Cyrus Shepard gave this particular Whiteboard Friday and what stuck out to me the most was at the end of the video.  He states that the best way to link build is to reach out to linking opportunities where you have no control over anchor text.  When you really step back and think about that concept, he’s spot on.  That means you are technically letting your link building look organic because it is organic.  You’re still getting that link but you aren’t manipulating it, which is in turn exactly what Google wants from you.

Shepard also mentions a link building suggestion that just makes so much sense!  He suggests when doing outreach in a natural way is to simply ask for a share.  Ask them to retweet you or share your story on Twitter, Facebook, Google+.  Now you’re reaching out to a community and you never know, they may still end up writing about you.

The post Future-Proof Your Link Building appeared first on Casey Camilleri.

In any role that you take on in your career you’ll be an expert in your subject whether is be project management, database admin, online marketing and the list goes on.  Most people look at career advancement as learning the next new tactics for their area of expertise and I do agree that is a great goal to have but we tend to downplay how important it is to hone in your communication skills.

During my previous role as an SEO Specialist I took a Dale Carnegie 2 day class on communication and after the short course I read How to Win Friends and Influence People in the Digital Age. It’s a spin off of his classic but it’s actually a great, quick read if you use social media or communicate with people at work on a daily basis whether it be e-mail or phone calls.

I highly recommend reading the How to Win Friends title but from there I read Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High which is also an amazing read.  No matter what, whether you are in a business or personal conversation you will eventually hit conversations that can become crucial, make or break the communication situations.

So before you start thinking you should focus all of your time on learning the next technical skill in your field think about getting back to the basics and hone in on your communication skills.  It’ll pay off in the long run more than you think.

Side Note:

You don’t have to invest a single cent for either of these books.

Use your public library to your advantage!

The post Communication in the Workplace and Social Space appeared first on Casey Camilleri.

What is Goodreads you ask? 

It’s another social networking site but geared towards tracking what books you’ve read and what you are currently reading.  You can add friends, rate books and not only see what your friends are reading but you can follow thought leaders and see what they are reading as well.

Reading Goals

I set a goal for myself to reach 100 books read total by the end of 2012.  I think I was at around 80 something read books in my Goodreads account and I’m at 113 today.  Clearly I took it way past my goal but I’m so glad I set it and surpassed it.

I set this goal for many reasons, of course the obvious reason was to read more again but I was dealing with an issue that most people I know have when it comes to reading: finishing books.

We see a book and we go ‘hey that looks like an awesome book’ so we buy it, we read maybe 25-50 pages of it and NEVER finish the book.  It ends up on some shelf and this process actually repeats quite often!  Well I became so tired of starting books and never finishing them.  The pile of “to finish” just kept adding up.

So I set the goal at new years to reach this 100 read books in Goodreads.  I started reading books that I haven’t finished.  I started with the books that I had the least amount of pages to read to complete the book.  The second I saw that number increase on my profile the addiction kicked into high gear.

Now I still have books that I own that I are still half read around me but what’s important here is that I am on a constant stream of starting and completely books.  Below are a few ways I was able to reach and surpass my goal:

1. Setting the goal

Actually writing down your goals and reviewing them every day really burns your priorities in your head.  It’s so easy now in days to get distracted, that’s why we have unfinished books everywhere!  Set goals and review them daily.

2. Tracking on GoodReads

Seeing my number of total books read go up every time I finished a book really kept my momentum going.

3. Started out reading books that I had already started

Again, keeping the momentum up allows you to feel accomplished and pushes you to really hit your target goal. If you just have a few last chapters to read then read those first!

4. Moved on to reading books that I researched on Goodreads

I went after books that people highly recommended and made sure they were “quick reads” so I knew I wouldn’t just start and not finish them.

5. Momentum!

After you have finished your half read books and you’ve completed some “quick read” books you’ll be well on your way to read the real good stuff you always wanted to read.

BONUS TIP:  Getting an Kindle is life changing as well.  It’s so much easier to focus on reading and you change the font size on the kindle so you feel like you’re reading the book faster!

With 2013 coming up closely what are your goals? 

The post GoodReads: WARNING! Makes Reading Addictive! appeared first on Casey Camilleri.

Study, Study, Study

It’s such an amazing, powerful, free tool. In my past I’ve done a little bit of PPC and adwords but I’ve never integrated an adwords account with an analytics account. I started reviewing the prep videos on a Saturday. I took screen shots of the areas they covered that I was unfamiliar with.

I would recommend reviewing the videos 2-3 times before you take the test and also acting out the actions they take through your own Google Analytics account. A lot of questions on the test are theory based meaning you really have to understand the concept and put it into action.

Keep In Mind

I found a number of other resources online that helped me prepare for the test. The main things to keep in mind about this test are:

1. Total test time is 90 minutes but it is open book and you can pause the test at any time.
2. Pausing is unlimited and you must complete the test in 5 days.

These two key points is what makes this test almost a guarantee that you can pass this test. Get an understanding of the concepts and review areas you are unfamiliar with and you will pass.

I encourage anyone who uses Google Analytics to even just review the videos that Google has provided.   They are extremely informative I guarantee there will be something you can learn from them.

The post Passing The Google Analytics Certification Test appeared first on Casey Camilleri.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Instagram, I’m a regular user, but the photo app I used the most this weekend is Diptic.  When you are out taking photos of the events you are attending it’s common to have more than one that you love the most.  So instead of uploading 10 pictures you can get creative and mash up your photos into one.

Bucket List + Diptic

I went out Saturday and walked the Golden Gate Bridge with my family.  I realized I’ve walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and even climbed the Sydney Harbour Bridge but I’ve never walked the bridge that is in my own backyard.

I took a massive amount of pictures, as to be expected, and I put my iPhone camera to good use.  Having so many pictures of one event makes using Diptic that much more fun.  There are a ton of different styles and cuts you can use to create your custom photo and you are able to photo edit (similar to Instagram) at the same time.

It’s definitely the best 99 cents I’ve spent on an app hands down and I highly recommend checking it out.  It’s worth it!

Once your create your custom Diptic you can then Instagram your photo after!

The post My Favorite Photo App (No, It’s Not Instagram) appeared first on Casey Camilleri.

To Keep Or Not To Keep

Typically when I read books I buy them and either sell them to a friend or sell it on half.com.  I feel that if I’ve already read the book, why read it again when I can read something new.  May as well de-clutter and simplify my life, right?  That might be OK with other books but no one is taking my copy of The $100 Startup. I will be rereading this book in the future and keeping it for reference.

Feed Your Mind

I love this book because it’s inspiring and I’ve been recently been listening to audiobooks as well that are very inspiring.  What you feed your mind is very important and it changes your outlook and your behavior.  I suggest not only reading this book but also listening to other inspiring audiobooks as well to get your mind in tune that you can achieve anything if you set your mind to it.

Next Steps After The Book

What Chris doesn’t go over is how once you launch your business (typically almost all businesses have a website) how important it is that you start your site laid out in terms of SEO best practices.  I would recommend taking a basic web development and a SEO for beginners class as well. You can also learn all of this information for free through numerous blogs out there.  I like using AllTop to learn further on any topic. The key is to continue learning.

The Resources Are Out There

You don’t have to learn how to code a site (there are so many free templates or cheap templates out there that it’s no longer necessary to know how to do it).  It is important though to be able to understand the concepts and be able to implement outside code such as Google Analytics.

What would you start if you followed your passion
to start your own business where you could be location independent?

The post Book Review: The $100 Startup appeared first on Casey Camilleri.

That’s why I have put together the top 56 list of  social networking sites.  If you are looking to optimize any of these sites for yourself check out my social media optimization posts. I’ll be adding new site strategies each week. Enjoy!

1. About.Me - About.me lets you quickly build simple and visually elegant splash pages that points visitors to your content from around the web. Get started today.

2. Flavors.Me – Flavors.me allows anyone to make a branded web presence using personal content from around the Internet.

3. BigSight – Why bigsight? 87% of our profiles appear at the top of Google. This allows you to share your story with the world.

4. Ziggs – White pages and free people search for professionals.

5. Xing – XING is a social network for business and career. Find old acquaintances, new people, jobs, events, companies, and groups.

6. LinkedIn – 50 million+ members | Manage your professional identity. Build and engage with your professional network. Access knowledge, insights and opportunities.

7. Plaxo – The leading smart address book, Plaxo unifies your contacts across sources, proactively updates contact info, and syncs your complete address book.

8. StumbleUpon – StumbleUpon is the easiest way to discover new and interesting web pages, photos and videos across the Web.

9. Twitter – Instantly connect to what’s most important to you. Follow your friends, experts, favorite celebrities, and breaking news.

10. Listorious – Listorious – Discover the best Twitter lists.

11. Twitpic – Share photos and videos on twitter.

12. Twitaholic – Tracking the most popular users of a certain microblogging/social network tool.

13. Facebook – Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them.

14. DailyBooth – DailyBooth is one big conversation about your life, through pictures

15. Pinterest – A content sharing service that allows members to “pin” images, videos and other objects to their pinboard.

16. Google+ – Google+ aims to make sharing on the web more like sharing in real life.

17. GoodReads – See what your friends are reading. Keep track of what you’ve read and organize your books into virtual bookshelves.

18. Tumblr – A feature rich and free blog hosting platform offering professional and fully customizable templates, bookmarklets, photos, mobile apps, and social network.

19. YouTube – Share your videos with friends, family, and the world.

20. WorkFace – Workface is a post-social media platform that is ready for social business, the hip alter ego of old-fashioned live chat software for websites.

21. Scribd – Scribd is a social publishing site, where tens of millions of people share original writings and documents. Scribd’s vision is to liberate the written word.

22. DocStoc – Docstoc is a community for people to find and share professional documents. Find free legal documents and free business documents.

23. Flickr – Flickr is almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world.

24. iKarma – Harness The Power of Reputation. Capture Customer Comments; Display Testimonials Online; Locate Trustworthy Businesses; Manage Your Word-Of-Mouth

25. Digg – The best news, videos and pictures on the web as voted on by the Digg community. Breaking news on Technology, Politics, Entertainment, and more!

26. Reddit – User-generated news links. Votes promote stories to the front page.

27. HackerNews – The Hacker News is Most Comprehensive resource in providing news related to Information Technology, Hacker News, Hacked by, Learn Hacking, email hacker.

28. Gather – Gather is the place where millions of people come for a fresh perspective on what’s happening now. Gather Members can join in the conversation.

29. Weebly – Named one of TIME’s 50 Best Websites, Weebly has an easy, drag & drop interface to create your own website. It’s free, powerful, and professional.

30. Emurse – Create, share and store your resume online for free. Use our resume builder and have a new resume in minutes.

31. WordPress – A semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability.

32. LookupPage – Enhance your online visibility on all leading search engines using LookupPage. Be in control of your business and personal online image.

33. Ziki – Ziki.com is an online B to B marketplace connecting buyers and sellers.

34. Repvine – RepVine is an online reference and reputation management service. RepVine puts your reputation online.

35. PlanCast – Plancast is the best way to discover events and share plans with friends.

36. Spoke – Discover, contribute to, and create industry topics, organizations, companies, and people. Become a part of the new business information community.

37. BlogSpot -It’s free. Template. Beautiful, customizable templates and layouts. Try the template designer. Stats. Up to the minute stats. Monetize. Make money with Adsense.

38. Instagram/Followgram.me – iPhone and Android. Instagram for iPhone. Instagram – Fast, beautiful photo sharing for your iPhone.

39. Mashable -Social Media news blog covering cool new websites and social networks: Facebook, Google, Twitter, MySpace and YouTube.

40. Quora – Quora connects you to everything you want to know about. Quora aims to be the easiest place to write new content and share content from the web.

41. PeoplePond – Online profile and personal branding platform with Personal Identity Verification.

42. GetGlue - GetGlue is a social network for entertainment. Check-in and rate things to discover new favorites, see what your friends are into, get stickers and win free stuff.

43. List.ly -Listly helps bloggers and publishers engage readers with continuously evolving viral lists.

44. Formspring.me -Formspring requires all users to provide their real date of birth, but it is used for internal purposes only.

45. Namesake -The easiest way to discuss what you love — live.

46. FriendFeed -FriendFeed is a service that makes it easy to share with friends online. It offers a fun and interactive way to discover and discuss information among friends.

47. Art of Saving – Art Of Saving, a social media network for ALL your financial needs, is a community for consumers, advisors, and small business owners to meet, share, discuss.

48. Picasa – Organize, edit, and share your photos.

49. Meetup – Helps groups of people with shared interests plan meetings and form offline clubs in local communities around the world.

50. Viddy – Life in the moment. Turn your everyday moments into perfect little movies with Viddy. New! Add Viddy to your Facebook Timeline.

51. Paper.li – Turn Twitter, Facebook and RSS feeds into online newspapers in just a few clicks.

52. SmugMug – Billions of happy photos, millions of passionate customers. Gorgeous online photo sharing. Protect your priceless memories. Create beautiful prints & gifts.

53. YouNoodle – Meet exceptional people. Join the startup of your dreams. Show the world your support for cool entrepreneurs. What are you noodling on today?

54. Posterous – Share Smarter. Share Smarter. Posterous Spaces is the easiest way to share safely online. Share More, Work Less.

55. Vimeo – Vimeo is the home for high-quality videos and the people who love them.

56. Konnects – Konnects is a social media platform that is embedded on the site of an online newspaper or publication to bring engagement to the organization’s site.

The post The Top 56 Social Networking Sites appeared first on Casey Camilleri.

This is part of a series of posts that is covering every social media/social networking site on the web. 

Plaxo

The leading smart address book, Plaxo unifies your contacts across sources, proactively updates contact info, and syncs your complete address book.

What Does That Mean For You?

You can sync all of your contact information for all of your friends and family onto Plaxo but you can also create a personal profile.  After you sign up for an account go over to the top right hand corner where it shows your name and click on Share your Contact Card.

You can then create a custom URL where I recommend using your first and last name (ie. http://caseycamilleri.myplaxo.com)

Under My Information fill out your name, add a photo of yourself, where you work, your job title, a bio of yourself, and the link information for your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Pro Tip:  All of these profiles should already be set up and focused on your full name.

You can see how clean this is from a user prospective and also from a professional prospective.  Also Google loves this so it can show your profiles on your search string when you Google yourself.

This matters a lot when you are job searching. Keeping your social profiles clean and consistent is key.

The post Social Media Optimization: Plaxo appeared first on Casey Camilleri.

Getting back to Penguin though.  Google has now hurt sites (they aren’t calling it a penalty) when they have thousands of links from one domain and/or it’s exactly the keyword they are looking to target, ie. say I wanted my blog to rank for the terms “social media blog” I would get 1,000′s of links from 2-3 sites with my site linking from that anchor text.

That doesn’t work anymore, it use to, Google cleaned this up making a large amount of people/companies worried about their web site’s performance.

And I totally get it.

But I always say, look at this from a user perspective or Google’s perspective.  Are you doing your link building where you are proud of it.  If Google was looking over your shoulder right now would they feel that your link building isn’t spammy?

Are you constantly just focused on gathering follow link even if they are from sites that don’t pertain to your site’s topic?

Please, I beg of you, diversify your link building.

We shouldn’t be looking for the next quick trick.

We should be doing what we are suppose to be doing and leave it at that.  You know how to link build the right way, the way where it will always help your site in the long run, but it’s easy to want to “lifehack” your link building because we got away with it in the past.

Continue to keep up with the trends such as rel=”author”.  This is really important and it’s fun to learn and implement.

Let’s get back to the basics with SEO, even if it might take longer to implement, nothing that resulted in an amazing outcome happened over night, neither should your SEO efforts.

The post Link Building After Penguin appeared first on Casey Camilleri.

Why Is Google+ So Important?

Google+ just became 10 times more important for a local business now that Google discontinued using Google Places pages.  Google Places use to make up half of page 1 for results such as DUI lawyer in San Francisco or car accident attorney in Los Angeles.

Next Steps To Optimize Your Google+ Page

If you already had a Google Places page set up you will be merged over to Google+ but it is very important to login and review your page.  Also fill out areas that may be blank.  If Google allows you to have 5 pictures, add 5 pictures! Always go above and beyond with information.

Are you affiliated with any organizations or have you received any awards?  Add that image to your photos section.

Continue to get reviews on your page. They have a new format (see below) but reviews still play a major role in terms of conversion.

Have you noticed a difference in your rankings or your sites performance since Google’s switch to Google+ local?  Leave a comment below and let’s discuss!

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