Are you looking for that edge online? Something that your competitors don't have? Forget wasting all your energy on a great design and developing superior content--it's not what you know, but who you work with.
Sooner or later, most of us in the industry get an e-mail, either passed on by someone we know, through our own e-mail, or possibly through one of our own sites that offers to help us achieve success online. Most of these are fairly nondescript and rather generic.
Then the other day, I had one passed on to me that was more than just a couple of lines of loose promises. This one proclaimed: "I specialize in getting sites listed at the top of Google in organic listings."
And it went on, even specifying that, "After the first month, it is only $300 month." And apparently, "That's all there is to it."
OK, so this one actually perked my curiosity. I couldn't help but go check out the site.
I looked around for a bit and was almost ready to just mosey on by when, midway down on one page, it caught my eye, the claim of all claims, the one that I had heard rumors about, but until this day, had never actually come across in the wild: special relationships.
Could my eyes have deceived me? No, there it was, in the fine HTML print: "We have special relationships with the search engines."
OK, by now you must be on edge as to the power that these special relationships could possibly muster. And there, like a beacon in the night, "...indexed within 2 weeks..."
Wow. So 1990s.
For those of us in the industry, this brings both a chuckle and a sad realization that there are still people out there who will play into the desires and fears of Web site owners, offering some magical potion that will be their ticket to success.
OK, this one was particularly sad and amusing because of the two-week window. I mean, talk about working some miracles! Let's face it--it's 2008--in this day, you would almost have to work to not have a site (or even a fair amount of a site) be indexed within two weeks.
Sadly, this is one of those things that gives search engine optimization a bad name. Just because someone claims to perform SEO, doesn't mean that they can, nor should that then be a negative reflection on the industry.
Certainly there are those who, after working so long in the industry, have established connections with those at the search engines, as peers do in nearly every industry. This does not equate to special powers to get the engines to overlook offenses or to serve up rankings based on these relationships. And if it did, I have to imagine that it would cost a bit more than $300 a month.
For anyone who doubts this, Google itself has stated its view on the matter.
As for the provider of the services that I found so amusing, well, with several pages with identical title tags, I have to question their expertise in SEO. As for their relationship with Google, it appears that only their home page has any PageRank, and seeing that it is a PR1, they might want to renegotiate their special relationship as they are clearly getting the short end of the stick.
The long-awaited launch of Wikia Search Alpha, a Wikipedia-esque search engine has arrived. And I have to admit to being disappointed. It's no Google-killer. Heck, it's no Mahalo-killer either.
Since the inception of Wikia Search's Search-l mailing list last year, I've been quietly lurking but following their progress with some interest. It was great anticipation that I went to check out their just-launched (as of January 7th) alpha version of Wikia Search, an open source search engine. I took a look around the search engine and was pretty surprised to find that not only were the results irrelevant -- the top results weren't even in a language I could understand.
Let's take a look at the search results for "seo"...
Search Results in Search Wikia for SEO
Hmm... Japanese results in the top positions? There's nothing (useful) to see here (in the first page of results), keep moving... I didn't see a way to define my language settings and filter out non-English pages either.
Just for fun, I put my name into Wikia Search. I was relieved to see that this CNET blog was ranking, but my own, personal blog which has been around for years was at the bottom of the page. "Ed Stephan's Timeline of Sociology" was number two.
At this rate, Jason Calacanis (founder of Mahalo) has nothing to worry about.
With the recent admission by Matt Cutts to Stephan Spencer that Google is using Adobe Systems' Search Engine SDK technology, a new set of optimization opportunities opened up.
That fairly definite confirmation of how Google reads text within Flash files makes it possible to create Flash .swf files with some level of search engine optimization.
"It used to be the case that we had our own, home-brew code to pull the text out of Flash, but I think that we have moved to the Search Engine SDK tool that Adobe Macromedia offers," Cutts said. "So my hunch is that most of the search engines will standardize on using that Search Engine SDK tool to pull out the text."
This has long been the suspicion of Flash developers and SEO professionals concerned with .swf files, but to my knowledge, this is the most direct and clear confirmation to date. The implication is simple but important: if Web developers--and specifically Flash developers--have the ability to test .swf files during development for textual SEO parameters, then Flash files can be designed to offer specific text to search engines.
While the concept is simple, the practice may not be. Flash is a complicated multimedia program with tremendous flexibility and many layers of content. Also, parent Flash .swf files can load secondary, child .swf files ad nuaseum, and this is a very popular, load time-friendly technique. The path between viable textual content and the "front" of a given Flash presentation can be very intricate.
There have been tests measuring what sort of text can be discovered by the Search Engine SDK program, much of it dealing with where in a Flash movie it resides, when the text crosses the stage, and what sort of text is most likely to be read. While there may never be absolute rules for optimizing text within a Flash file, now that it is known with fair certainty how Google reads Flash text, more testing is in order.
Well-designed Flash content can be a fantastic user experience. Google may not be pursuing this content, but it certainly has opened the door to the possibility. The ball is in Adobe's court to continue to develop and improve the SDK tool, but this is a great opportunity for Flash designers interested in SEO or for search engine optimizers interested in Flash.
Despite the shortcomings of the current Search Engine SDK software, (it would be nice to see an update, Adobe!), it is quite likely that SEO standards can be developed for dealing with Flash text so that Flash files can "tell" search engines about their content with more clarity.
Link building is one of those challenging subjects that carries a lot of technical undertones. It's a subject that often requires some explanation, depending on the audience, as to why it is so important to begin with.
The importance of building links to a site is something that SEO (search engine optimization) practitioners understand all too well. It's not just a quantity thing, but a qualitative measure. Links aren't just a conduit for traffic; they serve as an important signal to search engines. Of course, it is the significance and understanding of this signaling that often steers the explanation of link building into a much more technical discussion.
Just last week I was in New York for an on-site training with the Institute for International Research. IIR is a great organization to work with and very interesting from an SEO perspective. IIR puts on large-scale events on a wide array of topics and an even wider array of industries, like the upcoming conference that search engine optimization expert Stephan Spencer will be speaking at called The Conference On Marketing.
So I found myself explaining link building to an audience that was nearly as diverse as their topics...varying responsibilities, positions, and technical expertise. This meant discussing the importance of quality versus quantity--that links from pages and sites that are authoritative within their topical area, with thematically relevant anchor text, hopefully from pages with lower numbers of outbound links, and higher PageRank may carry more value than other links. Of course, all of this is on a relative scale, though the ideal is finding links that score high on all these, and other, signals.
On the flight back, as exhaustion was starting to settle in, I found myself trying to come up with some image that could encapsulate these concepts of link building. One of the great things about being in a state of exhaustion is that simple visuals often come to mind over more complex ones. At some point, my mind settled in on the image of a mobile...as in the sculptures you hang in the air, based on counterbalanced components. Some of these feature pieces that are larger, counterbalanced by a pair of smaller ones, and so on.
I thought this image was appropriate, how the largest piece represented that most ideal, highest-quality link. Every site has a link profile, composed of all the links coming into it. Some are highly relevant, some highly irrelevant. Some come from authoritative domains, others not so much. We really, as do search engines, expect to find a diverse mix of links, many of which we have no control over. But while those ideal links may take more effort to achieve, they often carry considerably more weight, and value, than a handful of low-quality links.
Link quality illustrated as a mobile sculpture.
It's important, when link building, to remember that most links have value and we must find balance--spend too much time just looking for ideal links, and your link profile will remain stunted, but just building links for links' sake will leave you out of balance, with links that convey no real value, off-topic from spammy sites.
Link building, like much of SEO, is about balance.
Seeing how it is nearly Thanksgiving here in the States, what better time to take a look at the SEO industry and give a little thought for some of the things that I give thanks for.
Search Engines
First and foremost would have to be search engines themselves, since without them, SEO would not be as important as it is. This isn't to say that SEO's value is only tied to the existence of search engines. SEO has really become much more encompassing than the acronym it is as SEO continues to evolve more as an extension of traditional marketing.
Ability to Rank
While every client and site owner feels challenged when it comes to ranking...... Read more
These days, there are several ways to get a customized or internal search engine free of charge. Google's Custom Search Engine (CSE) and Yahoo's Search Builder lead the way, and their products are fairly easy to implement. After the Big Two, there are several services trying to make their mark, but one that that stands out is the Swicki from Eurekster.
A Swicki is a combination search portal and widget that can be customized on any topic or topics either within a Web site, group of Web sites, or the Web at large. The end product is a custom search experience returning relevant, targeted results as well as revenue opportunity (yes, you can monetize your visitors!) for blog and Web site publishers.
A Swicki is created in a fairly simple, four-step process. And, they can be shared, so if creating one seems like too much of a hassle, there are literally thousands to simply grab for free from Eurekster.com. These neat little customizable search engines look nice on a Web site or blog and they pull information from a combination of sources, including Blinkx's video feed.
But there's more to a Swicki than that, especially from an SEO perspective. First of all, the company has its own search engine, spidering the Web and producing its own results--and, it works very well. Secondly, the social search widget included in the Swicki features a customizable tag cloud that adds popular search terms automatically to the Web page upon which it is embedded, making it easy for the Swicki user to reflect popular keywords or build their brand.
But what's unique is that the Swicki search results ranking is reflective of every previous keyword search, click, vote and user behavior within each customized Swicki, lending a publisher-guided and community-powered slant to the results. While this might not be ideal for general search, it can really improve upon the search experience when used within the context of a niche or topic of interest.
Last year, The New York Times published an article called "This Boring Headline Is Written for Google," which focused on the effect search engines are having on journalistic writing. The primary focus was on the negative impact of "writing for machines" and the corresponding loss of creativity such an endeavor entails.
What always amazes me is the fear and anger that many writers express about writing with search engines in mind. Just in using the phrase "writing for machines" they create among themselves a rather Orwellian hysteria, but it is only just that: hysterics. Why? Because it simply isn't true, symbolically or factually. Search engines--and especially Google--are designed to examine text published on the Internet and simply return accurate results when a human user plugs in words on the other end. To that end, there is no writing for machines, there is only writing for other human beings.
What has been affected is twofold. First, the writer must want to be found, or at least must be paid, in part, to be found. Most newspapers, which make money in part from online advertising, encourage this. Second, in response to this need, the accuracy of writing and the logistics of words must be taken into consideration more than in the past. These attributes aren't for the proverbial "machine," however, but specifically for the end user, the searcher.
Thus, creativity is not challenged at all. Rather, the creativity simply needs to shift with the new paradigm. Let's take writing a news story headline as an example. One headline in a recent edition of The New York Times is "Tangoing Cheek to Cheek for 3 Minutes in the Park." The story is about dancers hooking up in Central Park to tango and otherwise skip and hop together. The title above is fun and creative. It may not be fully optimized for search engines, but in fact, it's not far off.
What could be done to improve this headline for search engine users without obliterating its creative edge? It's a matter of including focused, common-sense wording without replacing colorfulness or colloquialisms. The term "cheek to cheek" is fun and describes dancing in a way that might not reflect how a user would employ a search engine. But that doesn't mean it has to go away. The other half of the headline, "for 3 minutes" is also colorful, but has less to do with the story. Little of the article focuses on the length of the dances, but instead the positive attributes of the dancing that goes on among the middle-aged in Central Park. Calling Central Park "the Park" adds ambiguity for humans and spiders alike, so call it "Central Park" instead.
A search-friendly headline can often incorporate search-savvy words within a creative headline by halving the headline into two distinct yet complementary parts. For example, our headline here could become "Dancing the Tango in Central Park, Cheek to Cheek." What have we lost? The time reference, which isn't core to the story anyway. What have we gained? Descriptive and focused search terms in the form of "Central Park" and "dancing" and "tango" (which is more popular with searchers than "tangoing"). And, I would argue, we have not lost any of the creativity or local color of the original headline.
This is just one example, but the core philosophy here is for journalists to let go of their search engine "machine" fears and simply embrace accuracy; writing search-friendly content is not to consider "the machine," but rather to consider the same humans they otherwise write for. Reaching them is the only difference, and through search engines, writers have both a larger and more focused audience to reach. Why on earth do they complain? Hey journalists, these search engines are actually good for you!
Marissa Mayer at SES San Jose 2007
(Credit: Chris Smith of Netconcepts)According to Marissa, Google is making moves towards cost-per-action as a more ideal auction-based pricing model, but she also pointed out that it's a long way away.
Cost-per-action may be a new term for some readers, so I'll review it for a moment, and then move on to explain why I think her comment is important.
Through its AdWords product, Google has been testing a version of CPA in which advertisers pay Google only when a certain marketing goal is met. Where cost-per-click means someone pays Google (or another entity) each time a user clicks on a particular piece of advertising, cost-per-action means that someone pays when a user completes a potentially larger and more involved transaction. Google gives the example of an airline paying a certain CPA every time a user clicks on their ad and purchases a plane ticket. Only when both deeds are done does the airline pay, but it will most likely be a larger sum paid than a simple cost per click.
Why, then, is Marissa's statement about cost-per-action so important? There are several reasons. First, CPA has the potential to significantly reduce the occurrence of click fraud--a bigger problem than most pay-per-click advertisers realize. This reduction will occur because the charge on the advertiser is better tied to the advertiser's desired end result. While click fraud detection systems like PPC Assurance will help advertisers get some of those dollars back that were lost through fraud, Google really needs to make it a lot harder to commit click fraud. With the current CPC model, it's easy for fraudsters to invoke a charge on the advertiser with a simple click of the mouse. Conducting a more involved transaction, like the purchase of an airline ticket, is much harder for fraudsters to game.
Secondly, if CPA becomes the dominant advertising model for Google, it will affect the entire search marketing industry. The acquisition of clicks will become less interesting to marketers, and as such, strategies and tactics will change. The harder-to-measure "action" will become central. This could spill over into the SEO industry, where CPC-based organic search solutions like GravityStream and perhaps even ongoing retainer-based SEO consulting packages may, over time, be priced and/or judged in terms related to CPA. In other words, "actions" may be a more elusive metric to track than raw traffic, but it is much more telling as to the ROI of the search marketing spend.
As Marisa said, the evolution to cost-per-action as the default model is a long way away. So pay-per-click will be the prevailing search advertising model for some time to come. Nonetheless, you should start thinking about your search engine marketing in "cost-per-action" terms now, giving yourself a leg up against your competitors in years to come.
As part of this week's Search Engine Strategies - San Jose convention, I was invited to a private party with fifty or so of top folks in the SEO world. The event was called the "Vintage Tub and Bath Event" and took place at the beautiful Japanese gardens and restaurant in Saratoga, Hakone. Attendees included representatives of Yahoo, Live Search (MSN), and, of course, Google.
SES San Jose 2007
One of the top entertainments of the evening was slot-car racing. There were many races, and they were open to anyone at the party. But then the smackdown came: a race between the search engines to see who is truly fastest.
It was an exciting and tense race, with each of the participants balancing control and speed just as real race car drivers do. And, like real races, the cars were painted up to represent each company's logos. In the end, Yahoo took the checkered flag, followed by MSN Search in second, and (oh my goodness) Google losing the race! (Ask was a no-show).
The Search Engine Slot Cars
When asked what his winning strategy was, Yahoo jockey Tim Mayer answered, "I just stayed on the track."
Emcee Allan Dick quickly relayed that information. "Did you hear that folks?" he asked. "Yahoo says to stay on track!"
Rest well tonight, People of Search. It's all been solved. Yahoo is the fastest.
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