SEO and Social Media

Here are a few little tricks you can do to customize or filter Google results. These 4 are clutch tricks for me.  I end up using these more than most other tricks in my arsenal (oh, there are plenty…):

Enter -site: to remove sites from the SERPs: If you’re looking for competitors for a popular product, and keep seeing the big players, comparison shopping engines or affiliates, and would like to get a better feel for the other players in the landscape, this trick works well.To see this work, search for a key phrase like Wilson Official NCAA Football.  You may see sites like Amazon.com, Nextag.com, and Bizrate.Try the search again like this -site:www.amazon.com -site:www.nextag.com -site:www.bizrate.com Wilson Official NCAA Football.  See the difference?  There are several ways you can use this iltering for your competitive education.

Discover related keywords: Google has the ability to show pages with keywords related to the actual keywords you searched.  They’ll do this when their algorithms suggest it’s a better result.  To get a feeling of what keywords variation Google is thinking about, at a tilda (~) to the query.  For example, Google ~sofa.  At the very least this can inspire your keyword research.

Find File Types in a site: Doing a quick audit and want to see if a site is using a particular file type (like Flash)?  This will give you some insight: site:www.nike.com filetype:swf

Figure out where those indented links really rank: Today a Google search (on my computer) for Frank Zappa will show you Zappa.com with an indented link for Zappa.com/whatsnew in the #2 position.  Indented links are pages from the same domain that can show up anywhere in the bracket of 10 results, except Google groups them together for user value.  In other words, although Zappa.com/whatsnew is ranked at #2, it’s not really the second result.  It could be the fifth, or the seventh, or the tenth.When working towards SERP domination, it’s important to know exactly where all the pages lie so you have a better idea of who you need to beat.  Add &num=x to the end of the Google search query URL, where “x” is a number less than 10 (remember – without using Advanced Search, there are only 10 true listings in natural results on any given SERP).  Keep experimenting with lower numbers for “x” until the indented link is gone.  Once it’s gone, you’ll be able to surmise where the actual position of the listing.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Sphinn.com is dropping its voting (ala Digg) system for a new editor controlled model. Sounds like there has been lower engagement than in past years, likely leaving a larger percentage of the activity to spammers and voting mobs. It will be interesting to see if the full-on editor model will be better than the group voting model. I wouldn’t think it would be, but then again…

>Others complain that someone else seems to “win” all the time.

Although I don’t think I ever typed those words on the web, I have to agree. It’s why I bailed a year ago. I loved the idea that marketers would decide what is the most valuable content in our industry, but after seeing what constantly got voted up (opposed to routinely greater stuff that didn’t get any votes – yes, I was one of the people who went deeper into the site), I just stopped believing that it had the same value for me that I originally thought it had.

Note… I said, “for me.”  This is totally my opinion. But in the end, it just felt like anything a Sphinn rock star would submit would sky rocket. Even if there were dupe submissions. I’m all for the authority of a rock star Sphinner, but there’s no way the dupe submissions weren’t getting any traction if they were equally as good.  It just meant too many readers stuck to a tiny slipstream of submissions and embrace the whole site.

Readers will still be able to submit articles.  But editors (who actually always had the ability to control things anyway despite the votes – hey, sounds like American Idol!) will play a bigger role.  Sounds a lot like YouMoz, come to think of it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m very sad the “people” thing didn’t work.  I haven’t given up on social communities though… just maybe that one. But I’m definitely interested in giving Sphinn another look when its “under new management” so to speak.

Popularity: 1% [?]

The deed is done – after many, many months, Bing is finally powering Yahoo’s natural search.  The results between the two engines are the same.  Take a look – click above.

Popularity: 13% [?]

You know the Old Spice social media campaign that exploded in the end of July?  Lots of online views, and low ROI (well, according to the preliminary reports from outside of the Old Spice camp).  I’ve read enough articles calling this a failure for the low impact to revenue.  Whether true or not***, all I know is that Old Spice, which I always considered (for whatever reason) a low quality, old fashioned product, is now on my radar.  This is momentum, and this is a rare gem today.  A lot of marketing fails to gain any attention at all.  When you succeed, and cut through some noise, consider that a success.  Now, in 2010, you need to ‘level up’ on that success, or you might as well have not even tried.  Some success isn’t enough success.

SEO is marketing and branding, too.  Getting routine rankings for similar queries helps the searcher buy into your brand.  Your customers spend a lot of time in Google.  Typically more unique visitors come to your site from a Google search than any other medium.  Maybe you’re not getting the sales you’re hoping for from natural search, but you may be building your mindshare just by appearing frequently in the search engine result pages.  A lot of searchers trust Google.  If Google constantly shows your webpage to the same searcher, the perception may be that Google knows something you don’t know.  A lot of people actually think that Google ranks based on traffic and popularity.  Whatever the reason, that semi-conscious thought goes a long way in online marketing.  It could even influence offline foot traffic or sales through your other online marketing channels.  With good rankings comes good brand visibility.

My goal isn’t to convince you to ignore ROI in SEO (or any online marketing), but I do want to help you think about it differently if you’re one of the people who say, “my campaign failed because it didn’t turn a profit.”  I want you to remember that marketing is more than just immediate sales.  Sales is an important piece dependent on the components of your strategy.  Brands that concentrate on branding do so because they know the value.  Just because we’re online with amazing abilities to cookie and track, doesn’t mean we should forget the original definition of marketing and branding.

As a postscript, and as far as Old Spice goes, I was walking through the grocery store last week.  I did stop and pause at the deodorant.  I didn’t need any.  But I was semi-consciously influenced, and I this time I caught it.  If Old Spice keeps up their momentum, I might stop next and buy when I am in the market for deodorant.  If they don’t keep it up, that stop may have been it for me.

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***Update – Per the beginning of this article, it looks like the reports I was reading of low ROI for the Old Spice campaign have been, well, wrong.  Hard stats are in.  According to BrandWeek, Old Spice’s sales increased 107% over last month and 55% over the course of the past 3 months.  Nice.

Popularity: 34% [?]

Search Engine Journal posted an article I wrote.  Check it out:

The Thinning Line Between SEO and Social Media

Popularity: 16% [?]

Today I was asked to look at a site and explain why it’s not ranking.  The answer… the site was whispering.

If you don’t have content, Google won’t know what your site is about.  But I don’t mean any old content.  I mean HTML text.

Oh… you say you have HTML content?  Let’s see if Google can hear it.

1. Perform a search in Google to get your page to show up.
2. Click the ‘cached’ link.

3. Click the ‘text-only version’ link.

4. Find a sixth grader and ask them to explain what this page is about.

I once heard that Google has a reading comprehension of a sixth grader.  If that’s true, then you need to speak to Google like a sixth grader.  Give simple context, but be specific.  Speak up!  Promote your message, hammer it home.  Don’t mumble (and spam your pages with junk content).

Granted there are a several ways you can add contextual relevance to a site, it doesn’t need to just be in the body.  Tags and links still play a big part, sure.  But why be shy in the body of your website?  Is it that “text is ugly?”  Is it that “people don’t read online?”  All untrue.  You read this post, and frankly, I think it looks rather beautiful.

Form vs. function, my friends.  Form vs. function.

Popularity: 54% [?]

Note: The title is not How To Trick Google.  I am not a spammer – not in the slightest.  It’s just not the side of the fence I reside in.  But, as someone who breathes SEO, I do get curious about understanding blackhat techniques from time to time.

I followed a thread on Webmaster World (via SERoundtable), where an SEO was requesting a direct answer on a tactic he uses.  His tactic uses Javascript for hiding affiliate links from Google.  His external .js file places the links and content into the webpage quickly after it loads.  But, he blocks the external file with robots.txt, so Google never sees the full final page with the inserted Javascript content.

With all the technology that makes up webpages, and incredibly smart techies working as SEOs, it’s interesting to see what clever things SEOs still come up with.  Obviously Google engineers eventually learn all these new tactics, but are they really able to defend against them?  They provide guidelines on their Google site, but these guidelines are usually written loosely.  They often raise more questions then they answer.  And per the tactic above, I’m pretty sure that’s why – loosely, Google is able to take the stance against this tactic, without addressing (or even knowing about) this tactic.

As a whitehat SEO, I talk to link building tactics that “are against Google’s guidelines”, or CSS tricks that “are against Google’s guidelines.”  Not because I think that Google is definitely able to catch them automatically, but because there’s a possibility.  There are humans behind Google’s rankings – they might hear about it.  A competitor might report you.  Google’s toolbar, that’s on one of your visitor’s browser, may report back a different experience than the Google spiders report back.

Even though I fall for the loose guidelines, it does sounds like a big if though.  If Googlet wants to thwart spammers, maybe it’s time to get more clear.  Spend the time specifying the guidelines.  Is it fear that specified guidelines will act as blueprints to spam techniques?  Maybe – but it also might thwart SEOs from walking in the gray.

Popularity: 7% [?]

It has begun.

If you didn’t hear, Bing and Yahoo have merged to a degree. Bing search will begin powering Yahoo.com’s search function. This merge also includes paid search (which is the real monetary motivator for this merger). The transition timelines are now out there.

Apparently it should be done between August and September.

Read more at Search Engine Roundtable.

Popularity: 8% [?]

I just got back from SES new York.  It was my first one.  I’ve been in this game for 10 years, and always wanted to experience SES.  Cost and timing always got in the way.  I figured all the conference goodness was getting live blogged out anyway.  But I was wrong.  With more than 80 sessions, I hit about 12 of them.  There was incredible value in the side conversations.  It’s a social experience.

It was really interesting to be with rooms full of peers, all with different levels of experience and philosophies.  No matter how confident (or cocky) you are, it still pulls you out of your comfort zone. You start questioning everything.  You’re exhausted by the end.

One topic that routinely came up was the value of search for business.  Old topic but finds new life each year.  Is PPC or SEO better for your ROI?  That’s such an executive level question, but to the shigrin of the asker, it doesn’t get answered straight forward.  It can’t.  The answer is “it depends.”

So I did attend one SEO only session where PPC came up. The feeling of the panelists was since everyone expects PPC to only be an ROI channel, compensate with SEO. Compensate?  As in, clean up with SEO?  It was a bit of a knock against the PPC definition of today.

Wait… It’s all coming back to me.

When PPC first came out, it was a way to help searchers, who were looking for yiour offerings, find your offerings.  Period.  Traditional marketing.  PPC offered visibility into your efforts unlike any form before it.  Television couldn’t tell you exactly who watched or acted on your ad.  Billboards couldn’t do it.  Magazines, bus wraps – everything – failed at providing hard data.  So naturally, this amazing technology bombed us.  A little later, google put out conversion code.  Now we could tell how much money we made off an ad.  We can report returns on ad spend.  A version of interactive ROI became more and more of the focus.  Soon, in some circles, it wasn’t about connecting users first.  It was about buying revenue.  The C-level was ecstatic.  Marketers who got good at PPC looked like rock stars and happily spent ad budgets.  Life got easy.

Avinash Kaushik had a keynote, and spoke about not just the micro side, but suggested we think about the macro side. What happened to marketing in search?  What happened to the value of creating return visits, lifetime value, and brand awareness?  Demanding solely ROI means a lot of bidding on brand terms, of which a massive percentage would be picked up by SEO anyway (since you almost always rank for your own terms).  I know you have exceptions, and you need to compete against competitors who are going after your brand terms, but if you’re a shop selling dog gift items, and sell dog sweaters, bid the terms even if they don’t convert.  Let people know you exist for when they want to buy dog collars or leashes.  Get on their radar.  That’s worth the cost of a click.  You used to think your customers were worth more when you were blindly paying for billboards on the highway.  Today, with Google being the most visited website in the world, I would put all my money in search first and foremost.  Google owns your brand.  Not you.  Not your customer.  Customers find you first through Google 9 times out of 10.  If Google is your portal, advertise on it.  Don’t be cheap.

I think the SEOs in this panel saw the miss on PPC, and suggested SEO to the rescue?  If you can’t (or more likely, won’t) invest in PPC for the non-ROI of it, then maybe you’ll have some luck with the cheaper alternative – SEO.  Branding, reputation management, controlling search engine real estate, and marketing can all be done with SEO.  Though SEO is not an ROI channel (where the dollar can guarantee anything like PPC), it is certainly valuable as an avenue to reach massive, larger streams of qualified visits.

When I do PPC for my clients, I explain this value.  Sometimes they get it, sometimes they don’t.  But at least I tried.  Technology spoiled us.  We lost the real value of marketing and advertising.  The 10:1 ROI focus is not the solution to online success.  If you think it is, it’s time to look at the big macro picture.

Popularity: 15% [?]

When Corey Haim died a few days, TMZ put up a page with a pretty spammy URL:

http://www.tmz.com/2010/03/10/corey-haim-dead-died-death-lapd-overdose-corey-feldman-lost-boys-two-coreys/

Dead, died, and death? Corey Feldman? Really???

Maybe it’s an overzealous SEO or overzealous logic in the CMS, but this is pretty much straight against Google guidelines (if it were a title tag I think it would get more of a flag). But my question is, will Google penalize TMZ? They’re a pretty big property. And yes, Google has penalized – even banned – big properties before, but usually for shadier practices. Does Google’s algorithm have a way of forgiving this spam because of the popularity of TMZ? Personally I think so. But what kind of message does this send? If TMZ gets away with it, then I think other webmasters will try.

Unfair for those who follow the rules.

Popularity: 9% [?]