New Orleans Internet Marketing

I get this a lot. I talk to so many people all over the country in the line of work I do. An advertiser wrote me tonight and at the end of her email it said,

PS.  If you have time, I’d be interested in hearing a post Katrina report.

From the Second Most Likely Area To Flood Out Sacramento, CA.

So tonight I took some time, and since so many people want to know, here was my response:

As far as New Orleans goes, overall I’d say the city is doing well considering what happened during Katrina. The good part is that most parts of town are “back to normal” I guess one could say. The bad part is that the poorer parts of the city are still deserted and not making much progress. The people with the least resources are the ones that were hit the hardest. There’s this “Road Home” program that the State created to give out the federal funds that were allocated to help rebuild, and over the past few months people have just STARTED to get that money – 2 yrs. later. So you can imagine, what low income person, who has already settled down in another state, is going to get that money and want to come back to rebuild? New Orleans didn’t treat them that great. Only the ones who really loved it here will come back, and even for some of those, the thought of returning and not having their community here will be too discouraging.

We have a lot of migrant workers here helping rebuild now, so there’s been a big shift in the racial / ethnic makeup of the city. After a while, abandoned houses will be torn down and new ones built. Some areas of the city have already gotten “facelifts.” So there has been some good and there will be more to come of it. For tourists, everything good about New Orleans is still here, and one probably wouldn’t notice much difference. I love the city and I guess you have to take the good with the bad anywhere you live, but for me the good here, really outweighs the bad.

This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot over the past year. Although I’m sure there were hundreds of other signs that Google’s image was changing, for me it started when Google “local results” started showing up in search above the natural search results.

Here we had our beloved “Google,” created by two Stanford students infatuated with search, beginning to venture into the realm of the “content providers” by adding local yellow-page-type listings in with their search results. Let’s see, how do we edit our listing? Has anyone ever tried it? If you have, you know that it’s next to impossible. Who knows where Google gets this data, or how they decide which businesses get the privilege of showing up on the front page.

Now we have “news” results showing up in regular search results. Was I looking for news? If I was, wouldn’t I just add “news” to the search or search “Google News?”

The problem as I see it, is that my favorite search provider is turning into “content provider.” This is further evidenced by acquisitions such as YouTube. The search engine we grew to know and love is now directly competing with more and more webmasters around the globe. This hasn’t happened without a backlash though. “Search” used to be the primary means I would use to find the content I’m interested in, but now I have many new alternatives.

Looking back at the evolution and rapid growth of social networks and media, I see a relationship between Google’s “sandboxing” of new content and the growth of popular sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon (SU). For those unfamiliar with the term, Google’s “sandbox” refers to the inability of new websites to rank well for competitive keyword phrases in Google. If I can’t find the newest, best content on Google, I’m going to go elsewhere; and Digg and SU provided a great means of delivering the newest and best content to users.

The recent tryst with eBay is a symbolic event that reminds me that Google is a competitor, more so now than ever. Google wants to be “everything to everyone.” By providing content that it’s too big to manage (local listings), and e-commerce solutions (Google Checkout), it’s no longer just our friendly search provider.

There was a front page thread on WebmasterWorld about this recently, and it’s something that’s frequently asked. Probably because it’s so infrequent that someone gives a good answer. I posted on the thread, but I’ll go into more detail here.

So what’s the good answer? “Maybe,” is the best answer.

This is what I consider when I’m thinking of listing a site in Yahoo!

1. How deep is the category where the site will be listed?
   
   

   Is it a deep category like this?
   
   Regional > U.S. States > Louisiana > Cities > New Orleans > Business and Shopping > Business to Business > Communications and Networking > Internet and World Wide Web > Web Site Designers
   
   If so, it will have much less value than the upper level categories that get more traffic and have higher PageRank.
   
   

2. Is the category relative to the keywords you want to show up for?
   
   

   In most cases, the category will be relative to the keywords you’re targeting. If it’s not, you should consider changing or adding content to your site that represents those topics.
   
   

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I haven’t talked much about MyBlogLog in the past, but I really like it. The site widget is neat because you get to see who’s been visiting your blog, and you can explore their blogs and get to know them better. So if you’re not in “the wagon” you’re missing the train.

This little experiment, I found on Chris Sandberg’s blog when I was looking at my backlinks. So I thought I’d give it a try:

***Start Copying Here:***
Here are the rules:

1) Write a short introduction about how you found this list and include a link back to that blog.

2) COPY the rules and ENTIRE list below and post it on your blog.

3) Take “My New Community Members� and move them into the “The Original Community Members� list.

4) Find 3 new blogs, join their MyBlogLog Community and add them to the “My New Community Membersâ€? section. Remember to also add the “Join the Community” link next to each blog. (Example: http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/community/ReformatThis/ )

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I “should have” started this blog 9 years ago. That’s when I got interested in designing websites. I can’t imagine how many transformations it would have gone through by now. I wonder how many links it would have going to it, or what I would have talked about back then. It sure wouldn’t be “sandboxed” by Google, like this one is.

I tell everybody I know, if you’re interested in anything, start a website on it. Let me help you with it. Just put something out there, and sooner or later, if you work on it a little bit, it will make some money for you.

It’s also neat having a blog and being able to sit down and write something that I know a ton of people will see tomorrow. But it’s also like owning property. The fact is, advertisers need relevant space to advertise. They need to reach their audience, and with all of the blogs out there, it’s hard to believe that sometimes I can’t find one on the topic I’m looking for. It does happen though.

Look at the new text ad products popping up: ReviewMe.com, V7N Contextual Links. They need bloggers.

So if you have something you like to talk about, what are you waiting around for? Put yourself out there…