the first few pages of Google when someone searches for your name. There are four other ‘Andy Britnells’ who have a good presence on the web. My website, blog, Twitter and Google account profiles are on the first two pages and I have the majority of entries on the first 6 pages. (Click on the image above and then click again to see first page on Google in more detail)

I will need to work on my Facebook and LinkedIn profile if I want a clean sheet. Not that simple when you have a racing driver and two managing directors of largish companies competing for the space.

How do you rank for your name on Google and what do you do to keep your profile high on the search engines?

By Andy Britnell Social Media 4 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Apr 1, 2011

How to Install Google Feedburner on your Blog – Simples!

How to install Google Google Feedburner on your blogNow that you are aware of the benefits of Google Feedburner you’ll want to know how to install it on your blog. As someone who looks for the easiest way to get something done I suggest you check out one of my favourite Blogs from WordPress Beginner which covers the more technical side of WordPress with user friendly posts and tutorials on every aspect of the WordPress platform.

It includes a step by step guide to setting up Google Feedburner which I can’t improve on. It also has many comments with questions and answers that might be useful for you.

Although this is the process for WordPress, where you need to install the Feedburner Feedsmith plugin, you can integrate Feedburner into pretty much every blogging platform or website with the code provided for your set-up.

I encourage you all to add this to your site and get the warm feeling of knowing that people are watching you, clicking on your feed and reading your content. It allows you to fine-tune your content as you can see where your visitor’s interests lie.

You can also check out new content and see if it strikes a chord. I think that this is one of the great things about blogging – you can test the market quickly, easily and at little cost. It is also satisfying to watch your subscribers grow over time.

So make this an action now and let me know how it helps you improve your ability to deliver great content and attract raving fans.

By Andy Britnell Blog Optimisation, Blog Traffic, WordPress 12 Comments Tags: , , ,

Mar 29, 2011

10 Benefits of Firing up your Blog with Feedburner

10 Benefits of Google FeedburnerNo doubt you would have heard of RSS (Really Simple Syndication), which is a way for interested visitors to get your new content sent to them rather than having to come to your site. If you want to make your RSS feed even more effective then using Google’s free Feedburner service is essential to your traffic building strategy.

What are the benefits of Feedburner?

WIth Google Feedburner you can:

1. ‘Burn’ multiple feeds to your blog for your main content, comments, categories, tags and authors depending how you want to serve your visitors

2. Get a true estimate of readership through number of subscribers and statistics – initially this can be confusing as it looks at visitors per day to your feed. However you will be able to see how many people are clicking on feed links, which stories they are reading and how many subscribers you have

3. Make your feed funky by adding your logo to the feed and on emails sent to email subscribers

4. Add social media and bookmarking links to your feed making it easier for people to share your content

5. Include advertisements to your feed if you want to monetise it using Google Adsense.

5. Feedburner re-hosts your feed so if you get lots of traffic your server doesn’t take the hit. Someone could inadvertently check your feed every second which would crucify your site!

6. It’s an all in one plugin which is simple to use and allows people to auto-subscribe in the reader of their choice. So rather than use 3 or 4 plugins which will slow down your site, Feedburner multi-tasks for you.

7. Maintain a permanent RSS feed address. Possibly one of the best benefits as it allows you to change blogging platforms or your RSS feed URL without disrupting your readers interface through the Feedburner URL

8. Make sure your content is readable as Feedburner is browser and reader friendly – whatever browser or reader your visitors use Feedburner can handle it.

9. Publicise your blog using the many tools available

10. Set up Feedburner to automatically ping Technorati and other online directories, search engines etc. which will need to know when you’ve posted something new so that it will show up in search engines

To sum up Feedburner allows you to build both your visibility and credibility online by keeping in touch with your target audience on a regular basis. Remember that the more time they spend reading your material the more likely they are to use your services or buy your product.

So now you know why Feedburner is useful you can subscribe to See a Man About a Blog by email (see top right sidebar) and get my next post on how to add it to your site sent direct to your inbox!

By Andy Britnell Blog Traffic, RSS for Blogging 15 Comments Tags: , , , , , , ,

Google Search Robots – Friend or Foe?

Mar 1, 2011

Google Search Robots – Friend or Foe?

Google search algorithm and content farmsGoogle have recently changed their search algorithm, PageRank, which helps them to rank pages on the internet. Their search robots are sent out with specific criteria to search for and if you hit the right buttons you’ll get ranked highly. If you don’t, you’re toast.

This time they are targeting the content farm sites and sites without original content – that means sites which strip out your quality content and post it on their site so they have lots of content with no effort. They now have a content farm filter (crap catcher might be a better name!) which detects duplication of material.

(By the way, you might want to set up Google Alerts to track your name and main keywords as, when content farms strip images from your site, they often link back to the image on your server. That means that they use your bandwidth to serve the image to their readers. Not only do they steal your content but they also syphon the juice from your site).

It has always annoyed me that, for many search terms I use for my sites, my best keywords will bring up garbage sites at the top of the list. Not because they are worth reading but because they are fooling the search programme and getting ranked by cheating. Judy’s site about working from home has been particularly difficult to rank. The key word ‘work from home’ is very competitive. However she is now at page 3 on Google so some trash has been removed. There’s still some dross left behind though!

I am pleased to see Google doing something about it and many people have found that their content-rich blog is starting to get more visits and gain more visibility and credibility amongst the global surfing community.

So is this really a win-win-win situation?

A win for bloggers because their content will be seen by more poeple interested in what they are saying, a win for surfers because they are going to find funky stuff that was buried under a mound of steaming sites, and a win for Google in that its searches will become more relevant and people will use it more.

Unfortunately there is a downside as hundreds of legitimate sites have been tripped up by the new criteria, some losing half their traffic overnight. This Guardian article cites research done by Sistrix which shows that the British Medical Journal and Technorati are amongst 300 sites that have suffered due to the new search algorithm.

Cult of Mac are a hardworking team who write original content and aggregate news about Apple and Mac stuff. They have been hit by content farm filtering quite badly and have given examples of others in their post Cult of Mac Has Been Hit By Google’s War On Content Farms.

So Google have some tweaking to do to make it a win for some people. But at least they are attempting to reach their vision of serving legitimate, relevant and awesome content to the internet surfing community.

By Andy Britnell Blog Traffic 12 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , ,

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