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November 7, 2008

SMX East 2008 Give It Up: White Hat Edition

One month ago, SMX East held it's Give It Up session -- this time with a new twist. All the secrets revealed by the panelists were tips considered to fall into the white hat category of search engine-accepted search engine optimization techniques. As with all Give It Up sessions, the tips and tricks revealed were under a blogging embargo for the following month. Today we finally get to share with our readers. Enjoy!

Moderator Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land, introduces our speakers: Michael Gray, President, Atlas Web Service; Kimberly Krause Berg, Usability Consultant/Owner, UsabilityEffect.com; Kate Morris, Search Engine Marketing Manager, RateGenius; Tyler Shears, Online Marketing Manager, Databanq Media; Stephan Spencer, President, Netconcepts; Rob Kerry, Head of Search, Ayima Search Marketing; and Shari Thurow, Founder and SEO Director, Omni Marketing Interactive.

Shari Thurow's tip is something she does herself. She's going to compare the searcher's intent to the engine's intent. Remember that you're designing for people who use search engines, so understand how and why someone is searching, why they're using those keywords and why they're in that order. You should also understand the same concepts as they apply to search engines.

The Search Engine's Goal

The first thing she does is search. She gets keywords from keyword research tools, user interviews and tests (you need direct contact with actual users). She considers her keyword research findings with Web analytics data to predict how the engines will rank her optimized content. The tabs at the top of search (news, video, blogs and books) are the different places for which you might want to optimize. If a Wikipedia result shows up for the keyword, that tells her that the search is an informational type search.

When people use the commercial search engines, they usually have the following intentions:

  • Go to a specific site
  • Want info about a topic (60-80 percent of searches)
  • Want to do something

A plural is an indicator to the search engine that the searcher is looking for information. Look to the search results for the type of information the user is looking for. Remember this about search listings:

  • The Title tag is first, the Meta tag is second and the URL is next. For informational searches the snippet is very important.
  • Another type of search is a navigational search. People are searching to get somewhere specific. People with navigational intent rarely look past the number 1 and 2 positions.
  • The point is to have realistic expectations about search engine positioning.
    • The right pages
    • The right keywords
    • The right place in search results

She's looking in the search results to get her information.

Michael Gray is going to talk about how to drive traffic with your Flickr photo stream.

Take pictures that people want to see:

  • Good subject, good quality: This is the kind of image that people want to make their wallpaper.
  • Dull subject, good quality: An example is a picture of daisies that's taken from an interesting angle.
  • Good subject, bad quality: No matter how blurry your picture of big foot is people will want to see it.
  • Dull subject, bad quality: Don't take these pictures.

Use keyword-rich, unique titles:

  • Instead of "DSFC001234.JPG", name the image with keywords. Try adding the month or the year to make the picture unique from all the others.
  • Consider the amount of pictures that are coming up for that title and narrow it down by adding more descriptive keywords to avoid duplication.

Increase internal links with groups:

  • Titles of pictures will be your internal linking text.
  • Find relevant groups to submit to.
  • Submit to multiple groups.
  • If there isn't already a group for a certain subject, start one!

Increase Flickr views with ratings and comments:

  • Ratings and comments help your internal ranking.
    • There's a group called Score Me! That you enter a photo for review and you score five in return. There's also a Score You! group where you add comments. Follow the rules of the group.
    • Submit only your best photos.
    • Have a thick skin -- some of the criticism can be harsh.

Use tags:

  • Use relevant tags.
  • Include the name, state, city or location in the tag.
  • Use multiple words - there is no right way. Michael likes to make two-word phrases, like "Las Vegas", one tag because "Las" doesn't mean anything by itself. Other people do them individually.

Consider creative commons:

  • Creative commons lets others re-use your pictures, as long as they link to your picture and give you credit.
  • Consider commercial re-use.
  • Take pictures bloggers want to use.

Bringing it all together:

  • Try to submit pictures that are high quality or that people want to see.
  • Don't add links to every picture.
  • Only add links to pictures that have traffic, ratings or comments.
  • Add links to deep pages that enhance and add value.
  • Eventually you will drive traffic from multiple sources, like other sites, image search and even Wikipedia.

Tools to help with Flickr:

  • Picasa: import, crop, edit pictures
  • Flickr bulk uploader: uploads, renames, tags, put photos into sets and groups
  • Picnik: online photo editor
  • WordPress

Kate Morris is going to talk about developing links from the inside out.

Tip 1: Hire a student

What level?

  • Undergraduate
    • Cheaper
    • Willing to do anything
    • Moldable
  • Graduates

.Edu links are the golden egg of this technique. Links from student home pages and links from organizations can be gained from the student (ask nice!). You can ask them to post about what they are working on. Because it is a student account, it's not as "juicy" as other .edu links, but it's still a .edu.

Students are also good for:

  • Research projects
  • Content development
    • White papers are like school papers!
    • They're young and creative.
  • Pay your interns! She says they'll work better for you.

Tip 2: Participate on Yahoo! Answers

  • Niche market community building
  • Links
  • Tips and tricks

Tips to using Yahoo! Answers:

  • Don't automate the answers. That doesn't actually answer the question. You'll be chosen as best answer more often if you actually answer the question.
  • Talk to their specific situation with details.
  • Add the whole URL to your site. These links are not followed but they show up in Webmaster Tools and are indexed.
  • Be transparent. If you're representing your company, say that you work for that company and that they can help. She's built more business through this than any other link building she's done.>/li>
  • Clean up the spam. There are tons of phishing opportunities, so the more often you report them, the more trusted you are.
  • Vote and check daily. The more "best answers" you get the more points you get and the higher your level and trust will be. You can vote for yourself, too.

Other answer services include Live Search QnA and WikiAnswers.

Tip 3: Utilize your partners and affiliates for links

Got affiliates?

  • Trackable URLs
  • SEO URLs
  • Blog posts
  • When you have affiliates, build it into your contract

Got partners?

  • Partner link pages
  • Just ask
  • Work out blog deal (swap favors!)

Up next, Tyler Shears will discuss white hat link building.

Your Web site is a business:

  • Your Web site is a business and links should b e part of your business model.
  • The model has various levels of link development needs.

No Links? WordPress!

  • Start a WordPress blog on your domain.
  • You can write more and with personality.
  • A college intern is a good candidate to write your blog.

Content, Content, Content!

What is excellent content?

  • Find out what the industry standards are for your niche.
  • Use keyword research to target your terms that will generate the most exposure.
  • Look at what people are writing about in your niche, what's working and what's not.

Badger Badger Badger... Mushroom!

  • Create a directory.
  • Create a listing for the top 100 businesses and email them with their listing info.
  • Require the business to place a badge on your site.
  • Use relevant anchor text.

What about the juicy links? There are some links that have more value, and there are many tools available to help you determine what a juicy link is.

Give free SEO advice!

  • Point out some easy things.
  • The benefit is that you can build a business relationship (affiliate, email marketing list, content partnership).
  • If the relationship develops into something further and they choose to link back to you, the chances are the link is a lot more valuable after your SEO advice has improved their problem areas.

Kimberly Krause Berg is going to share her experience of reputation management with organic SEO through a case study.

There was an artist named Nathan DiStefano from Doylestown, PA. There is another Nathan DiStefano, also in PA, who wrote a vibrator review in Amazon. For the purpose of this story, I'm going to refer to the artist as ND1 and the Amazon reviewer as ND2. ND2 was getting the top spot in the rankings for a search of "Nathan DiStefano".

A colleague of ND1 got Nathan a Web site, but it was ranking below the reviewer. This Web site had:

  • Text in images
  • A boring Title tag: "Nathan DiStefano"
  • Google was forced to pull the SERP description from the Meta Description tag: "Official web-site of Bucks County, Pennyslvania Artist Nathan DiStefano"
  • An old domain. Kim would need to beat the aged domain
  • No inbound links

Unfortunately for Kim and ND1, the colleague that had created the site wouldn't give them control of the site. Kim would have to create an entirely new site.

On the new site, Kim focused on organic SEO only:

  • Added content to the new site, www.nathandistefanoart.com
  • SEOed pages with Title tags, unique on-topic content, content before images and text links
  • Wrote a testimonial which ranked in the number 2 spot for about two months because she promoted that page
  • Expanded the bio page
  • Connected with art galleries that show his art on their site
  • Promoted the new URL in new business cards and brochures and all press including Philadelphia Inquirer
  • Fiddled with the Title tag; put his name first; moved "original" around; added local information
  • Added local information to Meta Description
  • Added locality in text on home page and inside pages; local search
  • Design new Web site

For months, the old domain was in the top three spots, followed by ND1's MySpace page, and then ND2. To combat ND2, Kim decided to make an Amazon account and new profile for the artist. She included reviews on art, music and local books.

In three months time, ND1's new site was in the number one and two spots in Google and the SERP description accurately portrays him as an artist. Now it shows what he actually does.

The more they focused on a clean and usable Web site, they more links they got. The number three ranking page for his name is a chamber of commerce link to his site. MySpace is now number four. Number five is Facebook, which she asked him to create as his professional networking page. The old ND1 site has moved to number 16.

In Yahoo, the results were even better. Print promo, interviews and videos were coming up in the SERPs. Yahoo SERPs show more results from related sites and the old site is no where to be seen.

Stephan Spencer is up next to present on Google power user tips.

Keyword competitiveness

  • The intitle: operator shows pages that are more focused on your search term than the pages returned without that operator.
  • Use the ratios to give you a sense of how competitive a keyword market is. This is an alternative to KEI. A high ratio is a good sign that not a lot of people are optimizing for the phrase.

Anchor text

  • Anchor text remains a very important signal for Google and the other engines.
  • Your allinanchor: ranking is an indicator of the strength of your anchor text. A low ranking indicates that you've got some work to do on improving anchor text.

Indexation

  • Q more accurate number of pages on your site that are in Google's index can be obtained by appending &start=990&filter=0 to the URL of a Google result set.
  • Want to see past the first 1000 results? Refine your query by extending site: into a subdirectory or by adding inrul: and a directory or file name.

Number range

  • The Numrange operator can help restrict results set to a set of model numbers, product numbers, etc.
  • The Numrange operator is also great for copyright year searches (for example, to find abandoned sites to acquire). Combine with intext: operator to improve signal-to-noise ratio.

Supplemental index

Filetype refinement

  • The filetype: operator is great for looking for needles in haystacks.
  • This operator actually matches based on the file extension in the URL.

Cache

  • Cache is great for getting to subscriber-only or deleted content.
  • You can get to it from the "cached" link in the listing or by using the cache: operator.
  • Don't want to leave a footprint? Add &strip=1 to the end of the Google cached URL. Images won't load.
  • No cached link? Use Google Translate and translate it from English to English.

Similar pages

  • The related: operator will show who else folks link to in addition to the URL you specified.
  • The results for this search operator are limited to a result set of 26 to 31.
  • It is useful in identifying neighborhoods.

OR Operator

  • Words in a search query are ANDed by default.
  • Perform an OR search by including "OR" in the search term or with the vertical bar |.

Rob Kerry is going to talk about getting link love.

Buying links is frowned upon by Google. Link exchanges have little value and are time consuming. Web sites love free content almost as much as free money. Supplying data/content makes your site and authority and strengthens the brand. Providing content (that includes a link!) is a cheap alternative to buying links or paying social media gurus.

Case Study: Finance Client

  • Offers free financial news stories and comparison tables to major publishers.
  • Re-writes stories to avoid duplicate content issues.
  • Integrates a copyright link on every story.
  • XML feeds ensure that content is loaded on publishers domain, resulting in link juice.

Benefits:

  • "Powered By" logos can strengthen brand and copyright links and significantly benefit SEO.
  • The content publishers are choosing to link to you, so it keeps Google happy.
  • You can gain links from super hubs that never sell links or exchange them.
  • This technique can work in any industry.

Examples:

  • Car insurance site: Offer gas price comparisons or new car news.
  • Poker: Provide a feed of player stats or tournament news.
  • Kitchen appliances: Offer recipes that can make use of any appliance.

Q&A

What kind of traffic can we get from Flickr?

Michael says that it depends on the industry, like travel, and that getting into groups helps.

Kim, if you've got small business, what does it take to do a project like your artist's?

She bartered her services for a piece of art!

How do we combat our own affiliates that use black hat methods?

Rob made the affiliate URLs link to another site which filters to his site. Stephan says to include a restriction on black hat methods in the terms of the agreement.

Stephan, where can we find the search parameters you shared in your presentation?

Search parameters like those in Stephan's presentation are in his ebook, which he's working on updating now. Shari says that Google Power by Chris Sherman also has great stuff. Joost De Valk has a cheat sheet you can search for by plugging in some of the parameters into the search box.

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 11/ 7/08 at 1:48 PM | Comments (4)
See more entries in Liveblog, SEO Tips & Tricks, smxeast2008

October 10, 2008

Ask the Search Engines

The last day of SMX East was hectic as I tried to touch base with new friends and contacts, attend all the sessions and make it to my flight in time. I managed to pull off most of those objectives, with the exception of posting a couple of live-coverage entries to the blog. So without further ado, here's what happened at the last session I attended. As my momma always says, "Better late than never!"

Moderator Danny Sullivan has got to feel good right now. Another awesome conference nearly complete! For the final leg of the marathon, let's go straight to the source and talk to the search engine representatives about all the things on our minds.

Danny says that he used to do a session called "I'm So Confused" because of all the conflicting information that is shared at conferences. But this panel will give us the official take from the search engines.

The reps are Nathan Buggia, Live Search Webmaster Central, Lead Program Manager, Microsoft; Aaron D'Souza, Software Engineer, Search Quality, Google Inc.; and Sean Suchter, VP of Engineering, Yahoo.

Sean says that sites should submit sitemaps, either .txt or .xml, and overall it helps with inclusion. He also heard a question about keyword order in Titles. He says that it is important to get right, not because of ranking but for the effect of the presentation in the SERP. Users will react well to seeing the keywords they are searching for in the Title so they should be further toward the beginning.

Aaron says that he's involved in trying to get rid of spam. He hears a lot about companies wanting to put up different versions of content for different countries. They wonder if it's going to be a duplicate content issue. He says that if the URL and the path to the content is reported to Google as specific for a certain location, Google won't see it as duplicate content.

Nathan says that he hears a lot about URLs. He says that session tracking parameters for a page will result in multiple versions of the same page in the index. Competing against own pages for space in the index can be harmful. He recommends submitting a sitemap with one URL for each page, and it should be the shortest form in the canonical version consistently. He also hears a lot about metrics and thinks that people are worrying about metrics that aren't the most important. He thinks it's all about conversions and trying to find the most valuable action. Finally, he doesn't believe that enough people are using the search engine provided tools available.

Now comes the Q&A part that you've all been waiting for. Be kind; Q&A can be hard to blog.

Are there best practice for running A/B tests so search engines don't think you're trying to cloak?

Aaron says that the way they look at it is that cloaking is only a problem if the intent is malicious. So for A/B testing, it is fine because the same type of content will be served. While they don't encourage cloaking, penalties only happen after a human review, so no penalty will be served if it's clearly just testing and not malicious.

Nathan says that A/B generally looks different than cloaking, and while they don't recommend cloaking, it really isn't a problem.

Sean says that the bad situation happens when there are large diversions, not the little ones that are common of testing.

Do you count affiliate links?

Sean says it depends where and in what context the links are coming up. If they are coming up in random, irrelevant places, that's not good. But if affiliates are making them of value to users, it's probably going to be a fine signal.

Nathan says that each link is evaluated independently and it's not necessarily considered if it's an affiliate or not.

We're currently redesigning our site and the only thing staying the same is the domain. The old site had ten pages and the new one will have 100,000. Are we going to have a problem?

Nathan says that the search engine always tries to find the most relevant page for a query, so if there's a page with similar content about a product as the manufacturer's page about the product which has been around longer, your site's page may not show up as it's considered a duplicate. One way to work around this is if you can add something beyond what's already out there, like pictures or reviews. As the question came from someone who has a weapons site, he suggests that she could maybe do videos of tazing pets... The whole audience laughs and groans and I'm pretty sure Nathan is turning pink. Maybe not the best example!

Aaron says that when you have a unique offering in a market, you will stand out by doing something different. He doesn't think that the reputation credited to the old site will be devalued on the new site, but he does warn to be aware of duplicate content from the old site.

When will Yahoo and Microsoft get country-specific targeting? And what's your advice if you want your site seen in another country?

Sean says that you should use a ccTLD because it's a huge signal. The other big signal is where the users and links are coming from.

Nathan says that you should make sure the international site is all located in the same sub-group or sub-directory because it's easier to identify. If a whole sub-directory looks like it's in German, it's a signal that it is targeted for Germany.

What percentage of false positives do you have in spam protection?

Aaron says that it's low but that it's an algorithm so there are sometimes mistakes. Spam algorithm changes are treated the same way as any other algorithm change. They test changes in a large sample and if they see a generally overwhelmingly positive result, they roll it out.

Sean sways that it's low, but if you think your site is treated incorrectly or if it has been cleaned up, submit a webmaster support form for consideration by the right people.

Danny says that Microsoft and Google will report to you if they think you're spam, except for cases that Google feels are so obvious the site is spammy that you should know it already. Yahoo is working on it.

Should people be bothering with nofollow or not to try to flow their PageRank around?

Sean says that in terms of designing for users, it's not helpful at all, so in the long term your energy could probably be better put into other areas. Aaron says that for the most part the issue comes up when there are way more links on a page than are useful to a user. In that case you have to think if the page itself is good for the user. He doesn't think it's going to cause an issue one way or another. Nathan asks who in the audience is doing sculpting (maybe five) and then he asks who has measured a positive change (maybe two). He says it was higher than he thought, but he still doubts the long term value.

Aaron says that sculpting seems like a lot of effort to put into the one signal of the link equity algorithm. He says he thinks it can be done if there's nothing left to do. Danny recommends testing it yourself to see if you see a difference.

It was suggested in a link building session that you could make donations to charities to get a link on their .org site.

Danny says that, to make it more uncomfortable, Matt Cutts has said that's fine. Sean says that if a charity is offering links for sale, he would think that they'd be getting links from bad guys as well as good guys, which will quickly get them flagged. Then the site will be in the universe of people who are bad and that link will be worthless.

Aaron says that if they were to see that 60 percent of the spam comes from charities, then they'll go after it. If it's rampant and makes up a large portion of spam then they'll see it as low-hanging fruit. Nathan says that if you're giving it to charity, then it's good anyway. But really, a charity that is aggressively selling links is probably going to see other attention as a result of their marketing techniques and see an increase in traffic.

Do you ever do direct intervention to penalize spam, as opposed to changes to the algorithm?

Aaron says absolutely. If it's hurting the results right now then they're going to do something manually. But they want to make the algorithm better, too, which they do by learning about the ways people are spamming.

Do reports that come in from a Google account have more weight?

He says that reports that come in from Webmaster Central are considered first over the external submissions because it's a cleaner data set.

Does the Yahoo algorithm in Japan work in a significantly different way than in the U.S.?

Sean says that there are slightly different signals but that it is the same back-end search engine and system, just tweaked for the market.

In natural search, do you offer some sort of endorsement or certification for SEOs?

Nathan says no. He says that he wouldn't want to endorse vendors because there's so much behind it. Sean says that it's the second time he's heard the question and says it's an interesting suggestion.

Is there a conflict behind your content networks showing up in your search engines?

Sean says that the reason Yahoo has SEOs is because they're trying to avoid a conflict of interest. There's search and there's content and it's not the same thing. So, for the content they have to compete for their user base and thus they need SEO. Aaron says that there's no Google policy to boost Google properties, but for certain properties like YouTube they have more information on them than they have on other sites, so they may show up more. Nathan says that Microsoft tries to keep a firewall between all of their businesses. Even advertisers that spend tons of money get no preferential treatment. AdCenter and the search engine are separate.

Are links still the primary signal for popularity and importance?

Aaron says inks are a good measure of reputation. Clicks are a noisy signal, and so the absence of a click for a result is thus way more useful because it signals that it's not the most relevant result. Sean isn't sure if links are the most important signal or not, but he will say that it's a larger signal than Title tags, for instance.

What's happening with personalized search?

(Okay, I actually didn't hear the question, but this is the answer.)

Aaron says there's a lot of data they have access to because of the way people use the search engine. But in personalized search, one policy is that whatever is done will be told to the user. The user can go in and control what is being used for personalization. They want to give you the ability to say "I don't want you to use this".

And that's a wrap for SMX East! Thanks to Cindy Krum, Eric Lander and Kate Morris, who took time out of their whirlwind schedules to come on SEM Synergy and, of course, thanks to all the great speakers who didn't hold anything back when it came to sharing with hungry audiences. All that's left to post from the conference is the highly-attended Give It Up: White Hat Edition panel, which will be hitting the blog November 7.

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 10/10/08 at 1:17 PM | Comments (4)
See more entries in Google, Live Search, Liveblog, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engines, Yahoo, smxeast2008

October 9, 2008

Get SEO Into All the Right Places of the Development Life Cycle

People are beginning to trickle out as we're reaching the end of the sessions. Their brains are probably stuffed to the brim. What a marathon it's been! Let's get our sprint on for this penultimate leg.

Jessica Bowman, Founder, SEOinhouse.com, is both moderator and a speaker for this one.

What people think SEO is:

  • Little tips that need to be incorporated into the project
  • Code tweaks
  • Something that only programmers need to worry about

These are the reasons SEOs aren't usually brought in early enough in the life of a project. The biggest misconception is that IT thinks that one conversation with SEO means your project is search engine friendly.

Great SEO programs are integrated, much like usability, findability and design efforts. SEO becomes part of the corporate DNA that causes you to build a great product. It's well integrated with IT:

  • Prioritization discussions
  • Release planning
  • Existing workflows
  • Change management systems
  • Highly involved in project documentation

Typical Development Life Cycle with SEO

Project inception > requirement gathering > designing > front end development > back end development > QA testing > live on site

SEO is usually brought in during the end front-end development when it really should be involved since project inception. It needs to be considered at the beginning and end of project inception: at the beginning and end of requirement gathering, at the beginning and end of designing, at the end of front-end development, at the beginning of testing and at the beginning of the live on site stage.

It may seem like it would be more expensive to do it this way, but it's actually more expensive not to bring SEO in from the beginning because otherwise it requires more work to get up to speed and change things that have already been done in a search engine unfriendly way.

What It's Like with Full SEO Integration

Project inception:

  • The business sponsors talk about the idea.
  • The business sponsors reach out to SEO to get their take on SEO opportunities.
  • The SEO team does research for SEO requirements. They brainstorm for potential opportunities. They look at competitor sites for their SEO strategies. They identify what people are typing into search engines related to this subject area and they identify requirements to make the new section maximize opportunities.

Scope document:

  • SEO contributes to the scope document.
  • Include SEO success factors in the document.
  • Report the potential SEO traffic lift and the potential SEO revenue gain.

Once the project is approved and scheduled, requirements gathering starts.

Requirement gathering - meetings:

  • Everyone gives their requirements.
  • SEO sits as a key stakeholder in all sessions.
  • SEO listens for content areas that can be leveraged for SEO and functionality being requested that may not be search engine friendly.
  • SEO contributes by explaining requirements for search engine friendliness, how to take ideas further with SEO and any potential functionality being requested that may not be search friendly, how to make it search friendly and what to review in more detail during analysis.

This is where most SEO programs go wrong. Most SEOs only worry about SEO requirements, but the real money is bringing the ideas further and examining extra functionality.

Analysis and design - wireframes and design comps:

User experience and SEO meet on wireframes before they are presented to the project team.
Have a discussion when the project is about 80 percent complete.

Front-end development:

  • SEO QAs HTML code for search friendliness. It's quick, easy and cheap to make search friendly HTML code tweaks here.

Back-end development:

  • SEO is involved as needed.
  • At this point it becomes very expensive to make changes.
  • Development pro-actively reaches out to SEO for input and clarification.

Quality assurance testing:

  • SEO QAs for SEO requirements and search engine friendliness.
  • SEO enters bugs into the same system as IT.
  • Some bugs need to be fixed pre-release and it can take months to a year to clean up a mess in the SERPs.

Project deliverables that need SEO input:

  1. Scope document, project charter document
  2. Product release document
  3. Project plan
  4. Wireframes and notations
  5. Visual design mockups
  6. Page specifications
  7. Use cases, user stories
  8. Technical specifications that are not all related functionality

Let's Get Realistic

Most SEO teams don't have this kind of time. They are leveraging other people to pull it off.

Create a champion for each team in the development life cycle:

  • User experience design
  • Visual designers
  • Copywriters/editors
  • Programmers (front-end and back-end)
  • QA testers

Train the team on SEO:

  • SEO won't be in every meeting or conversation.
  • Engineers view SEO requirements as bells and whistles until they have the knowledge.
  • When trained, development can help you execute SEO in every project.

Tips for training:

  • Continuing education
  • Train on the aspects of SEO each role needs to know
  • Don't just list the SEO requirements - show examples
  • Be cautious about using your own site as an example
  • Reinforce the top three things you need to be changed

Get SEO into the project plan template:

  • Basic SEO tasks are consistent with each project
  • SEO reviews for additional tasks needed project by project

Incorporate SEO into existing guidelines and standards:

  • All development projects abide by company standards and guidelines
  • Get SEO best practices and standards into existing documentation (UED guidelines, visual design style guides, programming standards)

Create SEO knowledge centers:

  • SEO portal gets answers at your finger tips , online
  • Open office hours - the same time each week when team members can get answers
  • Continuing SEO training to keep SEO requirements at the top of mind

This isn't happening everywhere. Bringing these things to your company will put you ahead of the competition.

Matthew Brown, Director of Search Strategy, New York Times Co., is up next.

What you're expected to bring to the table:

  • Basic on-page SEO tactics
  • Fundamental keyword marketing strategy

What you should bring to the table - audience development:

  • Near psychic ability to interpret competitive markets or opportunities
  • Good grasp of server side technology and how scripting plays a role
  • Ability to conduct SEO testing on specific tactics or new strategies
  • At least basic knowledge of the domaining world
  • Social media and other flavors of marketing

Can it all be so simple? It needs to be distilled for others to understand.

When SEO is involved:

  • Pure play SEO is a major business driver
  • New site sections
  • SEO traffic predictions are essential
  • Specifications and documentations are typical of re-launches and layout and navigation changes
  • Design and development phase
  • Content creation of any sort

You're probably not going to get a site jump 85 percent growth in search traffic, but if there are basic changes and crawl barriers to eliminate, addressing those should result in double-digit growth.

Bob Tripathi, Search Marketing Strategist, Discover Financial Services, has learned that you should make the project managers the warriors to fight your case by giving them the numbers and getting them in the know. Executive buy-in is also key to getting in at the right level of the development cycle.

Q&A

Who are your best internal advocates and champions?

Bob says it's the project managers or your extended team working for you day in and out. Matthew says that if you're a resource for others, they'll start spreading the word that the SEO team is where to go for help and answers. Jessica says that UEDs are amazing advocates for the user experience but you need to get them to believe that they have two users to design for: humans and search engines. She also thinks the product or project manager is a good representative, as well as the person in charge of documentations.

Are there any tools or programs you use to stay organized throughout the life cycle of a project?

Bob uses Excel and his project management team uses Microsoft Project. Jessica uses a spreadsheet for personal use but when she's at meetings she brings whatever the team uses. Matthew suggests Basecamp because it's easy to share with others on the team.

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 10/ 9/08 at 11:37 AM | Comments (3)
See more entries in Liveblog, SEO Tips & Tricks, Search Engine Optimization, smxeast2008

October 8, 2008

Advanced Keyword Research Tactics

Welcome to the final day of SMX East. These sessions may be last, but they're certainly not least important. I haven't grabbed coffee yet but think this one will rock, so I'll do my best to turn my brain on.

Gordon Hotchkiss, President and CEO, Enquiro, is moderating and says he's glad the audience came this early, early morning after Search Bash. He says that the audience knows the basics of keyword research, but during this session the speakers will let us know the next steps to take.

Christine Churchill, President, KeyRelevance.com, says that keyword research is important because search engines are looking for clues to what Web pages are about. Keyword research is a never ending cycle. There's a graphic with brainstorming and discovery, keyword evaluation and keyword expansion all pointing to each other in a circular way. Making your Web site better will help increase traffic.

Create Keyword List Using Diverse Sources

Keyword lists from within the company:

  • Review company Web site and print collateral
  • Press releases
  • Often too much insider jargon
  • May or may not be customer's lingo

Site search box:

  • Reveals keywords and expressions that visitors are actually using and looking for
  • Gives insight into the number of words searchers are using
  • Can follow visitor's path and see if site converts
  • Useful source for long tail keywords
  • Make sure you collect site search data

Intel from offline conversions:

  • Phone and in-store conversions are an often-overlooked resource.

Use keyword research tools to expand your options and refine your selections. Some tools include:

  • Google Keyword Tool
  • WordTracker
  • Trellian Keyword Discovery
  • Google Insights
  • Google Trends
  • Hitwise
  • GoodKeywords.com
  • adCenter Labs Tools
  • Microsoft adCenter Add In for Excel
  • Nichebot
  • ComScore
  • SpyFu
  • PPCProbe
  • SEOBook Keyword Suggestion Tool

The Long Tail Concept and Finding New Opportunities

Long tail identification techniques:

  • Keyword concatenation
  • Permutations
  • Alternate spellings and common misspellings
  • Brand and model numbers
  • Modifiers (geo terms and adjectives)
  • Regional language
  • Searcher behavior (navigational, informational, transactional)

Sources:

  • Log files
  • Site search
  • Thesaurus
  • Tools

Speaking to Audience Segments

Her technique is to divide and conquer:

  • Different visitors have different goals.
  • Targeting pages to speak to each audience segment will be more persuasive.
  • Identify visitors, segment them and target pages to meet those customers' needs.
  • Ways to segment include by searcher behavior and by the stage in the buying process.

If you match your keywords with your segments, you'll bring your conversions to another level.

Evaluating Keyword Performance

  • Track keyword performance mercilessly.
  • Use PPC as a test bed for conversions.
  • Purge low performers.
  • Play up successes in SEO.
  • Analytics is key to evaluating performance.

Ariel Bardin, Product Management Directory, Google, works on making AdWords a better product. He will be showing us some of the tools available to mine the database of intentions by playing with them on the screen.

The first tool is Google Analytics. He's going to focus on the map overlay, which shows where traffic is coming to the site from, and the content overview section. He's going through the page to see different data that's available. He says that playing with this data will help you make sure you're maximizing your ROI.

With the Google AdWords Keyword Tool, he recommends plugging your URL in for suggested keywords. He also recommends entering text in the text area to help with categorization if it seems inaccurate. He says that they recently started showing the actual numbers for search volume and trends.

Google Insights lets you see the Web search volume for a keyword and how it breaks down among locations. You can see rising searches, including break out searches which have seen a rapid spike. This way you might be able to catch which keywords are on the rise before your competition has.

One new feature lets you look at keywords and placements together. This helps you manage keywords and placements in the same ad group to contextually target the placements you choose. You can choose placements that reach your target audience and also add keywords to contextually target your placements.

Marty Weintraub, President, aimClear, is going to talk about buzz mining and the intersection of keyword research and social media.

Social Keyword Suggestion Methods

Part of the overall marketing mix is social engagement and they try to have search influence that. If you find out what people are talking about in certain channels, then you'll be able to speak to them about what you know they're interested in. Social sites are congregation points for hundreds of millions. Hot topics define each community and influencers moderate social search. You can gain huge insights into your product.

It's about finding authoritative content and scraping it for contextual insight, then extrapolating with lateral stemming. In social communities you can see the tag cloud clearly and find out what people are talking about. You can sometimes even measure individually or on average. Advise keyword research by what people are talking about.

An example to think about as a jumping off point:

  • A large candy and baking supply ecommerce site creating a blog feed.
  • There is power to SEO and recurrent content.
  • The blog will help to truly serve and engage customer base.
  • Hiring writers, installing WordPress, planning promotion and avatars, etc., will be needed.
  • It's a big investment of time and cash so there's insight needed regarding content with viral productivity.

StumbleUpon can give you tremendous insight. To get to the tag cloud, type gibberish in the search box. There's the recently hot and the most popular of all time. You can see that people at SU like chocolate and that there are featured chocolate sites, which is the authority content chosen by SU users. By looking at the sites he found a good one and plugged the URL into the Google Keyword Research tool. Keyword clusters are generated and you can begin constructing the keyword list. Do this over and over again to continue building a list.

Buzz Pocket Mining

  • Socially advised keyword research
  • Great for content ideas, SEO and PPC
  • Yields easy to promote keywords and content
  • Take note of authority users in your travels
  • Create your own pages to scrape from walled gardens to gain insight regarding particular users, groups, etc.
  • Exploit each tool's unique stemming features

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 10/ 8/08 at 9:06 AM | Comments (3)
See more entries in Liveblog, SEM Events, SEO Tips & Tricks, Search Engine Optimization, smxeast2008

October 7, 2008

Legally Speaking: Recent Legal News About Search

Jeffrey K. Rohrs, our moderator, is a "recovering attorney" but he still likes to moderate these types of panels. I agree that legal issues can be very interesting and, of course, important.

Mark Rosenberg, Of Counsel, Sills Cummis & Gross P.C., says that there are a lot of legal issues being addressed at the moment. The press and politicians are starting to care about the legal ramifications of search marketing.

Privacy Concerns in Behavioral Marketing

There's a general squeamishness about private user data being collected and there was a Congress committee hearing recently. We'll probably see a consent or opt-out mechanism coming out of this.

Google and Antitrust Scrutiny

Google has 60 percent of the search market and may have as much as 80 percent of paid search, so they're a large presence. The words antitrust and monopoly are being used by the media in reference to Google. It's only when the market position is abused that antitrust regulations come into play. The current scrutiny will only increase if the Yahoo deal goes through. In anything it does, Google probably realizes that everything they do will be scrutinized.

Trademarks and Search Marketing

There hasn't been an alignment between Internet commerce and brick and mortar commerce. According to a growing number of courts, search marketers can use their competitors' trademarks if certain qualifications are met. Trademark law says that the use of a trademark that will likely cause confusion is prohibited. Usually it's a simple matter of asking yourself why you're using someone else's trademark.

Why and How Am I Using Someone Else's Trademark?

The following are permitted ways to use another's trademark:

  • To identify a product or serviced offered on a site
  • To let users know that a site offering a product or service
  • To make a comparison
  • To let a user know the site selling a generic version

It will likely be okay if there is no other readily identifiable way of identifying the trademarked product or service.

Courts don't care if Internet users cannot see the trademark. Most courts believe that Meta tags are the most important factor in search marketing and so consider use in a Meta tag to be infringement. You may think that a user that ends up clicking on the ad and getting to your landing page will be savvy enough to realize where they are. Initial user confusion, however, is not acceptable. There's an exception in Michigan, but I'm personally not going to worry about that. Sorry Michigan readers!

Improper Trademark Use

These are the ways you can't use another's trademark:

  • Overuse
  • Overly claiming
  • Causing confusion
  • Using the logo
  • Something that suggests affiliation or sponsorship

Fake Articles

He hasn't seen any cases on this issue but his guess is that courts will find such action to be confusion.

Jonathan Hochman, Founder and President, Hochman Consultants, will share with us a cautionary tale. The names have been changed to protect the innocent! So Violet runs a home security business. She installs alarms throughout the U.S. Nemesis is her competition. Benedict is who Violet hires to build her site and manage a PPC campaign. They start small and nobody bothers with a contract.

Then, Benedict realizes that Violet is making lots of money. He starts looking for a better deal. Benedict meets Violet's competitor, Nemesis, and they start to work together. One day Benedict locks Violet out of her AdBlurbs PPC account. Violet goes to Bobble, the search engine, and asks for help. Bobble says, sorry, but we're not here to dictate ownership. Then Benedict clones Violet's AdBlurbs account, providing multiple copies to Nemesis. Violet sues Benedict and Nemesis. Violet got a preliminary injunction granting custody of the AdBlurbs account and removal of the copies. Then, Bobble asks Violet to pay her balance due for AdBlurbs. Violet shrieks that Bobble must pay high damages for denying access to her account.

The judge had never heard of PPC advertising, but she figured it out within ten minutes. Ancient legal concepts like property and agency can be applied to online assets. Common sense prevailed and it's decided that the person who pays the search engine and who pays the manager probably owns the account.

Evidence Cited

As an expert witness for this case, Jonathan cited the following evidence:

  • Domain registration info of landing pages
  • AdBlurbs change history. Transactions are logged and date-time stamped.
  • PPC account peculiarities, such as misspelled keywords and account structure, are like fingerprints.

SEM Assets

PPC accounts are valuable business assets that may include trade secrets:

  • Keyword performance history
  • Ad version test results
  • Quality score

Replacing these assets can be expensive.

Four Important Questions

  1. Do you have a contract with your consultants/clients that specifies who owns what? Is your relationship work for hire?
  2. Have you read the search engines' Terms and Conditions?
  3. Who has access to your SEM accounts? Can you revoke access? Can you get locked out?
  4. If you leave your agency, can you take your accounts with you? Are they portable?

Protect Your Property

  • Google: Create your own account and allow the manager to link via My Client Center.
  • Yahoo: Create an account and add a revocable login in for the manager. Don't use a sub-account.
  • Microsoft: Create own account. Give your login to the manager and hope they are honest. Don't use a sub-account.
  • Ask: Create own account and a login for the manager.

Roy Shkedi, Founder & CEO, AlmondNet, will be giving us an operational perspective of using behavioral targeting and where it fits in the law.

Consumer Behavior

Behavioral targeting is the delivery of ads to a person, wherever they go, based on their observed online behavior. Post-search behaviorally targeted ads are delivered based on purchase-intent data. Use searched trademarks to behaviorally deliver your ad to your prospect on the sites he or she spends 95 percent of their online time on.

BT Legal Challenges

Data ownership:

  • Who should be rewarded for the valuable data?
  • Who owns the data?

Data is owned by whoever the consumer gave the data knowingly and willingly:

  • Visited sites
  • ISPs

Are data owners allowed to share data with others? The sharing of PII (Personal Identifiable Information) requires data owners to task for consumers' permission (opt-in)

Privacy is the biggest challenge faced the behavioral targeting industry. BT requires data scale. An opt-in solution historically does not generate a very large scale. Data scale requires an opt-out solution. What determines when opt-out is enough and when opt-in is required? As a rule of thumb, if you have PII you need to ask for opt-in.

Who monitors the implementation of privacy safeguards? So far, the industry does through the NAI (Network Advertising Initiative). But congress is watching. He believes self regulation of the industry would be better and a behavioral targeting initiative is seeing some adoption.

Deborah Wilcox, Partner, Baker Hostetler, LLP, will be looking at two cases that have caught her eye.

To the Top of Google

Punchclock.com owned a federal trademark registration for "punch clock". It was for time clock and computer payroll software. Punch-clock.com was Canadian but sales were in the U.S. as well. The U.S. company sent a cease and desist in 2001. In 2007, they filed a lawsuit in Florida federal court. The defendant punch-clock.com ranked higher on Google. Alexa traffic rank was much lower for the plaintiff than for punchclock.com.

The Canadian defendant did not defend the litigation and just ignored the lawsuit. The judge found trademark infringement, cybersquatting and unfair competition. The judge transferred punch-clock.com to the plaintiff and awarded $100,000 in cybersquatting statutory damages, plus $30,000 in attorneys' fees and costs.

The judge also awarded over $1 million in corrective advertising damages. They figured that it would take $136 per day to purchase keywords from Google for seven years for the following keywords:

  • Punch clock
  • Punch clock software
  • Punchclock
  • Punch clocks
  • Punch time clock

The $1 million was reached because the judge multiplied the number you get when you multiply $136 per day for seven years by three since it was considered a willful violation. Today a search for any of the terms doesn't show punchclock.com because the company actually isn't bidding on the terms.

Acknowledgement Page

TrafficSchool.com and eDriver were both referring drivers to traffic schools. eDriver was using the domain DMV.org and designed the page to look like an official government page. At the end of the page was a small disclaimer that says it's not owned, operated or affiliated with a government agency.

DMV.org saw 70 to 80 percent of its traffic coming from top search engine placement. The consumer confusion led to the finding of false advertising.

The court found that the plaintiff also had "unclean hands" because it had also registered DMV domains. So, no money damages went to the plaintiff, but the court ordered a mandatory acknowledgement page for the defendant. Now, before anyone can get to the site there's a page that states that the site is a private site not affiliated with a government site. They also had to redesign the site. DMV.org dropped in the Google rankings.

Takeaways

Courts are still grappling with search engine marketing and how to remedy infringement. Businesses need a careful legal review of:

  • Domain names
  • Content
  • Consumer confusion (this is key)
  • International issues

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 10/ 7/08 at 4:43 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Liveblog, Pay Per Click, Search Engine Optimization, smxeast2008

Googleopoly

Finishing out the day on the Issues Track, let's take a look at Googleopoly! Our moderator is Jeffrey K. Rohrs, VP, Marketing, ExactTarget, and he'll be the one asking the questions. Our speakers are: James Grimmelmann, Associate Professor of Law, New York Law School; Shelly Palmer, Managing Director, Advanced Media Ventures Group LLC; Kevin Ryan, CEO and Founder, Motivity Marketing; and Jimmy Wales, Founder, Wikia Search.

What does it take to be considered a legal monopoly?

James says a monopoly is simply when you're the only one selling something. There's nothing illegal about having a monopoly. The thing is, you can't do unfair things to get one and once you have one, it's not legal to exploit it to discourage competition.

Are you hearing concerns from advertisers regarding the Google Yahoo deal?

Of course advertisers are concerned because they assume a partnership between Yahoo and Google is intentionally vague so as not to be understood. The world doesn't know what it doesn't know, and people generally don't know that having one source of information on the Internet is a bad thing.

Does Google's growth in the domestic market concern you?

Chris thinks we're going to see competitive responses. In China, Microsoft revealed a new suite of tools that they're going to have which show quite a bit of transparency. He doesn't think that Google's monopoly is bad, and he sees competition coming about.

Hitwise is reporting that Google has a dominance in the video space, which appears to be propped up by the search space. Is that concerning?

Shelly says there several things to think through. First, Google is an ecosystem and it's not likely to go anywhere. The chart shows that Google, if left unchecked, is pretty much unstoppable. But not only is Google a medium, it's a metric. That's a new place advertisers are finding themselves. Google is the metric of how to do other media that has become ingrained and will be hard to unseat. He's only concerned from the perspective of how advertisers will handle the circumstance after never having seen this kind of shift before.

Now Jeff pulls up the Wikipedia page for "Googleopoly" and it's a sad little page. (Go at it, marketers!)

Share your thoughts on Google growth and how it fits into your view as a competitor.

Jimmy says that search doesn't trend naturally toward monopoly. Like big brand spaces, there are reasons why some are going to be big and others are going to be small. He says if he can launch a search engine he's going to be super thrilled to get even 2 percent of the market. To launch in the advertising space is much harder.

Jeff shows a chart of one company's client's paid search spend for Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Google is up at the 70 to 80 percent line, Yahoo is around 15 to 25 while Microsoft is hovering around 5 percent. So what does this mean for the monopoly issue?

James says that from a market share perspective, Google is crossing the point of being considered a monopoly. At around 75 percent, some could start seeing monopoly, but the real question is if they are doing anything to clobber competition.

Jeff asks the audience who is an advocate for the deal, no one raises their hand. Almost everyone raises their hand when he asks who is a skeptic.

Advocates

  • 11 members of Congress (CA)
  • Ayn Rand Center
  • Google
  • Overstock.com
  • Publicis Group
  • Randall Stross (Author, Planet Google
  • Yahoo

Skeptics

  • American Antitrust Institute
  • ...

Ugh, the slide is gone and I missed the whole skeptics list. You'll have to forgive me. :( I did notice that the list of skeptics was longer than the list of advocates.

Are you a skeptic or an advocate of the deal?

Kevin likes Google's culture and admires how they've added to the working environment. He doesn't see people being thrown under the bus. Part of him says that that's a great thing and maybe life would be better if we could all join collectives. The other part of him sees Android, Chrome, and many more things pointing to one dominant source of information, and he views that as a bad thing.

Shelly says that personally he could care less if the deal goes through or not. But, speaking as a representative of advertisers who need to buy advertising, it's not a good thing because the mash-up will take the advertiser's ability to target the distinct differences of the two audiences. As a buyer and a planner he can't be effective. But Yahoo wouldn't do the deal if they didn't think they need to do the deal. Advertising has always competed to the death, but that's not done in technology because there's no reason to reinvent the wheel.

Jimmy says that Yahoo made a huge mistake by not being bought by Microsoft. It looks like this deal is the alternative to the failed Microsoft deal. To Yahoo this is a like giving up on something that should be a core part of their functionality. But his concerns for monopoly factors are that if you're big enough to be a player you don't want to sign everything off to the biggest guy.

Chris says that the deal has been suspended indefinitely. He also heard news today that Yahoo's and AOL's talks about merging have heated up. He doesn't think the Google Yahoo deal will ever occur.

James says that it makes him sad that some large center of innovation has folded. While Yahoo lost the edge years ago, the recent effect is that someone else out there who was figuring out a good way to build tools for advertisers is now lost.

Shelly says that a combined Yahoo AOL would be a content behemoth, but they still can't translate that value into wealth. To the level that Microsoft could buy that combined entity is funny. He also thinks it's funny that the evil empire talk used to be reserved for Microsoft.

Kevin says that Google built everything organically while Yahoo tried to build through acquisition. He thinks we're comparing apples to Buicks (hah!) because the two follow totally different strategies.

Is Google using their market power in organic search to propel YouTube, Google Maps and its other products in a disproportionate way?

Kevin says that Google's acquisitions came fewer and slower. We're going to see a lot more of search and behavioral targeting coming together because it's a means of collecting all kinds of information.

Shelly says that the practical thing is that some things require a certain scale. When the DOJ decided to break up Microsoft, not a whole lot changed because no one understood what a browser was, what an operating system was, or any of the basic terminology that was needed to talk about Microsoft.

Jimmy says that it only occurs to us to be shocked by the idea of the deal because it doesn't match what we understand about Google. Search is a report on the world, like a form of journalism. If people begin to sense that Google is promoting their properties over others, people would be suspect.

What is Google's responsibility to ensure accuracy?

James says that Google doesn't have any responsibility there. Shelly reiterates, saying that Google is a pipeline. It's like blaming radio waves for what's playing on the radio.

If Google knows everything about us, should we be more concerned about the aggregation of this data because of what the government could do with it?

Shelly says that it comes down to it, the electronic footprint that everyone leaves (completely apart from Google) is huge. Jimmy says that one of the interesting things about this is that if you're someone of intense interest, the government will be able to subpoena all that data, but for most people most of the time, it's not likely.

What does the Android phone do to the conversation of Googleopoly?

James says this is one of the best moves for openness in the telecom technology area. This is a great development in the mobile space because it's holding Apple's feet to the fire. Jimmy agrees and says it's good that there's something that will drive innovation.

Do you think the government is wise to look at Google for antitrust issues, or are there other places that they should be directing their attention that bear a far more negative impact on us as consumers and citizens?

Kevin says that they should look toward Google to figure out how to make money (hah!). James thinks we should worry about the ISPs first.

That was a fascinating conversation and I sometimes found myself entranced listening to the panelists instead of typing. That said, you can always check out alternative coverage. I saw Tamar Weinberg blogging away for Search Engine Roundtable, so if you like what you read so far, check it out!

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 10/ 7/08 at 4:26 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Google, Liveblog, Yahoo, smxeast2008

Personalized and Customized Search

Moderator Danny Sullivan says that it was very hard to get speakers for this topic because many people aren't sure what they're doing yet as far as personalization and customization are concerned. But Bryan Horling, Software Engineer, Personalized Search, Google, is hoping to give an overview of what's going on, what changes to expect and the history behind personalized and customize search.

Here's an example using "dinner" as a query. The top two results are a Wikipedia article and a site with recipes. Basically, the results will help you research what dinner is or find a site that requires additional work. In a personalized version, there's a result for a manicotti recipe and a result for an area restaurant. This shows the difference between what a user might want and what is being provided, and the two are miles apart. If every person was to write out a list of what they'd expect from the query "dinner", everyone's would be different, so it's not a one-size-fits-all approach. [I've heard that about personalization somewhere before... --Susan]

Why personalize? You get the user to the right information as quickly as possible. Many searches are inherently ambiguous, so they can be a challenge to answer correctly for the individual user.

He won't be talking about: search preferences, iGoogle, custom search engine, subscribed links, and Google Desktop, although these things can all affect a user's search experience.

Early personalization history at Google

  • Kaltix acquisition (2003): Three guys from Stanford wrote some cool things about personalizing PageRank.
  • Personalized search on Google Labs (2004): Explicit, specify your interests.
  • Personalized search launched (2005): Implicit, based on your Web history.

Web history records a user's queries and clicks and gets a good idea of what the user is actually interested in. It's better than models where users enter their interests because sometimes people don't answer in the way that best shows their interests.

Principles of Personalization

User privacy is key. Without the trust of users, no one's going to allow their information to be used. This is done through:

  • Transparency: Inform when and what changes are made.
  • Security: Sensitive info, including personalization based on that info is only available when signed in.
  • Control: Users can edit or delete underlying data or turn the service off.

Web History

On the search results page, click on "Web History" for a page that displays Web history. The date and time of all activity is shown, and there's a calendar where heavy search days occurred as well as a place that categories are sorted, from images to news to blogs and videos. This is the transparency arm.

Web history control is letting the user remove or pause Web history. Individual items can be removed from the history. A user can also clear their entire Web history. This has been around for a few years.

More recently, there are customized results for locations. By clicking on the "more details" link, there is info shown for the location and you can compare results if the Web history was not applied.

Ranking Changes

Localization is:

  • Using the searcher's geolocation to affect search.
  • Different levels of granularity.
  • Both explicit and implicit information.

Country level localization will serve results that apply to the country you're in. He uses the query "got talent" as an example, and in the UK the result is Britain's Got Talent while in the U.S. the result is America's Got Talent.

Regional localization is, again, intuitive. When querying "metro" in D.C., you'll get results for public transit, but if you search in San Francisco, you'll get results for the publication.

City localization will show local results, especially for queries with strong local intent, like "pizza". That query will result in local business results for pizza in your town or city.

Personalization

  • Using the searcher's personal context to rank results
  • Recent searches (short term)
  • Web history (long term)

Recent searches - Disambiguation

Searching for "jordans" would probably result in the sneaker, but if their recent queries were about furniture, the results will show Jordans the furniture store. Generally, it results in a re-ranking that still includes shoe results.

Web History - Disambiguation

A search for "galaxy" will mostly show pages about space for non-personalized results. But if the searcher has been looking at soccer sites, the LA Galaxy will show up more proficiently.

Web History - Refinding

A result that is visited previously will show that it has been visited and that site's listing may possibly rise in the position it shows up for.

What does this mean for SEM?

Half empty:

  • Collecting metrics
  • Seeing how your pages rank

Half full:

  • Easier for people looking for your service to find you.
  • Easier to retain customers who prefer your business.

The top position is not winner-take-all. To take advantage of personalized search:

  • Create compelling and interesting content.
  • Appeal to users, not search engines.
  • You can control personalization for your searches. Use search details. Disable it by appending &pws=0 to searches.
  • Sign out.
  • Firefox extension, greasemonkey script.
  • Edit or turn off Web history.

Q&A

If I want to create personalization on my site itself, how can I do it?

A lot of what we try to address with personalized search is ambiguity, but within a particular site, there's probably not the same need.

What's the percentage of people that are actually using this on a regular basis?

All Bryan can say is "a bunch".

How does this all tie into local business accounts?

He doesn't know a lot about local business, but the issue is what if you're looking for a result in an area that you don't live? We probably aren't serving those as well as you might in the short term. But in the long term, Web history would help resolve this as it figures out that you like to visit some place. Of course, if you're looking for something out of town, you'll probably make it a town specific query. There's nothing stopping searchers from refining queries.

Could personalization help a site that seems like another site?

People with similar interests will see similar results.

Do you need to have a Google account to be served personalized search results?

Previous queries and geo-based queries don't require a Google account.

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 10/ 7/08 at 11:50 AM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Google, Liveblog, SEM Events, Search Engine Optimization, smxeast2008

Search & The U.S. Presidential Campaign

So I chose to cover this session out of primarily selfish motives, but I bet there's going to be some broad takeaways that can be applied to company's marketing campaigns. It's a large panel of excellent presenters, so this should be fascinating.

Here's the killer lineup.

Mindy Finn, Partner, former director of e-strategy for Mitt Romney '08, Engage
Eric Frenchman, Chief Internet Strategist, McCain-Palin 2008, Connell Donatelli Inc.
Peter Greenberger, Team Manager, Elections & Issue Advocacy, Google
Justine Lam, Former e-Campaign Director, Ron Paul 2008, Ron Paul for President
Diane Rinaldo, Political Advertising Director, Yahoo
Tracy Russo, Chief Blogger and Deputy Director of Online Communications for the John Edwards for President Campaign, Russo Strategies
Don Steele, Director of Digital & Enterprise Marketing, Comedy Central (and Colbert for President Campaign!)

Moderator Sara Holoubek explains that this panel will cover a timely issue where we're seeing online marketing play a big role. This year seems to be the time that politics "got search." In 2007 it started as politicians started using digital tactics and it's also been seen in the media coverage.

We're at the point where technology and politics are mixing. Which came first?

Peter says politics came first. He'd been working for Democratic campaigns for years, then the opportunity at Google came up it and seemed to be a good way to mix some of his interests.

Diane says politics came first, and she wouldn't recommend getting into it unless you're passionate about it. She was in retail first, but says it's a lot like politics.

Eric was working on the Internet first and fell into his role as a good fit.

Justine says technology came first. This was her first presidential campaign (and maybe her last!).

Mindy says technology and online communications came first.

Tracy says that technology came first, as she started blogging in high school. She eventually got a job in a campaign and it was common sense that technology would make her job easier, while some saw it as strategy.

Don says technology came first and it's a tool used to gain visibility.

What might be different with technology marketing in politics?

Tracy says that politics are four or five years behind corporate America. Political campaigns aren't giving any budget to digital strategy, and when they start trying to adopt it, they're looking for talent in corporate America because political insiders don't usually get it.

You mentioned that there's not a lot of dollars going to digital marketing. Is it changing?

Peter says there's going to be growth and that it's moving in the right direction. He's working hard to convince the decision makers to flow more dollars to the Internet because there's a shift in the audience, who are spending as much time online as watching TV. Diane says that any decision maker wants to know that the advertising is effective. Corporations can decide to put a budget into it and research the ad effectiveness, but in politics, every dollar counts. Tracy says that outside of top-tier campaigns, there's no one to staff those races that know how to do that.

Who's the ultimate check signer?

Eric says it's the campaign manager. They stay very in tune with what's happening on the Internet. He says that they understand it more than the general public gives them credit for. Mindy says that there is education going on to educate the political sphere, but more is needed. Until they understand it they'll turn to what they know. Justine says that she suggested SEM to her campaign manager and he didn't understand it and wasn't willing to try, preferring to stick with traditional tactics.

What about the ability to target locations and demographics, or microtargeting?

Tracy says that being able to explain to decision makers that micro-targets can be reached is the key. People get more comfortable when it can be explained. Peter says that no matter how many times he pitches to political people, the ability to geotarget amazes the crowd. It amazes people that targeting can be done by state, region and direct ads. The challenge is to speak to them in micro-targeting terms that they understand. If we do a good job explaining that they realize there is no more effective or efficient way to target people they'll adopt the strategy. Mindy says that those that are "married to TV" see that people can target a specific audience and that's the selling point. Eric says that during the primary season he made a lot of use of geotargeting and micro-targeting.

To what extent are you tailoring ads or do you have the time?

Eric says that it's very tailored. If you search for McCain in Jersey, you'll see an ad about protecting the shore. If you see a generic campaign ad, it's on purpose. Mindy says that a lot of people that are just trying it aren't going to dedicate a lot of time to it, and they might be afraid to tweak it too much. This is where the education plays out. Peter says that it's similar to corporate markets. There are still instances where corporations are missing out on online opportunities. Presidential campaigns also don't always have the resources to dedicate.

Have you tied together the television and other media with search?

Eric says that the creative and the tactics are integrated. The messaging and the landing pages and video ads are integrated, and on the back end they are measuring to see how people are getting to the site. They know what keywords are driving what traffic and use the information. The test is seeing if it ends up in an election. Mindy says it'll be helpful to get to the point where the TV people do their comparative testing online.

In regards to BT, did any of your campaigns explore that?

Eric says that all candidates are interested in behavioral targeting. Each targeted group has a different strategy and is targeted specifically. Diane says that the most-seen targeting is geotargeting, but there's also other user targeting going on.

How does search tie into email marketing because there's a lot of email marketing going on?

Tracy says that all the pieces have to be integrated and search has to touch all the areas. As the cycle evolves, you'll see a lot more and there's some creative stuff going on in senate races where people have more freedom to try different things. Mindy says that campaigns often know how many emails they want to send, but the subject is often decided as issues come up, so it's not decided beforehand and tied together. Peter says that campaigns are also using search to "correct the record" or do rep management.

Is there going to be RSS integration on the district level?

Diane says that as far as going to the district level, when there's enough demand they may consider it. Peter says he gets this question frequently and their general response is asking what's the cost-benefit analysis and the interest, but it's going to get there.

What are your primary conversion goal metrics, besides the typical more information request?

Mindy says that campaigns have different goals. Grassroots campaigns look at interaction with elements on the site, volunteering, and, of course, donating. The goal is driving eyeballs to video landing pages and driving video views. It's purely about awareness. Peter says that in the last few weeks there's been a shift where we're seeing a lot more persuasion search advertising, not only for campaigns but also from issue groups. They're not looking for the traditional dollars but to persuade. Diane says that she's noticed that people are thinking that politicians can raise a lot of money online, but most can't. Approaching search as though it's an ATM is a mistake and she wants to make sure that campaigns are educated and the right expectations are set. There's a lot of opportunity but the immediate online donations is not something that should be their priority in search marketing.

Are there political and philosophical criteria involved in doing the jobs that you on the campaign level can do? Do you need to be a true believer?

Mindy says that the point that you should be passionate about politics is true because it can be intense. Campaigns do want to feel that you're interested in what they're doing and that's something that's hard to fake. Tracy says that as a consultant there's definitely a blue-red divide that dictate where a person will get hired.

Let's talk about SEO and social media. To blog or not to blog (for a candidate)?

Tracy says that it's hard to come up with something that's worth reading. The Obama campaign hired a blogger that put out compelling, engaging story telling. If you can do that, that's good. But if you're just putting out press release and pictures of kissing babies, it's going to get boring. Working with bloggers is important, not necessarily blogging yourself. Mindy says that content is king, so it can be a very powerful connection tool. Justine says that blogs was a great tool for listening and finding out what could be done better in the campaign. Tracy also feels the community that is developed is priceless and can be extended after the campaign.

How effective is microblogging as a tool?

Mindy says that like all tools it's all about mass, but even though Twitter is small, it's a hyper-active community. They're doing everything and those are the highly-influential hyper media users. If there's something you want to filter out to the community, Twitter is a good way to do that.

Have you ever been in a situation where there's a suggested tactic that's a negative tactic, but you thought that it wouldn't work?

Tracy says that saying no is very important. Not all ideas are equal, they should be debated and in a healthy campaign that can be decided. Now digital strategists are taken more seriously and they will be listened to when they say no. Don says that the decision has to be made at the end of the day that, even though Comedy Central is all about humor, there's still a line that they don't want to cross. He represents a brand and wouldn't want to associate the wrong things with it.

How effective is Facebook for campaigns?

Don says that the Colbert for President Facebook group was started by a high schooler, but it took off as a way to reach out. Justine said she didn't think FB was effective in her campaign. The most effective areas were informal forums, where people were coming together to talk about what they're interested in. FB is not as conducive to collaboration and community. As a badge it's great but it didn't get people as activated.

Sum up the Ron Paul money bomb?

Justine says it was a recipe. There was a unique message. YouTube allowed the message to get out and help with brand awareness. Throughout the summer supporters were taking more active role in creating things for the campaign. On forums, people were talking about what people wanted to do for the campaign. They let go of the reins and the supporters were creating ads. Then the campaign decided to go transparent with the campaign, and were talking about who the donors were. People got excited to see their name on the site when they donated. They would post screenshots to the forums and urged people to donate as well. Then the campaign decided to go fully transparent, which was unheard of. They made a goal of $4 million in a month, which resulted in a graphic that was really hard to see individual names in. The campaign was thinking of ways to fix the graphic, but people in the forums figured something out -- they all decided to donate on the same day so that they'd all show up on the graphic. In a single day they got $4.2 million.

What reputation monitoring tools do you use?

Eric says that he personally uses Google Alerts and Google Trends, while the campaign has an entire war room. There are rooms of researchers keeping up on what's being talked about. Tracy says that some of the tools that are being made available aren't producing good interfaces because they don't understanding how campaigns would actually use it. Peter says that related searches are an indicator of what else is being talked about. Diane says Yahoo Buzz is similar and shows the overlap of what terms are being searched and there's a map of what search terms are hot in what areas.

What are you monitoring?

Peter says the data's only as good as the use you put it to. The question is whether it is affecting the offline mentality of the campaign. Too often, campaigns are flying by the seat of their pants. Mindy says that early in the election cycle, rep monitoring was more of a concern, but now there's so much out there, flooding the zone is the best strategy. If you see a trend you can do search campaigns to head it off.

What does the investment in search, video, and social mean for corporate America going forward?

Tracy says campaigns are learning from social media, but Peter points out that Howard Dean may be credited with making the blog mainstream. He's excited by the attention it's getting and hoping it will trickle down to other candidates. More experimentation and different strategies being tested will be good. Diane says that an ad effectiveness study about display or search advertising in campaigns will be a powerful influencer to corporate marketers. Eric says that rapid communication and not being afraid to turn over the brand will be lessons learned. The paid side will learn to be faster and faster. Corporations can learn to do more regional and local advertising. Peter says that as one of the first Internet elections, it's been fascinating to watch in his space. It will end up coming down to who turns out to vote, but there's a good chance that the Internet will have played an important role and that will probably spur corporate adoption.

Which campaign is doing a better job with online marketing? Or is the blue-red divide just too great to answer this question?

Eric says that he's only going to answer one way, while Diane says she just may not answer the question she was asked (hee!). Don says that he's amazed at how little media companies are using political terms. Media companies have a chance to use it more effectively, say more and use online marketing more. Point goes to InDecision 2008!

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 10/ 7/08 at 11:18 AM | Comments (1)
See more entries in Branding, Liveblog, SEM Events, Social Media, smxeast2008

SMXE Keynote -- Tim Armstrong

Welcome back to SMX East. I expect nothing less than awesome after yesterday's great sessions and the rocking IMNY Charity Party. And we're kicking it off strong with Google's Tim Armstrong, President, Advertising and Commerce, North America, & Vice President - Google, Inc.

Danny Sullivan: We're at the point where people are starting to wonder if Google is getting too big. Is Google a monopoly?

TA: Our answer is definitively no. When I started there eight years ago, Google had virtually no market share. But the core thing we focused on over time is getting information to people. Google's also been very innovative in transparency. We're doing anything in their power to make it open. We're an important part of the industry environment, but we're by no means a monopoly.

DS: The review by the DOJ was supposed to be a voluntary thing, but if they say don't do it, will you follow them?

TA: One of the things that some of the larger advertisers haven't like about it is that Google has allowed all sizes of companies to play on an even field. There are a lot of big companies that are used to having pricing power over the smaller competitors. So some people are making arguments in their best interest. In general, we'll see what happens over the next few weeks.

DS: The ANA is opposing the Yahoo ad deal. Is the ANA like 30 big advertisers?

TA: Most of the ANA are customers of ours. There are different levels of understanding about what our advertising is. Overall, the vast majority of them have great relationships with both Yahoo and Google. One of the things we've been offering the ANA is an open town hall. We want to talk about the deal with people in public. In general, they're great customers of ours and we'd like to have them understand the deal better, because I think overall they'll support the deal if they understand it.

DS: There's a concern with advertisers that you're going to dictate the prices. Are you guys going to get together and decide that any ad is going to start at $10 per click?

TA: For us it's really about user quality. From my past experience in media, the whole point is to help customers and sell ads. But the respect around end users is always in the conversation. It's in many cases a way to make sure the highest quality bids show up. But whether it's landing page quality or loading time, it's all about the end user. Google wouldn't set bid pricing because our focus is on user quality.

DS: What else are you doing to aid transparency?

TA: From Google Analytics to Google Trends to setting your own bid price, the planning stage of what you're going to buy from Google through the delivery stage of what you get - it all has transparency. Transparency slices through the auction, and the Google model is probably more transparent than traditional media. As we try to define what quality is for advertising, there's a responsibility on Google's side to make things more transparent. A big help is listening to customers. We don't have a specific plan for transparency, but I think people will see it over time.

DS: What's behind the idea that you're both working with and competing with ad agencies?

TA: I think there's no conflict because we work with them. If you're a big agency and you have a big client and you don't know what you're doing in search marketing, you may want to start to call us names. I think the market has really reset and Google's got a growing number of relationships with agencies. As the search market becomes bigger and more sophisticated and starts to bleed into other areas, search marketers are the only people to be able to connect all the changes together for their clients. The notion that Google is a frenemy or a froe is outdated and I think many of our clients would say that we're a great partner and have helped agencies grow to an extent.

DS: When clients go directly to you and bypass their agency, it has led people to ask "Who owns the client?"

TA: I think the clients own themselves. I don't think that Google owns the clients. I think agencies are the best people to connect clients to Google, eBay, Amazon -- they're the only people that can help companies connect all the dots together. They can figure out how to optimize across the board. When you look at the examples of what people are saying when they make this point, it's usually because the client had a specific question or were trying to solve a specific issue.

DS: What's the relationship between Google and Publicis?

TA: We started talking to them about a year ago. The Publicis clients were looking to Google and together we decided to get closer together. There are a few basic principles behind how we work together. First, people need to understand what the other company is doing, so we've been swapping employees. On the systems front, Publicis has a tremendous amount of information and they want to mix their data with Google's data, so we need to figure out the format to do that. The other question is how does Publicis add the most efficient value to their clients. We're working on all these things and I would expect us to work with more agencies in the future. Email me at tim[at]google.com if you're interested in working together.

DS: Is there anyone left that doesn't get search?

TA: The good news for us is that there are still many people that don't understand search. When we start showing people statistics about how many divisions of a company are taking advantage of search marketing versus how many are signed up for Google Analytics and trying to understand search traffic, it's sometimes a shock to them because there are people in the company hungry to understand how to get more traffic and people to their site.

DS: Are their big areas that are still going to blow up in search? It's been the year for mobile for the last five years.

TA: If you look back five years, there's a lot more available online now. But local is still a big opportunity. Mobile 1) works really well and 2) is sometimes more important than online search. It's going to happen but the question is when. We tested mobile in Japan and it was a big business success. I don't know when the year of mobile is, but it's coming. The other area is video. Search on video has the potential to be like AdWords in its long term value. It's important now, from a traffic perspective.

DS: Sometimes it's hard to keep track of everything Google's doing in video.

TA: Video is a few different markets. There's the traditional model (banners), there's version 2.0 (overlays) and also version 3.0 (promotion for what people are searching for). Engagement level is probably going to be very high considering the opportunities available on YouTube.

DS: Is AdWords for video still running?

TA: Going back to user quality, when an ad comes up in search results we try to deliver the best available ad at the time. We're testing to find out when is the right time to serve videos as ads. We don't have any findings to report, but it's what we're looking at.

DS: There was an honest to goodness banner ad on Google images. What's going on?

TA: We decided to finally test serving banner ads and we figured Google image search was the best place to try that.

DS: You've got Yahoo doing banner ads across the Web that are influenced by search profiles. Then Google is saying "we're not doing that", other than maybe not showing the same ad twice.

TA: We've thought about behavioral targeting for a long time. It's beneficial for both advertisers and end users. But we'd want to watch the area carefully before we do that, if we do that. We're watching BT be successful and it's on our radar, though we don't expect to do anything with that now.

DS: Audience, how many are worried about the Google Yahoo deal?

[Just a few people (I can see about five hands) are and most aren't (more like 50 hands), although many think it will cost more for advertising. Tim's glad to get the feedback.]

Audience member: It looks like you've tried to purge some poorly performing advertisers. Do you think you got everyone off you wanted to and is this a process that needs to be repeated every so often?

TA: We've never targeted specific advertisers and as we've grown, we've had to look at how to scale quality controls. But quality is not something we're ever going to stop addressing. Are we done? Have we reached the pinnacle of quality? No. I think you should expect us to keep ratcheting quality up over time and on a daily basis. You can expect us to continue to do more quality-based changes to the system. There are also times when we've done a bad job of letting more ads into the system, so you've seen us do both, but there's constantly a back and forth.

Audience member: What happens if the DOJ investigation takes a number of months?

TA: We'll patiently wait, I think. We're committed to seeing the right outcome so we're working with them to figure out what they're figuring out. I don't want to comment for the DOJ because they're on their own time table.

Tim wants to know if anyone has anything they'd like to see.

  • Business search options (as opposed to consumer search)
  • Grand Central
  • Purging Maps spam

DS: You've been at Google since 2000. What's the most significant thing you've seen happen to the company?

TA: Some things haven't changed at all, so the biggest surprise is that I'd expect more change in the fundamentals we concentrate on. But one thing that's been surprising is that I thought search quality and ad quality would be something we'd master overtime, but it's actually an ongoing task. Also, it's surprising that the rest of the market hasn't caught onto ad quality. We treat ads like information, and a lot of the markets haven't adopted that, which is really surprising. Targeting criteria and ads targeting hasn't bled into the rest of the market and I think that's a huge advantage for us in general. Those early hard choices we made about letting end users choose the best ads are something we're proud of. The general culture hasn't changed. We've got great people and great projects. It's still exciting to go to work and that hasn't changed.

[ Awww ;) ]

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 10/ 7/08 at 8:54 AM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Google, Liveblog, SEM Events, smxeast2008

October 6, 2008

Keynote - Click: What Search Activity Tells Us About Society

Danny Sullivan introduces the first keynote speaker of the conference, Bill Tancer, General Manager of Global Research at Hitwise, a Time Magazine columnist, and author of Click: What Search Activity Tells Us About Society. He says that we spend a lot of time wondering about who to market to in search. But oddly enough, for these machines, these search engines that have changed so much of our lives, there's relatively little information on how people interact with search. Bill's book tells us the behavior of people and shows us what they do.

Bill Tancer says that at his very first speech (which was for SES) he didn't know yet what he was going to say. It was standing room only and it was a data heavy presentation. He started off by saying that he loves data. In science camp as a kid he recited Pi to 200 digits. That's how much he loves data.

"To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something." --Walker Percy

In Percy's book, he says that the most interesting thing about going into town is not getting there but the search involved in getting there. Bill's found something he likes even more than data, and that's the idea behind the click. Think outside the box. Think of what you can do with the data beyond buying search terms. Start thinking of all that's possible with search term data.

The data he's going to be using is based on the largest worldwide sample of Internet users (25 million). He and his team once did a test. They compared the top fears reported by people who were asked to the fears most searched for.

Reported fears:

  1. Bugs, mice, snakes
  2. Heights
  3. Water
  4. Public transport
  5. Storms
  6. Closed spaces
  7. Tunnels and bridges
  8. Crowds
  9. Speaking in public

Most searched fears:

  1. Flying
  2. Heights
  3. Clowns
  4. Intimacy
  5. Death
  6. Rejection
  7. People
  8. Snakes
  9. Success
  10. Driving

He saw this as a great insight into what people are willing to claim in traditional market research versus how they really feel.

The Economy, Porn and Bigfoot

Search term data provides insight into how we react to the economy. They found that when there was a new high in the gas prices, there was a spike in visits to gas related sites. But the searches would taper off in a week, even if prices continued to rise. But over the last six months the searches have gradually been going up. He thinks this represents a lasting sensitivity to gasoline prices.

He's been quoted a lot about porn. He's found some interesting insights into adult Web sites. Over the last five years, every summer is the low point of visits to adult Web sites. However, there was no dip this summer. Looking at the demographic data for visits to these sites shows that households earning under $60,000 were visiting the most. His theory is that during times of economic downturn, people turn to diversionary sites like adult sites.

Search data can also show some of the popular Halloween costume ideas. Bigfoot is the most searched costume this year, and it could be because of the Bigfoot hoax a few months ago.

Stacy Keibler, Sarah Palin and "Hot Photos"

As he was putting together a presentation, he was watching a news story about Dancing with the Stars. It was the season where Drew Lachey, Jerry Rice and Stacy Keibler were the final contestants. Knowing that viewer votes count for half the score, he decided that the most-searched celebrity would be the winner. Stacy Keibler was getting significantly more searches. He predicted Stacy would win, but was wrong.

Trying to find out what actually happened, they looked at the breakdown of the searches. It turned out that many of the searches were for hot pictures of Stacy Keibler. It's likely that these searchers weren't actually voting. (Surprise!) These findings led to the Stacy Keibler Correction Coefficient. Because of market conditions, people were not searching for the intent the researchers expected.

"Searching for Palin's 'Hot Photos'" was a Time column that Bill recently wrote. The week after Sarah Palin was named to the Republican presidential ticket he started gathering search data. There was a huge spike that week in searches for "Sarah Palin" but the searches were very Stacy Keibler-esque. People were looking for "hot photos" of her.

His research shows that here are three segments that adopt online technology before the mainstream: Young Digerati, Money & Brains and the Bohemian Mix.

Watching Search Trends

Specific trends of the early adopters:

  • Cam-based social nets
  • Personalization
  • Tattoos
  • Deal sites (resurging)

The Google Chrome team asked Bill to do the same analysis on the browser. The findings showed that a group designated Executive Suites was the main group adopting the browser. The theory is that this is because Chrome is only available for Windows, and not Mac OS or Linux, while early adopters likely prefer Mac OS and innovators seem to prefer Linux.

There's a few ways to learn more if you're interested. Visit the Hitwise Intelligence Blog, www.ilovedata.com. Read his column on Time.com: The Science of Search. And read his book, Click: What Search Activity Tells Us About Society.

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 10/ 6/08 at 3:19 PM | Comments (1)
See more entries in Analytics, Liveblog, smxeast2008

Link Building Fundamentals

I knew I would screw up before the day was out. But after setting up in the wrong presentation room, I got myself over to the right place. Time to jump right in. Links building is a critical part of SEO and links have become increasingly important in the Web 2.0 world. It's time to break down link building basics in this boot camp session.

Debra Mastaler, Alliance-Link, starts us off.

Why links are valuable

Links connect the Web and are the way search engines and users find things. Link building isn't rocket science, but there is rocket science behind link building. Back when the U.S. space program was just beginning, the group of scientists came together from across North America and realized that there was no way to share their information. That was what started the development of the Internet. Over time, search engines and directories were started. Some fizzled while those that improved their algorithms survived.

What is link popularity? Link popularity measures the quality and quantity of links pointing to a Web site. All the major engines use it. It's considered an off-page factor. Some of the terms include link juice, link pop and link love.

Quantity, quality, anchor text and relevance are the four factors that play into link popularity

Link quality is determined by the authority of the host sites and the sites linking to them. Quality flows from one site to another. PageRank is the most popular of these factors. PageRank is a link analysis algorithm used by Google to determine the quality and quantity factors a page and its inbound links.

Anchor text is a query ranking indicator and endorsement of what's to come. Anchor text is the clickable part of the link you see. It's also known as link text. Off all of the components behind the concept of link popularity, anchor text is probably the most powerful. We know this because just based on anchor text, rankings can occur (i.e., "miserable failure"). Use keywords in your anchors for maximum ranking effect. It's better to hyperlink your keyword phrases as anchor text.

Relevancy helps establish where you belong. Search engines read the text around links. Linking out and being linked to establishes a connection, helps classify your site and where it belongs. Build links within your neighborhood. Links to and from contextually relevant or thematically-related sites convey more authority.

Authority sites are those that rank well or are well known within your niche or in general. They have strong inbound links and are insulated against algorithm fluctuations. Spend the most time and greatest resources securing authority links. Focus your inlinking efforts on securing as many solid, quality authority links using keyword rich anchors as you possibly can.

Ranking influences

Link factors to avoid:

  • Control your rate of link acquisition. Build slowly, increase content and vary link types.
  • Repetitive anchor text should be avoided. Avoid using same anchors and URLs. Deep link when possible.
  • Don't use the same tactic over and over. Implement a wide array of linking tactics.

If you do these things, these links will be ignored. For optimal linking success:

  • Screen partner sites carefully. Avoid partnering with sites hosting "excessive" reciprocals and site-wides.
  • Place links in content areas. Avoid navigation and sponsored areas. Perception is everything.
  • Understand that all links have value. Even nofollow links are good because the traffic will follow it. Also, when content is scraped, the link's nofollow will not be copied.

For optimal linking success, remember that redirected links or links passing through third-party sites (affiliates) will not pass link popularity. Avoid losing PageRank by being consistent in the way you link (i.e., www and non-www).

Link Building Tools and Learning Resources

Blogs:

Webmaster blogs by search engines: googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/
www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000343.html
blogs.msdn.com/webmaster/
Matt Cutts blog (SEO feed only): www.mattcutts.com/blog/type/googleseo/feed/
SEL Link Week: www.searchengineland.com/lands/link-week.php
Search Engine Roundtable: www.seroundtable.com
Search Engine Guide: www.searchengineguide.com
Search Engine Journal: www.searchenginejournal.com
SEOBook blog: www.seobook.com/blog

Link Building Tools:

Link Harvester pulls back all the information in an Excel spreadsheet. It gives you the number of unique linking domains, the number of unique Class C Block, the number of .edu/.gov/.mil links and how many are linking to the home page versus deep in the site. She recommends using the tool on competitors.

Hub Finder compares the backlinks of two or more sites and points out their co-occurring back links.

The Langreiter Tool compares Yahoo and Google rankings and where they agree or disagree.

Search Status Tool turns all links using nofollow pink. It cuts your time down so you don't have to go to the code source to find out if the page nofollows links.

The Bad Neighborhood Tool will give you an idea of links coming from risky neighborhoods.

Google Alerts is a discovery tool that will let you know anytime one of your articles has been used and you can go there to see if they've linked to your site.

The Utility Linking Tool will pull up directories and forums that you can submit your URL to based on your keyword.

[ED: These are my best guesses at links for the tools referenced. Hopefully Debra will drop by and correct me if I got them wrong. --Susan]

Link building tactics

In the evolving Web, everything still works but link building strategies using content generation are the ones to focus on because they will get you the most value for your effort. This includes link bait, article writing and content targeting.

When looking for authority links you must first identified the key players in your niche. You'll want to mine their back links and take advantage for the sites linking to them. Separate their back links by media contacts and editorial/commercial sources. Media contacts, like publishing press releases, can get expensive. Use the majority of your time on the editorial and commercial type links.

Find top reviewers at large retail/comparison sites like Amazon and Epinion. There's probably someone out there reviewing products like yours.

Directory submission is still a good way to get links. There are directories for everything (general, niche, RSS, article, podcast, blog, wiki, local). Avoid directories hosting excessive search ads because it detracts from your listing. Check pages for nofollow and robots.txt blocking. Niche directories tend to be less scrutinized. The ISEDB is a directory for directories.

Article writing is a traditional source for links. Write a long version for your site and use a shorter version for article directories. Pull topics from customer service questions. Add RSS to your resource center. Include a bio with each article, including those on your site.

Content networks let you publish content on any topic. They distribute content to engaged participants. Blogger outreach also works well in getting your content with your links out there. Offer to write a guest post.

Link bait is content created and submitted to the social news sites. Submit to sites like Digg and Propeller. The power behind the social news site isn't in the individual links you'll get from each profile, but from the community within. Linking is driven by motivating content. Look for niche social media sites.

What you really need to know before link building:

  • Look at partner sites carefully, avoid those with excessive reciprocals and sponsored links.
  • Link slowly and add content at the same time.
  • Use several different linking tactics.
  • Spend resources on obtaining authority links.
  • Focus on traditional content generation tactics.
  • Notify the media when you've added sizable content.
  • Find an alert service you like and use it.
  • Use the social media sites to spread emotional content.
  • Find your niche community and use it.

Eric Ward, EricWard.com, says he's glad to be back on the speaker circuit. He retired for a while but he's excited to be back at the podium. Things have changed quite a bit since he started link building. The Google algorithm changed it all. Links now serve multiple purposes and audiences. You have two audiences. People who click on links and search engines that count, analyze and judge links The best kind of link will help your traffic and your ranking.

The link building and content publicity required for any given site will vary based on each site's focus, content and intended audience. Eric says you should remember these closing thoughts:

  • Since the link building approach required for any given Web site will vary dramatically depending on that site's focus, content and intended audience. Each site deserves it\s own link building and content publicity plan or strategy.
  • Your links tell a story about your site, like a transcript or "rap-sheet". Engines now use that story to decide where you should rank. You're not going to be viewed through a single link. Google will judge you on your overall body of work.
  • The easier a link is to obtain, the less useful that link is likely to be for a person or a search engine.
  • If you aren't sure why you are doing it, don't do it.
  • The future of links and rank can't be guessed, but we can figure that the sites trying to manipulate link popularity will be devalued in the search engines while the trustworthy sites will continue to pass signals.

He's made his presentation available at www.ericward.com/smx.

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 10/ 6/08 at 2:18 PM | Comments (5)
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