Posts tagged TechCrunch
14 Steps To Successful SEO For Startups – TechCrunch
Jan 21st
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14 Steps To Successful SEO For Startups
TechCrunch And while the tech world is fascinated with social media and major platforms like Facebook and Twitter, we shouldn't overlook the role of SEO (and consequently Google). Like Facebook and Twitter, SEO is another opportunity to expand your funnel and … |
View full post on SEO – Google News
NSFW: When Good SEO Goes Bad – TechCrunch
Dec 12th
 TechCrunch |
NSFW: When Good SEO Goes Bad
TechCrunch Greg Kumparak is the Mobile Editor at Techcrunch. Greg has been writing for the TechCrunch network since May of 2008. Greg was born just outside of San Jose, and now lives in the East Bay of California. → Learn More It's been nearly two decades since … |
View full post on SEO – Google News
Enterprise SEO Platform Ginzametrics Raises US$1.3 Million From 500 Startups … – TechCrunch
Nov 15th
The Winners & Losers Of Google’s Freshness Update Revealed – TechCrunch
Nov 7th
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The Winners & Losers Of Google's Freshness Update Revealed
TechCrunch However, the sites that lost SEO visibility after the changes didn't seem to represent any one group, as they also included some brands, blogs, broadcasters and even Google's own Blogger.com, which dropped over 20%. Google's most recent algorithm … PR Professionals Need to Adapt to Google's 'Freshness' Algorithm Update, Says … Google's Algorithm Changes Enhance Value of Content Creation Activity Says Punch |
View full post on SEO – Google News
TechCrunch is Wrong: Here’s the Real Location Opportunity for Quora
Aug 25th
I don’t think TechCrunch’s M.G. Siegler cares about location in the same way I do. Maybe it’s because he lives in the heart of the tech scene of San Francisco; which is both the center of the world and a kind of history-less-nowhere. It’s more fun to know where you are and what has happened there before when you’re not in a place that’s all about planned obsolescence.
Either way, Siegler was told by the startup Quora today that Topics (collections of questions and answers on Quora) will soon have locations associated with them. (The feature is live now.) He makes a case that it’s a bigger deal than it might seem, but the way he explains it makes me wonder whether he was even able to convince himself. I’ll tell you why adding location data to Quora could be a big deal. I think it’s because of the pseudo-secret Quora iPhone app that’s about to launch.
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Above: The Quora map of Portland, Oregon – where tech bloggers come from to challenge other tech bloggers who seem like they want to retire. 
To be honest, I think location is going to need to be rolled out to a broader range of topics than it is today on Quora and probably to individual questions too before it proves as useful as it ought to.
How to Hold a Map Upside Down & Backwards
Siegler says that dropping a pin on a map to associate a Quora Topic with a place means that people looking at the Quora page for the Topic will know what place the content is related to. I don’t think that’s terribly interesting, myself.
He then mentions something brief about mobile phones making location more relevant and concludes with a line about how if you were planning a vacation someplace, you could use Quora to find unique and interesting information about the place you’re going to go.
Sure. Undoubtedly a few people will appreciate the opportunity to look at a topic page on Quora.com about the Taj Mahal and say “well I’ll be darned, there it is on a map.” And udoubtedly some people will take a detour past quora when planning a vacation. Not very many though and if I were Quora I wouldn’t bet the farm on that.
I imagine Quora’s vision for location probably extends far beyond these limited scenarios. Their PR strategy regarding the feature may have been woefully unimaginative (and have correspondingly dissapointing results, I’d think, though they’re not unique in that) – but I bet the feature itself is going to aim high.
What Location Offers Quora
Take a look at the Quora thread asking what the most beautiful buildings in the world are. It’s a commonly referenced part of the site and it really shows what Quora can do. It’s beautiful, mind-expanding and compelling for visitors.
Other parts of Quora are just waiting for their elements of location to be leveraged as well. What are the best places to rent a startup company office in SOMA? What are the best restaurants in Portland, Oregon and why? Where can I find an open wifi connection with power after mindnight in Arcata, California?
Those are the location-based questions people want to know…when they are out on location and have location exposed to apps on their phone.
Like the forthcoming iPhone app that Quora is building, testing and going to launch sometime very soon. Why will you have that app running in the background on your phone when there’s already really good HTML5 mobile web app Quora has had forever? Because, one might assume given all this “lets add location” stuff because that app will quietly track your location if you let it and then ping you when it can drop some awesome Quora knowledge about the place you’re in.
This isn’t about people planning vacations to the Taj Majal but unclear on where it is on a map.
This is about a big bold move to make Quora, the potentially lovable but potentially pedantic, nichey and forgettable Question and Answer network into something that will stick with users, that will be passed around through word of mouth and thus will grow outside of the Silicon Valley startup and VC clique that…put it on the map.
It sounds great to me. I love those evenings when I remember to go browse the Quora, to find upvoted answers to in-depth questions on topics of interest to me. Tech, location technologies, art, Portland, Oregon, personal hygiene or odd intimate proclivities – there’s a Topic on Quora for everyone.
And sometime soon I’m going to guess that you’re going to get a push notification sent to your phone reminding you about all that collective knowledge, when you’re in a real-world place that it references.
Specifically, you won’t just get push notifications when Quora has something to say about the place you’re at. You’ll get push notifications when you and your phone are in a place that is related to a Topic you are following on Quora. That sounds to me like something that could be awesome.
Where are the best places to go to find UI designers? Let’s say you’re following that question and then you find yourself in one of those places. Ding, ding, ding says your phone! That would be super cool!
That’s what I think is going to happen – and I think it could be way cooler than M.G. Siegler makes it sound. Maybe I just find online location data more exciting than other people, though.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
(Founder Stories) Kevin O’Connor: Having An “Exit Strategy Is Total Bullshit” – TechCrunch
Aug 21st
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(Founder Stories) Kevin O'Connor: Having An “Exit Strategy Is Total Bullshit”
TechCrunch O'Connor tells Dixon most of his early efforts are directed towards SEO. Recognizing SEO's flaws (with people trying to manipulate the system) O'Connor notes Google's attempts to clean up SEO with Panda and says that Panda improved FindTheBest's … |
View full post on SEO – Google News
TechCrunch is Wrong About Mobile Startup Quipster
Jun 1st
A mobile location startup called Quipster launched today and TechCrunch panned it. In fact, author Leena Rao may have panned an entire sector, starting out her review with the sentence “Do we really need another mobile check-in app?”
Rao went on to criticize Quipster for a shortage of differentiation. I think she’s wrong about that; I think Quipster is a very interesting product with some important differentiation that points toward the future of mobile social media. What Quipster deserves to be slammed for is having a terrible launch marketing strategy.
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The Good News
Quipster is a silly name for a service, “quip” is an antiquated and awkward word in this day and age. Once you look past that, though, the structure of this app really is something to take note of.
The app lets you check in at a venue using a nested series of structured activity types. First click the big icon for Art & Entertainment, for example, and then you’ll be presented with options like good movie, bad movie, festival, concert, watching a play, etc. Pick one of those and then you’ve got the option to edit the caption of the activity type and offer something not just granular but personal. The check-in is completed with venue selection, photos, comments and options to push to Facebook, Twitter or Foursquare. The company says it’s a better way to check in and there’s something to that.
When looking at a city with some Quipster users, you can see who has posted the most popular messages concerning each type of activity and then you can choose to follow that person. Consider this: on Foursquare I have no reason to follow people I don’t know. But if Quipster had a meaningful number of users in my city I’d follow the top people in Dining, Sports, Art and other categories whether I knew them or not – because I wanted to see their updates and comments.
There’s a lot of potential here. The site is nicely designed and the user experience is well-considered. Different levels of social rewards beyond a single Mayorship per venue is something Foursquare has been talking about doing for a long time – Quipster does that and then takes it a step further by measuring social influence in particular activity types.
I think TechCrunch was wrong to slam it on account of differentiation, I think their review was too brief and not well enough considered.
The Bad News
Unfortunately, Quipster does still deserve some criticism beyond its choice of names. Essentially, they are marketing problems. Here are the first things that made a negative impression for me.
- There’s a cold start problem: this is a social network with no users and no value other than what users contribute. No one is using it in Portland, Oregon where I live and Portland is one of the hottest places in the country for mobile and location. That’s why Google tests all their mobile location programs here first (like HotPot, now Google Offers). Even if there aren’t any users here though, there has got to be some info about these venues that Quipster could pull in from elsewhere so it could offer me something while it builds network effect.
- The company’s founders have strong resumes but are nowhere to be seen. The launch press release mentions that Quipster was built by veterans of Google, Yahoo and Oracle. And it quotes the CEO, Krating Poonpol. Looking him up on LinkedIn, he’s listed as “Product Marketing Manager (Global lead) – Google Earth/Ocean/Moon/Mars/Sky” for more than two years! No one on staff has an up to date LinkedIn profile that lists the company’s current name, though. If these guys have so much experience – let the public know! And if they’ve got so much experience, why didn’t they do a better job of launching this product?
- The company’s Twitter account has never posted a message and is only following one person. There are no posts on the company’s blog. There’s no entry in Crunchbase, despite the CEO’s LinkedIn profile making multiple references to the company’s having raised “funding from Forbe’s billionaire angel investor.”
- Some companies use their Twitter accounts and blogs to build up interest before they launch. It looks like Quipster just planned on building an attractive product and then trying to get on TechCrunch.
- The company’s URL is Quipster.co – because someone else owns the .com and it’s got spammy looking pop-ups on it!
- The company put a super-dorky over-the-top press release on the wires (“Quipster will transform your social life and turn you into a social icon… it’s about redefining the world around you and that of your fellow citizens”) and has a press kit on its site full of unlabeled icons and screenshots named things like icon1, icon2, icon3, none of which are something anyone in the press would publish.
I would have thought this wasn’t even a real company except (to be honest) that it has enough money to have paid for a very nicely produced video, below.
It’s a crowded market, folks. You might have an innovative, attractive, relatively well-designed app in one of the hottest sectors around, like mobile social location, but unless you can communicate the value you offer more effectively than this – then you’ll be lucky if you get a short, snide review on TechCrunch. The problem here isn’t with the product though (beyond the cold start problem), it’s with the marketing of the product.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Sequoia-Backed Milanoo Appears To Be Gaming Search Results With Link Spam – TechCrunch
Apr 29th
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Sequoia-Backed Milanoo Appears To Be Gaming Search Results With Link Spam
TechCrunch As we saw from retailer JC Penney's recent downfall in search rankings, using 'black hat' SEO tactics and gaming search is considered deceptive and 'tantamount to cheating' by Google. JC Penney said that it had no idea that this was happening and fired … |
View full post on SEO – Google News
RankAbove Offers Start-up and Non-Profit SEO Packages To Companies Who Aren’t … – TechCrunch
Apr 13th
How To Leave Your Yacht Out Of A TechCrunch Story
Mar 31st
Having your yacht mentioned in a TechCrunch article can be alarming. Follow a few simple guidelines, and maybe you can avoid this.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
