Google’s attempt at integrating a human edited directory of sorts into its results is definitely one of the more unique ways the search giant has come up with so far to add humans to the search relevancy mix. The beauty of it is that, since users have to subscribe to a particular provider to see the results they generate, it’s harder to scam the system. After all, no one would want to willingly subscribe to a service that made their results LESS relevant, would they? At least not without some incentive.

So, while this offers little or no benefit to throw-away site builders, those who offer valuable content to loyal subscribers stand to gain.

Take a look at Search Engine Watch’s profile as an example… when you subscribe, you’ll see the top three headlines related to your query from the Search Engine Watch Blog.

Thats a #1 position in a SERP for “Google” without any SEO effort at all.

So, how can Google Co-op help your site or blog? How can you entice subscribers to subscribe to your provider directory?

Think on it tonight. I know I will.

Edit: I’m still a little unsure of myself in Google Co-Op land, but I did find this RSS to Google Co-op converter that might come in handy:
http://www.seo-search.net/rsstocoop/

I’m about to embark on an experiment using RSS.

I have used RSS a lot… but always made a feed of posts or articles that exist on a particular site. The feeds all had just a brief teaser of text and hopefully anyone who saw it would click on to my site.

But, I thought, I wonder if I could use RSS in the same way that I use articles, namely, to get my links on other related sites in my niches.

The best way to do this, of course, is to offer those sites something really useful to add to their site in the way of content — not just a snippet with a link.

So, what if, instead of offering a feed of pages hosted elsewhere, I offer a feed with a FULL mini article that they can post directly on their site. Within the article, I’ll link to my own web properties, but ensure that the links open in a new window so the host site won’t have to worry about losing traffic.

I’ve got a few content writers working on sets of 52 tips articles that are 150 to 300 words in length to offer weekly tips in some of my niches, and I’ll drip the content to the feed once a week.

Once that’s set up, I will need to find publishers willing to host them, and probably create ready-made scripts to display the tips on their sites — since the majority of people don’t have the technical know-how to do something like that.

And I’m posting before doing, just in case there are other people out there who are thinking about doing the same thing. Please contact me and maybe we can work together — even build a free content one-stop shop that would serve the same function as article directories do for article writers.

Write a comment or send me an email if you’ve got ideas or if you’re interested in exploring the concept further.

Since “Tagging” is turning out to be the next big hype in internet marketing (aren’t you glad I told you about it back in February?), I thought I’d share another tip with you to help you generate more traffic with tags.

Now, if you know anything about tagging, you’ll know that Technorati is king of the blog tagging world.

And if you’ve experimented with tagging, you’ll realize that on Technorati, the number of people who have bookmarked your site with a particular tag doesn’t matter. You get to tag your own post, and for as long as you’re the most recent post with that tag, you get top billing.

You’ll also know that for some really popular tags… the ones that can bring oodles of visitors… you’ll stay on top about 15 seconds at most.

So, what is a traffic-searching soul to do? (Especially if the site you want to promote is a regular content site, not a blog!?)

Well, visit Technorati for a second and look at a page for any particular tag. You can head in that direction by clicking any of the tags below this post, for example.

See the pictures on the top? They’re from Flickr. Yep, if you have a Flickr account, you can post photos AND TAG THEM.

Those photos tend to have a much longer stay on the page, and if you have a compelling shot, they have GREAT placement. The problem is, they lead to your Flickr page — not your web site.

But that’s no reason no to use them. Here are three things you can do:

• Add your URL as a copyright notice on your pictures
• Create book cover images to match your blog posts, and upload the covers to Flickr and tag them
• Use your URL as your Flickr username (you’ll have to use a hypen instead of a dot, like surfthemind-com)
• Put your URL as the very first text in the description of your photo
• Put a compelling headline as the text of your description, and use and HTML a href tag to link it to your site
• Add your URL to your Flickr profile

While Flickr tags don’t have all the advantages of a Technorati tag, there is still a great opportunity for exposure and targeted traffic (depending on your niche) if you play them right.

Well, I was surfing themes looking for inpiration, and came upon this theme by by Kaushal Sheth. Since it was close enough to what I was envisioning to work for me, I installed it, and I’ll delay making my own theme for this blog for another time… when I don’t have a million other things to do.

I upgraded the blog from Wordpress 1.5, and got everything working smoothly after a half hour or so, even though I had modified the heck out of the old blog… the only thing not yet here are the comments. I still haven’t decided whether to add the old comments or not.

I also added a bunch of new plugins, so the main reason for this post is to see if they actually work.

I feel the intense urge to update my theme.

Something more linear and less feminine this next incarnation I think. Stay tuned to see what happens.

In other news, I’ve launched a new software package called “Private Label Article Toolkit” which you can find at plrkit.com, and I’ve got a few others in the wings waiting for me to have some time to get things organized.

If you want to snag one of the remaining resell rights licenses for the package, you can go to this url to see if there’s still some available.