Welcome back to the infamous “Twitter Weekly” attack where I dissect the hype around Twitter like a mad dog on crack. This week I will ridicule the baseless but nevertheless highly popular gossip about Google aiming to buy Twitter.
First off I tell you one thing: Guess what? Google won’t buy Twitter!
I don’t have to disturb Eric Schmidt’s fiancé’s privacy to know that. There are plenty of reasons not buy Twitter, especially if your name is Google. I personally hate those “Gazillion reasons why x will y” postings so I will tell you only a few of them and never disclose the actual number of gazillion reasons.
- Twitter is humongously expensive. Yes, indeed. Twitter has so much vulture capitalist (term coined by Aaron Wall, not me) cash that they are worth more than BP probably by now. Facebook offered 500 million $$$ back in 2008 already and Twitter refused. Last year the were estimated at 1 billion. This year they might be worth a gazillion and a half already!
- Google gulps your teeny weeny tweets already via the so called Twitter firehose. It’s cheaper and less messy. You don’t have to deal with the FTC for getting hacked each other day and such.
- Google has already digested a microblogging service, Jaiku. They needed only 15 months to actually throw it up. Now how effective is that! Google sucks at social like a newborn baby. Google’s performance at microblogging is like BP’s performance at stopping oil leaks. No matter whether they buy a third party service or they do it themselves, any attempt to make a microblogging product that didn’t implode almost instantly is hopeless. Be it Jaiku, Google Wave or Google Buzz. Why? Google consists of mad scientists. Never sleeping geeks playing with life size Lego toys. They are anti-social.
- Google doesn’t need to buy Twitter to enlarge its penis/overcome the competitive advantage of Twitter. They just need a quick and dirty third party service on the cheap which enables Google to better better spy on you and assess tweet reputation and authority. Thus they are far more likely to go on a shopping spree in the already disgruntled Twitter developer community. To me it’s just a question of when and which service will be acquired. I guess they will swallow Topsy. Otherwise it will be TweetMeme or BackType. Those three services have some clue. They might buy bit.ly as well as the guys down there will go bankrupt soon anyways beacuse of t.co and will desperately seek an exit right now.
Now what do you think? Will Google gurgle down Twitter or some other poor souls? Now don’t be shy, I don’t bite.
© SEOptimise – Thinking of attending SMX London in May 2010? get a 15% discount code!
6-28-2010 by admin in Google, google acquires twitter, google buys twitter, gossip, rumor, social media, twitter | 0 Comments » |
Do yourself a big favor and get some video surveillance to protect your home office from being compromised by thieves. How much do you stand to lose if someone steals your office equipment?
And now, in French:
Se faire une grande faveur et obtenir quelque surveillance vidéo pour protéger votre bureau à domicile d’est compromis par vole. Combien vous vous tenez pour perdre si quelqu’un vole votre matériel de bureau ?
Happy waiter by howard N2GOT
Today someone was searching for a “client’s guide to SEO” over at my SEO 2.0 blog. I think this topic is more fitting here on SEOptimise so I will explain the best approach to SEO companies and Internet marketing agencies for potential clients.
In 2010 most people in business already know at least something about how Google works.
Business people know about keywords and often pay for Google Ads already. That’s why it’s easier nowadays to deal with clients. You don’t have to explain anymore that SEO is needed or how it works. They already know and thus they contact you.
There also some drawbacks as many SEO clients already have had a bad experience with SEO practicioners, are convinced they know themselves what’s best for them and last but not least have too high expectations for a too low price.
A client can gain a competitive advantage by approaching SEO agencies in the right way.
Basically finding a fitting SEO agency is like finding a good restaurant and eating out. Thus I will use this allegory to make my explanation easier to grasp. You need to know a few more things to approach an SEO agency correctly.
Know what you want
Imagine yourself visiting a restaurant and asking for something tasty to eat. You wouldn’t do that. You would take a look at the menu and ask for actual dishes. You would perhaps consult the waiter what he recommends and whether the food of your choice is fresh. Ask for actual services and outcomes not for fuzzy metrics like “ranking number one” or “gaining traffic”.
So if I were a business person seeking SEO services I’d approach a SEO Agency with the following wishes and questions:
“We are in need of keyword research, onsite optimization and link building services. We prefer high quality links and content creation as a way to get them. With our SEO campaign we plan to reduce our bounce rate from 50% to 20%, increase our conversion rate from currently 1% to 2% and to increase sales by at least 50% within 1 year. Do you have the resources to achieve that? How would you try to achieve those targets and how much do you think this would cost for a year? We pay 5000$ per month already for Google ads and plan to cut costs here by at least 50% after one year of successful SEO. Please outline an SEO strategy for a year with these objectives.”
Reading this I would realize that you already know quite well what SEO is about. I wouldn’t bother to explain what keyword research, onsite ptimization or link building is but would focus on the actual measures to be taken to reach your goals. I would probably tell you where your goals might be a little unrealistic as well. Last but not least I’d outline the strategy in an easily digestible form.
Know what you don’t want
When you visit a French restaurant you don’t want to eat French fries I assume. Thus you know quite well what you don’t want. Accordingly in SEO there are lots of things you most probably don’t want. Clarifying it from the start might be very helpful both to achieve your goals and to get the right type of agency in the first place.
To make sure not to get third rate SEO you could write something like this:
“As a reputable leader in our sector we don’t accept low quality link building techniques like mass directory submission, irrelevant blog commenting, keyword rich forum signatures and so called three way link exchanges along with other kinds of link farms. We don’t want to get linked in “your network”. We seek high quality editorial links from relevant third parties in our sector instead.”
Know your limitations
Most potential clients these days already have done some form of keyword research either themselves or with by their former SEO service providers. That’s great but it’s like visiting a restaurant and bringing your own recipe. We have to do a keyword research of our own. The keyword you provide are a great help and can help reduce the time we need to perform our market and keyword research but we can’t solely rely on research done by others.
I’ve seen many client for example who were focused on big competitive terms while they largely ignored the low hanging fruit you could reach withing weeks or a few months after starting a SEO campaign. Other clients have huge lists keywords and phrases that do not make sense from a strategic perspective. You don’t usually optimize for a hundred keyphrases. You of course do by by way of increasing your overall site authority. Then not only the keywords you directly optimize rise in the search results but also those others you don’t directly optimize for.
Last but not least many clients do not know how to find money keywords, those keywords that really drive sales or otherwise make money. Just going after traffic volume, even with relevant traffic doesn’t suffice to succeed.
Don’t assume you know more about SEO than we do:
Always allow the SEO to do their work as a whole. Don’t make them rel on potentially flawed wok you or others already did.
Know how to motivate
When eating out you expect the more expensive restaurant to be the better one don’t you? By paying more you ensure quality. The same applies to SEO. The less you pay the worse the quality you get.
While much of SEO is tedious work like coding, writing, connecting with linkerati etc. that should be paid by the hour or day additional financial incentives can influence the outcome of an SEO campaign significantly. People simply work differently when they know there will be more money in it depending on the outcome. You are more focused on the results and not just on tweaking more code, adding more content and getting more links.
Your offer might sound something like this:
“In case we reach our objectives within the first year of our SEO campaign we plan to add a bonus to our payment. Also we consider a sales dependent performance based payment model. We know there is a considerable time and effort investment needed to achieve results but once we’ll see those we’re ready to share the revenue with you.”
Know our limitations
Imagine a restaurant where people just get in ask the waiter a few questions, talk about the price for a while and then leave. Just one of five actually actually sitting down and places an order. A good SEO specialist or company typically receives many inquiries. Many of those are low quality inquiries you can already sense are made just for the sake of getting one more offer.
Make sure to choose the restaurant or SEO agency before you approach them. Find one with a name, one with a great renowned cook for instance. In SEO trust is everything. A generic “SEO Services Company” is most probably low quality. On the other hand an agency with both a brand of its own and a personal brand of the people who work for it will be more reliable as they want to keep their good names.
To set up an SEO offer that makes sense takes time an effort by itself. In case you want to reply to all generic inquiries saying “hello, we are x and want SEO for website y” you’ll end up wasting most of your precious time.
So make sure to approach the right SEO agency from the start:
In case you don’t like the offer then try another one but don’t just approach ten of them and compare. I can smell such inquiries and I will ignore them whenever I have the choice. I will spend my time on potential clients there are serious about working with me.
Know who does the work
Imagine entering a restaurant and judging it solely by the waiters. Does the waiter wear shiny expensive shoes and suit? Does the waiter recite the menu like a poet? Well, this must be the best restaurant, right? I remember the times when I worked in an Internet agency of the early days. We had three kinds of staff there, the sales reps, the project managers and the people who make the actual work. The sales reps and the project managers were mostly wearing suits, driving sleek sports cars and promoting everything the client wanted to get in a time frame that was nonsense.
Then the actual designers and developers had to cope with the impossible tasks of building huge excellent websites in a too short time. What happened was twofold: Many, many bugs and timelines that didn’t work out. Broken websites and projects delayed by months. While the sales reps didn’t care, they have gotten their pay already as often they got a commission based on the project size. They weren’t even present while the others were working on the project.
The project managers were running around in a frenzy and increasing the pressure on the poor developers who had to work day and night in 12 to 16h shifts. At midnight they were getting “free pizza” for their superhuman efforts. Most clients haven’t ever talked to the developers.
Make sure you know who does the actual work:
Speak with the actual coders, writers and link builders. Speak with the geeks. Speak with the guys wearing sneakers and checkered shirts. Don’t judge the restaurant by the waiters. Know the chefs. The chefs don’t wear suits.
When you take into account the advice mentioned above you will most probably succeed with your outsourced SEO campaign. It will also succeed faster.
Always remember that SEO is like good food. You don’t want the cheapest one, you probably prefer the healthiest or the tastiest.
I think I will extend this guide in two weeks should it succeed. So make sure to let me now in the comments or elsewhere that you like it. The topic of the next post will be how to deal with SEO agencies or specialists once you have found one. Success in most cases depends on how the SEO practicioners work together with the clients or rather how the clients do it on their part.
© SEOptimise – Thinking of attending SMX London in May 2010? get a 15% discount code!
6-23-2010 by admin in How to, Keyword Research, SEO, cliens, guide, link building, seo agency, seo guide | 0 Comments » |
Last weekend I finally convinced myself to buy an iPad, after a few weeks of trying to figure out if I actually needed one.
I know I’m not the only one – and there’s probably a lot of people in the search industry who are currently contemplating the same decision, so I’m sure you’ll appreciate a few extra reasons you convince yourself that an iPad is essential!
1) How do you advertise on an iPad?
This is a question I was asked last week. The right answer may be that they don’t need an iPad app and they don’t need to think about marketing any differently just yet. But as a search marketer you should be aware and able to respond to your client, letting them know how the iPad may potentially change the game.
2) Why doesn’t your clients great flash-based site not convert as well on an iPad?!
The popularity of the iPad so far is incredible, you need to make sure users can browse clients (and your own) website in the same way they would normally.
3) Tweetdeck
Twitter is now essential for most SEM’s. Tweetdeck on a iPad is so much better than using a phone, so when you’re at home or on the train it’s far easier to use – and it saves booting up your laptop. It’s also very useful when tweeting from conferences and not wanting to carry around a laptop or slowly type away on a phone.
4) Google Analytics app
Without Flash, Google Analytics isn’t quite as good on the web. So the Analytics app really helps here – very surprisingly AdWords doesn’t work very well at all on the iPad yet. I’m sure that’s something Google will be planning to fix quickly.
5) Email
I find the iPhone great for reading emails on the move, but it’s a bit too small to send long responses or to organise emails into folders. The iPad makes this much easier.
6) Amazon Kindle/iBooks
I’ve recently written a post on the top 12 books every SEM needs to read, it’s not always easy to have these available when you have a spare 20 minutes to read though. Using iBooks or the Amazon Kindle makes this far easier, removing the need to carry around a book. The Winnie the Pooh book was preloaded on the iPad – honest!
7) Reeder
I’ve found that I subscribe to and read blogs far less frequently these days. But by being able to star/share articles in Google Reader which I am interesting in and coming back to read them later is really useful. There’s also the read it later app too, which I haven’t used yet but it does look very useful.
8) Keynote
Don’t worry about taking your laptop to that client meeting for a presentation. Keynote on the iPad is far easier!
9) Things
I’ve written before about the importance of organisation and GTD for a search marketer. Things is great for organising tasks and key projects, plus you can sync this across your mac, iPhone and iPad – making it easier to stay up-to-date on the move.
10) Blogging
The WordPress app is a great way of writing blog posts when you’re not at your PC or laptop. Again, for us SEM’s it’s a great tool to use at conferences – making it easier to live-blog or type up notes.
11) A bonus reason – it’s pretty cool!
Watching HD YouTube videos, the BBC iPlayer and IMDB app film trailers is much better on the iPad – plus it’s a great way to read the newspaper on a Sunday morning!
So there you have it, no excuses now – you’re not an Apple addict – it’s a completely necessary part of your SEM toolkit!
© SEOptimise – Thinking of attending SMX London in May 2010? get a 15% discount code!
6-22-2010 by admin in ipad, search engine marketing | 0 Comments » |
Recently a client of mine has been once again approached by someone who wanted to sell him an exact match keyword domain for one of the main keyphrases we optimize for. It was a German domain so I will use another similar phrase as example instead.
In this SEO tutorial I want to show you the process of assessing a keyword domain for purchase and finding out whether buying it does make sense or not.
Most common domains names that have keywords in them have been grabbed already.
That’s a shame as many are empty or only filled with low quality ads. We know for sure that both Google and Bing prefer exact match keyword domains in some cases.
For instance if someone searches for [iphone shop] and you own iphoneshop.com you have ideally an advantage compared to someone having unrelateddomain.net/somedirectory/iphone-shop.html
SEO experts disagree as to whether it’s really the search engines that prefer such matching domain names or whether it’s the people who tend to link to keyword domains with their keywords as anchor text that push them up. Webmasters tend to link this way: <a href=”ipadshop.com”>iPhone Shop</a> or <a href=”iphoneshop.com”>iphoneshop.com</a>. In both cases the website gets the additional SEO push for the keywords.
No matter why, it’s often easier to rank with exact match keyword domains.
Take note that I say “keyword” for the sake of simplicity but nowadays you will use a keyphrase instead. This keyphrase will contain more than one actual keyword.
Are you a new kid on the block?
Do you already have a website, domain or brand for that niche you trying to rank for or not? Or are you a new kid on the block?
In case you already have a website like most businesses have these days you should thnk twice before buying an expensive new domain. Maybe you can cover the niche or market with your existing domain.
Is your old domain really old as in older than 3 years? Then our old domain is really valuable. Anything older than one year is already OK as Google judges domains based on their age. So even a domain without any keywords may have an SEO advantage compared to a newer keyword domain.
Take a look at your current online real estate. Do you (or your client) have reputable domains already? If you’re new it makes more sense. An established domain is in most cases better than a keyword domain.
Are similar domains available?
Try a little trick add a random charachter or number and search for a similar domain. Something like ziphoneshop.com or 7iphoneshop.com You will notice that all relevant TLD domains are still available (as time of writing). For a guy named Zack or a shop located at 7th street this domain domain name might be even better. Consider competing in the seacrh reults with many generic domain names like that.
You might end up on the first page of Google with iphoneshop.com, iphone-shop.com iphoneshop.net and iphoneshop.us and you are the only person that stands outs with your initials. In case you already have a brand you might consider even a longer domain name. Something zacksiphoneshop.com or 7thstreetiphoneshop.com
Check whether domain names with added branding are available with any hosting provider or a tool like domai.nr
In our example you’ll notice that in Google.com there is iphoneshopusa.com ranking quite well. I see it at #6.
What’s the TLD?
While you can’t really prove the superiority of .com domains it’s by now consensus that .com domains are worth more than other TLD’s aka Top Level Domains like .net .org .us .eu or .info
This is one of the reasons why a domain name like sex.com sells for 14 Million Dollars. It’s not just the keyword in it. People are used to .com domains, that’s one of the key factors. They just assume that the default domain ending is a “.com”.
This may vary internatioally though. The British co.uk might be the better choice in the UK and .fr or .de in the respective countries.
In contrast .info and especially .biz domains have a bad rep. This goes as far as that Google even ascribes lower values by default. Nonetheless I still prefer .info domains when I have to choose between .info, .net and .us/.eu for example. .net is just meaningless nowadays and .us/.eu has a limited meaning. People might assume that the geographic orientiation of the site is US/EU only centered and bounce.
On the other hand I haven’t seen many reputabable .biz domains to this day. I always see somthinng cheapcrappyseoservices.biz instead.
There are lots of exotic domain TLD domains you can buy as well. Especially for short URLs o funny Web 2.0 services it may make sense to take the rare domain instead of the common one.
Check whether other popular TLD or exotic domains are still available using a tool like Domai.nr
Who sells the domain?
The particular seller who has approached my client this time was a competitor. Why would a competitor give up such an advantage? So that offer sounded suspicious to me. In most other cases some “domainers” or domain grabbers will either contact you or wait until you contact them. They can wait for years. This way many good domains get wasted indefinitely. Many people in th edomain business will also try to be more or less anonymous.
In all these cases you have to double check the domain. The only way I can think of where I would buy a domain without really be wary of the seller is someone clos eto me, I work with or trust for years. In all other cases you really have to check the domain you wnat to buy looking for several things. Read on.
The person who approached my client has written an email from their company account so it was obvious. Oterwise I’d simly use Google. In case you can’t find the person on the Web its smells like potential fraud of course.
Check the email address and visit the domain or if it’s generic like Gmail or Yahoo.com search for the email address.
Do people search often enough for this keyword or better type it in the URL bar?
Check Google Insights for search for the actual and historical search volume. This is of course the first thing to do. Even obvious keyword domains might not use actual keywords real people use. You can also check Google Trends and Google Adwords Keyword Tool or your favorite keyword research tool. Insights is just my personal preference.
It shows me a quick comparison with other keywords (I know the amount of search traffic of) and historical data. For instance you might notice that traffic is stagnating or dwindling over the years. Other keywords might get steady traffic for years while there are plenty of keywords that just arrived a while ago and have experienced a meteoric rise in traffic. I’m not a domainer so in most cases I’m late here.
Check the keyword Google Insights and compare to some keywords you already rank for and know the number of searches/visitors for. Does the domain already appear in the search results for the respective keyphrase? You can check that manually by searching on Google. Also scroll down for additional suggested keyword combinations. In our example we see that the keyword par [iphone shop] is quite popular but it’s far less popular than the query [iphone store].
Does the domain have a history as bad neighbourhood?
One of the foremost Google ranking factors these days are both domain age and domain history. Many people in SEO even speculate that Google uses its position as a domain registrar to take domain ownership into account for its ranking. Google will check and know whether a given domain was a link farm with dozens of unrelated links or links to porn or gambling sites.
Check whether the site in the Google Index with the site: and cache: commands.
A site that has been penalized might not appear at all in the Google Index. Even a for sale domain should be in the Google index. iphoneshop.com for example is neither cached nor indexed. The domain my client was offered was both in the index and the Google cache.
Check the Whois of the domain. Has the owner changed frequently? The less often the better.
Example:
http://whois.domaintools.com/iphoneshop.com
This domain had far too many owners to be of any SEO value historically.
Check the domain age and history using Archive.org. The longer it is the better.
http://web.archive.org/web/*/iphoneshop.com
An older domain should have some archived version there. Just click them and view the archived pages. Do they contain spammy links?
Check the domain with Web of Trust.
http://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/iphoneshop.com
The domain itself is green on WOT but if you take a look at the souce code you’ll notice it displays a frame from another domain. Searchnut.com
This domain in contrast has the mmost awful record on WOT I’ve seen in a long time:
http://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/searchnut.com
How much does the domain cost?
The particular domain I was asked to assess was 750€. That doesn’t sound does it? Basically you have to count here. Will the profit from this domain pay back the price in a reasonable amount of time? A year still sounds reasonable but a month or two sound great.
So let’s just say that you sell two iPhones via iphoneshop.com per 750€ each and your profit margin is a healthy 50% than your domain already paid for itself.
So paying 14 million for sex.com or 5 million for slot.com must make some sense financially. Although I guess that in some cases it’s just trading for the sake of it. The buyers might resell the domains in future for even more money just like collectors resell Picasso paintings.
Use a calculator to determine how long it will take to “repay” the domain. Take into account your current sales. So you find out how many more items you’ll sell using this keyword domain.
Both the domains my client was offered and the domain from my example (iphoneshop.com) are not really worth it from the SEO perspective as both are actually bad neighborhoods.
It would take much longer to overcome their dark past than to optimize a completely new domain, even an unrelated one.
I wish you good luck with finding a better domain than these two.
© SEOptimise – Thinking of attending SMX London in May 2010? get a 15% discount code!
6-21-2010 by admin in SEO | 0 Comments » |
Welcome back to the “Twitter Weekly” column. This week I want to talk about the phenomenal success of Twitter in Japan. Of course I refer to the AP article that was widely circulated this week.
It seems that Twitter is huge in Japan, 16,3% of Japanese Internet users tweet, especially compared to Facebook which is only used by 3% of the Japanese Internet population. The AP story includes some ideas on why Twitter is so popular in Japan. Techcrunch has listed many more last year already. I’d like to add a few thought of mine.
Japanese Internet users are quite different than western ones from the US, UK or Europe.
While we tend to brag about ourselves and make our names known the Japanese are rather timid or humble. They prefer to stay anonymous. They don’t do it out of fear or only for privacy reasons. In Japanese culture not the individual counts but the group, be it the family, the company or the sports team. So the Japanese do not try had to stand out but rather connect with other people and act together to the benefit of all. While the Western cultural paradigm is the hero, a man who saves the world on his own, Japanese culture rather emphasizes a group of people, like the Samurai fighters or the Geishas. While the Japanese youth is more about pop musicians than Samurai they still share the the traditional understanding of social relations. Japan’s pop icons seemingly love Twitter.
Standing out on Facebook is not the way to go for the Japanese. Being part of a social context on Twitter without having to be overtly exhibitionist is much more acceptable.
Also Twitter has done some things right in Japan earlier than elsewhere in the world. They added a mobile Twitter app quite early. Also Twitter has an innovative business model in Japan: Users can charge their followers for reading their tweets. Twitter gets 30% o the revenue. This is ingenious. Instead of annoying people with ads users pay for what they want, direct access to celebrities or business pundits. I can imagine many girls paying for Britney’s tweets and also tech zealots paying for the inside scoop by early adopters.
Twitter is not Google.
Seeing ads in search results where we actively try to find something to buy is much more useful than seeing ads on Twitter where we expect current events or trends to show up. Twitter is experimenting with “promoted trends” aka ads in the popular topics section. That’s like buying a frontpage appearance on Digg. What’s not popular organically isn’t popular at all, it’s an annoying distraction. The Japanese model might be the solution for many current woes not just the lack of Twitter revenue. I can imagine readers paying for the latest breaking news on Twitter from the NYT or BBC. Also micropayments never went prime time because the platforms were always dark horses with a low adoption rate. A Twitter connected system might change that. So listen up publishers. Maybe Twitter is the future of paid content, not the closed iPad sphere.
Watching Twitter growth in Japan will offer even more unique insights in the future.
© SEOptimise – Thinking of attending SMX London in May 2010? get a 15% discount code!
6-19-2010 by admin in business model, japan, micropayments, social media, twitter | 0 Comments » |
Many people have noticed during the last 12 months that Sphinn has gradually become less of a force within the search industry. I have to admit, I’ve been one of the users who used Sphinn heavily in the early days – but during the last 6-12 months have found myself visiting the site far less frequently.
Having been involved in a Sphinn meeting at SMX Advanced last week and following Matt McGee’s announcement of Sphinn 2.2, I thought it would be a good idea to list some ideas about why you should still be using Sphinn.
1) Traffic – yes, traffic may have tailed off recently, but there’s very few website’s out there which will send as much targeted and high-quality traffic as Sphinn.
In 2009, Sphinn was the fourth biggest traffic source to SEOptimise with a huge 14,322 visits. An average bounce rate of 81.86% is also excellent for a social media website referral, suggesting the quality is high. This should be a good enough reason alone to use Sphinn!
2) Links – at worst, for a homepage story you get a followed link from Sphinn.com. But if you can generate that much targeted traffic, it’s likely to be picked up by other bloggers too and mentioned in some weekly roundup posts.
3) Keep up-to-date on latest news – for many people visits to Sphinn and subscribing to blogs via RSS has been replaced by the sharing of links on Twitter. However, tweets are easy to miss – if you keep an eye on the Sphinn homepage it’s easier to pick out the main stories of a day or week.
4) Train your SEM team – everyone wants their team to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and news within the industry, but this can be very costly or time-consuming. Sphinn stories are generally aimed at all levels of understanding, so monitoring homepage content can be a great way of making sure your team picks up a few tips and tricks.
5) Get involved in some great discussions – homepage stories can generate some great comments and debates. This is something which smaller SEO blogs may not have the influence to generate themselves with such an audience, so it’s a great way to get some feedback and discussion started.
6) Build relationships within the industry – Twitter’s very good for this too, but if you can interact with industry contacts and promote each others content, then this can be a great way of building some useful contacts.
7) Build a reputation as a top Sphinner – you don’t necessarily have to write great content to become recognised as a top Sphinner. But by picking out stories which frequently make the homepage, you can start to build a reputation which may be useful both within the industry and to potential clients.
But what does Sphinn need to improve?
Matt has asked for feedback the Sphinn blog, here are some quick thoughts which I think would help to get Sphinn back on track:
- Continue to mix editor choice stories onto the homepage – sometimes it can take 3-days for a story to be promoted to the homepage of Sphinn. For news and time-based stories this is too slow, this may have been and gone by the time you get to read about it otherwise.
- Bring back the top users list – this is currently behind the paid members area, but having this freely available makes the site more competitive and gives a greater motivation to submit. This should help to improve the number and quality of submissions.
- Better integration with Twitter - Twitter is clearly one of the main reasons why the popularity of Sphinn has suffered. If there was a way in which Sphinn could be integrated to reward Twitter users in a similar way to Tweetmeme – then it gives more of a reason for users to use both Sphinn and Twitter – as opposed to one or the other.
- Sphinn iPhone app – I’m not sure if this is just me, but I would find an iPhone app to be an easier way to read Sphinn on the move, rather than having to use the browser instead. Or perhaps I just need an iPad! :D
© SEOptimise – Thinking of attending SMX London in May 2010? get a 15% discount code!
6-17-2010 by admin in social media, sphinn | 0 Comments » |
Even us webmaster homebodies own cars and, from time to time, drive to the store to get caffeine drinks and cigarettes. If you own a Mazda, and need Mazda Parts, you need to use that link I just gave you to get the best deals on the widest selection of Mazda car parts and accessories on the internet.
I’ve been out in Seattle this week for SMX Advanced 2010. I’ll try and do a more detailed write-up once I’m back, but in the meantime I’ve shared 12 top tips which I covered on Twitter during the show.
It’s been a very good conference and great to finally meet a lot of people in the US (too many to mention) and have one or two beers with the likes of Guy Levine, David Reynolds and Richard Baxter.
© SEOptimise – Thinking of attending SMX London in May 2010? get a 15% discount code!
6-10-2010 by admin in conferences | 0 Comments » |
Image by spaceamoeba.
Many people in the SEO industry write list posts about SEO myths. The authors always want to debunk myths but why repeat the myths over and over in the first place?
Why not just speak out the brutal truth instead? Is it because people love myths? Is it because people love to believe in the myths they are taught?
Several recent posts by Aaron Wall, David Harry and others have inspired me to write down the things that bug me. Thus I compiled this list of 25 brutal truths about SEO, Google & main stream media.
You may not find out much about SEO techniques here but you will get a good overview at the actual issues you have to deal with as an SEO specialist.
SEO
“SEO is bullshit” bullshit
People who dismiss SEO do it to gain a competitive advantage. Visit the sites of the pundits who said SEO is bullshit, SEO is dead or whatever such people tell us. How many of them are in Google? How many of them use SEO friendly CMS software like WordPress? How many of them use the meta noindex tag to make sure they do not commit the SEO crime of getting indexed? People who dismiss SEO are either deceiving you or they have no clue. That’s “SEO is bullshit” bullshit.
SEO needs time and/or money
There is no magic in SEO. It’s hard work. Any 19$ SEO secret tool that submits your site to 100k directories (aka blog comment spam) is either a scam, black hat SEO or simply worthless. Sure, your site might even get a push for a while but unless you’re a black hat SEO expert who uses throwaway domains you have basically committed suicide on the Web.
SEO is queen
The content is king mantra gets repeated all over the place. Google engineers love it. Bloggers and journalists who dismiss SEO out of cluelessness tell you that good content is enough and it will spread by itself. That’s nonsense. You need SEO, social media, blogger friends or a major publication to make that work. In the best case you have all four of them. It’s like in chess. Your site won’t work without the king but you need the queen and a lot of others. SEO is your queen. It’s the most versatile and long term ally of your content.
Everybody publishing on the Web does SEO
You never have never heard of SEO? Do you have a website? Are you on social networks? In case yes you have done or taken part in SEO whether knowingly or unknowingly. Part of the SEO definition is making web sites and content readable by search engines. Unless you have made your website invisible for Google etc., like you can do in WordPress in case you want to keep your blog “private” at installation, your site is optimized for search to some extent. Remember next time when you say that you hate SEO that everybody publishing on the Web does SEO. It’s like saying you hate web design or web hosting.
Global players dominate search results
As a site owner you are most likely not able to compete in the most lucrative niches as the likes of AOL and Yahoo already own them. They can show up in the top 10 with ten different sites and you wouldn’t even know that one company owns all of them. Just search for Google on Google. How many non-Google properties do you see on the first page?
Big Brands are Favored by Google
Google favors brands in search results even if they have less relevant content. Google CEO Eric Schmidt himself has stated the Web is a cess pool and only brands are reliable.
There are no real SEO secrets
Google has secrets. It won’t tell you its exact ranking formula because otherwise Bing and Yahoo could quickly catch up. On the other hand SEO secrets are really rare. Most SEO knowledge is readily available. Google itself offers basic SEO advice and lots of free SEO tools that are enough for most average webmasters. You just have to research a little more to find out about advanced SEO techniques. There are no real SEO secrets. Even black hat SEOs share their insights on blogs and forums.
SEO is not just SEO
These days when you refer to SEO you most probably also include other things like conversion rate optimization, usability or information architecture. SEO is not SEO these days. Social media is a big part of SEO for instance and it’s not automatically social media marketing then.
Good SEO is invisible
Do you know why most people hate SEO if you ask them? Good SEO is invisible to the naked eye. Normal web users only recognize bad SEO that is crappy keyword stuffed websites. Good SEO just make people find websites, click the results and perform the action the website owners wants them to. The users are perfectly happy and don’t even notice there was SEO involved.
Most People confuse paid search results with real ones
Back in 2005 Wired cited a study asking how search users perceive the difference between paid ads in search and organic listings: They basically don’t. Ole 18% really did. This was even before Google introduced as top results. In 2005 Google only displayed ads in the rights sidebar. That’s why even news media today refer to buying ads as buying search results.
Google does black hat SEO
Google uses black hat SEO techniques itself. Years ago there was a story in main stream media about how porn spammers used porn consumers to overcome captchas. They displayed captchas from sites they wanted to spam in iframes to show them to people wanting to watch porn. To get free access you had to use the captchas from the hijacked site. Now Google does the same. Google uses you to recognize text they can’t read in books they digitalize.
Also black hat SEOs use scrapers to show stolen content from other sites as theirs. Google does the same on Google Buzz now. It displays whole blog posts instead of just parts of them.
Google earns money by spam
Google makes 500 million dollars a year just by advertising on typo-squatting domains. Sites that have very similar web adresses to other, in many cases well known sites.
Live by the Google die by the Google
Google can destroy your business over night. Many nameless website owners have been put out of business over the years when Google tweaked its ranking factors. Yesterday they were on top today their rankings dropped and their traffic as well. Famous business blogger John Chow has been banned from Google a few years back and has proven that you can survive without Google relying on multiple traffic and revenue sources.
You work for Google
Whatever you do or publish the Web, you work for Google. Google finances its free services by your work. You provide the free content Google can place its ads on. You provide the data Google sells to advertisers and you provide the attention for its ads, whether it’s in partly or fully sponsored search results like the “shopping” search. It’s not just the captchas. You work for Google.
Google works with your government
Google China has been hacked by a backdoor built in by Google itself for the US government. This is no conspiracy theory. They are required to do so by law. Obama has not only extended the Patriot Act without adding any privacy provisions to it. So whatever you search on Google, write in GMail or Google Docs etc. can and will be used against you in court or outside of it. Remember, the US had locked up innocent people for years in Guantanamo without trial. It takes one day for the police to find you based on your Google usage. Google works with your government. Think twice before using Google.
What’s free today may be expensive tomorrow
Google enters new markets by offering services for free others have charged for. The people love it. The other companies go out of business. Now guess what, when that happens, Google can dictate prices in the future. Google can’t grow forever. One day Google will start charging for services like Ning just did. By then you won’t have that many choices other than to pay.
Google favors Google services in search results
Ever since Google Universal search appeared and Google started adding videos, products and maps to its results it favored its own properties. There is a word for it, monopoly. Google favors Google services in search results like Microsoft favors Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office. When it comes to video Youtube already has also already almost a monopoly of more than 80% market share. The second biggest site, Vimeo, has only 10%.
Google says privacy advocates are conspiracy theorists
Google engineer Matt Cutts, responsible for search quality but acting as the main public relations person when it comes to webmasters refers to privacy advocates as “conspiracy theorists“. I don’t think Matt Cutts says what he thinks. Everything what the says is basically approved by Google lawyers. Google employees have very strict guidelines as to what they are allowed to say about and concerning Google. So it’s rather what Google says. Also Google CEO Eric Schmidt says on privacy: “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” Of course he himself is exempt from this as the case of his mistress blog shows.
Only 21% of Google’s results are organic
As of late 2009 Google’s results were showing so many ads, Universal search results (such as paid “shopping” results) and other distractions that only 21% of first page results were actually organic search results.
You can get Google free in one day
You need just one day to stop using Google services if you want to. I’m not referring to living in cages again. It takes that long to switch to alternatives.
Main Stream Media
Journalists copy
Journalists will steal your story and won’t credit you as the source. Most journalists just copy stories from elsewhere like Reuters or or DPA. So it’s not a big difference. They have to credit Reuters or DPA because they have good lawyers but they will even steal from high profile bloggers like Danny Sullivan who can’t afford to sue dozens of news organizations.
News outlets hoard PageRank and trap users
Commercial and other main stream news outlets like the BBC are known for not linking out to sources. There are two reasons for this beyond stealing: Hoarding PageRank and forcing visitors to stay onsite to generate more pageviews.
All major news media practice big time SEO
Many people on the Web still assume that SEO is some kind of spam. They are convinced that good content gets popular by itself and that old media prevail online because they excel at content creation. What they don’t know or prefer to ignore is that every major news outlet has a whole inhouse SEO department. The New York Times does SEO, the Chicago Tribune, the BBC (see above). All major news outlets practice big time SEO. In case you hate SEO just stop reading these websites, just go offline.
Wikipedia articles are biased
In German Wikipedia an article about the LHC security or rather lack of it has been deleted because of pressure by CERN supporters. Looking at Wikipedia entries for countries like Kazakhstan you won’t really know that there is a dictatorship down there unless you read between the lines. Full disclosure: I have been approached by a PR agency working for Kazakhstan to do their SEO but declined for ethical reasons. While Wikipedia ranks on top for most search queries it is the most unreliable source. Dig deeper to discover the truth.
Other media are only biased toward the views of the journalists or the owners/advertisers at worst. Wikipedia reflects the opinions of the people and organizations described. Just try to add something critical to a politician’s page. Wikipedia editors are a small elite group you can easily control. When a NYT journalist has been abducted Wikipedia held back the information along with all of the press. Only 13% of Wikipedia editors are women, most editors are young, male, white, middle class and thus reflect views of the American main stream as this study on “feminism” articles on Wikipedia shows.
Apple isn’t as popular on the Web as it seems
Before Twitter was mainstream, there was Digg. It blocked the topic “SEO” altogether. You just needed to say SEO in your headline and you wouldn’t end up on the frontpage. On the other hand Apple marketing stories always went wildly popular on Digg. So I took a closer look at who submitted those Apple stories featuring “Apple ads. Many of the submitters had some more or less direct connection to Apple. Either they sold Apple products directly or they had Apple ads on their sites. These days all media follow this example.
The iPad hype showed how efficient viral marketing works. All parties involved earn money via Apple. The newspapers that like blogs tried to rank at one for iPad in search engines are directly involved. The likes of the NYT hope to save its business model using the iPad. Technically the iPad sucks, it’s not even a real computer. Some Indian students have developed a far better tablet but Apple promises more revenue for those hyping it. Apple isn’t as popular on the Web as it seems. It’s not just Apple though. Always ask yourself who profits by a given article.
How do these brutal truths affect your business decisions? They do in manifold ways. Not only do they affect business decisions but also your private usage of the Web. Some readers tend to allege that “I hate Google” whenever I write something not just flattering the search giant. As a SEO you compete with all of the above: Google itself, mainstream media like news outlets, Wikipedia, huge conglomerates like AOL and Yahoo and the idiots who dismiss SEO to gain attention because there are enough other idiots who hate SEO out of cluelessness (just search for SEO FAQ to see what I mean). Thus you have to adapt. You can’t fight all of these directly. You have to develop your own ways to get found on the Web.
So I don’t hate Google. I use Google all day. Heck, I even use Google Docs to write my blog posts. So get off me and focus on what I’ve written. It’s all true.
Want more of this type of truths? I’d recommend reading both the SEO Book and SEO Bullshit blogs. Full disclosure: I’m a SEO Book affiliate.
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6-7-2010 by admin in Google, SEO, brutal, brutal honesty, brutal truth, truth | 0 Comments » |
