This is a guest post by Chris Burns.
In the wake of so much bad news for the social voting model this month, people may wonder if there is really a need for another voting community.
The staff of SERPd wondered the same thing.
This month saw the demise of AOL’s Social news voting site Propeller, as well as extremely bad news for Digg’s traffic and generally negative reception of the new version of Digg. While most people don’t find the new Digg agreeable, most can at least understand why they attempted such a drastic change.
To many, the social voting model has become outdated as a means of disseminating and consuming news stories as well as keeping tabs on what your friends like. Sites like Twitter and Facebook have set a new standard for sharing and consuming information.
Compounding these issues with the fact that the SEO and Internet marketing community is a very niche group to cater to, it is easy to see that “just another voting site” is not really something that this group of professionals really needs.
This is why the new SEO community site SERPd is making big plans about moving toward a real niche community that offers its members something more than just sharing news stories.
The creators of SERPd, Chris Burns and Gerald Weber, thought long and hard and found that it all boils down to three questions…
Who Is SERPd For?
Let’s be honest, the SEO community can be a bit… geeky.
The first thing that we have to accept is that being a clique community is not really going to benefit the largest amount of people. While there are many exceptionally talented and experienced SEO folks, there are just as many and probably vastly more people that are mid level or entry level in the industry. There are also many amateur SEO small business owners trying to find out how to do SEO for their own businesses.
We have to realize that any SEO content could potentially benefit anyone depending on where they fall along their current skill level on the spectrum.
We do not want to cater only to the super knowledgeable SEO experts and be considered a community for the SEO Elite.
Rather we want to provide those people with a place that they can benefit with their peers, but also possibly help out the new or less skilled with their knowledge base.
While other sites may have considered a story to be poor quality if it was not targeted to the high level SEO crowd, we want to broaden our tent and let SEO enthusiast of any skill level partake and benefit from the community.
Why Is SERPd Different?
While we want to support and enhance the voting model, we recognize that in today’s social atmosphere, people need more in order to really use us as a resource.
We don’t want to be just another bookmarking site.
Some of the ways we are taking our community to new heights include:
- Integrated our blog which is open to guest posting, features weekly roundups of some of the staff’s top stories from the previous week, and keeping our community updated with the general happenings at SERPd.
- Close to launching a web cast that will become an interactive platform for SERPd users to engage with not only the staff, but each other. We have some really fun ideas planned for this. Just imagine two community members debating a controversial story from the site live in front of other SERPd members
. - We will be implementing contests that will engage the audience such as top commenter of the week and more.
- We are developing an SEO Wiki that will be a resource for all things SEO. We hope to get involvement from our highly experienced audience to help make a resource that people of any level will be able to reference as an authority repository of information about anything in our field.
Why Should I Spend My Time On SERPd?
We really think that once you register on SERPd and spend a bit of time looking at the content, the comments, the Facebook fan page, the Twitter fan page, the blog, the wiki, the show, and everything else we are doing, you will see that if you are an SEO professional, this is a place you want to get involved in.
We are always looking for any feedback we can get from the members about how to improve the site and make it a valuable resource for them.
Marketing Takeaway From Ana:
I’ve been a member of SERPd community since its conception and even recently joined it as a moderator.
Have you ever thought about how your business would’ve changed, had you been with Digg from the very beginning? All the influence, the exposure, the “power user” status?
Well, that’s how I feel with SERPd.
Whether you join me or not is entirely up to you, but I’ll be upset if you don’t.
One more thing: do you see those sharing buttons to the right of the post? One of them is SERPd. Click it!
PS: We’ve had a few requests for instructions on how to add the SERPd button to your WordPress blog posts.
Here are the complete instructions from Chris:
The easiest way to have the button show up on every page is to modify the single.php file. You can do it right through your WordPress admin. Just login to your admin and follow these steps:
1. Under the “Appearance Option” choose Editor
2. Find single.php. It’s one of the files options on the right. Click on single.php.
Do Control+F and type in <div class=”entry”>. This will take you to the right place to insert the code. Just below that line copy and paste the following line of code:
<table width=”100%” border=”0″ cellspacing=”5″ cellpadding=”0″ style=”background-color: #ffffff;”>
<tr>
<td><script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://www.serpd.com/index.php?page=evb”></script></td>
</tr>
</table>
3. Save the file and you are done. You now have a SERPd button at the top of every post on your blog!
If you need help customizing the display or installing the widget on your blog please just contact me on gtalk (chris@burnseo.com), skype (sithburns), or email me. We are working on getting a wordpress plugin that will make it easier for WordPress users!
PPS For more no-nonsense traffic generation and conversion tips from Ana, fill out this short spam-free form:
{ 37 comments… read them below or add one }
Well I have to say,
.
This is, hand down, one of the most informative and feedback-rich comment discussion threads I’ve had the pleasure of reading. Thumbs up Tristan, Chris and Ana (not necessarily in that order)
A quick question for you Chris - have you considered making a SERPd WordPress plugin that would automate content submission?
Dan invites you to read: Long Tail Keyword Misconceptions-SEO Pro Style
Dan,
We are actually looking at a Wordpress plugin to help bloggers easily add our widget to their blogs. I’m looking for a developer familiar with Wordpress plugins if you know anyone
I love the idea. We are also entertaining the idea of an android/iphone app for easy voting and submission.
Not to mention getting the SERPd button added to the addthis and other such social sharing widgets! We have lots of work to do to help people fully realize the benefits of serpd.com. Thank you for the suggestion!
Chris Burns invites you to read: WordPress Integration Video Tutorial
Sure thing Chris.
I wanted to add that lately I’ve been experiencing trouble with posting content to SERPd - some sort of glitch with reading the header.
Dan invites you to read: Google Previews – Exciting New Developments
4. Thank you very much! Your site has provided me with such great ideas and tricks, that it made me write to long copy websites, good ads, and earn great money. This site is truly helpful. web copywriting
You’re welcome. Feel free to read and learn more stuff from my blogs. I’m glad you find my posts helpful.
Have a wonderful day,
Ana
Ana,
If you have time…I’m curious, how to you add the SERPd button to the blog? I copied the code but it seems like I’m supposed to insert it into every blog post? Is there a plugin that I can install that will allow the SERPd button to just show up without having to remember to put it in my posts? Is there a plugin for your scrolling “sharing” widgets to the right that contains the SERPd vote button?
Thanks,
Heather
Heather C Stephens invites you to read: Are Your Posts Lonely 10 Ways to Get More Blog Comments Part 2
Heather,
The easiest way to have the button show up on every page is to modify the single.php file. You can do it right through your Wordpress admin. Just login to your admin and follow these steps:
1. Under the “Appearance Option” choose Editor
2. Find single.php. It’s one of the files options on the right. Click on single.php.
Do Control+F and type in
3. Save the file and you are done. You now have a SERPd button at the top of every post on your blog!
If you need help customizing the display or installing the widget on your blog please just contact me on gtalk (chris@burnseo.com), skype (sithburns), or email me. We are working on getting a wordpress plugin that will make it easier for Wordpress users!
Chris Burns invites you to read: Top 5 Things Every Car Dealer Website Needs
Heather - it seems like Chris’ code does not show up in comments, so I added it to the post.
Look forward to seeing you around SERPd!
Ana
Hi Ana & Chris,
Thanks for the head’s up about SERPd. I’ve just registered and I’m looking forward to digging in and checking it out. I was not aware of it before your post, but it does make perfect sense that it is a resource to look into!
Thanks,
Heather
Heather C Stephens invites you to read: Are Your Posts Lonely 10 Ways to Get More Blog Comments Part 2
Very interesting post, howeveer, I guess it largely depends on the type of business you are doing and what results you are working for. For those who want to go into real niches optimization for sure will make sense.
Frieke Karlovits
Frieke Karlovits invites you to read: Red Personalities – Traditionally Called Choleric
Good point Frieke. Thanks for sharing your own ideas on this topic.
Have a nice day,
Ana
Hey Ana and Chris,
I found it interesting that people don’t like the new version of Digg. I’m not a very big Digg user, but I thought the newer version was more user friendly. And I also didn’t know that Propeller was gone!
But this is very interesting. A new “niche” version of Digg. Likewise, I try to limit the amount of time I spend on social bookmarking and voting, but if this turns out to be worthwhile, you’ll definitely have a new fan!
Thanks,
Wayne
Wayne Wu invites you to read: Discovering the Missing Pieces of Success – A Conversation with Cynthia Breed
Hello Wayne,
I’m still very optimistic about social bookmarking especially with SERPD and even with Digg although as I have mentioned there are lots of negative feedback this month about the new version. Yet, it still depends on the user how they see things. If you think a certain site whether a bookmarking or not is really effective in bringing traffic in you site then that’s great.
Thanks for stopping by,
Ana
Very interesting post Ana,but never the less, tons of value girl. Keep it coming. I can tell you take you time when doing your research for your articles.
Kareem Williams invites you to read: Featured MLM Tribe Member Of The Month For Three Different Tribe’s In October
Hi Kareem,
I’m glad to see you here. Thanks for dropping by to read this post.
All the best,
Ana
I’m very far from the best or most successful blogger/marketer/SEO expert out there, so take my previous remark with that disclaimer in mind and with a grain of salt.
My intention when I started writing that reply wasn’t to bash the idea, and I feel bad that it ended up looking that way. I just started writing and ended up an hour later with a 1000 word comment. SERPd has some great bloggers behind it (of course Ana, but also Kristi from Kikolani and Hesham from Famous Bloggers), so I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a success.
Let me add the following addendum to my previous comment:
Worse case scenario:
You join SERPd, put the badge on your blog, are an active SERPr, get some traffic from SERPd in the short term, and it fizzles out because it doesn’t catch on. You’re out no money and a relatively small amount of time.
That’s not so horrible, is it?
Best case scenario:
SERPd is embraced by its target community and becomes a niche Digg, vaulting its founders, moderators, and members to even higher levels of traffic, with the corresponding financial success.
There’s really not much to lose, is there?
Tristan invites you to read: Should Every Word in a Post Headline Be Capitalized Or just the first word
Tristan,
HI I’m one of the SERPd founders, nice to meet you. I appreciate your comments, thoughts and input.
“I’m concerned that unless you guys are a traditional startup (and not a traditional blog startup) with extra cash for you to hire extra people, you’re spreading yourselves too thin. Social bookmarking site AND a blog AND a web cast AND an SEO wiki?”
I really don’t think we are spreading ourselves thin at all, because these things are all a natural extension of what we are doing on SERPd. All of our staff and most of our community are bloggers, therefore the blog is going to be a great way to communicate with our community and also give them a voice.
Also our weekly roundup is basically a way that we are going to highlight some of the best submissions of the week and this is going to spin into our webcast show (meaning it will be the subject matter of the webcast show).
The purpose of the show is to bring the discussion a level further than the comments thread on the site via audio/video human interaction. We are making this a truly social platform.
“Why would I (a blogger who blogs about blogging tips) use SERPd when I could use a social bookmarking service that caters to blogging tips in general?”
We are a SEO and internet marketing community at our core, but there is so much overlap with things like blogging and copywriting and SEO that it would be almost impossible to leave them out. Also there are many bloggers that write about blogging tips that want to know more about SEO. Hell I’m an SEO by trade and I frequently write blogging tips.
“Even if your intentions are for SERPd to be a place where non-experts’ posts can still be seen and heard, don’t you think that yours is the kind of website/service that would naturally attract SEO experts (because how many non-experts and SEO dabblers are going to WANT to be an active SERPd member?) over time and evolve into more of an expert-only niche? And would that really be a bad thing?”
This is a subject that comes up rather frequently. There answer is that we don’t want to be thought of as a platform just for newbies, but we don’t want to be a place for only elitist either. Most of our staff are professional SEOs and internet marketers (meaning that is what we actually do for a living) so we definitely know our stuff when it comes to SEO and internet marketing, but we don’t want that to intimidate users that are newer to the industry.
I personally enjoy helping out others that are newer to the industry but I also enjoy reading articles that are more advanced for my own personal use.
One thing we are discussing is tagging posts by skill level. beginner intermediate, pro etc
Thanks again for taking the time to give us your thoughts. Hope to see you around SERPd.
Gerald Weber invites you to read: Weekly Roundup- The Tales of Winning Some- Losing Some- And Burping Some
Well-spoken, and thanks to Ana, and Chris for putting together the info. I like SERPd so far - the community feel is great. I’d love to participate more when things are less hectic schedule-wise. Otherwise, can I suggest something?
The SERPd button thang - it ain’t workin’. It’s not labeled, nothing - just a blue “submit” button. Brand that thing like you’re an Idahoan rancher - name that steer, man, claim that sucker!
Otherwise, it’s good in your hood. Things look great - and the benefit to being a Johnny come lately is that you can learn from the mistakes in front of you guys. I think it’s going to be hotter than the Mojave.
Especially if Ana’s involved.
(( teacher’s pet, sorry ))
JamestheJust invites you to read: Chicken Little and Godzoogle
James,
Based on your great suggestion we have added the name SERPd to the vote button. It’s now displayed before it’s submitted and also after someone votes using the widget. Great idea!
Chris Burns invites you to read: WordPress Integration Video Tutorial
Well I am in or at least I will be once I get my confirmation email.
I don’t want to express any kind of negative opinions because a new business(no matter what kind) doesn’t need bashing right before it even start.
I want to say that I will try to support the community and maybe it will be a real success.
Alex invites you to read: Imbraca pe barbie de Halloween
The confirmation email comes immediately after registration. If you didn’t get it perhaps it’s in your spam folder or something.
Let me know your username and I can manually approve your account.
Gerald Weber invites you to read: Weekly Roundup- The Tales of Winning Some- Losing Some- And Burping Some
It was several weeks ago when I discovered SERPd and have to say that it is an interesting place to go to. One can find A LOT of quality content there and discover new great blogs as well. Of course getting some additional traffic from your stories is also a great benefit. Hope to see the site grow bigger and bigger, as the community could’ve been a bit more active.
Daniel Sharkov invites you to read: Blogging Just for Money or Is There Something More
We are glad to hear that you are enjoying SERPd. We hope to see you around the site more in the future.
Gerald Weber invites you to read: Weekly Roundup- The Tales of Winning Some- Losing Some- And Burping Some
Wow, this is certainly an interesting post and the comments make me more likely to spend time checking it out.
Thank you for the complete picture and update on SERPd. I’ll spend some time checking it out this weekend.
Susanna
Susanna Hess invites you to read: The Law of Compensation For Network Marketers
Hi Susanna,
Thanks for taking time to read this blog. Yes I’m glad you’ll do that. It’s really better to see for yourself how this site can actually help you.
Cheers,
Ana
Hi Chris, hi Ana,
interesting post. At the moment, I’m perfectly happy with my social media and bookmarking strategy. I agree with Tristan that it sounds intereresting, but just like Andreas I dedicate my time and energy to other projects at the moment. Special thanks to Tristan for his thoughtful comment.
Thanks for sharing your insights.
Oliver Tausend invites you to read: Outsourcing For Network Marketers – A Foundation
Hello Oliver,
I understand your point and I valued you opinion. Thanks for being honest. Maybe in the future you’ll find time to check it out.
All the best,
Ana
I read through this post twice and spent a considerable amount of time checking out the SERPd site just to make sure I’ve got the gist of everything. Sounds interesting, though I’m not sure if it’s something I want to participate in at the moment, and I’ll tell you why.
1) I’m concerned that unless you guys are a traditional startup (and not a traditional blog startup) with extra cash for you to hire extra people, you’re spreading yourselves too thin. Social bookmarking site AND a blog AND a web cast AND an SEO wiki? Starting up any one of those could be a massive project by itself. If I knew you were giving 100% of your time and energy to building and spreading the word about the social bookmarking aspect, I’d be more inclined to hop aboard. How many SEO bookmarking options are there already? I’m guessing one, and it’s SERPd? This makes me more excited about the idea. How many SEO blogs are out there that I can be reading and guest posting to? About a gajillion. This makes me less excited about the idea.
2) I’m trying to focus my efforts and my readers’ efforts to have one main sharing call to action for posts. Right now that’s Twitter, and that’s where I want to build my community right now. I don’t know if this really is the best way to do things (sounds like a good idea for a case study if there isn’t one already?), but I know that when I share something from a site, I usually only do it via one channel unless it’s holy-crap-I-just-blew-my-mind amazing and everyone I know HAS to read it (which doesn’t come along super often, right?).
3) I have written (and will write more) about SEO on my blog, but it is not the focus of my blog. I would be more inclined to use SERPd (both as a blogger and a voter) if I had a blog devoted to SEO. Why would I (a blogger who blogs about blogging tips) use SERPd when I could use a social bookmarking service that caters to blogging tips in general?
4) Even if your intentions are for SERPd to be a place where non-experts’ posts can still be seen and heard, don’t you think that yours is the kind of website/service that would naturally attract SEO experts (because how many non-experts and SEO dabblers are going to WANT to be an active SERPd member?) over time and evolve into more of an expert-only niche? And would that really be a bad thing?
5) I would be more inclined to read SERPd if it DID have more of an expert level feel to it. I’ve read thousands and thousands of words on SEO and I feel like I have a solid understanding of the basics. I want to get beyond “Here are some SEO plugins you can use.” Being an aggregate of all intermediate- and expert-level SEO advice would be a very valuable resource.
6) In this post, the impression I got was that you’re trying to market SERPd as a SEO social bookmarking thing. But then I go to the SERPd site and the tagline is “Search engine and Internet marketing news.” Uh oh. To me, Internet marketing means “everything else associated with trying to make money online.” What’s to prevent this from becoming just another Internet marking social bookmarking site? Because if you’re not actually focusing on blogs that are SEO-only, it seems inevitable that non-SEO content will creep in, and this (to me) makes SERPd less valuable. For example, Ana’s last post was about a DoFollow blog search. If I vote for that using the handy-dandy badge to the right, it will “pollute” SERPd with non-SEO content. (Not saying that I didn’t like that post of Ana’s; on the contrary, I think I left a comment saying that I enjoyed it). But If you’re billing yourself here as an SEO social bookmarking site, I don’t want to go there and see non-SEO content.
7) At first glance I thought the SERPd button on the right of the page here was a StumbleUpon button because the colors are the same and the of the button is similar. When I see round, I think StumbleUpon. Not saying that’s a bad thing by any means, but that was my first reaction.
I think that’s just about all I’ve got time for. I hope I didn’t ruffle any feathers here and that this feedback can be instructive. I don’t think it’s a bad idea, I just don’t think I should be a member of your audience, because I think you need to be more targeted in order to attract a community. I will check out the SERPd site from time to time because I would like to expand my SEO knowledge. If I see a lot of non-SEO stuff on there, however, I’ll probably stop going and stick with the more familiar blogs about SEO.
Also, Ana (by the way, I keep wanting to type your name with two Ns, even though I know that’s not how it’s spelled, so forgive me if two Ns do slip through at some point without me catching myself), I’d be interested in seeing what kind of traffic you’ve gotten so far from SERPd, seeing as how you’ve been pretty active on it (you’re the 7th top user in the past 30 days). That would be another thing that would possibly sway me to look into it more.
Tristan invites you to read: Should Every Word in a Post Headline Be Capitalized Or just the first word
That was a very in depth comment, lol.
I can tell you that SEO & Social marketing are more and more going hand in hand. Blogging, social marketing, link building, on site seo, tools, plugins, etc… these are all related and this is why SERPd.com is going to provide the opportunity for all of this type of content to be shared on our site.
Regarding the submit button… it is one of the links at the very top of the page: http://www.serpd.com/submit/. I’m not sure how you missed that, but if we need to make a graphic so that it’s easier to find and use that is absolutely something we will do for our users.
Regarding the wiki, guest blogging, and other features of serpd.com, I would say that we (and by we I can really only speak for myself) are 100% dedicated to making these various aspects of the site as important as possible. We want to provide a real interactive community for this niche.
The type of honest thoughtful feedback you have provided is vital to our success. I can’t thank you enough for taking the time to share your thoughts, your concerns, and hopefully your time with us. We continue to strive to make this site a resource for anyone in the above mentioned fields.
We are still thinking through possible ways to categorize content at different levels of readers. We have some tricks up our sleeve for how to do this in a way that will empower the community rather than limit them, which will always be our intention. As we get closer to bringing them to life we will post twitter polls and blog posts about it as we have about adding categories to the site in the past.
Thank you to Ana for posting this story about SERPd.com and helping us to get the word out. I hope to see you all there!
Chris Burns invites you to read: Google Adds Location Setting To SERPs
@tristan,
It may be bad form to reply to my own reply here, lol.
I wanted to update you that based on your feedback we have updgraded the submit link in the header to a submit button that will stand out more now. It should not be easily missed now we hope
.
Chris
Chris Burns invites you to read: Why Dealers Need Indexed Inventory
Hi, Tristan:
I also appreciate you providing such great feedback - we do need to hear honest opinions from our users/potential users.
As far as your question to me is concerned, SERPd is the third largest referral traffic source right after Twitter and Facebook.
So traffic-wise, I am very pleased with it.
Also, another great benefit behind SERPd is that it’s a DoFollow sites providing great backlinks for your blog.
Those are 2 very practical reasons behind me being so active in the community.
Plus, there’s so much amazing info to learn from some of the best in the field!
Hope my prospective helps a bit, Tristan.
Ana
Also Ana in addition to the do follow link, for site/blogs that are related to SEO, it’s also a highly relevant do follow link.
Gerald Weber invites you to read: Weekly Roundup- The Tales of Winning Some- Losing Some- And Burping Some
Good point, Gerald.
I have only been able to take a peek at serpd due to my limited time and occupancy with existing social networks but it looks promising so far. Will give it a shot once I free some time.
I think SERPd offers the real sense of community that many other networks lack, Andreas.
I hope you come back to visit us soon!
Ana
I’m glad to have visited your blog and good to know you! I find it interesting and informative.
Thanks for stopping by. I appreciate it.
Cheers,
Ana