I get a lot of e-mails asking questions, and I frequently turn my replies into articles. That’s actually how my SEO 101 section came about long ago.

Replying can be quite time consuming, but not replying might be seen as rude, so I’ve now come up with a great compromise that adds a sort of “Web 2.0″ aspect to my site, and helps me easily generate new content.

Since I had this idea, I’ve been playing with a certain plug-in for a long time, and just today decided to buckle down and make it work. If you look over to the left on my blog menu you’ll see a new link for Ask Scott.

It’s an FAQ plug-in and it’s really pretty cool. For every question that gets asked, I get an e-mail notification, along with a link to log in to my own blog and answer the question.

Upon my answering, a new page is created and added to my blog, and the FAQ question page is updated. Each new question page is created with subject specific link text, title tag, H1 tag etc. and even added to my XML site map.

The sender of the question is then notified with a copy of the answer, as well as a link to the specific page where the question is displayed, where they (and others) can give the answer a thumbs up or down.

The only recommendation I’ve got for the creators of this FAQtastic plug-in would be to allow an option for the use of a post for each new question answered, instead of a static page. This would encourage comments and further discussion on each particular question asked. Otherwise, great job guys, and thank you…

Unfortunately, I won’t be attending the SMX social media event in new York city next week, and now I’m even more disappointed.

I don’t think I’ve ever regretted not going to a specific event so much before, and not just because I’m missing great content, but because this is a great way to spend an evening in support of a good cause.

If you are going to be at SMX in New York then you absolutely have to go, and donate $40 at the door of this event to support of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s fight against cancer. Attendees will have three hours of open bar partying with fellow marketers.

I got tagged on this post by Todd Mintz, and I’m doing my part by tagging three others – Andy – Jerry and Scott and you can see the incredible amount of community support this is getting at Sphinn

When it comes to social media marketing, the very term itself is almost an oxymoron. If you think about the process only as “marketing”, you’re likely going to fail, because you are trying to exploit the very concept that these networks were founded on.

These web 2.0 networks don’t exist so that you can sell your product or service. These networks exist so that users with a passion for similar subjects can get together and share information, discuss opinions, and sometimes make recommendations ABOUT the products and services of others.

Submit Content (Not just your own)
Shameless self-promotion will backfire, and people will call you out in their comments, if the website itself doesn’t just ban you.

The best way to avoid appearing self-promotional is to primarily submit the content of others. As you come across things on the Internet that you like, take a minute to submit those to your favorite networks.

You can add something to Stumble Upon or practically any site in 30 to 90 seconds, so get used to doing it. If you expect others to submit stuff of yours, then you have to submit content that others have written. That’s how it works.

In the same way there are people leaving comment spam on your blog, many of these websites have people trying to “game the system” by creating user accounts and submitting article after article they’ve written of pure crap, without ever participating in the community.

Social Networking Rings
There are actually “social network rings” that are (sometimes huge) groups of people that all vote on and submit each others’ stuff, attempting to become popular.

Members of these rings are quickly identified and rooted out of the communities, because of the unnatural relationships between users that are easily spotted by moderators and communities, and the technology for finding these relationships will continue to improve.

In many cases, heavy participation in these rings can even lead to having all of your content removed, and the banning of your account, disabling your ability to submit anything at all – (or so I hear

Social Network Marketing
Now don’t get me wrong, you can “market” successfully in these communities, and having friends and associates with accounts can help, but you have to do it honestly and legitimately by becoming an active member of each community you want to be involved with. Doing things right can best be described as “participatory marketing”.

You have to spend some time in each network and determine if it’s an appropriate place for you to even submit any of your content.

For example, some sites are more news oriented while others are lighter fare, and many are in between, with a eclectic mix of content that may or may not suit what you’ve got to share.

Read a few of the articles that have made it to the “most popular” sections, and to the front pages of these sites so you can determine what these people really like. This gives you a feel for the demographic of the audience.While you are reading / skimming / glancing at those articles, DO take a minute to vote for some of things you like, and it don’t be afraid to vote things “down” which that you disagree with or don’t like.

Also at the same time, DO leave some comments on articles that interest you or those that move you to disagree (controversy is even better!).

Try to leave something with some insight, something clever, something funny, something sarcastic, or anything that actually adds to the discussion in the article. In other words, be honest and add to the discussion with comments of value. Don’t just say, “me too!”.

Show that you value your own reputation. Don’t submit cat news to a dog group just because you’re too lazy to pay attention to what’s going on. In the best case scenario you’ll damage your credibility as a worthwhile contributor, and in the worst case, you’ll lose your account altogether, and the conversation about you will continue after you’re gone. Either way, you lose.

These networks are growing by leaps and bounds, and even the smallest network can drive some quality traffic to your site. They are all filled with dozens, hundreds or even thousands of new users every month users and may well be worth your participation.

Get out there and explore and participate in some of these sites, find a couple that you like and stick with them, support them, and become a part of their community in the same way you attend your local chamber of commerce or networking group meetings.

Get involved in these communities BEFORE you start trying to exploit them, and you’ll gain credibility, you’ll be contributing something positive, and you’ll have a better time while you’re at it.

This past week has been a huge investment in time for me, joining and learning everything I could about various Web 2.0 communities. I have several clients that will really benefit from participation in these communities, and I can’t coach very well if I’ve never played the game, can i?

I first joined Technorati in 2005, and after a Pubcon conference in 2006, I got Digg and del.icio.us accounts. Since then, I’ve submitted a few articles here and there at Digg and de.licio.us, but beyond that, I’ve admittedly been a pretty slow adopter to the world of social networking.

There are social bookmarking sites that are great for building inbound links, and there are news and article sites that help generate traffic, and they all have communities that are growing all the time.

For me to ignore these Web 2.0 in my effort to drive traffic and links for clients would practically be malpractice, and I think I have a pretty good handle on things now. It’s been quite an educational few days, let me tell ya!

Even though all the pundits have been saying that Web 2.0 is the way of the future, and social media is where everything is happening now, I’ve had other priorities, and I’ve assumed that it was just not that important compared to search engine traffic.

A couple of months ago I joined Facebook, after a friend of mine put his wedding pictures up there, and ended up poking around in their for a while, finding it to be pretty good.

I’ve been using Mybloglog quite a bit, and making sure to comment here and there on people’s profiles that stop by my own blog.

At Danny Sullivan’s Advanced SMX in Seattle last month, I talked to one person after another that was singing the praises of various social networks, social bookmarking, this widget, that widget, and whatever might be coming next.

I even talked to someone who had literally dozens of different logins for many of these services, and paid employees to generate “buzz” for certain clients in certain industries. While that may go against the spirit of these services, there is no denying that the increased traffic leads to increased sales, and ultimately increase profit for the customer.

Last week, the board of SEMpdx was discussing ways to promote an upcoming networking event at Paddys bar downtown. After joining the Portland group of the Facebook, Todd Mintz noticed that there were over 33,000 members in the Portland Facebook group.

That number to me is staggering! I would’ve thought there may be only a few hundred, or even a thousand, but 33,000 members in Portland? Clearly, there’s a ship sailing away here, and I’m not on it!

After that, I spent about an hour joining every one of these social bookmarking groups:

Backflip, Bibsonomy, Blinklist, Blue Dot, de.lirio.us, Diigo, Furl, Jots, Linkroll , Looklater,
Ma.gnolia, Markaboo, Rawsugar, Shadows, Simpy, Spurl , and Wink

Then I made sure that I was a member at most of the other important sites, (some of which I had actually joined quite a while ago but forgot about altogether)

The complete list that I’ve joined is:

Netscape , Newsvine , Plime , Reddit , Stumble Upon , Shoutwire , Tailrank, Squidoo and
PlugIMM .

It sounds like a lot of time, but joining the services took me a total of maybe 90 minutes altogether. What took a lot of time, and continues to, is the endless poking around, and reading of others’ material.

I’m trying to do this with a totally “white hat” mentality, and you really have to, because these sites police themselves, and if they find that you are engaging in shameless self-promotion, and do not participate in their community, and vote on the sites of others, they will bounce you out of the system.

So I’m spending the first week or two getting acclimated to each of the services, and figuring out what they will allow, and what they won’t, and I’ll be reporting back soon.

Until then, happy tagging…

PS-

As usual, being ever so considerate, I’ve made it very easy for you to try out many of these services for yourself.

All you have to do is click on the “Bookmark” button below, (or on the right side of my blog), and you will instantly be transported to whichever service you would like to try.

In fact, I think you should bookmark me at all of them, just to see which ones you like the best.

From a site visitor perspective, of course it should look professional, and be functional and easy to use, but what about for the administrator or site owner that needs to maintain it? What would make it perfect for them?

Host anywhere
In their case, the perfect website would not be dependent on where it’s hosted, nor would it be dependent on a certain web designer to be able to easily add or change content.

Easy to Edit
A perfect website would be accessible by the site owner from any computer in the world, to add and edit content as they wish without having to own expensive software, or have a computer science degree.

Scalable
A perfect website would be able grow with a business, and be able to incorporate things later that may not be needed in the beginning, like a shopping cart, a forum, live chat, contact forms, surveys, audio, video, or anything else the site owner may desire.

A perfect website would be built with the search engines in mind, knowing that their future may depend on it.

Search Engine Friendly
In keeping with the search engine friendly best practices, every time a new page is added, a unique and page specific title tag would be automatically generated.

The description tag too, would be completely unique, and automatically come from the first 150 characters of text on the new content page.

Since a header tag and keyword tags are a part of every good webpage found in the search engines, those two items would also be automatically generated with no extra effort given by the page author unless they wanted to.

In a perfect world, content could even be added to this site using RSS feeds that come from other subject relevant websites. Naturally, any new content created on this perfect website would automatically generate its own RSS feed, for users to subscribe to and other websites to display on their sites.

Automatic Notification
What if every time a new page were created, an XML site map could be automatically generated and zipped, then Google were to be pinged to come get it, how cool would that be?

At the same time Google were to get pinged, what if dozens of news services too, could be automatically notified new content had been added to the website so that they could come visit and index it immediately.

Content and Design Separated
The perfect website would also use CSS, and keep the content completely separate from the design. This would allow for easy backup, and even more important, allow for easy design changes, done literally within seconds.

Open Source
Of course a perfect website wouldn’t cost a fortune either. In fact, if it were perfect, then it would be free, and even supported by a community of thousands of designers and developers.

WordPress
Until now, this wish list of things that a perfect website should have just wasn’t realistic. While all these things might take place individually with the proper systems in place and a lot of effort, there really hasn’t been an all-in-one solution that could please nearly everyone.

Now, however, with the recent upgrade of WordPress 2.1 and the built in ability to use a static page for your homepage, there’s no reason to keep dreaming.

Word press software is free, and if you’re a do it yourself type, a WordPress tutorial program is available from Sherman Hu, one of the top WordPress authorities in the world.

The tutorials are excellent (that’s why I’m an affiliate), and can take you start to finish, through installation and customization, as well as the code modifications for search engine friendliness. If you’re not a do it yourself type, then that’s why I’m here.

WordPress really isn’t just blog software anymore…it’s how you make the perfect website!

By now, you’ve likely heard of Digg. If not, you soon will. It was even mentioned on ABC News yesterday, and Alexa has ranked them as the 95th most visited website in the world this past month.
Digg is a “social news site” that is taking the world by storm. It and others like it are in a group called “Web 2.0″ which allows users to create and control the content they see.

In a nutshell – Users read news stories around the world from various sources on various sites, and when they see one they like, they can instantly submit it to Digg. At Digg, other users see, read and vote on the quality, which determines the story’s placement on the site.
Why is it so popular? Because people really like commenting on what they read there. That’s what this “Web 2.0 ” is really all about to me; the interaction and participation of readers.

These days, engaging your website visitors with articles and resource directories is great, but if you want to take things to the next level, give people a way to participate in the process, instead of just passively looking at your website. When users are helping to generate your content for you, the search engine battle becomes a whole lot easier.
Can you Digg it? You could if you read this post for everything you ever wanted to know about Digg.