A lot has changed since “Search Engine Optimization All-in-One for Dummies” first hit the scene in 2009 … but then, Web marketing is a fast-moving industry. What hasn’t changed, though, are the fundamentals of solid SEO practices. Along with a refresh of the entire book to ensure it’s current to address trends and technology in Web marketing, the second edition of “Search Engine Optimization All-in-One for Dummies” is more than 700 pages of tried-and-true methodologies in SEO. Launched in January, the newest edition is hot off the presses and available for purchase now on Amazon.

We thought we’d give you an all-access glimpse into what the book has been up to since it launched into the search industry a few years back. Now in 2012, the book’s contributions have made a name for itself, and backed by a high-powered brand, the book keeps everyone pretty busy. Let’s take a glimpse into the new life of the “Search Engine Optimization All-in-One for Dummies” book.

You may remember back in 2009 when the book would start out its day making coffee for the office. Welp, not anymore. Mr. SEO All-in-One for Dummies has way too many important things going on for that. Now, the coffee is served to it — at just the right temperature (the book gets a bit cranky if the coffee is too hot).

As an expert in all-things SEO, the book often takes a moment to keep its team on track. Here, we see the book digging into a site’s Google Analytics, explaining the key performance indicators its team should be tracking to reach goals.

As a top contributor in the workplace, the book often presents research it finds throughout the workweek. Here, we see the book explaining in detail the findings of a new study where time spent reading the information the book provides directly correlates to business revenue.

Not everyone on staff can understand the profound and complicated data that’s being presented, so the book tries to “dumb-down” the language.

Mr. SEO All-in-One for Dummies always takes time throughout the day for learning and reflection. Here, we see the book analyzing its former self from 2009, and pondering all the ways it’s grown and changed since it first joined the industry. My, how it’s progressed …

Lunches aren’t just for eating anymore. No, no. The book takes this important time of day for power lunching and even the occasional date (when it can get away).

As a leader in its field, the book is often out teaching its wisdom to groups of professionals at conferences and at Bruce Clay, Inc.’s SEOToolSet® Training. (An insider secret: The book’s favorite part of the SEO training course is the PeanutButterVille.com lab.)

The book’s popularity also often puts it in the media spotlight. Its not uncommon for it to be the subject of interviews and news stories due to its expertise in SEO.

But all work and no play makes for a dull book. That’s why it fills its time with favorite leisure activities at the end of a long week. Always keeping up appearances, the book is sure to never miss its weekly manicure at the local spa. (Trashy magazines help the book relax – constantly teaching is hard work!)

And of course, taking in culture is a must for the book to stay well-rounded.

But, at the end of the day, Mr. SEO All-in-One for Dummies really just loves to curl up next to the fire with itself and a fine glass of brandy. Ahhh, the good life.

Like what you see? Want to spend some time with the book? Pick up your copy today! And if you’re headed to SMX West at the end of February, stop by our booth No. 401 to enter a drawing to win your very own “Search Engine Optimization All-in-One for Dummies” book signed by author Bruce Clay.

Know your audience. It’s a truism we assume every big name actor is familiar with. After all, their success depends on spectators buying into each performance. So how is it that an Oscar nominee forgot this basic tenant of the actor’s handbook? Did Woody Harrelson fall victim to apathy born of accolades and forget to research his audience before agreeing to this latest turn in the spotlight?

Unfortunately for Woody, he’d never before performed for an audience so unforgiving as Reddit, the Academy and north-nosed critics included.

As members of the marketing community can attest, knowing your audience is an important principle for more than actors. Unfolding in real-time, Woody last week demonstrated a major social media faux pas which could have been avoided had he followed the basic principle of understanding his audience when interacting with communities online.

Reddit Schools Woody on PR

Last Friday afternoon Woody announced he’d be doing an AMA, or “Ask Me Anything” ━ a Q&A format popular in the Reddit community where notable individuals offer to answer all questions.

Reddit is one of the most popular social sharing communities, with active and highly vocal participants. A quick look reveals a common lexicon and de facto etiquette. Upvotes move submissions closer to the top of the list so they’re more visible to the community. Images are like candy. Atheism is a favored philosophy. “TIL” is shorthand for “Today I learned.” Members subscribe to subreddits in order to focus on categories of personal interest. And comments generally unfold in a manner consistent with high schoolers in the quad.

Think what you want of it, but let’s be clear: when you’re a guest, you respect the rules of the house. When the dust settled, Woody and watchers came away with lessons that businesses and brands of all stripes can learn from.

Lesson #1: He tried to make the rules. Right off the bat, Woody struck out. When the first question accused him of having a fling at a high school prom, Woody said: “First of off, its not true, and second off, I don’t want to answer questions about that. Lets focus on the film people.”

As several commenters pointed out, Woody hadn’t signed up for AMAAR, or Ask Me Anything About Rampart. “You talking only about your new movie makes me not want to see it. Woody. Don’t waste us redditors’ time; do your research on Reddit first if you are going to do an Ask Me Anything.”

Lesson #2: He was too self-promotional. Online communities aren’t averse to promotions and marketing. People recognize that these present opportunities which allow them to get close to their favorite celebrities and brands. Your favorite artist comes out with a new work, and you’ll get to see them in the public eye as they work to promote it. It’s a give-take relationship we’re all familiar with. However, it felt like Woody wasn’t willing to give outside his own narrowly defined comfort zone.

Lesson #3: He wasn’t genuine. No one believed it was actually Woody answering the questions. Brands should treat their online reputation with at least as much care as the offline one, considering your online exploits are highly traceable and have a very long shelf life. Before you say anything, especially in a public forum, consider what you stand for as a well-rounded brand. Be prepared to go beyond the company line (in Woody’s case, beyond the subject of the movie) and give up some secret sauce. We’re all multi-dimensional. Offering access to only one dimension will earn a flat response.

Assuming Woody’s out a PR agency, I’ll give him some free advice.

Before you talk to Reddit, you should know at least everything in the article linked here. Brief highlights:

• Redditors don’t take deception lightly.
• The lifespan of a story on Reddit is quick, never exceeding more than 24 hours.
• Redditors’ interests are exteremely broad and front page stories range from politics to technology to design and pop culture.

When performing for any online audience be sure to:

• Research demographics and psychographics.
• Identify personas or facets of the audience.
• Speak to their motivations and values.

Know your audience is a simple maxim, but Woody could have benefited from an even more basic one: the Golden Rule. A little respect for his audience and last Friday’s fiasco would have led to more fans instead of fewer.

Technology has sufficiently crept into every nook and cranny of our lives. From the way we brush our teeth to the way we move about town to the way we interact with people, it’s a part of who we are.

I recently led a discussion along with Jen Lopez, community manager of SEOmoz and author Becky Carroll at the Emerging Media Conference in San Francisco. The three of us, along with the audience, talked about how social media and virtual communities impact our lives in ways we could not have imagined prior. It was an exciting and engaging conversation that allowed us to explore social media and virtual worlds outside the realm of marketing.

And, since the topic is fresh in my mind, I thought I’d share some of those concepts with you today. Let’s dive into some of  the research on the virtual world’s impact on the physical world, and explore how these virtual communities have impacted our relationships and what we should do with these discoveries.

The Virtual World’s Impact on the Physical World

We’ve reached a time where there’s certainly no shortage of people studying the impact that virtual worlds are having on us as individuals and as a society. According to research by professor Jeremy Bailenson of Stanford University, half a billion people spend about 20 hours a week “wearing” avatars.

Avatars are the virtual representation of a person in a virtual world, and these virtual worlds include everything from massive multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft and Second Life to Farmville. You could even go so far to say that people wear avatars in their various social communities as well – representations of their physical selves in the virtual world.

Now, the term “wearing” is an important nuance, because reports from the same professor show that people tend to essentially act different than their true selves depending on how different their avatars look from them. For example, if a person’s avatar is better looking than that person, the person’s avatar tends to be more outgoing in the virtual world than this person might be in the physical world.

To take it a step further, these behaviors online can actually impact a person’s behavior offline. Embedded below is a video that presents some of professor Bailenson research, but I’ll sum it up. Stanford University conducted tests where participants would have avatars created to resemble them. They would hook these participants up to special equipment and have them move about the room while the avatars mimicked their body movements in the virtual world that was projected before their eyes.

What the study revealed was this: positive behavior can be reinforced in the physical world if the participant could visualize and experience a particular scenario in the virtual world. Let me explain:

• Scenario one: Participant mimics jogging and sees the avatar of him or herself jogging and losing weight at the rate of one pound for every four knees lifted.
• Scenario two: Participant eats junk food and participant experiences the avatar’s body expanding.

The result? In the weeks following this experiment, participants ate healthier and exercised more in the physical world as a result of being able to visualize the consequences on themselves of that behavior. The same worked for retirement funds, where the participants would begin to save money for the future if they could make a connection with their future selves by seeing a computerized aging process on the avatars that resembled them.

This is one very inspirational example of how we could find new ways of using these types of virtual realities to impact personal growth in our everyday lives. The Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Kinect are examples of companies who are creating games for this very purpose.

But, for every positive, there’s a potential downside. Spending loads of time in these virtual worlds and being more connected to people than ever before has some consequences.

I think perhaps one of the most powerful demonstrations of how accessibility and connectivity in this new era of social networks can affect us negatively is the following story of a young woman (and several others) whose course in life was completely altered in less than three hours following a short video that was innocently posted to YouTube. You have to see this presentation from Tom Scott at Ignite London:

So the question here is not if virtual worlds and communities impact our lives, but how can we capitalize on the positive and seek solutions to some of the most negative impacts? Just like many of us are deeply involved in making our communities a better place, we should take these lessons and try to figure out how can we make these virtual communities better, improve our lives and minimizing the harmful risks.

How Relationships Are Different Since the Advent of Online Social Communities

So we know that how people choose to spend their time in these virtual worlds and online communities can impact lives, but let’s take a look at the relationships forged in those online communities – are they any less real? There’s not a simple answer for that. These are real people, making real connections – but … and there is a “but” here: the depth of how far they go, I believe, is limited.

You can’t always make a genuine connection with someone online. In person, you see how a person behaves and interacts with you and others; you can look into each other’s eyes, share a smile, an emotion, an experience, camaraderie. Sure, you can feel connected to someone online, but how connected?And do these online relationships strengthen or weaken our relationships in the physical world?

How Virtual Communities Impact Offline Relationships

Being connected to these virtual worlds and communities impact our experiences in the present time. Look around you next time you’re at an event, at dinner or just taking a walk. People are buried in their phones, in their virtual worlds. Sure, we’ve learned how to become more social online, but at what cost? Are we socializing less when we are together as a group? Are we missing out on a the world around us?

Now, it would be a stretch for me to attribute the decline in social skills with the rising of technology, but I can tell you that when I see all those people sitting across from each other at dinner, with their heads buried in their phone updating their Facebook status or texting, it disappoints me. We lose out on the present when we let the virtual community win.

But, with the aid of these virtual communities, we’ve also been able to have richer experiences. Take this example: You’re in Vegas for weekend on vacation. You decide to check-in to a location-based service like Facebook Places or Foursquare to let everyone know where you’re at that. To your surprise, you see that a friend of yours is in the hotel next door because of his check-in. And you and your group and he and his are now able to connect and spend time together that night, which would not have happened without this technology.

These kind of stories happen all the time because of the luxuries our virtual communities afford us. And beyond just letting us find and connect with the people we know in the physical world, they give us added layers of relevance to our experiences. We can unlock best-kept secrets of the places we visit, score relevant deals and get to know other regulars of our local hangouts – all of which would not be possible without these virtual communities.

In the business world, virtual meetings have made it possible for companies to cut down costs on travel and save time; on mental health, many with depression or anxiety disorders have been positively affected by becoming a part of a larger narrative in the online multiplayer games; on the way we receive news and information, social media has made it possible to transmit it faster and further than ever been before, changing the way journalists do their jobs; and social media has totally changed the way politicians campaign, with our current president leading the charge in this area.

The Differences Between Virtual Communities and Offline Communities

It’s really fascinating to see how virtual communities force us to behave in ways we perhaps would have not prior; on the flipside, virtual communities tend to take on characteristics of the way we behave in the physical world as they progress. Take Facebook for example. You post an update, everyone sees it, no matter who is in your friends list – whether it’s Aunt Bee or the person you’re casually dating. And while Facebook continues to make tweaks to its network’s rules for a better experience, you still have to conform to the social norms of that virtual community — even if it’s not how you’re used to acting in the physical world.  This is an example of the virtual community impacting how we would normally behave.

But what’s interesting, is that data show the average number of friends on Facebook is 120 – this is just 30 less than Dunbar’s number, a theory by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, which states that there is a cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. So, this is an example of our social norms impacting virtual communities.

Then along comes Google+, which understands that we don’t communicate the same way with Aunt Bee as we communicate with the person we’re casually dating, and allows us to create virtual social circles that mimic how we interact in our daily lives. This is a great example of the virtual community can develop to comply with our social norms.

But no matter how you slice it, participating in virtual communities makes our interactions more public than ever before. Social media researcher Danah Boyd once said that our interactions in the physical world seem more private by default (although there’s a lot of factors involved on whether or not that’s actually true), but in the online world, that sense of privacy is immediately dissolved and makes anything said potentially very public and immortalized.

It’s taken time for many people to come to terms with that. So the way we behave in our virtual communities may never fully coincide with the way we behave in our everyday lives.

But what does seem to be happening is virtual communities as a whole first impose their rules on us, and as time goes on, we begin to impose our will on it, making the experience more fluid between our relationships in our virtual communities to our relationships in our physical communities.

So, Where to Next?

We know that more and more time is being spent in these virtual worlds. And we know that this time spent has the ability to either negatively impact or positively impact us in our daily lives. Communities are communities, whether online or offline. And virtual worlds are proving to be very real.

So, my question is, how can we better spend our time in those communities? How can we use social communities online an extension of our communities here in the physical world? How will we, as a society, use these virtual worlds to make a difference?

It’s all still very new and these worlds are still developing. But, as the creators of these virtual worlds, we have a choice in how we shape them. How will you make a difference?

This post is an entry for SEO Chicks’ contest SEO: The Next Generation, which challenges folks who’ve been in SEO less than a year to predict what the industry will look like in the year 2022. This post is not meant to be taken seriously, nor does it refer to current or planned future services offered by Bruce Clay, Inc.

January 2022:

It seems like only yesterday that augmented reality (AR) contact lenses were considered just a toy for video gamers, a weapon for Special Forces commandos or a tool for rescue workers. Now I catch myself wondering how I ever got along without them.

I’m reminded of the early ’00s, when cell phones seemed to go from novelty to necessity overnight. But no one suspected how quickly mobile AR would become so ubiquitous. By the fourth quarter of 2022, 60 million Americans will be wearing some sort of AR device, and the rate of adoption isn’t expected to level off for at least another year.

We’ve already seen massive upheaval in the search engine marketing industry (along with the usual yahoos screaming that SEO is dead) and the coming year promises even more change, as companies shift ad budgets toward augmented reality marketing, including tactics like psychosocial-based hypertargeting and In-Real-Life (IRL) remarketing.

With that in mind, here’s a look at some recent developments in the SEM industry, as well as a peek at where we’re headed in 2022.

User Attention: The New Trust Indicator

In the first decade of the 21st century, search engines used a site’s linking profile to gauge trust and authority. This led shady webmasters to buy and sell links in an effort to pay their way to the top of the SERPs, and eventually forced search engines to switch to social indicators as their primary metric of Web authority.

That switch, of course, led to the buying and selling of Likes, +1′s, Friends, Followers, etc. in the second decade of the 21st century.

Now it looks like the third decade will be less about artificial social signals like Facebook Likes and Google +1′s, and more about genuine, natural engagement between an object and a user. (And besides, how much do you like something when you “Like” it, anyway?)

AR devices track a wealth of data about what wearers see, say and do – and Google and other search engines are now using that data to measure what they’ve been after all along: user attention.

After all, aren’t links and Likes just crude proxies for user attention?

Better yet, search engine marketers now have access to data about user responses. Google Analytics just added a new section, “Expressions,” which has a slew of awesome new metrics. Not only can SEMs track the amount of time users spend looking at a page, but also see data about users’ reaction to content – including my favorite metric, the percentage of people who roll their eyes after viewing an ad.

Google’s Matt Cutts recently announced that Eye Roll Rate is “not expected to be a major ranking factor in organic search.”

Mobile Augmented Reality (AR) Devices

Forget about staring at that tiny screen on your smartphone, and toss out those bulky projection glasses. New functional contact lenses by Microsoft, Innovega and Sony are the latest in AR wear, seeing strong sales even after the holiday season. Expect Apple to instantly grab a 15 percent market share in early spring when they release their much-anticipated iPeer lenses:

More Privacy Issues with Facebook EEG measurements

Facebook is under fire for giving advertisers access to more biometric data from users. Now, in addition to heart rate and perspiration, marketers will gain access to real-time electroencephalograph (EEG) measurements in order to gauge the effectiveness of ads.

The company insists that user privacy is, as always, one of their greatest concerns, and that their intention is simply to provide users with the most relevant ads possible. CEO Mark Zuckerberg responded publicly to accusations of mind control: “No one is forced to join Facebook.”

Hypertargeted Marketing to Friends

Why not let users’ friends advertise to them? Since November, Facebook’s FAdPro service has let marketers automatically hypertarget ads for individuals based on their psychosocial profile. Draw up an ad, set your desired input fields, and FAdPro will do the rest. Here’s an example of what some people are doing:

In-Real-Life (IRL) Remarketing

In-Real-Life (IRL) Remarketing programs are popping up in malls all across the country. Software tracks and monitors shoppers, and decides what deals and specials to advertise to them. All this happens automatically, without any human having access to personal data.

I’ll use an ad called the “15/15 Special” to demonstrate how IRL retargeting works.

Ms. Gupta comes to the mall to do some shopping. Her first stop is a little trinket shop where she likes to browse but rarely makes a purchase. This time, however, a certain glass vase catches her eye. She knows just the perfect use for it. It’s even reasonably priced, compared to the rest of the shop’s items.

But she ultimately decides it’s still just a little too expensive, and goes off to do the rest of her shopping. The mall’s analytics program tracks where she goes and what she pays attention to, and decides that the 15/15 Special is appropriate for her.

On her way out, having completely forgotten about the vase, Ms. Gupta passes by a hypertargeted billboard that flashes a custom advertisement at her:

There’s that vase! With 15 percent off, there’s no reason not to buy it now. And even though 15 minutes is plenty of time to get to the Trinket Shoppe, she hurries anyway: the ad haunts her from every hypertargeted billboard she passes, the seconds visibly ticking away.

Sure, we’ve all had negative experiences with IRL remarketing. There’s something uncanny about ads that literally follow you around town. Some states are even allowing restraining orders against marketing campaigns.

But remarketing serves a useful function – without it, how would consumers remember what they want to buy?

Department of Justice Data Request

Under a new section of the Patriot Act, the US Attorney General’s office last month served Google, Facebook and Microsoft with warrants for access to their users’ search, traffic, biometric, GPS and financial data.

This demand from the U.S. government, which has civil libertarians up in arms, requests that Google, Facebook, Bing and other major search/social engines provide the Department of Justice with unrestricted, real-time “firehose” feeds of user data.

Privacy advocates warn that the government will be able to engage in warrantless spying on citizens, but the DOJ insists that the data is necessary in order to identify and stop potential acts of terrorism.

Onward into 2022!

There are some exciting developments on horizon for 2022, with some of the key advancements being:

• The number of AR device wearers climbs to 60 million in America.
• Artificial social signals such as Likes and +1′s becoming less influential on organic rankings, while actual user attention gains importance.
• Tactics that were once only feasible online, like hypertargeting and remarketing, become possible to implement in real life.

I can’t wait to see what new developments arrive during 2022; if the past is any indication, the only predictable thing about the SEM industry is its sheer unpredictability.

Google recently reminded webmasters that page Titles matter and are an important part of the search results displayed. Why did Google write another post about “better page titles in search results” when the majority of webmasters already know that relevant descriptive Title tags are an important component of a properly constructed Web page?

The short answer is that people do not always follow the basic principles they know are correct. Oftentimes this is a result of the fact that webmasters find themselves pulled in multiple directions. Thus, when developing a complex website, descriptive Title tags are frequently no longer the top priority. On many occasions a webmaster’s client is more interested in meeting specified deadlines and how a page renders in the browser. The inevitable result is that since clients do not care as much about taking the time to look at the source code to see if there is a descriptive Title, neither do many webmasters.

However, Google primarily uses the tag, if one exists, to display the hyperlinked headlines users’ see in the search engine results pages. Since that is the case, this is likely a reason Google elected to spend the time to remind webmasters of the value it places on page Titles.

But for some pages, a single title might not be the best one to show for all queries, and so we have algorithms that generate alternative titles to make it easier for our users to recognize relevant pages. […] Other times, alternative titles are displayed for pages that have no title or a non-descriptive title specified by the webmaster in the HTML. […] Another common issue we see is when a webmaster uses the same title on almost all of a website’s pages, sometimes exactly duplicating it and sometimes using only minor variations. Lastly, we also try to replace unnecessarily long or hard-to-read titles with more concise and descriptive alternatives.

Google provided further encouragement to use <title> tags by encouraging a visit to their updated help center that contains their page detailing best practices to use when constructing a <title> tag. As a follow up, Google proceeded to remind webmasters that if either a page’s title is not descriptive or does not exist then it will use an algorithm to display a title it deems most appropriate to users. A warning is also added to that Google is more likely to replace duplicated titles across WebPages, titles that contain only minor variations, and <title> tags that are needlessly lengthy.

The bottom line and takeaway is that even certain seemingly small and fundamental components such as page titles still matter. Therefore even though there is much more involved in SEO as the search landscape continuously evolves, it is important not to overlook the basics by placing an exorbitant amount of effort on the other and newer factors.

Late Monday, we announced the service “Local Paid Inclusion,” which we said gives local merchants higher rankings in the Places and local search results in Google, Yahoo! and Bing. We believed that the service offering was finalized between our backend partner and the aforementioned search engines.

So far, we have determined that it is not a released program, made even more complicated by statements of confidentiality agreements that put the kibosh on further discussion. Bruce Clay, Inc. has ceased to engage in Local Paid Inclusion while we dig into confusing and contradicting statements.

We announced what we believed to be a legitimate program where Bruce Clay, Inc. was going to be one of several distributors of this service. Our understanding of this service was that it impacted the sequence of entries within the Places or local results in search engines. And within that separate area of the results, this service would validate local profiles, assuring those entries would naturally result in appearing higher in the local results.

There was misinterpretation of the information surrounding this service; mainly that it would impact the organic search results, instead of only the local results. We take responsibility for an unclear message being announced in an untimely manner, where specifics of the program were not disclosed and the messaging was jumbled.

Bruce Clay, Inc. also takes responsibility for the early promotion of the service Local Paid Inclusion without taking the extra steps to verify these contracts existed as we understood them. For that, we apologize.

We believed at the time that the offering was valid and acted accordingly. We did not collect money at this time, choosing to only set up a notification contact list dubbed “pre-registration” for when the program formally released.

Bruce Clay, Inc. has always been committed to ethical search engine marketing practices that work alongside the values of the search engines: to serve the end user and provide exposure to businesses. This program seemed to be a solid way for local merchants to validate themselves online and to have their companies be found.

At this time, it’s our highest priority to be as clear as possible on this issue with the business and search communities. Bruce Clay, Inc. is prepared to openly discuss this matter as best we can with media and community to be as transparent as possible.

We will make every effort to answer looming questions as soon as we know more, but please understand that we are forced to work within confidentiality agreements, and may be unable to talk specifics.

We are currently working to better understand all of the contractual agreements in place, if any, with those search engines regarding this service.

We also need to thank the various social communities and search marketers for their passion regarding this matter; the voices were heard loud and clear, showing there’s no lack of diligent, inquisitive and knowledgeable marketers and business people in our community.

In the meantime, Bruce Clay, Inc. has withdrawn Local Paid Inclusion pending our further research into this matter. And the site LocalPaidInclusion.com has been taken down while this issue is resolved.

Comments are welcomed on this matter below.

Thank you.

Have you taken a moment to read about Google’s new privacy policy and how it affects the information you share, effective March 1?

Privacy policies and terms of service aren’t exactly riveting literature, so if you haven’t rushed into cuddling up with the thing and getting to know it better, I don’t blame you. So, I thought I’d take a few minutes to give an overview of what it is and the important takeaways.

In sum, Google’s new privacy policy is essentially a way for Google to try and ensure there won’t be mass public freak-outs or lawsuits over the new “Search, plus Your World” function, as well as more and more personalized search results to come.

And as much as Google is trying to make this information public and available to its users, let’s be real, freak-outs will still ensue.

This is why Google had to come up with this very straightforward, easy-to-read policy because on March 1, it’s Google’s way or the highway. To be fair, Google says it’s still collecting the same information as it always has. It’s just being used in new ways. And, according to Google, you still have the same liberties to control privacy.

Google has promised that whenever it makes significant changes, it will do its best to let users know exactly what those are so users aren’t blind-sighted. Does this mean people are going to read it? No. Does it mean people still won’t freak-out? No. But Google is doing its due diligence with spreading the word, see?

And:

And:

Trust me, I wasn’t super enthusiastic about reading it either, but I wanted to get an overview I could share with you, so let’s explore some of the concepts behind Google’s new privacy policy to get a birds-eye view.

New Privacy Policy is Armor for Search + Your World & Things to Come

Google works in mysterious ways … OK, I take that back, Google tends to work in methodical, strategic ways. And if you’ve been following Google long enough, you begin to see patterns of how they roll things out, and how each individual feature or product fits into the big picture.

If you haven’t taken the time to familiarize yourself with the new Search, plus Your World function, this is an important step in understanding some of the reasons behind the new privacy policy. The way the search results are changing with Search+ is going to cause some confusion. The new privacy policy is meant to provide some comfort around the new search results and spells out, in plain English, that if you choose to play in Google, you choose to play by its rules.

The new privacy policy is also meant to cover Google when it decides to roll out even more targeted search results to it users, including ads, many suspect. While some are very uncomfortable with Google using this information for advertising, others welcome more targeted ads. I tend to err on the side of the latter. If I’m inundated with ads on a daily basis anyway, they might as well be what I’m interested in. I wrote a post once on why online ads suck less than other forms of advertisement. Check it out.

But, I suppose it’s not the ads that are the problem, it’s people and entities knowing stuff about you that you may not want publicized … but then we have to go back to the idea that if you don’t want something publicized, don’t share it online. It’s kind of a vicious cycle. People want to be able to participate in this thing called the World Wide Web, but then they also want the same anonymity in the virtual world as the have in the more-private physical world. This is just not possible.

One of the examples Google gives in its privacy policy FAQs on potential ways it could personalize information using data from multiple Google accounts is the following:

“Maybe we can tell you that you’ll be late for a meeting based on your location, your calendar and the local traffic conditions.”

Helpful, yes. Creepy? Kinda. But, to reinforce what Google is trying to convey:  it’s not any information Google wasn’t already gathering from you.

Google’s New Privacy Policy Says Not Much Has Changed

According to Google, not much has changed. Let’s go over some of the things Google says is the same in its new privacy policy:

• Privacy principles remain unchanged. Google’s privacy principles tell us how it approaches privacy and user information across all products. It also says users still have the option to manage individual data through Google Dashboard and ad preferences.
• No more new data collected than prior. Again, Google is reinforcing that the data is not different, the way it uses the data is.

In Google’s policies and principals FAQs, it answers the following question: Under the new Privacy Policy and Terms of Service, will my private information in Google services remain private?

“Yes. As before, we won’t share our users’ personal information without their permission except in very limited circumstances like a valid court order. For more detail, please read the section of the new Privacy Policy called ‘Information we share.’”

Following that link, we see a list of terms regarding how Google shares the information it collects. It says Google does not share personal information unless certain circumstances apply.

The first circumstance is “with your consent” and Google goes on to say that, “We will share personal information with companies, organizations or individuals outside of Google when we have your consent to do so. We require opt-in consent for the sharing of any sensitive personal information.”

The opt-in feature is only for what Google dubs “sensitive personal information” that contains things like medical facts, racial or ethnic origins, political or religious beliefs or sexuality. Outside of that, it seems using the new Google after March 1 essentially means you are agreeing to Google’s new terms of service, that is, giving Google permission to do with your data what it pleases (based on the privacy settings you have chosen).

What Has Changed in Google’s New Privacy Policy

Here’s what Google says has changed:

• The readability factor of the privacy policy, including more clear language to ensure users understand that if they have a Google account and are signed in, Google may combine information across Google services you use to treat you “as a single user across all products.”
• The readability factor of the terms and services, plus the condensation of many terms of service for many Google products and services into simpler terms that apply to its products and services across the board.

In sum, Google wants to combine the information it collects across the services you use in Google to make an uber-personalized experience for you while using Google. Members of congress aren’t so happy about this new privacy policy, as many of them question whether or not it violates an agreement set into place after a settlement over Google Buzz, stating Google violated its privacy policy by making it difficult for Gmail users to opt out of the Buzz social network.

Take Control with Your Privacy Settings & Through Knowledge

Here’s a couple simple ways you can control the way your data is used and understand what it’s all about:

• Go to your Google Dashboard and manage the privacy settings for the individual Google services. Uh, remember when I said “simple” way to control data? Well, this is one of those get-a-cup-of-coffee-this-could-take-you-a-while tasks. But, it’s a great way to get acquainted with the information Google collects and how it fits into the big picture. Here’s a video to help you understand more about Dashboard:

• And I hope you like reading, because Google says in its new privacy policy FAQs that another good way to understand how it uses data is through its “Good to Know” resource. In all fairness, Google does try to break it down in its most simple terms for the general public to understand. Those who are super concerned about privacy should take the time to understand how Google works.

Are You In or Are You Out?

Here’s how I see it: You have three choices under Google’s future of search:

1. Go with it and ride the wave of personalization to have an extremely relevant search experience.
2. Continue to use Google but control as much as possible what Google does with your information through privacy settings, thus impacting the full extent of personalization.
3. Stop using Google.

The changes Google is making with its search functions will either invoke great praise or mass aversion by the public. Perhaps a more realistic view is that majority of the general public will probably not even notice or understand what’s really happening (and I don’t mean that in disrespect). Those who use search for leisure not business might be pleasantly surprised at the new results or totally baffled. Either way, many will just go with it.

It makes me wonder though if this most recent change by Google finally opens the door to other “little search engines that could” finally making their way into mainstream usage. Will this new personalization turn off enough people to make an impact on Google’s market share or will it simply make our lives easier through these new online experiences?

What’s your take? Tell us in the comments below!

Our first newsletter of 2012 is packed with search marketing goodness, and we’re giving you a sneak peek into this month’s articles before it hits inboxes everywhere. If you love this edition, go ahead and subscribe to our SEO Newsletter; it’s a great way to ensure you’re up to date on the industry’s hot topics and provides a deeper glimpse into some of the trends and issues online business faces every month. So, without further adieux, here are the highlights of January’s SEO Newsletter.

16 SEM Predictions for 2012 by Bruce Clay

This month, our feature article kicks off with Bruce Clay giving 16 predictions for 2012. If you’ve been following our newsletter over the years, you know that about this time each year, Bruce offers his forecast into what lies ahead in the search marketing climate.

This year, he touches on:

• Budget predictions for search in 2012
• Emerging SEM disciplines
• Web marketing conferences
• Impact of Google+
• AdWords costs
• Local SEO
• Offshore labor for SEM
• Content publishing

Plus, check out the link in the article to his 2011 predictions to see how they panned out.

Understanding Search Plus Your World

Our Back to Basics article gives the nuts and bolts of “Search plus Your World,” Google’s new search results that rolled out just this month, plus some extra insight from senior SEO analyst at Bruce Clay, Inc. on if the new search function did, in fact, kill SEO.

In this article by yours truly, I cover:

• How Search+ works: How Google+ factors into the results, what else you can expect in the new search results, what kind of content is featured in the SERP and the various options for viewing results.
• What the implications of Search+ are: Why brands, the public and the government might be concerned about this new search function by Google.
• What personalized and non-personalized results mean: Understanding some of the ranking factors in the various results views.
• If Search+ killed SEO: We explore how SEO factors in a new Search+ world?

Google’s Freshness Score and Why it Exists

The ability for search engines like Google to determine the “freshness” of Web content is required to return the most relevant results. Enter Google’s freshness score. In this article by Brent Yorzinski of Bruce Clay Australia, he dives into the step-by-step fundamentals of Google’s freshness score, how it influences what we see in the search results, and why the freshness signal in Google’s algorithm leaves much to be discovered.

Since the flat site architecture concept appeared on the SEO horizon and gained some traction around 2010, many SEO consultants got it wrong. The flat site architecture concept is related to the click distance between pages in a site, and how relevancy is distributed according to internal links structure — yet has nothing to do with URLs.

The main misunderstanding was, and unfortunately still is, that you have to get rid of directories in URL structures. Although it is widely agreed that you may want to keep URLs short and locate keywords close to the root or left part of the URL, there are many reasons why you should keep a certain structure of folders or directories there. This is what I’m going to explain in this post.

After the flat site architecture concept was introduced, many SEO consultants freaked out and changed their structures from something like:

• myautoparts.com/engine-parts/cooling/audi-a6-quattro-engine-timing-belt-kit.html

To:

•  myautoparts.com/cooling-audi-a6-quattro-engine-timing-belt-kit.html

Or even worse:

• myautoparts.com/audi-a6-quattro-engine-timing-belt-kit.html

Another example:

• mycorporatesite.com/blog/women-accessories-design/top-fashion-trends-for-2012.html

To:

• mycorporatesite.com/top-fashion-trends-for-2012.html

A little warning: If, for any reason, you do decide to remove directories from content page URLs, never get rid of category pages. Following the previous examples, do not destroy URLs/pages like:

• myautoparts.com/engine-parts/cooling/

Or:

• mycorporatesite.com/blog/women-accessories-design/

… Because they represent a great space/opportunity for a better content strategy, keyword allocation and internal link building. This is SEO 101, but just in case.

1. Structured URLs Help Semantics

You already know that from a search engine perspective, a site is not a big bag of unordered words. Search engines try to make sense of text by analyzing how those texts are organized in main topic and subtopics. URLs are the ID of every page, so the more they reveal about how the content is structured, the better. An example of how relevant directories at URL structures can be is the breadcrumbs you see frequently on search engine results pages (SERPs):

It is true that the typical HTML breadcrumbs in a page can trigger them to appear, but I’ve seen many cases where the only reason for that was a clear, organized URL structure (showtimetickets.com/concerts/rock-pop/) with no HTML breadcrumbs at all.

Tip: Add specific semantic markup to breadcrumbs in combination with a coherent URL structure and your chances to get breadcrumbs in the SERPs skyrocket.

Example:

Take the URL: http://www.overstock.com/Clothing-Shoes/Womens-Shoes/692/cat.html. Have a look at the HTML code of page breadcrumbs to see the semantic markup:

You don’t want to miss that extra click-through rate, right?

2. Exhaustive Indexation Control

A common task of SEOs is checking how many of the pages in their sites are indexed by search engines. It should be simple: list of URLs in a site, list of URLs indexed at search engines and compare. Not so, especially at large sites. Trying to make an exhaustive inventory of indexed URLs to find out the non-indexed ones can be a real pain. Even worse, Google’s site: command is not going to show more than 1,000 URLs.

The no-brainer trick here is to use site: command for sections of the site URL delimited by directories. Once you get a number of indexed pages smaller than 1,000, it is not hard to list them all out of the SERPs by using the OutWit Hub Firefox plugin, for example.

Of course, it takes time to collect all URLs indexed by section, but this is one of the reasons they pay us SEOs, right?

The second step is comparing the indexed URLs with the ones available at the site. Your XML Sitemap should work like a charm and list absolutely all URLs; unfortunately, this doesn’t happen frequently. Use some of those tools that simulate a bot crawling your site like Screaming Frog Spider Tool or Xenu Link Sleuth. Both are able to crawl and list all URLs below a certain directory, but Screaming Frog does that by default. If using Xenu, it’s something you have to configure before a crawl job.

In any case, you can probably see how handy structured URLs can be for the finest indexing control.

3. Better SEO Traffic Analysis

Measuring SEO performance is a remarkable chunk of time in any project. It was always important to me, but after the Google Panda algorithm update rocked our world, it became essential to analyze organic traffic by sections of the site.

Content drilldown reports are nothing without the proper URL structure.

Reports based on pages are way useful and easier to manage when we can filter groups of URLs to break down by sections and, again, having directories at URLs makes regular expressions easy as pie; this is a real advantage. Otherwise, you would end up having the mother of all regex, and the uncertainty of leaving part of them out of the bucket to analyze.

If your URLs have not been carefully crafted, traffic analysis is going to be the worst of your nightmares (believe me, I’ve been through that) unless you make perfect use of virtual pageviews. The CMS of your site has extra fields in the database to handle readable names, and the code logic to populate those virtual pageviews; unlikely to happen and an expensive solution.

For example, the URL:

• myautoparts.com/audi-a6-quattro-engine-belt-kit.html (no directories here)
• VPv _gaq.push(['_trackPageview', '/engine-parts/cooling/audi-a6-quattro-engine-belt-kit.html'] (Directories inserted by code logic at page tracking level with category names coming from database to cover the lack or    real categories at URL level)

An E-Commerce Scenario

It is quite common at e-commerce sites to have URLs reflecting directory categories and subcategories of products, for example: /engine-parts/cooling/ — but when it comes down to product level, they are all allocated under something like /products/audi-a6-quattro-engine-belt-kit.html — completely out of their natural allocation under corresponding categorized URLs.

I usually dislike this solution, but it is handy to solve duplicate content issues where one product belongs to several categories at the same time. If you must do this, use something better to describe what you sell other than just “products”  – it could be /auto-parts/. And at least use one directory for all products. Do not place them directly under root domain.

One of the advantages is you can easily guess at-a-glance how much traffic product pages get. I always include a chart in SEO e-commerce dashboards that shows:

• Total visits from organic traffic
• Visits that view product pages
• Visits that added products to shopping cart
• Visits that completed checkout process

This gives me a very nice perspective of how my SEO performs while converting visitors into clients.

In sum, don’t fool yourself with misconceptions. Before making any decision in your SEO, think about the pros and cons. We have reviewed three primary reasons why you should do a clever use of directories in URLs for a better SEO. Those reasons are:

• They reinforce the search engines semantic understanding of your content.
• Indexation control is easier to manage while having directories.
• Full profit of analysis capabilities thus better insights from your data.

Convinced yet?

Welcome to 2012. It may rock for you, especially if you don’t make the same social media mistakes people did in 2011. If you’re doing any kind of marketing on Facebook this year, try not to make the same following 10 mistakes that are, unfortunately, all too common:

1. Overestimating the Importance of Facebook Pages

Less than 1 percent of page fans ever go back to your page. You can create a custom tab and set it as the default for non-fans. So, your custom tab might be seen by non-fans, assuming they didn’t already like your page from a Like box on your website or the Like button on a fan-growth ad.

But if they did, they’ll never see your welcome tab; fans always go straight to the Wall. On a daily basis, fans may see your posts in their news feed, if your posts are interesting and get likes and comments. Your Facebook page is not another website for you. It’s a social email. Pages are not as important as posts and EdgeRank.

Also, you don’t have to have a page to do Facebook marketing. You can use the advertising platform to get more targeted traffic to your website. Fan marketing (marketing on Facebook with a business page and fans) requires quality content and attention to detail. If you don’t have the time to do that, you might want to try just ads first.

2. Caring Only About Numbers of Fans

It’s amazing how many people only look at how many fans a page has, not how many it’s reaching with the average post (I like to get that info from PageLever, but you can also export your stats from your Facebook page Insights to Excel and average it yourself).

Since so few people go back to pages and most fans will only hear from you again through your news feed, EdgeRank and reach are critical. You must get interaction to remain visible. The stats are discouraging — many pages are only reaching 5 percent to 10 percent of their fans per post. And that raises real fan acquisition costs by 10 to 20 times!
Getting a fan does not give you a captive, forever-attentive audience. It gives you the opportunity to keep them interested. Your posts had better be engaging, or you’re lowering the value of your page every day.

Is ROI important to you? You aren’t just trying to be visible and engage, are you? You probably want people to become business leads or buy something. If your fans aren’t people who fit your target customer profile, they may never buy.

Contests may produce numbers of fans but not qualified buyers. If you run a contest, make sure your contest qualifies them in the process. For example, if you sell mountain bikes, make them send you a quick story about mountain biking to qualify for the contest. Or take what you know about the best buyers and target those kinds of people with Facebook ads to grow your fan base.

3. Thinking You’ll Get Enough Fans from Your Email List

On first look, it seems obvious you’d want your email subscribers to become fans of your Facebook business page. And you do. But what’s not obvious is that even if you contact them repeatedly and incentivize them to do so, you’ll be fortunate to get 25 percent of them to do so. The reason why is simple math: even if 30 percent open your emails, and 10 percent click, not all of them will follow through. You never get 100 percent response to anything online. Multiple steps always cause a drop-off in compliance. You’re going to need other sources of fans, like Facebook advertising, a Like box on your website, and perhaps contests.

4. Thinking About Yourself Instead of Your Audience

Most of us are good at talking about ourselves and our own companies. And that’s boring. You want to see what percentage of people find you fascinating? Create a Facebook ad with just your face and name and no call to action. I’ve actually done that, and only about 0.05 percent of people will click on that if I include my major benefit to businesses. When I did an even more boring ad with my name and face, I got 0.01 percent. Only one out of 10,000 strangers cares about me. Not surprising.

5. Posting Content No One Cares About

You actually have to think about what your audience cares about and appeal to that. What do they need? What do they love? If you do Facebook advertising to precise interests, you’ll learn this along the way and can apply it to your posting ideas. All the typical rules of great blog posts apply. You have to have a good headline, it helps to have a list or numbers, and pictures and videos rock. By the way, photos are the most liked and shared type of content on Facebook. You should probably post a lot of them.

6. Posting Too Frequently (Quantity Over Quality)

Some pages post too much, and at the same time post things people don’t interact with. All this does is lower your EdgeRank quicker so you can reach fewer and fewer people more and more frequently. Is that really what you want?

It’s better to make sure you’re creating quality posts. Review your engagement for past posts to see what worked and what didn’t. Create surgically. By all means, experiment, but learn from your experiments. Use calls to action: ask for the likes and comments. Don’t be shy. More people will do it if you ask. Don’t post with a custom publisher if that prevents you from customizing your posts. Don’t post photos without some text and a call to action.

And if you are a company that has three or more admins who feel they can post whatever, whenever they want, you’re going to need to do some training, or revoke their rights and have it go through a point person who understands that boring posts lose fans.

7. Creating All Your Content Yourself

It’s a lot of pressure to create and post quality content every day. Something we learned from years of Twitter is that some of the most popular and retweeted folks are simply curating other people’s content. You can do the same for Facebook, for example, create a new blog post to quote and comment on popular, viral content (I would advise that, so you can get the traffic benefits). A product like InfiniGraph can help you find Facebook posts that already have proven likes, comments, shares and clicks.

8. Treating Facebook Like Other Marketing Channels (Twitter or Search)

Facebook has multimedia advantages over other channels. If you don’t use them, you lose in the news feed, because your posts are competing with everything else. Tweets are short, but Facebook posts can be long. Take advantage of that. Autoposting blog posts without commentary or a call to action is lazy and leads to loss of fan visibility. Don’t do it.

Facebook is not search marketing. It’s social. It has to be interesting. And you have to understand your potential customer better. Google is about what people want. Facebook is about who they are. You can sell your “what” to their “who.” But, it requires a change in your thought process.

It’s comparatively easy to sell headphones to people who search Google for “buy headphones.” But, it may be new to brainstorm people who already “like” techno music on Facebook and will want quality headphones, or those frequent travelers want noise-canceling headphones and probably already like “Gogo inflight Internet” and the topic “#frequent flyer program.”

9. Ignoring or Disparaging Facebook Advertising

Some people don’t like advertising at all. Some marketers and PR folks look down their nose at it. Some business owners try to avoid the hard costs associated with them. All of these people are missing out on The Biggest Marketing Opportunity in Human History. I capitalize it that way because I hear it that way in my head. I really think it’s that important.

You can target and segment 800 million people via 16 targeting factors for a minimum spend of $5.00. That’s a TV-sized audience with better targeting than AdWords (yes, there’s no intent but you can get around that with the “who” targeting approach I mentioned in the previous tip). Some say that, in its growth, Facebook ads will pull more money from TV than from AdWords. I think it will cause substantial shifts from each.

I’ve seen ecommerce sites make direct ROI from both Facebook ad spend for traffic and Facebook ads spent to get fans – the best strategy depends on your business. And if you want more awareness (which turns into more Google searches and purchases), Facebook ads have the cheapest CPM in the world. Facebook advertising costs roughly one-fifth of the CPC of AdWords and one-eighth the CPM. Ignore it at your own peril. Facebook ads in 2012 are like the AdWords ads of 2004. Now is the time.

10. Ignoring Metrics and Analytics

Every bit of internet marketing is measurable and trackable. Both visibility and engagement should be tracked for your Facebook pages. Correlate interaction with posts and learn from what you’re doing by using Facebook Insights or PageLever. Go the extra mile and track not only the ROI of Facebook traffic, but also how your Facebook activities affect other marketing channels. Is Facebook increasing the number of searches for your brand? Is it increasing the overall conversion rate for your website? Add URL tagging for your Google Analytics. And can you install multichannel analytics to see where people first heard of you, even if they finally bought via Google.