Google’s Hot Spot

“Google is rolling out a new advertising and marketing platform for local businesses, and this time, it’s all starting in Portland.

You may recall that earlier this month, Google launched a social, Yelp-like service for consumers. Dubbed Hotpot, the service was based on data from Google Places, but it brought an entirely new, user-friendly interface and recommendation engine.

At the time, we noted that Google had beat Facebook to the punch in launching location-based recommendations; we wondered which company would be most aggressive on places-based marketing.

While Google has already dipped its toes into location ads within Google Maps and Search (and with special programs like Boost, its Hotpot marketing scheme is something entirely new.”

Read the full article at MASHABLE.

Living Content: It’s What People Want

Most web content is barely alive, even when it is first written. It is pumped out by content mills, optimized and uploaded. This kind of bulk content is often referred to as backfill content. I prefer the term “landfill content.” Dead and rotting from day one.

In sharp contrast, living content is quality content. It is shared quickly through social media—because it is worth sharing—and takes root across the web. Better still, true living content is updated and added to on a regular basis.

Let’s look at the attributes of these two types of web content.

Defining landfill content

Landfill content is written primarily for the search engines. Working from a list of strong keywords or phrases, marketers aim to create a new page of content optimized for each phrase.

The purpose of this content is to please or mislead the search engines, and achieve a page-one position in the search results.

The focus is on volume, and not on quality.

This kind of content can achieve its purpose very well, particularly if the strategy is employed by an authority domain. The site’s historical authority lifts the landfill content pages higher in the search results.

But there is one huge downside to this approach. It’s a customer killer, and a brand killer.

When a visitor’s first experience of your website is through one of these low-quality pages, they get a very poor first impression of your site, company or organization. They won’t become customers, they won’t return to your site, and they certainly won’t share the page through Facebook or Twitter.

That’s the fundamental problem here. Bulk content is written to impress the search engines, and not your visitors.

And, as you know, only people buy. The Googlebot will never become a customer.

Read the full article @SEARCHENGINELAND.