SEO

May 12, 2008

SEO Weekend Update

The Social Networks Get More Social

Something must have been in the water this past weekend because Google and the social networks have decided to be just a little bit sweeter to their users.

Both Facebook and MySpace revealed portability options that will allow members to take their information off the site and use it in conjunction with other trusted sites. MySpace's program is called the Data Availability initiative and will allow users to share their public photos, videos and text on sites like Yahoo, eBay, Twitter, Photobucket and beyond. Similarly, Facebook announced Facebook Connect, a program which will allow members to take their Facebook identity and use it across the Web.

Google isn't making user information portable, but they did launch Friend Connect to help site owners add social features to their Web site with just a small snippet of code. Google thinks of Friend Connect as a "shortcut to connections you've built up somewhere else". It will work with OpenID, OAuth, OpenSocial, as well as with APIs from Facebook, Google, and MySpace. Good stuff.

Looks like the future of the Web and social applications will be all about letting people create one Web identity and then giving them the ability to take it wherever they go. We like.

10 Percent of People Say Design Is Part of SEO

A frightening article over at Web Designer Wall signals that only 1 out of 10 Web designers think design should be a consideration to search engine optimization. I suppose that's actually not too surprising considering that 24 percent of people didn't even know what search engine optimization was. Oye.

The article, geared towards design professionals, goes on to explain what search engine optimization is, why it's important, and how certain design and architectural elements may impact the spiderability of your Web site. It's one of those posts you want to bookmark and then send to clients when they get mouthy. I mean, confused. ;)

Seriously though, it's a bit frustrating to see that so many in a related field have no idea what SEO is and continue to make it an afterthought. Search engine optimization should be a part of your site design process from the very beginning. We actually believe that you should know your keywords before you even begin designing. For a good rundown of how we look at SEO design, you can take a read through our How To: SEO Web Design post from a few months back. It explains how knowing what terms you'll need to target is going to determine how your site is structured, how your navigation will come together, how deep it will be, and will influence nearly every design decision you make.

Third Annual SEM Scholarship Contest Launches

Andy Beal has revealed that the 3rd annual SEM Scholarship Contest has officially kicked off and it's promising a prize package worth more than $10,000. Yowsa!

To enter, simply submit an article on your favorite Internet marketing topic between the deadline of May 23rd. From there, the finalists will posted on the Marketing Pilgrim and the five that receive the most traffic will go before an expert panel of judges. Have I mentioned I'm on that fine panel? Yeah, I don't know how my name got there either. :)

It's a great chance to give back to the community and help some new search marketing faces find some recognition. We hope to kick off the third edition of our SEO Charity Contest soon, as well. Good to see so many people fighting for SEO education. Kudos, Andy!

Fun Finds

Matt Cutts tells us what Google knows about spam and says, on the record, that search engine optimization is NOT spam. All hail, Matt Cutts!

The always smart Kim Krause-Berg says the key ingredient for SEO and Web Design is true passion.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 05/12/08 at 5:06 PM | Comments (1)

May 6, 2008

Actionable Organic Search Analytics

We're back in the search track with Matt Bailey (SiteLogic) and Diane Hoag (IBM developerWorks). Matt is giving me a hard time for going to bed early last night and missing out on all the debauchery that went down after I left. Based on how tired Matt looks, methinks I made the right decision. :)

Mikes moderating and starts off by telling the story about his stick. If you know Mike, you know what I'm talking about. Basically he takes it everywhere and it's been around the world. If you haven't heard the story, ask Mike the next time you see him. He loves to tell it.

Up first is Matt Bailey.

Matt says conferences like this are the 'dump truck conferences'. You come, the conference dumps all this information into your brain, and then you have to go back and apply it.

He says that Plato talked about three different groups. The first were the gods and they already knew everything. The second were the beasts. The beasts didn't know anything. They didn't ask questions. The third group was the people. People are the only ones who can ask questions. We're the only ones with the fundamental ability to ask.

[I know I say this all the time, but I love listening to Matt Bailey speak. He's so animated. He gets people excited!]

We can't look at our dashboards of information and expect them to tell us what to do. They don't function that way. We have to pull information out of the machine data and interpret it.

You start with the data - 34,000. There's nothing you can do with just the number. You have to add a bit of information and context. There's no such thing as complete and true accuracy. If your supervisor is asking for accuracy, you need to let them know it's impossible. Instead, you have to look at the trends and gather the information that's happening on your Web site. Adding context to the equation doesn't make things actionable. What makes things actionable are when you can create a story. Visitors who searched for X stayed on the site for X minutes and looked for Y and converted at a rate of Z.

You want to get beyond knowledge. You want to get to understanding and that comes from people. People are the central focus for adding that understanding and figuring out what to do on your Web site. No program is going to give you understanding. It can only give you information and knowledge. Avinash said that analytics are 90 percent the person and 10 percent the tool. That needs to be your mantra.

Reporting or Analysis?

Reporting just gives you information like path views, path analysis, hits, monthly visitors, etc. That's not actionable.

You can't do analytics on an ad hoc basis. You have to have clearly defined goals. If you don't have goals you don't have measurements. Your goals need to be written down. If there are no goals, there are no insights.

Your goals can be anything. They can be downloads, page views, contact form leads, sales, etc. You have to ask question of the data. That's how you're going to improve those numbers.

He starts talking about segmentation. It's an essential part about beginning to ask questions about your Web site. People are not cattle. They don't come to your site in a herd and move from point A to point B. We don't have a herd mentality. (Matt has clearly never attended high school) People come to your site with vastly different motives. You can't treat them all as one group of visitors.

He brings up the famous Star Trek segmentation example. I'm going to copy and paste it from our coverage of SES NY to save my fingers a bit of retyping.

The Starship enterprise had a crew of 430 people. He knows this because startrek.org told him. There were 59 total deaths in the 5 year mission. That's a 13.7 percent mortality rate (aka conversion rate). Of the 54 deaths, yellow shirts made up 10 percent, blue shirts made up 7.2 percent and red shirts made up 72.8 percent. That's our data but we still have no action. We have knowledge, but no indicator on how we can improve it or make it worse.

Factors that lead to a red shirt death: If you beamed down with Captain Kirk and wore a red shirt, you died 57.5 percent of the time. This is the number one factor that leads to the death of a red shirt. OMG the giggles.

To increase the survival rate: You'll see that if Captain Kirk meets an alien woman, the red shirt survival rate increases to 84 percent.

How often do these factors occur? Capt Kirk has a conquest rate of 30 percent. If you go to a land of [insert name of things that fight Captain Kirk. I'm not geeky enough for this.] and you're a red shirt, you'll probably die. If you go to a land of peaceful women, you'll live 30 percent more of the time. That's segmentation!

Say you have an electronics Web site. You have a visitor who comes and is trying to locate a digital camera. They're looking for price, brand, size, battery life, etc. On the other side of the site, someone is looking for an MP3 player. You need to understand that you can't classify these two people with a single conversion rate. It doesn't tell the story. It actually ignores the story that you have two people looking for two different things on two different sides of the Web site. Each group needs a new conversion rate. People see your Web site differently based on what they were looking for.

Three C's of Analytics: Context, Comparison, and Contrast.

Key Performance Indicators:

• Time on site
• Pages Viewed
• Conversions
• Goals

By Segment:

• Blogs
• Web sites
• In-market links
• Social News
• Search
• Actions
• Content
• Media

Anyone who clicks on a link about you from a blog has a high context for your site. They have a specific expectation and you need to know what that is. On topical sites, you have lower context and a lot of competition. You have to be unique to stand out.

Use your analytics to tell the story. Find out where the Red Shirts are on your Web site. Find out how you can improve your site for all the different segments. Add more context to the situation. And then do something.

Forrester says that bringing in an analytics person will result in a 900-1,200 percent increase in ROI. You can't just collect the data; you have to do something with it.

I'm just going to say that if Matt Bailey was a priest, more people would go to church. He can get you excited about pretty much anything. Seriously.

Diane Hoag is up.

Diane works for IBM and says that in 2005, out of nowhere, their Google referrals dropped off. They started missing monthly targets in June. Analysis exposed search (Google) issues. They went to the Internet (as you do...) to see what was happening and found that in May Google had released the Bourbon algorithm update. It focused on sequence and types of redirects. The intent was to discourage URL hijacking. They don't do any blackhat SEO techniques so they didn't understand why their traffic dropped off. They did more analysis. They finally concluded that it was due from moving to different hosting environments, which led to long redirect paths.

What resulted was that their URLs had incredibly long redirect paths. Some were 7 or 8 redirects long. Sometimes they even circled back and went through the same server a second time. They needed to clean up their redirects.

Steps to Recovery:

• Established canonical URL: www.ibm.com/developerworks
  • Internally: Changed links on their content to the canonical URL
  • Externally: Asked marketers to use the canonical URL
• Cleaned up their redirects: Monitored progress with HTTP simulate textbed of 33 URLs
• Made DNS changes
• Eliminated unnecessary Meta refreshes: Developed a redirect application for Web editors to use.
• Established a unified proxy with ibm.com: Eliminated redirects. The canonical URL appears in the visitor's browser - beneficial for social bookmarking.

She shows how well IBM has recovered and that they're growing their visitors.

Take a look at your own infrastructure and redirects. No matter how bad your situation is, recovery is possible! Aw.

Mike Grehan takes a moment to plug Mike Moran's new book and wants to make sure it gets mentioned in the liveblogging. See, Mike, I got it.

Question and Answer

To Diane: Did Google provide any assistance when you were in this train wreck?

They got a letter from Google because they had a personal contact there. But that was it.

To Diane: What analytics were you using when you discovered the problem?

They used SurfAid, it's an IBM product. They're transitioning to CoreMetrics right now. She pitches SurfAid a bit.

To Matt: Did you actually watch all those Star Trek episodes? (Hee!)

Matt says he watched about half. Sci-Fi has an episode-by-episode recap and they list Red Shirts. He got his "data" from there.

For Diane: After you consolidated those URL, did you notice any changes outside of Google?

Google makes up 90 percent of their search engine referrals and has forever. They didn't notice any changes with the other engines.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 05/ 6/08 at 2:44 PM | Comments (1)

May 2, 2008

Plugging Up Those Duplicate Content Holes

Is your site suffering from unfortunate duplicate content? Do you wake up at night in fear that your perfectly SEO'd pages will be filtered out of the SERPs? Have you suffered any of the following symptoms: Link dilution, ranking fragmentation, important page disappearing, rank checking-induced vomiting? If so, we can help!

Here are some of the common causes of duplicate content and how to best avoid them.

Plagiarism/Scraping

Accept it; most people are jerks. That means many folks out there will have no problem stealing your content and slapping it on their own site to place ads on it. It's up to you to protect your valuable content from these villains. The first step in protecting your site is to mark your territory. That includes using your brand name frequently within the content, sticking to absolute links, and hosting your images locally. People will likely steal your content anyway, but this will make it harder for them to do so and easier for you to spot.

You'll also want to be vigilant about protecting your content. There are plenty of ways to go about this. Copyscape is a good tool to use to go hunting or stolen passages or you can cut and paste a snippet of unique text and use it as a Google Alert. If you find someone has stolen your content and that it has caused Google to trigger a filter, either approach them about taking it down or consider changing your content so that it is no longer duplicated. It sounds like a pain, but it's often the easier recourse and is much better than having your pages filtered out of the index!

Parameter/URL Issues

Any time the search engines find the same page at multiple URLs, you have a duplicate content situation. For example, if you type in the three URLs below and they all bring up your home page, you have a problem.

• www.example.com
• www.example.com/index
• example.com

Your customers may be able to figure out what's going on, but the search engines will see three versions of the same page and pick for themselves which one gets to live in the index. You don't want Google or Yahoo making these very important site decisions for you. Figure out how you want people linking to you and stick to it. 301 the other versions of the page to the lucky URL you decided on.

Sites can also get themselves into trouble when they begin using ugly parameters to track their customers' movements through their site. Not only does this present a duplicate content issue because the engines can access the same page through multiple URLs, but it's also not particularly user-friendly. You also run the risk of skewing your analytics data if the parameter-filled URL gets indexed and users start using it to click through from the SERPs.

If you're going to put parameters in your URLs for tracking purposes, you have a few options. You can block that URL from being spidered by doing a mod_ rewrite or simply redirect it to the URL without the tracking parameter. If you do opt for the latter, make sure it doesn't mess up your ability to track. Sometimes things get buggy.

Multiple Site Issues/ Mirror Sites

Bruce Clay has offices in the United States, South Africa, the UK and beyond. To make sure the search engines recognize that these are different sites even though the content may be fairly similar, we're careful to create content specific to each country, as well as take care of all the technical aspects as well - like using country-specific TLDs, hosting the site in the country it's targeting, specifying that in our Webmaster Tools, etc. Matt Cutts has noted that site owners need not worry too much about duplicate content when it comes to different top level domains. Google is able to tell which site should rank and then filter the dupes.

Along the same lines, you want to be careful of mirror sites that simply republish the same content on multiple domains. For example, some sites have multiple domains like http://www.mydomain.com, http://www.my-domain.com, http://www.mymisspelleddomain.com that are all mirroring the same content. The solution would be to 301 redirect the duplicate domains to the main domain. This not only helps eliminate duplicate content issues, it also makes sure you're not wasting any link popularity.

Product Pages

Product pages are a goldmine for duplicate content because they've very often been built using a single template. This means they'll typically share the same basic description with just a few words altered to tell the customer that the shoe they're looking at also comes in red, black brown and blue, as well as in suede and patent leather. Your customers may love you for all of your available options, but the search engines are likely to get confused as to why you have virtually identical content on several pages of your site. Not that they'll penalize you for it. They'll simply "help" you by "filtering" all the extras.

You really have three options when it comes to this one.

1. Take on a massive project and write unique content for all of your product pages
2. Update your robots.txt so that only one product description (preferably the one that provides the most revenue) is crawled
3. Consolidate your product pages and use another method to show all the different styles and options. Perhaps using CSS or some other fancy hover-type creation.

Block Printer Pagers

It's good that provide printer-friendly pages for readers and customers looking to take your content with them, but there's absolutely no reason why the spiders should have to know about it. These pages may be super usable for your audience but they provide no links back to your site for the engines to follow and they're just going to diminish the apparent uniqueness of your content. Put these pages in their own folder and then disallow it in your robots.txt. It's that simple.

What other forms of duplicate content do you commonly come across?

Posted by Lisa Barone on 05/ 2/08 at 9:45 AM | Comments (1)

April 28, 2008

SEO Weekend Update

Hey, friends. We've got a busy week ahead here at Bruce Clay, so let's just jump right into some of the big stories of the day. Grab a cookie or something and let's go!

First, Some Housekeeping!

First things first, did you know that Bruce Clay, Inc. now has its very own Twitter feed where you can easily keep up with our daily blog postings? If not, now you do! If you prefer to get your blog updates via Twitter, start following BruceClayInc and hear all about what TheLisa says. ;) [Even when it's not TheLisa posting, I notice. --Susan] Hey, it's automated, give me a break.

Also, I'll be heading up to eMetrics San Francisco next week for another around of "let's see if we can make Lisa's hands fall off!" as I attempt to liveblog three days of Web analytics sessions. Keep your eyes on the blog to see which sessions I'll be covering. As a special treat, we'll also be featuring interviews on the blog with some of eMetrics familiar faces, including Vanessa Fox, John Marshall and Matt Bailey, so keep an eye out for that!

And our last bit of housekeeping news: The SEO Newsletter will be hitting your inboxes Wednesday afternoon so make sure you're subscribed. This month features dueling articles from Susan and myself as we debate why size matters in SEO conferences.

Yahoo To Help You Find Your "Center"

Danny Sullivan talks about a new Yahoo paper about finding the local "center" of search queries and how it may help the engines decide which pages are more relevant for local interests and which have more of a national audience. There are some interesting tidbits in both Danny's coverage and the actual study itself. Danny lists off a number of ways he thinks mapping search results by their "center" could be useful, though I'm not entirely convinced. Let's let users do the search and sites optimize for how they want to show up. I'm not sure I'm okay with the engines moving around my "center" and skewing results based upon it without my permission. I'm a control freak like that. Or maybe I just like authentic results.

I personally love how we need a study to tell us that it's mostly people in New England searching for [Red Sox] every hour on the hour and how the line of searchers typing in [Hurricane Dean] into their search box matches the path of the actual hurricane. Um, thanks for that totally obvious information.

Protecting Your Job With Common Sense

Andy Beal comments on the Washington Post article about When Young Teachers Go Wild on the Web. The Post basically asks if disciplinary action should be taken against teachers with racy MySpace and Facebook profiles. I'm sorry, and this may age me, but I have to go with a resounding "yes" here.

It's not that I think people aren't entitled to a private life; it's that I think if you're going to be working with school-age children and setting yourself up as a role model, I think you should have enough common sense to check the "set to private" on your MySpace profile settings and restrict who can view your Facebook profile.

As Andy points out in his post, the actions and behavior these teachers are being "outed" for is nothing new. People in their 20s, regardless of profession, have been going out to bars, doing stupid things, and then photographing the evidence for as long as the camera has been in existence. The only difference is now these young adults are publishing tracks for their debauchery on the Internetz. And when you're supposed to be setting an example, it's probably worth keeping that stuff behind a locked door. You don't blow up your racy pictures and put them on billboards in front of your house, do you?

You're an adult. Do you want to do, but be responsible about it.

Fun Finds

Four days ago Mack Collier wrote that when it comes to blogging, you can't let the fear win. I've had the window with Mack's post open for four days. It speaks to me.

Over at All Things Digital, Kara Swisher says no one but us tech nerds knows what Twitter is. Well, yes, Kara, but they will! Oh, will they. [And then we'll all leave for the next big thing. --Susan]

Posted by Lisa Barone on 04/28/08 at 11:57 AM | Comments (0)

April 21, 2008

SEO Weekend Update

Why Even Hire A Search Engine Optimization Company

There's an article over at Search Engine Journal today that asks why people would hire a search engine optimization company or bother training someone in-house. SEI is nothing more than some tag optimization and link collecting, right? Oh heavens. Not this conversation again.

If you don't think having someone trained in search engine optimization is valuable to your team and that you can do the whole thing yourself with minimal training, well...then you're both delusional and a really bad SEO. It also proves that you've never tried to rank a site for any type of competitive keyword. Get your site ranking for a non made up word and then we'll talk.

SEO isn't easy. Can you save yourself the money and learn to do it yourself? Maybe. Motivated people can teach themselves to do virtually anything. Like how to jump off buildings without getting hurt. However, don't you have a job already? Learning how to do search engine optimization the right way takes a good amount of talent and dedication. That's time that you're not spending on your core business. If you don't realize that and you think SEO is just about optimizing Meta tags then you know even less than you thought.

If you're trying to save money, cutting corners with mediocre SEO isn't the way to go. That may actually cost you more when you fail to capitalize on the target traffic you would have received with a smart SEO campaign. Hiring a good search engine optimization may actually prove to be far more cost effective.

Is Failing At Web Analytics The Key To Success?

At WebMetricsGuru the question is whether failing at Web Analytics is often the key to success later on. It's like a geekier version of the chicken or the egg

I don't think it's "failing" that's the key. The key is using Web analytics. That initial failure is just the natural process of things. You're not going to be perfect right out of the gate; that's how you learn and make improvements and come away with a better Web site.

I don't think you can have a truly successful site without the help of Web analytics. Analytics show you how your visitors are interacting with your site, where they're running into problems, where valuable advertising dollars are being wasted due to no traffic, etc. Web analytics programs give search marketers the ability to track call to actions and to understand the conversion funnel in ways that you can't always see when looking at sales alone. It basically allows you to make tweaks to your site while leaving the light on. You can't fix something you don't realize is broken. And the more stuff that gets fixed, the better your site is going to perform.

Search Marketing Budgets Increasing In Europe

Over at Search Engine Watch, Greg Jarboe reveals that UK search marketing budgets are beginning to increase as search marketers across the pond begin to see the value of a healthy Internet marketing campaign. According to Greg and the UK Search Engine Marketing Report released today, 63 percent of UK businesses plan to increase their paid search budget, while 61 percent plan to increase their search engine optimization budget. I'm sure Rory De Niro and Marie Howell of Bruce Clay Europe are glad to hear this. ;)

Key takeaways from the report:

• One in ten companies surveyed is spending more than £1 million annually on paid search.


• Since 2007, the proportion of companies conducting paid search (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) exclusively in-house have declined.


• Correspondingly, the proportion of respondents outsourcing to an agency for both disciplines has gone up.


• The proportion of agencies offering landing page optimization has increased from 71% to 76%, making this the second most commonly offered service.

Fun Finds

Marc Hausman wonders if it's ethical to follow two of his employees on Twitter. Personally, I think that's territory better left unexplored. Why make everyone paranoid? There's a reason I have my Twitter account protected. :)

The Guardian reports that Google is the most powerful brand in the world. Because we didn't know that already. Thanks.

And just a reminder: I'll be heading down to Long Beach tonight for the SMX Social Media Marketing event that begins tomorrow and goes through Wednesday. If you're in town, make sure you track me down and say hello!

Posted by Lisa Barone on 04/21/08 at 4:18 PM | Comments (0)

April 17, 2008

How You Define Search Engine Optimization Matters

One thing that makes the search engine optimization industry so complex is that it's near impossible to find two people who define SEO the same way. Eavesdrop on conversations taking place in the hotel bar during a trade show and you'll hear people arguing whether SEO is about rankings or conversions, whether link bait is a viable technique or just today's buzzword, what exactly qualifies as SEO, who your site should be geared for, etc. Search engine optimization may not be rocket science but it's not as easy as making a grilled cheese sandwich either.

It's why SEO has this weird reputation following it and why we may never come to an agreement on the SEO standards debate. The fact is, the way you define search engine optimization matters. It forms the basis for your entire viewpoint regarding how you look at SEO, and ultimately, how you create and manage a campaign.

When you talk about SEO do you look at it as a one shot deal, a long term investment, a collection of techniques you can use to steal rankings, a combo of all three?

At Bruce Clay, Inc. we believe in search engine optimization as a long-term Internet marketing strategy. And even that is misleading because it suggests that somewhere down the line there's an "end" to that process. And we don't feel that there is. Search engine optimization will be a part of your life for the entire life of your site. There may be times when you'll have to focus on it more or less, but it's never something you can completely forget about. At least not to us.

But not everyone will agree with that. When you're judging an SEO vendor you can get a quick glimpse into how they view SEO by looking at the kind of tactics they're preaching and the plan they're creating for your site. Before you sign a contract, you better make sure you have aligning viewpoints.

Because we're about creating and SEOing sites for the long term it means that we're more interested in helping our clients to create link magnets and resources, than quick linkbait. Even though link magnets may take more time and are often harder to implement, we believe it creates more value for our clients over time. If you go to an SEO firm and they're talking about getting links quick and don't seem up to the challenge of ensuring those links stick long-term, then they're probably a company who thinks of SEO as a quick fix or something you do in the beginning while still fighting for rankings. That may be all you're looking for, but know that beforehand.

What kind of linking strategy is that SEO firm talking about building for you? When they talk about purchasing links is it about manipulating PageRank or using those links as a traffic source? Is buying links all they're offering or do they have a competitive link strategy with a clear plan for earning you links from noted authorities in your field?

If your vendor views search engine optimization has a long term strategy, they're likely open to teaching you best practices and explaining what they're doing. If SEO is a quick fix to them, then they won't be. What's their level of transparency?

Like I mentioned, for us, search engine optimization is a long-term marketing strategy and that has a huge impact on the way we do things. We're about getting clients off on the right foot and then working with them to maintain that. Before you go with any vendor, ask yourself what you want out of your SEO campaign. Once you know that, make sure whatever principles and views you have regarding SEO are mirrored by those you leave in charge.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 04/17/08 at 2:05 PM | Comments (3)

April 16, 2008

Big Brands Need Search Engine Optimization Too

The SEM Insight blog started a conversation about the reasons big brands downplay search engine optimization. Laura Callow attributes it to their need for an easy-to-maintain system, personalization and tracking, issues concerning languages and multiple countries, and legal red tape. Personally, I don't even want to hear the excuses big brand companies throw out for not investing in search engine optimization, because truthfully that's all they are, excuses. Stop doing your company a disservice and take a look at what's going on around you. Otherwise, prepare to lose your rankings, your customers and your cushy yacht.

There's a big misconception out there that companies already well branded don't need to invest in search engine optimization because they're already showing up for their branded terms and are in customers top of mind recall. I'm sure this helps top level execs sleep better at night all tucked into their mansions, but it's still a bunch of crap. Wake up, people.

It's true that big brands may have an easier time getting indexed and ranking for their brand name, but is that how you measure search engine optimization or business success? Not in the slightest.

Like we mentioned yesterday, anyone can rank in the top spot for anything - you just have to pick a term no one else wants. And often, your brand name is just that. Sure, New Balance may rank for [New Balance] based off their offline prominence, but that's not going to help them increase sales and conversions by attracting new customers. They need SEO to help them focus their site around category themes like [trail runners], [women's athletic apparel], [fitness], [outdoor sports] and other long-tail type queries to make sure they're showing up for all sorts of searches. This is where your new business is going to come from. Anyone searching for your brand name was looking for you anyway. You haven't "gained" that sale, you just didn't lose it.

It's disheartening when you see big brands out there completely unengaged and uninterested in their users. I know things are slower to move in big business, but as a brand that users already love, there's just so much potential to do really great stuff. To tap into that loyal brand community and to come up with new ways for your users to do the endorsing for you. Think of all the SEM dollars you could save if you didn't have to invest in PPC because your community helped you dominate the SERPs. Think of all the other ways that money could be spent. Like on donuts for everyone!

And I don't care how well known you are, there's always room for improvement. You should never become complacent or satisfied with your traffic and sales to the point where you're sitting on your couch counting your money. Get out there and look for ways to increase your brand's reach, to target new customers, to find new product ideas, to extend your brand's authority. That's the making of a successful business.

The old line of thinking that said big brands didn't have to worry about search engine optimization or advertising is what many are now trying to correct. How embarrassing is it to have users search for your brand or keywords and find a hate site about your company instead? Or how about when someone does a search and a local hobby site is ranking where your multi-million company should be? You don't want to be sitting there with egg on your face and less money in your pocket because you got lazy.

And search engine optimization isn't just about ranking. Companies need to be aware of SEO to ensure they're creating spiderable, usable sites. That they're optimizing their media correctly so that it will show up in blended search results. That they're paying attention to analytics in order to learn how customers interact with their site. An SEO'd site is a healthy site. It's one that performs better, smarter, faster and more efficient.

Big brands, I don't want to hear all the excuses why you can't possible invest in search engine optimization. I don't care about all the red tape or your problems with your IT department or how the executives just don't understand its value. Investing in SEO is vital for a company looking to succeed. As well known as you think your brand is, there's still room for you to extend your reach and build authority. With more and more small- and medium-sized businesses investing in search engine optimization, you can be darn sure that they're coming for you. You can get lazy if you want but realize that if you're not out there defending your brand, your market and your product line, it won't be long before you see Joe's House of Sneakers outranking your Fortune 500 shoe empire. We know because we're the ones helping them do it. ;)

Posted by Lisa Barone on 04/16/08 at 4:23 PM | Comments (3)

April 2, 2008

Google Will Sell Performics, SEOs Exhale

Exciting news from The Official Google blog today that reveals Google will stop scaring SEOs everywhere and will sell off Performics, the search marketing company that they accidentally acquired when they bought DoubleClick last year. To avoid the conflict of interest that comes when you’re a search engine selling search engine optimization services, Google will split Performics into two companies – an affiliate marketing company and a search marketing company – and then sell the search marketing half.

Google, FTW!

Google is already getting props from Danny Sullivan, Shoemoney and Donna Fontenot for the decision and really, it was just the right thing to do. Google’s already freaking people out by owning nearly the entire online advertising market; they don’t need to be dipping their toes in SEO on top of that.

Here’s a snippet of what Google had to say:

“It’s clear to us that we do not want to be in the search engine marketing business. Maintaining objectivity in both search and advertising is paramount to Google’s mission and core to the trust we ask from our users. For this reason, we plan to sell the Perfomics search marketing business to a third party. We believe this will allow us to maintain objectivity and the search marketing business to continue to grow and innovate and serve its customers.”

Google notes that they haven’t yet found a buyer, but that they have had partners show interest. I’m sure now that the official word is already out, interest will skyrocket.

Way to go, Google.

While we’re on the topic, it’s worth mentioning that the New York Times reports that Google will be laying off about 300 DoubleClick employees as they prepare to merge the two companies. Google hasn’t yet confirmed the number, but we do know layoffs are in the works.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 04/ 2/08 at 4:31 PM | Comments (0)

April 1, 2008

What To Look For When Hiring InHouse SEOs

Last week I wrote a post about What to Look For When Hiring Bloggers. That post got me thinking about what traits I’d look for if I wasn’t hiring a blogger, but instead someone to join my inhouse SEO team. What qualities are Must Haves and which are just Wants?

Hiring SEOs is tricky because the search engine optimization industry is a unique one. It’s one of the few fields where finding someone special takes more than just recruiting kids out of college and paying them enough to buy a fridge filled of beer and some ramen. There is no SEO major. There’s no Usability major. There are subjects just barely on the cusp of what we do for a living but there’s nothing with a skillset that perfect aligns to search engine optimization. So what do you look for? What are the traits that make a good SEO?

When coming up with traits SEOs should have I left off things like “prior experience in SEO”, “knowledge of the search engines” or “being the brother of Matt Cutts”. It’s not that these things aren’t important (especially that last one), but they’re all things that can be taught (okay, 2 out of 3). Just because someone knows what SEO stands for doesn’t mean he or she is any better qualified than the girl currently sitting in the marketing department who secretly has some mad technological savvy.

With that, here are the traits I’d look for if Bruce ever lost his mind and put me in charge of hiring our SEO team:

• Technical Acumen: Most of what it takes to be a good SEO can be taught in a few months (at least on a basic level), but it definitely doesn’t hurt to hire someone with some technical skills. For example, I know that no amount of search engine optimization training will make me an A-list SEO. I could probably do the basics, but to be honest, I’m pretty technological retarded. I can’t even change my settings in Outlook without calling IT. You don’t want to hire someone like me to run your inhouse search engine optimization department. You want someone who is familiar with FTP programs, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, ASP, etc. Someone who perhaps has a basic understanding of Web design, IT understandings and knows Internet business models. I can write you some kickass ad copy, but that’s about it.
• Analytical Mindset: Going along with being technologically skilled, you should also look for someone who is a bit mathy and analytical. Someone who can look at data sets without feeling lightheaded. As an SEO, you can’t be intimidated by numbers or conversion rates or other types of Web metrics. So much of search engine optimization is interpreting the information you already have and then making decisions off that. Gathering all the information collectors in the world won’t do you any good if you don’t have anyone who knows how to do something with those numbers.
• Mad Research Skills: I personally believe (like such as?) that in order to be a good SEO you have to be tirelessly curious and inquisitive. Much of search engine optimization is based on research, tracking down answers, and experimentation that either you have the mindset for it or you don’t. When I look at the amount of time our SEO Analysts spend trying things out and researching the pearls of wisdoms exposed by the search engines, it’s amazing they get any “real” work done.
• A Think Outside The Box-er: Hey, search engine optimization ain’t for dummies and it’s definitely not static. You need someone will be able to soak up the training you’re giving them and run with it. Someone who can read Larry and Sergey’s master plan and pick it apart. Someone who’s able to understand marketing practices and the bigger picture. People who exudes creativity and has that spark in their eye when you present them with a problem with no answer. A good hire will always be able to find that answer or at least spend a week not sleeping trying to find it. I credit the success of Bruce Clay’s SEO team to these people. Our SEO Analytics who don’t see the leaves off the tree, but instead imagine the leaves and somehow make it all come together to form a solid foundation. They’re awesome.
• Ethics: I hate to even go here, but I think it’s important. You have to hire someone who will respect what search engine optimization is all about and not fall prey to the “quick and easy” mentality. The worst thing you can do is hire someone, teach them about SEO, and then watch as their eyes get real big reading less than pure SEO blogs and they start “experimenting” with your site. If you’re going to spend the time teaching someone the principles of search engine optimization, you want to make sure they’re going to stay true to those and not, um, wander. You don’t want your site getting banned because they were overzealous.
• Optimizable: Above all, you want someone who you can train and who will fit inside your organization. It makes no difference how smart they are, how creative, how skilled if they can’t work within your group. Smart people incapable of working in a group setting do nothing but frustrate everyone.

Obviously there are plenty of other traits that can help make a great SEO, but I think these are some of the most important. Would it be nice to have someone who has experience in Web analytics? Sure, but you can train someone how to do that. Would it be nice to have someone who can write and craft really stellar landing pages and ad copy? Yes, but you can outsource that to other departments or teach basic writing skills. These are the traits that your hire is either going to have or be without. They’re what’s most important.

Remember when hiring that you probably won’t find all of them in one person, but as long as they’re common among your SEO team, I think you’re in pretty good shape.

Which traits for the perfect SEO did I miss?

Posted by Lisa Barone on 04/ 1/08 at 5:32 PM | Comments (13)

SEO Headlines

Celebrating 50 Issues of the SEO Newsletter

Did you get your personalized copy of the SEO Newsletter in your inbox yesterday? We hope you did and that you’ve had a chance to check out the news tidbits, read about Expectation Management and learn a little something about Successful Site Architecture and Web Design. While we were putting together yesterday’s edition we noticed something kind of special. Yesterday we sent out the 50th edition. Yowsa, time flies!

Those of us who have been around for awhile will know that the SEO Newsletter started out as the SEOToolSet Newsletter when it launched back in 2004. Since then we’ve gone from updating monthly to being a bimonthly newsletter filled with news nuggets and a double dose of expert articles each month.

If you’re a subscriber, we hope you’ve been enjoying the newsletter that’s been hitting your inboxes at the middle and end of each month. And if you haven’t yet converted, I think yesterday’s anniversary is just the latest reason to come over to the light. We invite you to check out the newsletter archives, and if you like what you see, consider giving it a whirl. We did mention that it’s free, right?

Rand Gets Ranty over Startup Advice

Rand’s got his offensive yellow shoes all in a bunch because he’s sick of reading startup advice that doesn’t mention search engine optimization anywhere on the page. Rand is so frustrated with the lack of SEO mentions that he’s summoning his inner Rebecca Kelley and throwing a near fit on the SEOmoz blog, swearing included. Poor Rand. He needs a cookie.

I think the reason Rand’s resources are lacking any mention of search engine optimization is because he’s looking at general business articles. They’re not about how to market a company. They’re about how to set it up. How to find a unique selling point. How to treat employees so they don’t leave when you’re paying them in donuts. At this point, we’re not even talking about marketing; we’re talking about how to make your company valuable and keep it above water.

However, I’d be interested to know how many startups are really hiring SEOs at this point. My initial thought would be that the folks eating pizza and working out a basement aren’t likely to shell out a few thousand dollars a month for search engine optimization services. However, I think with the recession upon we’ll see this change. Talented inhouse SEOs are going to start splintering off from their agencies and begin offering affordable optimization services. Once costs come down, I think we’ll start to see SEO fit into the marketing budget for more startups. Sure, we can all say that SEO is worth the investment, but when you’re a baby startup and it’s either optimizing your Web site or paying the electricity…well, I hope you and your best friend can type in the dark.

Does A Faster Server Mean Higher Google Rankings?

Ah, the old “does having a fast server matter?” question. I know for a fact we’ve touched on this topic at least nine billion times, but since it’s coming up in the forums, here’s my quick spiel.

The answer is a definite “sort of”. Being on a faster server isn’t going to take your crappy site and instantly make it rank for all of its highly competitive keywords. However, a faster server does mean that Googleblot will be able to spider more of your site without fear of it crashing. The more pages Google has indexed, the more complete your site themes will be, and the better you’ll rank for your targeted keywords. Makes sense, right? Okay, now stop asking about it in the forums. Kthx.

Cre8asiteforums member EGOL thinks there may also be some social factors coming into play. Check out his response, as well.

Fun Finds

Nowsourcing talks about the different support networks that exist on Twitter. I have to say, being able to cry/vent/affection bait on Twitter is incredibly comforting and effective. You know have no idea the solace that can be had when say, someone steals your online identity and uses it to by random crap and ship it your apartment. Thanks for the virtual hugs, Twitter friends!

Darren Rowse creates a great resource with 20 Types of Pages that Every Blogger Should Consider.

Danny Sullivan says Search Marketing’s No Place for a Search Engine, Google.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 04/ 1/08 at 2:36 PM | Comments (1)

March 27, 2008

We Do Need SEO Standards

Over at Search Engine Land, Jill Whalen writes that we don’t need industry standards and just like that my inner pit bull wakes up and starts mouthing the gate. It’s like a tic.

As you might imagine, I disagree with Jill. Taking a look around, I think we are absolutely at the point where it’s Do or Die time for SEO standards. We don’t need the perfect search engine optimization How To guide (though I’m sure Mahalo is working on that), but we do need to outline what SEO is and what it means to optimize a Web site. We need to establish best practices, what the risk is for abandoning them, and what all these different terms that we throw around actually mean.

Jill gave the following four reasons for why they industry does NOT need SEO standards:

1. There are too many ways of skinning the SEO cat.
2. We can’t even agree on the definition of search engine optimization.
3. There are already laws to protect people from SEO scam.
4. There’s no such thing as “cheating” in SEO.

That was her reasoning. Now I will destroy it. Muahaha. (Just kidding, Jill!)

Jill is right. There are many ways to do SEO. There are also many ways to cook a pork chop. Just because the same task can be accomplished and approached differently and with different flavors doesn’t mean that guidelines aren’t useful. I’m not saying that SEMPO or another such organization should get together and create the end-all, be-all recipe of how to perform SEO. That would be unrealistic and outdated before it was even finished. I’m saying we need basic guidelines for the search engine optimization process and to document what it is we actually do. It’s something we need for training, for protection and for credibility.

Jill noted that we all know that keywords are important to a search engine optimization campaign even if we can’t agree on how many instances of each term we need in our copy. The fact that keywords are needed to support our subject theme is the SEO rule, the number of instances is the secret sauce that SEOs can experiment and test out on their own. We’re not creating a cheat sheet; we’re creating guidelines.

And as much as I sympathize with Jill’s hesitancy to push for a set of common definitions for SEO, good GOD do we need them. I know the process is going to be majorly not fun and that there will be lots of closed door fighting (bring popcorn!), but without standard definitions we’re all just making this up as we go along and trying to get square spammy techniques to fit inside a round white hat hole. It’s also necessary for newbies just entering the game and for the poor inhouse folks who have to explain and justify things to scary balding men in suits. I don’t need to know the history of cloaking. I just need a basic definition of what it is and examples of it in its most white and most black forms.

Jill’s last two points of contention are that there are already laws in place to protect people from SEO scams and that there’s really no such thing as “cheating” in search optimization to begin with. Back, pit bull, back!

As far as there being “laws” out there to protect people from wheelin’ and dealin’ SEOs, I think that’s up for debate. Yes, there is legislation out there that will make sure contracts are lived up to and that fraud doesn’t occur, but we need to educate people so that they are aware of when they’re being scammed. I suspect most site owners don’t even know that the SEO “professional” who is buying them links and engaging in shady SEO practices is potentially putting them, their site, and their company at risk. And that is scamming them. That is what a SEO standards can help accomplish. It’s about making the entire process transparent, without revealing each firm's specific secret sauce.

When it comes to the SEO cheating argument, I think Jill needs to understand that the best practices and standards we’d be creating aren’t meant for the black hats. I’m not trying to bring anyone over to the light here. What I’m interested in is helping upcoming search marketers learn the ropes and to give them the tools they need to learn to do things right from the very start. We’re creating standards so the next generations of search marketers get a head start and have more than just SEO blogs and forums to learn from. We’re trying to cut back on the amount of disinformation.

And I think it is up to us to police our industry, just like it’s up to us to be good citizens in the town we live in and speak up when we see something that isn’t right.

Obviously, I don’t think it’s my job to “out” people buying links or those using spammy techniques, but as a member of the search engine optimization industry, and a representative for a company known for doing it “right”, I think it’s my responsibility to educate. That is a stance Bruce Clay, Inc. has always taken. It’s why we have our SEO Code of Ethics and started our SEO training and Advanced Certification programs.

For search engine optimization to become a legitimate industry, we need to start treating ourselves as one. Ian McAnerin actually brought up a great point during the Is It Time For Search Marketing Standards panel reminding us that search engine optimization is a form of advertising. It’s not a matter of should it be regulated, advertising MUST be regulated. If we don’t do it, someone else is going to come in and do it for us. I’d rather see us create our own guidebook.

Think of SEO has a baby startup. In the early days, it’s okay when you’re stealing money out of petty cash to pay the rent and maybe not following all those OSHA laws you know you’re responsible for. But as you start increasing your employee count and becoming “legit”, those things start to matter more. You start to become responsible for making sure your organization is playing by the rules. It’s the same thing for SEO.

For us to grow, we have to adopt the official standards that are going to give us the credibility and protection that this industry needs.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 03/27/08 at 4:36 PM | Comments (28)

Search Headlines – Google & YouTube Edition

In case you missed the memo earlier, all today’s headlines must revolve Google and its related properties. It’s a rule. Live with it.

Google Not Punishing Sites Retroactively…Or Are They?

Search Engine Watch had me raising an eyebrow when they interpreted a post from Dave Naylor to suggest that sites could be penalized for selling/buying links in the past, even if they were no longer engaging in the activity. The rumor was sparked after Dave commented on a friend’s site who was seemingly penalized for no reason. The only red flag was a paid links situation from about six months prior.

Matt Cutts later chimed in to say that the site in question was actually penalized months ago when the paid links were found. It wasn’t retroactive.

I have no reason to believe that Google would penalize a site retroactively for selling links, but does that mean the site owner just now realized a penalty that took place months ago? Aren’t site owners usually obsessive about checking that kind of stuff? Or is the site just now seeing the affect? Enlighten me in the comments.

Either way, just say no to paid links, my friends.

YouTube Gets Analytics

YouTubers were way excited to learn that the video upload site has released YouTube Insight, a free analytics tool that folks can use to learn a bit more about their videos and how they’re performing. Ooo, numbers.

To view your video analytics, click on “Videos, Favorites & Playlists” located under the Manage My Videos header on your Account page. Once there, you can get your metric information by selecting the “About the Video” radio button that will appear on the right of each of your videos. Once you’re in you’ll be able to view your data either by date (days, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months and one year.) or geographic region. Basically you’ll be able to see what locations your video are most popular in, the day of the week they get the most views, how popular your video is compared to others, and similar information.

Google hopes YouTube Insight will help partners evaluate their metrics to better serve their audience and increase ad revenue, while also allowing advertisers to tailor their message to the right viewers. Basically, it’s all about giving partners more data so they can improve their videos and make more money off their ads. Look excited.

Seriously, well played by YouTube and Google. Providing free video analytics is a good way to encourage site owners to choose YouTube over the competition and get everyone optimizing video for blended search.

Site Owners Get A Robots.txt Generator

The Google Webmaster Central blog gave site owners a Spring treat with the introduction of a robots.txt generator that they can use to help eliminate crawling problems. To use the tool, log into your Google Webmaster Tools, head to the Tools menu and click on the Generate Robots.txt link. Danny Sullivan notes that by default the tool will create a robots.txt file allowing all robots to index your site. If that’s not what you want, make sure you specify that. Once you're done, just upload the file to the top level directory of your Web site.

Danny also offers up a mini Robots.txt tutorial over at Search Engine Land so you may want to check that out.

Fun Finds

SEO Optimise asks Should Google Universal Search Be Part Of Your SEO Strategy? I don’t even have to read the post to know the answer is YES. If you’re not playing in blended search, do us all a favor and go sit in the corner. The rest of us will be over here evolving.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 03/27/08 at 4:33 PM | Comments (0)

March 26, 2008

Google Can Keep Its Site Search To Itself

Barry Schwartz commented on a thread from WebmasterWorld that shows at least one site owner is happy about Google’s new search box within the search results idea. According to the WMW member, once Google began displaying a search box next to his SERP listing traffic doubled overnight.

First of all, really? Maybe I’m overly skeptical (or have just read too many forum threads), but I don’t see how that one change would cause a traffic spike of that magnitude unless we’re talking about some highly competitive keyword (or traffic jumped from three visitors to six) and the addition of the search box pushed everyone else below the fold. It just seems…extreme. Who knows? Anything is possible in search.

Regardless of the real story, I think it’s far too early to be posting any sort of definitive “results” based on the new Google “feature”. It hasn’t been around long enough for people to know the true impact and we haven’t heard from nearly enough site owners. Declaring anything now is both a waste of time and misleading.

Personally, I’m not a fan of adding a search box to the SERP. I think it put site owners in a really bad situation and decreases their ability to help users.

First of all, I think it will make sites harder to use and force more users to go away frustrated, without the information they were looking for. The site search Google is offering up isn’t going to be anywhere near as strong as the one you have on your site. Why? No Advanced Search features. Chances are you allow users to search only certain parts of your site (blog vs. whole site) or based on select criteria (by product, date, color, price, etc,), Google’s site search doesn’t allow such fancy features, features that help improve the navigability of your Web site. Basically, Google is helping you to look less helpful.

You know how you’re also going to look less helpful? When users search for products and can’t find them because you listened to Google and noindex’d certain product pages to avoid duplicate content. Google can’t return pages it doesn’t know about, right? Awesome.

I’m also not thrilled about what this does for your ability to mine keywords. One tip we give those who attend our SEO training class is to keep an eye on what users are typing into their site search. This often helps clue you in to the topics visitors to your site are interested in, where they’re getting lost, where you need more content, new products you should be offering, etc. By allowing users to search on Google, instead of your site, you lose out on all of these opportunities. Another chance to appear useful to customers gone. Google, FTW!

I could go on but I won’t. Mostly because there are only 24 hours in a day and listening my many objections would take too much time. Clearly, I’m not a fan.

I don’t think it’s cool that Google not so long ago decided it wasn’t okay for your site search results to show up in their SERPS (which I totally agreed with, BTW) and are now throwing in their own. It takes your ability to earn revenue off a CPM model and shifts it over to them. Way to declare yourself King. Any way you look at that, it’s not okay.

Truthfully, I think it’s Google’s job to help you find the best sites relevant to your query and then get out of the way.

Google, you’ve gotten me to the page I need. This is me politely asking you to get out of the way. [I wouldn't mind the site search so much if it gave me better results. I want it to be more 'I'm Feeling Lucky' implementation. I don't want yet another page of search results. I want the answer.--Susan] I hear you, but I still don’t think it’s Google’s job to give you “the answer” past the SERP. It’s the site’s job. Go there. Google, thanks for getting me this far but get out of the way!

Posted by Lisa Barone on 03/26/08 at 5:08 PM | Comments (2)

March 25, 2008

Local Search Engine Optimization Doesn’t Exist

There are plenty of things about search engine optimization that confuse me to no end. One of the biggest sources of confusion for me is our intense need to coin a million terms to describe the same thing. In my humble little brain, there’s no such thing as local search engine optimization. It’s just search engine optimization. Just because we’re targeting a more niche set of keywords doesn’t suddenly change what we’re doing. Also, why the hell do we need the word canonicalization? Can anyone even spell that, let alone pronounce it? Okay, that’s not the point of this post.

Tim Nash had a post yesterday hailing SEO Nottinghamshire Here I Come, which essentially asked whether or not companies received business from their local area and if they specifically target it.

Personally, I don’t see why you wouldn’t be targeting your local area. Isn’t the point of having a Web site to target everyone? How hard is it to work some geographic keywords and local identifiers into your content? To me, doing that isn’t “local search engine optimization”, it’s straight up smart optimization. Let’s stop with the names. We just make ourselves look silly and create more words people can’t spell. Like canonicalization.

It’s really my hope that in the next 3-5 years we’ll stop thinking about local search engine optimization, video optimization, audio optimizations and all the optimizations individually. SEO and all the practices and techniques that fall under that umbrella will simply be part of a company’s core marketing campaign. It’s not that we’ll stop performing these techniques; they’ll just become a natural part of your larger Internet marketing campaign. Optimizing for local search or making your site blended search-friendly will be second nature (okay, maybe that’s a stretch) as companies wise up and begin taking advantage of all the opportunities available to them. It’s promising to hear that 70 percent of those Tim asked said they were specifically targeting local areas, as well as nationally.

It’s promising, but not good enough. That number should be way higher, like 100 percent. I’ll use Bruce Clay, Inc. as an example just because it’s what I’m familiar with.

We’re a global business, right? We have offices open or in the works in the UK, Sydney, Japan, South Africa, Brazil, Russia, China, and obviously in the United States. Clearly our focus is on national and international clients, and yet we still know the importance of having a presence in our own backyard. That’s why if you do a search for ‘simi valley seo’ or ‘simi valley optimization’, we’re right there. It just makes sense that we’d want to show up for these terms.

By NOT focusing and targeting locally, you run the risk of missing out on a lot of great opportunities that just happen to be closer to home and may actually come with a lower cost of conversion. Okay, I have absolutely no hard numbers to support that statement, but my gut tells me that users searching for local terms are more likely to convert than someone who just found us searching for “search engine optimization”. Why? Because it’s human nature to trust someone “like you”, who lives and works in your town. Do you not immediately like someone when you find out they grew up in your home town? Of course, you do.

There’s also some comfort in knowing that you do business with someone who lives downtown that you can head down there and kick some ass should a problem arise. Say what you want, you know it’s true. ;)

When companies maximize these local relationships, they’re able to set themselves apart in a way that competitors across the country cannot. things begin equal, what business do you trust more: The one located 3,000 miles away or the one that happens to have an office in town?

I don’t think it matters how many local clients you currently “get”. Optimizing your site for local queries is just good business. You almost have to purposely NOT target your local audience. And keep in mind that opportunities for local search are growing by leaps and bounds. Just because you’re not seeing much return now, doesn’t mean that won’t increase as the search engines begin working local listings deeper into their SERPs, users begin searching smarter, and we all start taking advantage of mobile devices.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 03/25/08 at 3:46 PM | Comments (8)

SEO Headlines

Matt McGee Offers Very Polite Smackdown

Matt McGee is one of my favorite people in the industry and today he reminds me why with this Google Wants Your Analytics Data Badly (An Open Letter) post. I mean, how many people do you know that can still come off as an adorable, huggable teddy bear when they’re dishing out the smackdown to Google? Not many. Matt McGee is the man!

Matt is calling out Google for being so obsessed with their new data sharing feature that they’ve sacrificed user privacy by making it opt-out instead of opt-in. Even worse, they’re essentially doing everything they can to get users not to even notice that they have a choice. For real. All they’re missing is the giant neon arrow pointing to the “ACCEPT”button. Google really needs to revaluate what they’re doing here. If they want to make this “feature” available for users, great. But make sure site owners know that they don’t have to opt in and that you’re not opting them in without their permission.

Because Matt’s a nice guy, he offers up some advice to Google on how they can stop their evil stripe from showing:

“Make the data sharing stuff a little bigger so I don’t almost miss it, and don’t opt me in by default! What’s up with that? You’re like those awful sites that force me to uncheck a box so I don’t agree to be spammed halfway to tomorrow. Thankfully, I noticed the little “Edit Settings” link and took care of this. (Matt McGee, FTW!)”

Sounds good to me. See, now isn’t Matt McGee your favorite person in search too? I know!

Which is Better: Search Engine Optimization or PPC?

I came across Dave Wallace’s cumbersomely named Search Engine Guide article Which is Better – PPC or SEO? How One Company Increased Traffic 60 % After Ditching PPC for SEO and was left somewhat scratching my head. The article makes the case that while PPC optimization may deliver fast track results, it’s your search engine optimization campaign that is going to offer up the long lasting, steady results you’re looking for.

Fine. I can’t argue that. I totally agree that search engine optimization provides a great long term benefit and in the end, it’s probably cheaper than PPC optimization, I’m just not sure why we have to pick one or the other. It’s not a matter of what comes first. There’s room for both in your Internet marketing campaign. In fact, I think your marketing campaign needs both.

As David is careful to mention in the post (probably because he knows I’d pounce if he didn’t ;)), PPC optimization allows a great opportunity to learn about new keyword opportunities, to set new campaign goals, to help you better understand your searchers, and leaves you with new data that will help you measure the effectiveness of your SEO campaign. It always makes me nervous to hear people pitching one Internet marketing strategy over another. There’s no reason to start throwing eggs out of your basket. It’s about balance and using data from all the available avenues.

Fun Finds

It must be March because the old “what do I do when my client won’t listen to me because I haven’t set proper expectations” thread has come back up. This time it’s called SEO Clients Not Being Responsive and Tamar is commenting over at Search Engine Roundtable. See, this is why we lock our clients in the storage closet. It makes them much more compliant. I’m kidding. The server room is way warmer. [For more on this topic, make sure you're subscribed to the SEO Newsletter. --Susan] Yes, yes, a very timely article shall be arriving in your inboxes on Monday. So go subscribe!

Mike Blumenthal shows you how to get your video clips showing up in Google Maps by adding it to the Local Business Center.

Barry Schwartz posted How to Set Up Google Ad Manager On Your Site or Blog. It’s one of those posts you’re going to want to bookmark. And drink some coffee before you dive in.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 03/25/08 at 3:42 PM | Comments (2)

March 24, 2008

Jason Calacanis Is The Devil & SEOs are Children

A week or so before Jason Calacanis was due to give his keynote at Search Engine Strategies New York, search marketers decided to start a movement to “out” him as being misinformed about search engine optimization. The idea was to submit questions to ringleader Liana Evans and then we’d all get to watch Jason squirm and look uncomfortable when we fired the collected questions at him on stage. If you caught the thread on Sphinn, you know my reaction at the time as something along the lines of “really? Are we five?”

And when the Jason keynote came around, something amazing happened – he didn’t act like a jerk. In fact, he was humble in admitting his lack of search engine optimization knowledge, he was sincere about reaching out to the SEO community, and he was truthful regarding Mahalo, admitting that it’s in the early stages and that he’s still trying to figure it all out.

After that keynote and Jason’s appearance at SES NY where he was seen making amends with skeptical SEOs, I thought perhaps we’d see an end to the community’s polarization over Jason and Mahalo. That perhaps we could all act like adults and stop throwing stones. That we could be supportive of one another’s efforts to improve search and maybe even embrace a new way of thinking, one that could someday evolve into a Google competitor.

And then I woke up from my crazy dream world.

Search marketers will never stop beating the Jason Calacanis horse. Mostly because it gets them links. And also because it’s fun to have a common enemy to hate on when we’re feeling a little insecure with our own search engine optimization efforts.

On Friday, Aaron Wall, someone I have an enormous amount of respect for, launched another SEO vs Jason Calacanis attack arguing that according to the leaked Google Internal Spam Documents, Mahalo is spam. Aaron says that if you remove the scraped content, the ads, and the links from Mahalo’s pages, that there’s nothing of value left. Oh, brother. Here we go again. Time to get out our SEO-branded sticks and beat Jason with them! Maybe we’ll get him to say something stupid and then we’ll have a reason to beat him even harder! Huzzah!

Seriously, aren’t you over it? Can’t we be one community united in our passion for search and trying to continually improve the system? Apparently not.

I haven’t spent that much time navigating Mahalo, but I have looked at some of the basic listings and it’s not spam. Perhaps it hasn’t received the full SEO treatment. There are plenty of less than stellar results ranking because they haven’t been noindex/nofollow’d. However, from a user perspective, a lot of those Mahalo pages have value. I wouldn’t use them myself and you probably wouldn’t either, but my mother might if she was looking for information. So would other beginner searchers. It’s basically a poor man’s Wikipedia at this point, acting as a portal page for people looking for links to real answers.

Is it perfect? No.
Does Jason claim that it is? No.
Was it too early to start trying to monetize? Yes.

However, if I’m a user curious on how to bake a potato or on the hunt for Easter Cupcakes, Mahalo’s results are actually pretty relevant for me. [The how to make bacon page is a particular favorite among my non-SEO friends actually. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten emails linking to it. --Susan]

What I find funny is that the same people who argue that Google can’t tell you what to do with your site, that they’re not your mother, and that you don’t have to nofollow those damn paid links if you don’t want to, are now tripping over themselves to get in line and point fingers that Mahalo breaks Google’s guidelines. To be honest, I don’t care about Mahalo. I don’t really even care about Jason (I know. I’m sure he’s totally offended, heh). It’s the SEO attack mobs and our need to continually beat people with sticks to show how “right” and “cool” we are that bothers me. Dude, find a greater purpose.

The truth is, if Mahalo was a site we liked, we’d call it a portal page. Because we don’t, it’s “scraped content”. This polarization in search helps no one. It does no one any good when we set others up to fail. And if we keep bashing every new engine attempt all we’re going to end up with more Google. Do you want to write the Official "Google Gains 100 Percent Market Share" post? I don’t. Move on.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 03/24/08 at 3:29 PM | Comments (8)

March 19, 2008

Afternoon Keynote: Jason Calacanis

Take a deep breathe. You know this is going to be good. Jason Calacanis is giving the afternoon keynote at SES NY, which is an SEO conference. Do I even need to say anything? I’m just hoping no one gets shot. Or if they do, they don’t bleed on me.

[Jason just walked by and said I have to be nice to him in my recap. Why do people always ask me to be nice? Am I really that mean? I have such an innocent face.]

Kevin introduces Jason and asks everyone to keep it PG. Heh.

Jason starts by clearing the air. A few years ago he was here for SES San Jose talking about Weblogs Inc and someone asked him if he did SEO. He said they didn’t; they build sites and make good content and it ranks well. He says he called search engine optimization bullshit and then everyone in the audience gasped. That’s when he realized there was an SEO industry (hee). He thinks what’s changed is the definition of what is SEO, it’s becoming clearer.

Search engine optimization used to mean gaming your way to the top of the engines, because that’s what you heard from the cold callers. Since his fatal comment, Jason has gotten a big education about what search engine optimization really is from people like Bruce Clay (holla!), Michael Gray and Neil Patel. He knows SEO is about making sites that help people and having a good structure. That’s when Jason learned the difference between search engine optimization and blackhat SEO. He thinks blackhat SEO is BS and a waste of time. He likes building long term value. He thinks the whitehat SEO is really important. In some ways, he is an SEO. He’s a whitehat SEO. If SEO is defined as building a site that helps people, that’s what he is.

Hear that? Jason Calacanis is an SEO.

Mahalo was launched on May 30, 2007. The first question he got was, “isn’t this just DMOZ?” It does look a lot like Yahoo and DMOZ; it has that directory-like feel. Yahoo and DMOZ failed. You have to ask yourself: why did it fail? Why doesn’t it exist anymore? Yahoo Directory failed because they sold it out. DMOZ failed because it was neglected by its owner. But they were both amazing in their own time.

How is Mahalo going to Scale?

It will scale with a distributed work force. In June, they launched the Mahalo Greenhouse to let people work from home to create search results. They have 400 people doing it from home currently. It’s the largest distributed work force on the planet behind Wikipedia and (probably) About.com. They’re at 40,000 pages right now. It can scale. In theory, it shouldn’t. In theory, Wikipedia shouldn’t work, but it does.

How are you going to keep it up to date?

Having seen Delicious and StumbleUpon use site owners and people with a vested interest, he knows people will tell them when they make a mistake. That’s why they launched Mahalo Social, which is basically like Delicious. It dramatically lowers his cost of keeping the pages updated. They’re building a trust world.

The engines created the SEO industry so they didn’t have to talk to site owners. If you have a problem, talk to them. The SEOs are the intermediary. The Mahalo discussion boards are kind of the same thing. It allows people to have a discussion in a public forum about something they don’t like.

Jason talks about the Mahalo Toolbar/Mahalo Share and how it helps SMOs. He stumbles trying to figure out what SMO stands for and it’s actually kind of cute. See, Jason’s really not a jerk. He’s just like us, getting confused by oddball industry acronyms!

Where is all this going?

How we (re)search today:

We use machines, experts, our friends and the wisdom of crowds. He’s shows the audience how he’s using the social graph to connect users and information. That’s the future of search. It’s not just machines or the wisdom of the crowds. It’s all of those things plus the social graph. It’s creating semantic relationships between people and objects. The objects are the SERPs. They define states between people and objects. What is the state between you and a book? You could have read it, are wanting to read it, are reading it now. The new PageRrank is knowing if you can trust people through their behaviors. If you can, then you can let them contribute more to your site.

The new MyMahalo will make social graph features more prominent on the Mahalo search results. Page will show pictures of friends that have shown an interest in a specific topic. Reviews will be imported directly onto the page (with user permission). It’s giving users the chance to leverage all of their data into one spot.

One More Thing:

Not everyone wants to give up Google or Yahoo. If you’re doing a search on Google and you have the Mahalo toolbar, they’ll syndicate out some of their content so you can see it in your Google result. They don’t want you to give up your experience on Google.

Question & Answer

Can you define what you think an SEO does?

Jason: My perception has changed radically. The SEOs I’ve met are outsiders in the technology industry. You have this elite group (Digg, Yahoo, Microsoft) and then you have your SEOs and site owners. He’s found that the SEO folks are some of the smartest hustlers, get it done kind of people. (He means hustler in a good sense of the word.) Like Jay-Z (hee!). His mom was a nurse and his dad was a bartender (Jason’s, not Jay-Z’s). He worked his way up. He thinks SEOs are just like that. A lot of them are stuck in short term think. They want to make some money today, but they may be spinning their wheels a little bit. By the time you get a page ranked and you make 10K off affiliate links in a weekend, you basically expended all this energy and you maybe could have built the next Engadget. He thinks maybe they’re more into the gaming then they are of creating something of quality. SEOs are really intelligent people. The blackhats are polluting the Web and that makes it bad for all of us. Then consumers don’t trust the Internet.

Kevin: My experience with the blackhats is different. I tend to try not to piss them off. There’s an element there of let's think a little bit more altruistically. You gotta take it in order to get it, but maybe we could contribute a little bit more.

Jason: Just because you can take the number one spot doesn’t mean you should do it or that it’s right.

You tend to ask for forgiveness rather than permission and I was caught by an example where the Mahalo listings were supplanting paid listings (via the Mahalo Toolbar).

Jason: When the Web page reaches the person’s desktop, it's theirs to do what they please with. If people want to put up ad blockers, that’s their right to do it. If people want to put Mahalo on their page, I’m okay with that. If Google says they have a problem with that, we’ll change it. He doesn’t have a problem with people remixing in the privacy of their own home. He doesn’t think Google will complain.

Is this your model now: The more people get upset at you, the more links you get to your site?

Jason: Are we talking about linkbaiting? What is that?

Kevin: You say something obnoxious and 500 people link to you and it’s basically just a small group of people who are big fans of themselves. (Kevin, 1; Linkbaiters, 0)

Jason: You can only take linkbaiting so far. I like to have a good time but even I know when to call it a day. I don’t want to be at war with the search engine optimization industry. He’s more than willing to evolve the discussions. You can link bait a couple of times until people figure out you’re just schmuck. You get the reputation you deserve over time. You just need to be authentic and real. Don’t make linkbaiting your strategy. He’s turned it on his head. He’s made it affection-baiting. You have to say nice things about him in order to get him to link to them. People should be nice to people.

If you were an online marketer, how would you promote your content?

Jason: The best way to market is to have a great product. Make products that speak for themselves. Then you have to authentically insert yourself into conversations. If you want to engage someone, you write a comment on their blog about something that has nothing to do with you. If people add Jason on Twitter, he tries to go to their site, checks it out and then sends that person a message. Products without human beings behind them will never do as well as companies without them. People don’t want products with no personality behind them. Make yourself available.

Is there a risk for being overexposed?

Jason says he’s the first to admit that he’s overexposed. He has his cell phone number on his presentation slides. A stalker showed up last week at the office.

Kevin says yeah, keep leaving your cell number on your slides. Hee!

What about the long tail? Most searches have never been seen before. What about that?

Jason doesn’t believe that one solution is going to solve the search problem. He thinks it’s going to be a blend of techniques. If you’re looking for the pizza place around the corner or the girl you staked in college, Google is the way to go. But if you’re looking for info on Paris, that’s where human editing comes in handy. Sometimes you need a hybrid and there are those too. The person who will win big and create the next Google is the person who finds out how to blend these different disciples to create a single product. Users do not care how pages are built. They just care if the result is good.

[Jason breaks into a strong NY accent that is…well, it’s horrible considering he’s actually from NY. It’s like movie gangster.]

How do you categorize the traffic relationship you have with the other search sites?

Jason thinks that there are going to be a series of services that are dependant on search engines and some portion of them will be able to convert that traffic into direct traffic. Right now they get a majority of their traffic for search engines. Mahalo is a content company. They’re like Wikipedia or About.com. If they do good original content and they rank us, great. If not, we’re in it for the long term.

Can you explain why you chose not to implement canonical redirect?

He wanted to have URLs that you could type mahalo.com/keyboard. It’s easier for people to remember. It’s a personal preference.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 03/19/08 at 1:09 PM | Comments (1)

March 13, 2008

6 Questions with The Kelsey Group's Michael Boland

Search Engine Strategies New York hits next week and I was lucky enough to be tasked with the "responsibility" (read: really cool opportunity) to chat with some of the new and old faces we'll see speaking and hanging around the convention center next week. Fun, right?

Totally! And as a result, both today and tomorrow we'll be able to give you a sneak peak at some of the knowledge transfer that will be taking place all next week during SES NY.

First up is our interview with Mike Boland. Mike acts as Senior Analyst in the Interactive Local Media Program at The Kelsey Group and was kind enough to answer a few questions I had regarding the new opportunities presented by local search.

1. Greetings, Mike. Can you speak a little bit about The Kelsey Group's upcoming Local Search Track that will be taking place in New York? What can conference goers expect?

SES has invited us to its past few conferences to run a track on issues pertinent to local search. In New York, this will consist of three sessions on Day One, when they've decided to put a lot of general tracks that kick the conference off with a broader view of industry issues. This is fitting to TKG because our conferences and written materials generally take a 40,000 foot view of the trends facing online local media. In other words, we usually address industry players rather than advertisers. SES, by comparison, usually has more of a tactical level approach, geared towards search marketers. So we're hoping we can augment that with the "executive level" view; and with both, SES gains broader appeal to audiences with different focal points.

Specifically, TKG sessions will explore key issues in local search advertising, such as gaining channel partners to reach the fragmented universe of SMBs and local advertisers. Other emerging trends will be looked at, such as the development of mobile local search products and online video advertising at the local level. These are local offshoots of broader online and mobile trends but we are at inflection points in each of them that hold a great deal of opportunity (as well as confusion) for advertisers, as well as companies in the local search space.

2. Tell us a bit about how you've seen the local search space change over the past few years and what new trends you're excited about.

We're seeing general online trends such as social media and video manifest in unique ways in local. Mobile search is also exploding as hardware and software standards are improving through the iPhone, as well as Apple and Google's open source developer platforms. Through these, we'll begin to see an explosion in mobile search products that will finally move the medium beyond the early adoption stage where it has teetered for years due to unappealing products. Mainstream adoption will then lead to more advertiser interest and more ad products and networks that will allow businesses of all sizes to place ads in front of mobile users in targeted or contextually relevant ways. As mobile and local are inherently related, local will see a great deal of the benefit from all of these developments.

3. It's all kind of exciting, isn't it? What's the most important thing small business owners should be doing to take advantage of the opportunities presented by local search?

The majority of SMBs are too busy being doctors, plumbers, restaurateurs and dog washers to also take on the role of search marketer. This has gotten more challenging over time as a dizzying array of local search options now face SMBs. This confusion and the "paradox of choice" drives many SMBs towards sub-optimal local advertising or no advertising at all. This is why the yellow pages industry has traditionally had so much success; its local sales reps knock on every door in town and put easy-to-understand advertising in the laps of SMBs.

But as print revenues and readership are declining, yellow pages publishers are realizing that they need to utilize this unique sales channel to take on more of an agency role to the SMB and be a reseller of a cross platform package of local advertising (print, display, search, video and someday soon, mobile). A small percentage of savvy SMBs will be on top of their SEO and SEM game. But for the majority of SMBs, search marketing will come to them through the trusty yellow pages sales rep that sells them click packages and then hands them off to a third-party SEM affiliate to fulfill the campaign. There will be a learning curve for sales reps though.

4. We hear a lot about how the search engines are handling local search. What local resources are out there that small businesses may not be aware of?

Google's increasing favorability of local listings in blended search results (the local "10 pack"), puts more opportunity for small businesses and local advertisers to get found in Google local searches. These local-heavy blended results essentially create a larger front door for Google Maps (local traffic - otherwise dependent on direct navigation traffic). So for SMBs, the ball is in their court to provide Google as much information about themselves and SEO-goodness to take advantage of this trend. Many businesses don't know about Google's Local Business Center but some do. All SMBs should take the time to claim their Google Maps profile and provide as much information as possible about their businesses. This especially includes the many businesses that don't even have a Web site, as this offers them a free landing page that has a growing chance of being picked up in Google SERPS when local searches are done. This is also a viable option that is user friendly to the typical tech-illiterate and time-constrained SMB referenced above.

5. How does local tie in with the rest of the expanding verticals and social media?

We're seeing a lot of verticalization online. Content and ad relevance, audience aggregation, click-through rates, and traffic can all be improved by vertical segmentation. This is especially happening in local where many of the online vertical categories, such as autos, real estate, and shopping, are inherently local. Sites such as Zillow and AutoTrader are having a lot of success in aggregating content, advertising and traffic.

In terms of shopping, 90+ percent of U.S. retail activity happens offline, but a growing amount ($470 million in purchases in 2007) is influenced by online search. Many product models are being developed to take this reality to heart. This includes pulling in retail product feeds to tell users where they can buy a specific model product locally and how many are on the shelf. This is especially valuable in expensive or bulky items that buyers want to see before purchasing, such as flat screen televisions or appliances. These are also highly targeted and qualified leads for advertisers, given that if a user has taken the time to enter in a specific product name and zip code into their search box, they're typically at the end of the purchase funnel and ready to buy locally. So the key for some of these emerging offline shopping destinations is to develop SEO strategies that catch this upstream traffic from the likes of Google, so that they can effectively drive foot traffic towards their local advertisers.

6. We'll take the pressure off you for a moment. Any panels or speakers you're looking forward to during SES NY? What has your eye?

As mentioned above, TKG is generally focused on the executive level view and our audience generally consists of industry players and media companies rather than search marketers themselves. But my knowledge of these larger trends and my ability to communicate directional opportunities to online media companies can be improved with a sharper nuts and bolts-level intimacy with SEM/SEO. Though this isn't what I "teach", this knowledge can add perspective and give me a more holistic view of how the local search world spins. So I treat every SES show I go to as a classroom for tactical level search marketing. So you'll see me in some of the fundamentals sessions as well as some of the more advanced or intermediate tactical sessions. Social media optimization is also a big interest of mine so that track is also circled on my agenda.

Thanks a lot, Mike! You've given us a lot of great information here.

[Tomorrow we'll be posting our interview with Analytics lord Avinash Kaushik. You won't want to miss it!]

Posted by Lisa Barone on 03/13/08 at 10:59 AM | Comments (0)

March 12, 2008

SEO Headlines

Stopping Competitors Who Snoop

IncrediBILL’s recent Slow Down Nosy SEO’s and Snooping Competitors post has received some legs over at Sphinn. I’m going to be honest; posts like these give me the same dirty feeling that Jake Baillie’s Competitive Intelligence presentation did. I’m all for competitive search engine optimization, I just wonder if it has to be so damn sneaky. Is your competition really going to find out valuable trade secrets by reading your robots.txt file? Go grab a cookie and chill out.

Sure, you can worry about people checking out your site via the Wayback machine, copying down your Meta tags or spend your precious time cloaking pages so your competition gets porn instead of your Web site, but really, why bother? Don’t you have a site to run and a search engine optimization campaign to worry about? Unless your competitors are outright trying to harm your site by messing up your link profile and making you look like a spammer, this all seems a bit extreme to me. Competitors are like annoying neighbors. We all have them, it doesn’t mean you should start throwing dead animals over the fence.

Just my two cents. Feel free to handle your SEO and competitors the way you see most appropriate. We’ll be over here with our souls. ;)

Matt Cutts: Want Links? Create A Link Magnet

Matt Cutts finally finishes a post he started in 2005 (I know I’m slow, but geez, Matt) and offers up some link building SEO advice. The gist of his post: If you want people to link to you, you have to give them a reason to. Provide a useful service, become a resource, offer up valuable information or open up your product to make it hackable.

It sounds to me like Matt is basically advocating that everyone go out and create themselves a valuable link magnet, whether it's something you physically create or a new business model that you adopt. See, now that’s advice we can get behind.

Eventually this whole link bait thing is going to mature and people are going to be forced to dig deeper and create content that actually matters, sort of like Bruce’s now famous Search Engine Relationship Chart. Creating a successful link magnet will help you stand out in your field and increase your visibility to your target audience. Like Matt hints at, it’s really about doing the research necessary to uncover an opportunity to create something useful that searchers can come back to time and time again. It’s less about the baiting and more about creating quality, link-worthy content. There are only so many hours in a day, you may as well use your time wisely. Let those other guys create yet another Top 10 list. Boring.

Fun Finds

Greg Jarboe has a great interview with the legendary Ralph Wilson and they dish about the importance of fine tuning your landing pages to maximize conversions.

Jonathan Hochman talks about using Wikipedia as a way to reveal Web traffic.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 03/12/08 at 3:18 PM | Comments (2)

February 28, 2008

Linking Q&A

Okay, time to answer all of your linking questions. Danny Sullivan (Search Engine Land) will be moderating a rowdy list of speakers who include Nathan Buggia (Live Search), Matt Cutts (Google), Priyank Garg (Yahoo) Rae Hoffman (Sugarrae Internet Consulting), Peter Linsley (Ask) and Todd Malicoat).

Rae says if I comment on how fast she speaks she’ll cut me in the parking lot. Saying nothing.

I want to move my site to a new domain, how do I make sure I don’t lose traffic?

Priyank: 301s from your old location to your new location.

Matt: That rocks. In addition to that, if you want to be very safe, consider moving one part of your site first. If you move those pages over and your rankings are fine, you know you’re in good shape. If you want to, lots of places give you a way to look at your backlinks. Write to those people and tell them you moved.

Peter: Try to be conservative with the content and the layout, keep it the same.

Rae: Getting new links after you do the 301 will help the engines sort it out a bit faster.

Nathan: This is a great place to engage a reputable SEO. There are a lot of things that can go wrong when moving a site over. Don’t do it yourself without experience.

How important are .edu or .gov links?

Rae: She goes for older links before the .govs and .edus. You can have a crappy link but if it’s been there for 8 years, it will be more helpful than an .edu link that you got 3 days ago. She’d be really surprised if the engines haven’t found a way to identify user pages on .edu pages as opposed to links coming from the core domain.

Matt: You used to see this question being asked in regard to DMOZ. The value in those links is that they typically have higher PageRank.

Peter: …And one of the reasons for that is because spam doesn’t exist on .edu domains.

Would Ask.com tell Google why the nofollow attribute is not necessary?

Hee!

Peter: I wouldn’t go as far as to say that. I think the concept is sound but the reality is a lot of paid links will not be disclosed that way. As a search engine, we still have this fundamental problem of trying to work out the value of each link. We support it on the page, not link. Not each link is created equally at query time. This algorithm is fairly good at filtering out paid links.

Google recommends disclosure about paid links, what do the other engines want?

Nathan: We recommend using nofollow in the event of a paid link. The definition of what a paid link is, is the gray area. He’s not going to talk about what a paid link is. ;)

Priyank: Paid links have been found to not be useful for searches. We tend to look at these things more on a site level and take relative points of view. That’s the kind of variation of the Web we look out for.

Danny: It sounds like the preferred method is to go with a nofollow.

What’s the definition of a paid link?

Matt: I understand the inclination to go for the gray area, but you have to realize that the vast majority of time when we’re talking about paid links, we’re talking about “here’s some money, here’s a link”. Those links are not the most useful to searchers.

Rae: The search engines created currency in links. You created the value of a link and I wish you would take more responsibility for the problem that you created instead of putting the responsibility on me to fix it. [Huzzah for Rae – Lisa!]

Matt: Every search engine tries to make their algorithm robust. Some people rant about nofollow, but the idea is that it’s a tool you can use so that the search engines don’t have to come in and run the algorithms. If someone wants to sell links, here’s an easy way to not flow PageRank – use nofollow.

Nathan: There are two spectrums of paid links. In one the link is totally irrelevant and obviously bad. On the other side, you have the American Veterinary Association where you have to pay to be a member but you’ll get a link. It’s very much a spectrum right now.

Priyank: We have been fighting irrelevant links before nofollow was there. All these mechanisms are a way for webmasters to provide us with better signals. Site owners do what they do and we lose control.

If someone has a question about a gray area with paid links, where can they go to get an answer?

Matt: We have our Webmasters group that will answer your questions. You can also ask on the Webmaster Central blog. You can ask on his blog, too. In general, it’s not a bad idea to ask yourself, well if a competitor walks in the room and looks at my site, are they going to consider is strange?

Priyank: Go to the Site Explorer discussion board.

Peter: Leave a comment on our site or send a message to support. When Bruce Clay was in the last session, he said that if you can explain why you have that link on your site to Matt Cutts, that’s a really good test. The opposite is true, as well. We should be able to tell you why you’re getting a ding.

Nathan: Ask in the webmaster forums. They don’t have an automated way.

Why do the link counts on Yahoo Site Explorer fluctuate?

Priyank: There was a period when there was an error and things when out of kilter. That’s all taken care of now. You should not see much fluctuation but what does happen is sometimes there are machines that go up and down.

We have a lot of link baiting going on. What’s the quality of UGC linking? At what point could they go bad?

Matt: Some links are higher quality because they come from high PR sources and you have to think of the effort and the value of a link. If you got a link because someone copied and pasted your widget, that’s a link a search engine doesn’t consider useful. A lot of social generated content sites spend a lot of time thinking about how they’re going to create a high quality link. The best thing a UGC site can do is to monitor for spammy links.

Todd: If you sit on enough linking panels, you’ll wind up getting the idea that the last links that are going to count are Harvard, Stanford and CNN. The truth is, there’s gotta be a balance. As long as there’s a balance in the links that you’re getting, you’re okay. If all your links are from UGC site, you’re going to tip off a filter.

Concerns that if I use a 301 I’ll use some of my link value. Do those links count less?

Priyank: A 301 is not the same as a link. In terms of Yahoo, 301s carry all the link juice forward.

Matt: For the most part, they carry the same link juice. If you use 30 of them in sequence, Google is going to get dizzy. He still recommends moving a small portion of your site over first.

Peter: Make sure the content is fundamentally the same thing so that we know the links you had before can vouch for the new site.

Nathan: If you’re using 301 in your site and it looks like a relevant page, then you’re golden.

Link sabotage: fact or fiction?

Rae: Fact. I think that a lot of it has to do with the balance. I don’t think I can go out and take CNN out, but I think I could take another site out by changing the balance of their links to be in favor of something Google doesn’t like.

Todd: If we can do it accidentally sometimes, you can certainly do it on purpose.

Matt: The thing I would say is that Google has made it really, really hard for one site to hurt another site. We make it very hard for someone to negative SEO someone else’s site.

Peter: People can hack into your site and pop up links in directories you didn’t even know existed. And then if they link to you, it looks like you’re participating in a reciprocal linking circle.

Priyank: If you’re checking your site in Yahoo Site Explorer and find links that you think are bad, you can report them. It goes into their analysis queue. It’s a way for you to see who’s linking to your site.

Matt: That’s a great feature. Matt asks how many people want to be able to disclaim links. Lots of people raise their hands.

Rae: If you make that feature, are you going to penalize me if I don’t patrol my links?

Matt: Matt basically says yes. Heh. Here we go again.

Peter: If you suddenly see all these incoming links, you have a right to be very suspicious. It could be a sign that someone is trying to hurt your site. It’s worth keeping an eye on your access logs.

Outbound links: Make a difference to a Web site?

Todd: Outbound links are probably one of the lesser discussed and more important things these days. It’s a good way to get someone’s attention to link to the 100 top bloggers, but you’re also linking to the right places, so you’re associating your site with other experts.

Rae: You’ve gotta link out when it makes sense for the user. It’s not even a search engine thing.

[The engine reps applaud her. Hee.]

Matt: Google agrees with that statement. Your users appreciate it when you link to high quality stuff. You can’t control who links to you, but you can control who you link to. It’s about reputation.

Priyank: We do look at your neighborhood.

Peter: All of the above. Linking to a bad neighborhood is not a good thing.

Todd: Don’t be a scrooge with your links. It’s like Progressive. They’re rates aren’t always the cheapest, but they still show their competitors rates so users can decide.

What about this PR sculpting thing?

Matt: Worry more about the overall health of your site. When you’ve got that down, then worry about sculpting your PageRank. You want to put your best pages first. Why wouldn’t you put your best selling products and put links to those top ten products right from your home page? It’s going to get the most link juice, they’ll get crawled, etc. All you’re doing if you’re using nofollow is pushing the juice to the most important pages. People have been doing that from the beginning of time. It’s an advanced technique. Pay more attention to the basics before you start worrying about that.

Rae: You’re not against sculpting, but technically it is manipulating things, right?

Matt: Well sure it is. Any time you put a link on a page, it’s manipulative. Google is only against evil manipulation. Deciding how you link around on your site, sure it manipulates, but it’s not a bad thing.

Rae: Do you think it could be abused and then we’ll have to change it?

Matt: People always do dumb things on their Web sites. The search engines don’t need to crawl your Contact Us page. In any normal usage, you’re not going to have to worry about it.

Nathan: Microsoft agrees with that statement.

I’ve got a Web site, then some company buys it and the domain name registry changes, will you still pass the credit or are we starting at stage one?

Nathan: No.

Rae: We did that recently when we had to move 20 sites from one company to another company and we didn’t lose rankings.

Matt: In the general case, no one needs to worry. It’s completely normal. However, as with anything on the spectrum, you can go all the way to the edge. Suppose you’re buying thousands of expired domains and you want to link them around. You wouldn’t want that to count. That’s the case where it’s not okay.

Rae: If you buy 15 smaller niche sites and redirect them to your site, is that a problem?

Matt: If it’s 3 or 4, it wouldn’t a problem. At 15, that’s a bit high. It’s a spectrum.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 02/28/08 at 4:04 PM | Comments (3)

SEO & Usability: They Can (And Should) Coexist

I'm running so late. Okay, here's the next panel: Moderator Gord Hotchkiss (Enquiro) who I have seen so many times this week. Speakers are Shari Thurow (Omni Marketing) and Lance Loveday (Closed Loop Marketing). This is presentation only because the site clinic is next session.

Shari Thurow is up first and my fingers start hurting preemptively.

She's going to be establishing a common vocabulary for us all and some key concepts of search usability.

What is usability? She provides Jakob Neilsen's.

People should be able to get the scent of information before they get to the actual web page. Usage-centered design is a focus on the use of the product, what you're doing, trying to accomplish. Search usability is usage-centered, not user centered.

Search does not mean query. It also addresses refining, expanding, foraging, pogosticking, browsing/surfing, negative search behavior, etc.

There are at least three types of query behaviors but the majors are navigational, informational and transactional. Your Web pages need to accommodate all of these types.

Usability affects search engine visibility.

Key Concepts:

• Using and validating the user's language - search engines do this by highlighting the words used in the query.
• Sense of place
• Scent of information
• Information architecture
• Interface
• User confidence

There's a lot of swearing that goes on in usability testing. Ahem.

Headings are important not just for ranking but also for user confidence. It validates their search.

Sense of place answers the questions: where are you, what page are you viewing whose site are you visitin