A new Forrester Research report came out this month, titled Retail Interactive Marketing Spend Grows Steadily. According to the report, retailers are increasing online advertising investments at a rate of 25% per year and working to get the most out of the tools in their toolkit to increase ROI in tough economic times. This includes focusing on growing their natural search through intelligent SEO automation technology. I was pleased to see our (Netconcepts') GravityStream technology highlighted in the report as such an intelligent SEO automation technology, and its outstanding performance for Pottery Barn...

"Forrester expects that retailers will continue spending to get more out of existing programs by expanding on size, improving analytics, or automating repeatable processes. VanBoskirk, for example, writes in the report that after three years of fine search marketing results, Pottery Barn boosted natural search results between 1,000% and 9,800% across its sites by investing in GravityStream, a technology sold through its search agency to automate SEO work. " (from MediaPost)

Use of the proper kind of redirects is a matter of SEO "best practice". Every site needs to have redirects (e.g. for example, from your non-www version of your site to your www version or vice versa). And if you don't, you're leaving money on the table. In addition, sites evolve over time and URLs change. And any time you make changes to your URLs -- whether it's to the domain, subdomain, subdirectories, filenames, or query strings -- you need to ensure links pointing to the old URLs are still valued by Google and the other engines, and that their voting power gets transferred to the new URLs. You can get very sophisticated with your redirects for SEO purposes and utilize what are known as "conditional redirects" -- a touchy subject and a potentially dangerous area that I'll delve more below.

First off, ensure you're using "301 redirects" rather than "302 redirects" or the link juice (PageRank) won't transfer to the destination URL. You can verify that 301s (not 302s) are in place by using a "server header checker" like this one. Only a 301 tells engines the previous URL has moved permanently and thus forwards the page's link equity to the new location.

When should you use a 301 redirect? Say you change your domain name, move content from one subdirectory into another, or you are retiring some pages. Or perhaps you are changing your content management system (CMS), which will change all of your URLs. The precious PageRank these pages have earned is valuable and you want to pass it along to the new pages. You also want to prevent a few weeks of 404 errors in search engines when no redirect is in place and users click on your listing. You'll want to do it even if you are "retiring" certain pages to an archive URL (e.g., the current year's Holiday Gift Guide once the holiday buying season is over—although I'd make the case that you should maintain such a page at a date-free URL forever and let the link juice accumulate at that URL for use in future years' editions and NOT redirect at all). If you're retiring a product, redirect the URL of the discontinued product page to that product's category page.

Duplicate content is a big issue for SEO, and 301 redirects come in very handy in eliminating (or at least ameliorating) that issue. Search engines will aggregate and filter out from the SERPs content that it detects to be duplicate. Worse yet, your pages will suffer "PageRank dilution," where the votes (links) are spread across all the duplicate versions instead of all aggregating to the one single, definitive, "canonical" URL. This can happen, for example, when tracking codes are appended to a URL (e.g., "?source=SMXad"). A current example of duplicate copies of pages with tracking code appended URLs getting indexed in Google can be found here -- ironically, it's Google's own site (yes, it happens to the best of us, even to Google!). Or when essential parameters are not always ordered in a consistent manner (e.g., "?subsection=5&section=2" versus "?section=2&subsection=5"). Or when multiple domains or subdomains respond to the request with the same content but no redirect (e.g., "myonlinestore.com/jcp/default.aspx" and "www1.myonlinestore.com/jcp/default.asp" and "mystore.com/jcp/default.asp". In all the above cases, 301 redirects pointing to the canonical URL would collapse the duplicates and aggregate PageRank.

<START GEEK SPEAK>

Usually a single redirect "rule" can be written to match against a large number of URLs. This is referred to as "pattern matching," and it allows you to use wildcards (such as the asterisk character) and to capture a portion of the requested URL in memory and to utilize it later in the redirect. This is possible whether you are running Apache or Microsoft IIS Server as your web server. Consider some of the above-mentioned examples, and how to handle each of them using Apache's mod_rewrite module (which comes bundled with Apache):

# Changing domain names
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} tiredoldbrand\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newbrand.com/$1 [R=301,QSA,L]

# Removing tracking parameter (but tracked URL still registers in the analytics). Assumes no other parameters.
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^source=
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1 [R=301,L]

</END GEEK SPEAK>

Above I mentioned the "conditional redirect." And yes, it comes with a warning: it could get you in big trouble with Google. Matt Cutts, the head of Google's webspam team, advised during his keynote at SMX Advanced that folks not employ conditional redirects due to the risk of a Google penalty or ban. This type of redirect refers to serving a 301 redirect selectively to search engine spiders like Googlebot. Obviously, when you start serving up different content to humans than you do to spiders (and yes, this includes differing redirects), you get into dangerous territory with the search engines. If you're using conditional redirects, you probably don't even need them. For example, if you use a tracking parameter in your URLs to differentiate clickthroughs on links leading to the same content, you don't need to use conditional redirects to collapse the click-tracked duplicates and aggregate PageRank. You can treat bots and humans equally by serving them both up a 301 redirect. The clicktracked URL will still register in your log files, even though it shows up for only an instant.

Intrigued by all this and want to learn more? Then read my full article "Redirects: Good, Bad & Conditional" published last week on Search Engine Land, and also check out my PowerPoint deck from my SMX West presentation on "Unraveling URLs and Demystifying Domains".

Ever see someone and think "Geez, that person looks like a totally different person from how I remember him/her"? I just saw MC Hammer at the Ypulse conference last month and thought that. In fact, I didn't even recognize him until he was introduced. Here's a picture I snapped of him in the hallway after his session finished. Compare that with the photo juxtaposed (taken from the "U Can't Touch This" video) in his "Hammertime" heyday, in the early 90's (gotta love those parachute pants!).

One of my staff was taken aback the other day to me that he came across an old photo of me on the About Us page of audit-it.com. Oh wow do I look different now. Compare a picture of me now with that one from 10 years ago:

Ha!

Yesterday I got an email from a relative, one of those joke emails that get forwarded around. If you could imagine what a few years and more than a few pounds could do to Michelangelo's David, it might look like this:

Ranking too well in the search engines and want to give your struggling competitors a more level playing field? Then follow these 3 easy steps to alienate those who already link to you and torch your best inbound links...

1. STEP 1: Collect a list of your backlinks and associated anchor text.
2. STEP 2: Scrape WHOIS domain information from all the linking sites. The email address of the administrative contact for each domain is what you're after.
3. STEP 3: Spam the admin contacts like there's no tomorrow! Make the email generic so it's clear you haven't ever visited their site or that you are aware of any existing business relationship the linker has with you. Make sure the email reads like it's written by a non-native English speaker (nothing makes a recipient feel more special than the knowledge that they've been outsourced to an overseas spam/call center!) To top it off, suggest specific anchor text without regard to whether the anchor text makes sense in the link's current context.
4. (Optional) STEP 4: Laugh all the way to the bank. Once at the bank, make a large withdrawal and promptly flush that cash down the nearest toilet.

(I figured I had better add Step 4 so it's extra-clear that I'm being facetious!)

Here's an email I received yesterday that follows the above Three Easy Steps, from a valued former business partner (I'm sure it's actually their new SEO agency)...

(Names have been changed to protect the guilty.)

Subject: A request from Widget Emporium
Date: August 5, 2008 5:01:41 PM CDT
To: sspencer@netconcepts.com

My name is Heather Irwin and I am Rep for Widget Emporium. I have noticed on your website page: http://www.gravitystream.com/, which provides visitors with some great Retail information, you have a link to our site http://www.widgetemporium.com which reads Widget Emporium.

Thank you so much for the link -- we really appreciate it. However, I am writing to ask if you would make one minor change to the listing so we can improve the brand awareness of Widget Emporium.

Can you please change the link text to Home Decor by Widget Emporium?

Additionally, if you can also change the link URL to point visitors to http://www.widgetemporium.com, we can work together to provide visitors with more relevant results for their search.

Alternatively, you may use the following HTML code to update our link:
<a href=”http://www.widgetemporium.com”>Home Decor by Widget Emporium</a>

Please let me know if the above provides you with the information you need to make the necessary changes.

I can be reached via email or if you’d like to talk about this by phone, my direct number is 480.282.6052.

Thank you for your time!

Heather Irwin

When it comes to link building, it's all in the approach. The last thing you want to do is relegate this critical task to what are sometimes referred to in the industry as "link monkeys" -- underpaid non-experts in link building, usually interns or overseas workers. Particularly if it's immediately obvious when reading their emails that they aren't native English speakers.

I've suggested in past Link Building presentations to "mine your existing backlinks" for opportunities to improve sub-optimal anchor text (like "click here" or your URL) then lobbying to get the anchor text changed. But you can't just do this en masse and spam everyone to hell. Be selective about who you target. And when you do reach out, craft a unique message that makes it clear you understand the relationship the linker has to you and that you are familiar with their site. Start a dialogue. Build a relationship. Even consider picking up the phone. (Now I've really shocked you!)

I know this is difficult to scale, but "get links quick" schemes rarely work.

I had the pleasure of interviewing via email Tony Hsieh, the CEO of online shoe retailer Zappos.com, for an article I wrote for the August issue of Multichannel Merchant. Zappos is a real innovator among online retailers in a lot of areas, not the least of which is social media. They have taken Twitter by storm, with 440 twittering employees - including their CEO (Tony) and their COO (Alfred). They even launched a microsite dedicated to their Twitter presence.

I thought it would be interesting to share the interview with you here. The final article is now online, so be sure to check that out too.

Stephan: Can you share a bit of background about you and Zappos, and how the company culture plays into your inclination to jump headfirst into new online marketing channels? What were your objectives in entering the Twitterverse? twitter.zappos.com from a social media standpoint is pretty impressive and in the corporate world a rather unheard of large-scale embracing of Twitter. What is the big picture idea behind this / how did this come about?

Tony: Background on the company is here. My bio is here. You can get a glimpse inside our company culture here.

Our #1 priority as a company is our company culture. We believe that if we get the culture right, most of the other stuff, including great customer service, will fall into place on its own. Long term, we want the Zappos brand to be about the very best customer service and the very best customer experience.

For Twitter, we don't really view it as a marketing channel so much as a way to connect on a more personal level, whether it's with our employees or our existing customers.

Initially, we started getting the entire company more involved with Twitter because we saw it as a great way to help build our company culture. But then we discovered it was also a great way to connect with
customers as well.

Stephan: Are you viewing this as an experiment to be evaluated over some trial period or are you committed to engaging with customers via Twitter over the long term?

Tony: We are committed to connecting with our customers on a personal level. The telephone is actually a really great way to do this, which is why we have our 1-800 number at the top of every page of our web site. We found that Twitter is another great way to do this, and if something else comes along in the future, then we would definitely explore that as well.

Stephan: How are Zappos employees using Twitter? Is there any competitive aspect amongst employees about follower acquisition? Is there an overarching theme to their tweets or are they just twittering about their cats? Do they twitter about Zappos products and blog posts? What's the level of supervision of them in their twittering? e.g. any employee guidelines for twittering? and are they trained? How do they know not to pose as a random consumer and post pro-Zappos tweets while hiding their corporate employee status? What would an employee have to tweet to get fired? What's the procedure for employees handling tweets directed directly at them from customers?

Tony: We do offer Twitter classes, but those are optional and are more for employees to learn how to sign up for Twitter and use various features and third party applications. We really don't give any specific guidelines except to tell them to use their best judgement.

It's up to employees what they want to Twitter about. As I mentioned earlier, the primary focus was to get employees to connect with each other, so the vast majority of the posts are about their personal lives.

In terms of what an employee would have to tweet in order to get fired, it would be if they did something that was not consistent with our core values, which are here.

But this is not twitter-specific: If an employee does anything that's not consistent with our core values, whether through twitter, telephone, or in person, then we need to consider whether that employee is Zappos material for the long term.

We currently don't have any standard procedures for responding to tweets from customers.

Stephan: What (if any) kind of ROI are you seeing by having your employees spend time being active on Twitter? What are your success metrics?

Tony: We're not really looking at short-term ROI in terms of sales. We're looking to form life-long relationships with our customers, and we think Twitter helps us do this.

However, we've also found that Twitter has been great for recruiting because people can get a glimpse into what our culture is like just by observing how we interact with each other on Twitter.

Stephan: What's the response from customers been? What was the response to your tweet asking for feedback to the idea of a zappos.org site that donates a percentage of the revenue to charity? Have you heard if any of your mentions of companies/products/restaurants resulted in an increase in sales for what you've endorsed?

Tony: The customers that are following @zappos on Twitter seem to really enjoy it because it allows them to interact with us on a much more personal level. I've heard anecdotally of people buying from us because of our Twitter presence, but as I mentioned earlier, we're not really looking at the short term ROI.

Stephan: Has Zappos embraced or have plans to embrace any other social networks on such a large scale? Digg? Propeller? Etc?

Tony: Not at this time.

Stephan: Could you describe some of the contests you've been conducting over Twitter and how successful you feel they've been? Any big plans for upcoming Twitter contests?

Tony: We don't have a formal contest plan or program.

Stephan: Have you considered Twitter as a customer service tool to crowd-source customer questions and set up an employee guru status where employees get points for answering customers' questions effectively?

Tony: Not at this time.

Stephan: You seem very open in sharing what you're doing and where you're going at any given moment. Do you feel too exposed sometimes by being so open? Do you fear making some statements on Twitter that might come back to haunt you in some way?

Tony: Almost any statement that's taken out of context can be interpreted negatively. But part of the beauty of Twitter is that you can see what we have all been doing over time and make your own judgement on what you think of Zappos based on the sum total of everything, not a single tweet.

Stephan: Do you randomly twitter stuff, or do you try to schedule entries consistently?

Tony: I think it's important to be authentic, so I don't have a schedule. I'll tweet if I feel like it, and I won't if I don't.

Stephan: What would be your advice to other CEOs out there who would like to try twittering?

Tony: Just be real and use it as a way to connect more deeply with people. Don't think of it as a marketing tool you have to leverage. And you actually have to be passionate about twittering or it's not going to work. So if you're not passionate about it, then don't do it.

Being a CEO is a tough enough job without having to worry about blog traffic on top of it all (ask me how I know...) A corporate blog could be a tremendous publicity tool, though, if properly executed. On the other hand, it could end up being a PR disaster if you say something that harms your or your company's reputation. I think maybe a combination of lack of time and fear of posting something dangerous is behind many a CEO's apprehension toward company blogs. The reality of corporate blogging, though, is that it doesn't take a lot of time, and the success stories far outnumber the horror stories.

Take Jonathan Schwartz, for instance. As the CEO of one of the IT industry's intellectual blue chips, he's attracted widespread attention for his corporate blog commentary on industry current events and company and product news. Originally he intended to foster a method of communicating with the IT marketplace -- his customers, partners, competitors, and fans (yeah, even a behind-the-scenes company like Sun has fans in the computer technology world) as well as the more than 32,000 Sun employees as well. In one of the tech blogging world's most innovative moves, Schwartz also offered a free $5000 Sun server to bloggers who wrote the most compelling reviews of the machine's performance -- positive or negative. At the time, the claim was that the Sun T2000 "Niagara" server was the fastest on earth, and certainly had the most performance per watt of electricity consumed. In order to get the word out about this new machine to as many people as possible, he didn't spend millions on a traditional advertising campaign. Instead, Schwartz posted the offer on his blog, then had his salespeople send out free servers to tech bloggers and other interested potential customers for a free 30-day evaluation. If you didn't want the machine at the end of the 30 days (and you didn't win the monthly contest to be the blogger with the most compelling T2000 benchmarking blog post), all you had to do was box it up in its original packaging, and Sun would pay return shipping. In essence, if you wanted to play with the machine, you had nothing to lose. Schwartz rationalized on his blog that the cost of the free servers he gave out -- even to people who didn't win the contest and wouldn't send the machines back to Sun -- was negligible considering the value of the press and blog coverage he got as a result, and he reported on his blog a few weeks later that this effort was especially effective.

Another interesting CEO blogger success story is Steve Spangler. As the founder and CEO of educational toy cataloger Steve Spangler Science, Steve expanded his business though non-traditional marketing methods. His online science experiment videos and blog posts about teaching science to kids has elevated his fame to new heights. Gradually, Spangler found himself on local, then national television talk shows and news programs such as the Ellen Show, teaching people to see the world through an adventurous scientific lens. He even got chosen as one of only 204 nominees for Time Magazine's "100 Most Influential People" of 2007. Steve credits his blog for a lot of this online buzz and media attention. Aside from having a lot of fun, what do you suppose all of this has done for sales at SteveSpanglerScience.com? Let's put it this way: Steve's blog accounts for 12% of online sales!

Still not convinced? Here are some of my own reasons for having a CEO blog:

• Search engines -- Google in particular -- love blogs. So anything you have to say or sell in your blog will rank better in the search engines, all else being equal.
• If you have a good blog, you can get readers hooked and coming back for more. What better way to burn your brand into the minds of potential customers, thus increasing the likelihood of repeat purchases?
• Having a blog helps get you links. If you are a blogger, then other bloggers think of you as "one of them." As such, they will be more likely to link to you and to give you favorable coverage on their blogs. It is also more likely that you will be on their radar because bloggers are more apt to follow your company's movements by subscribing to your blog's RSS feed than by subscribing to your email newsletter or periodically visiting your site.
• Having a blog helps get you press from the mainstream media. Journalists read blogs, and are more apt to solicit interviews from you if you have a popular and/or interesting blog.
• A blog builds your credibility and can position you as a "thought leader" in your niche. For example, a blog about stamp collecting (with interesting trends, news tidbits, insightful commentary, etc.) would position an e-commerce shop selling collectible stamps as a credible, trusted expert source for stamps.
• A blog can help you get invited to speak at conferences and to author articles. Speaking engagements, even when they're not paid, are a huge opportunity for networking and publicity.

So what are you waiting for? If you want to get started with a corporate blog, get your IT department to look into WordPress, b2evolution, Compendium, Movable Type, Drupal or whatever blogging software looks interesting to you. If you're on a shoestring budget or don't want to make a significant investment into corporate blogging, you could look into a free or cheap hosted service like Blogger.com, TypePad, or Wordpress.com. Be aware that you should own the domain name that the blog is published on, however. If you don't you're wedded to that URL and blog platform forever -- or at least until you decide to pull the plug and start over from scratch with a new URL and ZERO link popularity (since with these hosted platforms you won't have the luxury of installing a 301 redirect to your new URL).

Good luck and good blogging!

I went off the radar for a few weeks. Apologies for that. I have a lot going on in my life right now - not all of it good - that is taking up a lot of my time and headspace at the moment. Plus I've been traveling a lot. I just got back from a 10 day trip to the Bay area for 3 conferences -- FooCamp, Ypulse, and BlogHer.

It was my first FooCamp (I'm so psyched that I got an invite!). For those of you unfamiliar with Foo Camp, it is the predecessor to BarCamp with the word "Foo" an acronym for "Friends of O'Reilly." Besides being a huge fan of O'Reilly since about 1994, I'm co-authoring an O'Reilly book with Rand Fishkin and Jessie Stricchiola called The Art of SEO and I've spoken twice at O'Reilly/CMP's "Web 2.0 Expo" conference. So yes I'm an unabashed "Foo". FooCamp is invitation-only and limited to several hundred people. It's an "unconference" -- where the program is developed and presented by the attendees. The more proactive you are at Foo Camp (in terms of sharing/participating), the more you'll get out of it (and the more likely you'll be invited back again). It's completely free - free to attend, free food, free drinks, free "lodging" on the grounds - just bring your own tent. And yep, a lot of folks brought tents and camped out on the lawn. Some folks slept in the office buildings on the floor in sleeping bags. I'm not into "roughing it", so I stayed at a nearby Holiday Inn Express. My older two daughters got to hang out at the Holiday Inn while I went to the conference, which was pretty boring -- so they told me... about a MILLION times! Arrgh. Gotta love teenagers. Speaking of my teenagers, the middle one (who is 15) drew this flattering illustration (on the left) of me wearing a Foo Camp t-shirt. She finds it quite hilarious that I wear a T-shirt in public that says "Foo Camp." Of course I live to embarrass her (or so she thinks!).

Foo Camp attendees run the gamut - entrepreneurs to authors to venture capitalists - but they can all be described as leading thinkers and innovators. It was a real treat. I got to meet a lot of amazing people. Way too many to list. But here's an example: the founder of Drupal, Dries Buytaert. Dries blogged about his Foo Camp experience. Nobody has a bad time at Foo Camp.

After the Foo Camp weekend came Ypulse, a youth marketing conference. It was excellent. If you market to kids, tweens or teens, you should have been at this conference (so go to the next one!). My oldest Chloe was a speaker on the "Totally Wired Superstars" panel with other teen entrepreneurs. I really enjoyed the conference, but Chloe was in heaven -- she met directors (Chloe wants to be a director), journalists, folks from Disney, Seventeen.com, MTV, and her hero, Ashley Qualls, the teenage "MySpace millionaire".

Then a couple days later came the BlogHer conference, a conference focused on the women blogger community -- a powerful and diverse voice in the blogosphere that includes "mommy bloggers", foodies, political bloggers, techies, etc. It was my second BlogHer conference. I went last year too, when Chloe spoke. This time we just attended. Chloe did manage to get on the local (Bay area) news (see the video here) - she was interviewed as an attendee.

BlogHer was great. I did sometimes feel like the "token male" in the audience, because women so outnumbered men (I never felt unwelcome though, just to clarify!). Instead of feeling out of place, a male could look at it as an opportunity. For instance, I remember a guy telling me at last year's BlogHer how he loved coming to their conferences because "it was like shooting fish in a barrel". Ha ha! I presume he was single, but I probably shouldn't assume that.

Now I'm back and it's back to the grindstone. I have articles to write, the book to work on, conference presentations to prepare for, a ton of emails to respond to, and personal crises to deal with. *deep sigh*

Rock on.

I realized while writing my last post about press releases optimized for social media and SEO that "social media" may not mean anything to some readers and to others (particularly the early adopter types) it may mean the world. Some folks even react to the term with religious fervor.

But you know what, "social media" isn't the greatest thing since sliced bread. Nor is Web 2.0. Nor is Twitter.

I know it’s what everyone in the blogosphere keeps buzzing about, and when you hear it enough it makes you want to get in on the action. But guess what? Most people in your target market I bet don’t have a clue what such buzz words mean, nor how to use them even if they did. The fact of the matter is, not every new thing will be right for your business.

So what I'm saying is: Don’t just get involved in something because everyone else is. If everyone else was jumping off a bridge, does that mean you should too? (with the exception of bungee jumping, of course! ) If you are going to get involved with a new technology, don’t just jump head first without taking the time to understand what you are about to get into.

For example... a lot, and I mean A LOT, of social media sites will start ranking for your name if you use them heavily and garner several links pointing to your profile pages. Because of this, it they can be used as great reputation management tools and push down some bad press. But at the same time you can inadvertently misuse them and end up putting a face of your business forward that you don’t want the public to see.

You've been warned.

The press release is an often overlooked factor for online marketing success. Press releases not only promote your company/brand and raise your online profile, they can also increase targeted traffic by helping with your SEO. Specifically, the release can - in its own right - gain visibility in the web search results and the news search results (e.g. Google News and Yahoo News). And the release can boost your own site's rankings by building quality backlinks.

If you aren't writing press releases, you should be. Or if you are but you aren't optimizing them for search engines and for social media, you should be.

A standard, run-of-the-mill, un-optimized press release about a new hire or a promotion within the company won't do much for you on its own. Booorrring! I think I speak for all journalists when I say that I do not seek out press releases nor do I have any patience for pitches that are merely press releases. As a freelance journo who writes for Multichannel Merchant and MarketingProfs and various other pubs - and as a blogger - I get plenty of press release pitches and they only serve to annoy me. Even clever tactics to get the journalist's/blogger's attention like mentioning him/her in a blog post may not work anymore as we all have gotten a lot more jaded because of the ever lowering signal to noise ratio.

This means you have to be smart about the press releases you churn out.

If the news releases aren't terribly interesting, or if they aren't written with search engines in mind (and therefore are keyword-rich), or if they aren't syndicated to the right outlets, or if they aren't "optimized" to include key elements like text links and multimedia calls-to-action, then they won't be terribly successful at driving traffic to your website.

Here are some of the outlets you could syndicate your press release out to:

• BusinessWire
• MarketWire
• Prime Newswire
• PR Newswire
• PRWeb

All of the above sites offer various packages/levels of optimization and social media plays. For example, PR Newswire allows for embedded keyword-rich links which will help improve the search ranking of the linked page for the targeted key phrase. Note that other sites that pick up your press release from PR Newswire probably won't retain the links that you've embedded into the body of the release. So you're really only "buying" a link from PRNewswire.com when you pay the extra fee for the embedded links; but it's still probably worth doing. In addition to working text links into the copy, write the press release's title and body copy as you would any other search engine optimized copy. Do your keyword research using some of the available tools and include the important keywords prominently in the title and body.

Beyond the search engine optimization aspects, there's also the social media optimization that will help your release get syndicated into the social media realm. There's an excellent social media press release template you can use as a starting point, which will remind you to include such key things as:

• a link to your "News Releases" RSS feed
• multimedia call-to-action (e.g. "download white paper")
• photos (product pictures, executive's headshot)
• podcast feed and/or MP3 file links
• Skype and IM addresses
• link and RSS feed to a del.icio.us page containing relevant historical, trend, market, product and competitive content sources (which you should keep up-to-date so it continues to be a resource to journos who subscribe to this content source)

One last thing I'll mention about press releases... you should try to keep your frequency up too, just like with blog posts. A single press release per year isn't going to do much for you. Plan to push out press releases throughout the year.

Being a parent, sometimes the going gets rough. Particularly when you're dealing with teenagers. Ya know what I'm talking about? Parenting experts don't call it the White Water Rafting Years for nothing. Last week was one of those weeks from Hell. *sigh* Hopefully it isn't anything that a little "tough love" won't fix though. Of course she is grounded. But a new and very warranted punishment was I confiscated her cell phone -- permanently. If she wants a cell phone, she'll have to buy one herself, and sign up for service herself, in her own name. She went ballistic on that one.

Anyways, I thought you'd enjoy seeing a couple of funny signs about children...

A sign spotted in China

A sign spotted in Madison, WI