StepForth SEO News Blog

Friday, March 31, 2006

It has been an interesting and rather heady month here at StepForth's news desk. Several times this month, we had the cursed blessing of realizing the absurd, awesome reach of our column, newsletter and blog.

One story we covered (or miscovered, depending on how one looks at it) led to the delisting of INewswire from Google News. Another, written eighteen months ago, was introduced as Exhibit G in the Motion for Dismissal filed as part of Traffic Power vs. BatteryFuel Suit. Lots of stuff we wrote about Google was quoted and reprinted in literally too many other places to bother trying to keep up with. The weirdest one though, the one even my mother probably wouldn't believe is that someone at Cambridge University (the one in England) liked an article enough to reprint a hardcopy in their quarterly tech-mag.

March has been a truly bizarre experience, one that shouldn't pass without public comment. My 15-year old nephew has been bunking at my place for the past few weeks. If any single word could be used to describe the moral of the month it would be: responsibility.

In light of the absolutely incredible footprint of our News Desk, and the fact I have been cast in the role of instant father-figure to a 15-year old, I've been taking a long, hard look at my notions of responsibility in relation to my personal and professional lives. In all cases, I am fairly happy with what I see but also see some room for improvements.

First of all, the News department is working to find the balance between being well educated but geeky bloggers (as we see ourselves) and being trusted journalists (as others seem to see us). Finding the right tone and balance is not easy, especially as the firm prides itself on honesty, openness and high quality content.

The rules of engagement with readers are similar for journalists and bloggers but the checks, balances and most importantly, backgrounds are obviously different. Like most bloggers I have no formal training as a journalist. I try to get by on values I think to be fair, accurate and reasonably objective. The safety net for bloggers who wish to appear open, honest and reasonably objective is the comments section. I've been called on a couple of things over the past month and the tone of the responses tells me that when readers have something to say, they have no inhibitions saying it. Thank goodness for that. Over the past year, the blog, newsletter and general column are moving in a positive direction and, at least from where I am sitting, getting better. StepForth News is a team effort and I owe a deep debt of thanks to Bill, Ross, Mark and Scott for their efforts.

On the production front, our working systems are fairly tight. There is a tremendous amount of communication between the sales department and the SEO department, leaving virtually no space for things to fall through the cracks. We made internal communications a priority issue over the past six months as our office has moved and our staff is growing. The goal of our weekly Sr. Staff meetings and more frequent intra-staff conferences is to ensure that all files receive prompt attention and those fielding the files are as up to date as possible.

On the visioning and future-tech front, we have developed and implemented a new design focused division, Pure Ignition in order to offer our clients a stronger stable of search friendly services. This is going to become one of the most important facets of our operation, moving into the future where SEO and site redesign necessarily merge.

Growth is good and over the past year we've seen more than our share of it but with the greatness of growth comes greater responsibilities. We are doing our best to live up to them and, judging by our inboxes and the comments section of our Blog, we can rely on the general community to hold us to them.

As for my personal life and the shock of becoming the primary caregiver to a teenager, that's another story for another blog entry. Suffice it to say I wasn't as well behaved when I was a kid but I am learning how to behave now that I am a certifiable adult. Responsibilty is a two-way street.

On SEO and Responsibility

Search engine optimization is a clearly established industry, one that exercises both direct and indirect influence on the Internet experience of countless millions of people. SEO is a growth sector with amazing potential however, that potential remains limited as long as the mainstream marketing world misunderstands the role SEOs play in website marketing.

It is easy to see why the major, non-tech news organizations almost always get it wrong. Good SEO is often boring. There is little drama to grab the attention of anyone but another SEO. For the most part, the SEO sector toils away doing extremely repetitious tasks. There are frequent technical riddles to be solved and fresh copy to be written but after the rush of research and discovery recedes, there is still a lot of basic hard work to do. In other words, there are no words to make the daily grind of the practice appear sexy because it isn't.

Drama gets attention. When a SEO gets a Top10 ranking, nobody but the SEO and the client gets to hear about it. When a firm manages to get a client list banned from a search engine, that becomes interesting news. The only sexy way to write about SEO is to make dull work seem somewhat murky, like a spy novel. It attracts readers but misrepresents and taints the real work of SEO by painting a bleak picture of unethical practices. It must be said however, the murky work and unethical practices written about are often all too real.

Some of the practices outlined in evidence presented in BatteryFuel's motion for dismissal, while focused on the behaviour of one specific firm, are seen being used by dozens of other SEO firms. When they get in trouble for it, as happened to another very large firm last year, the mainstream media hears and writes about it. They rarely mention the fact that most SEOs are honest and ethical but that's as much the fault of the subject matter as it is the writers. Again, it is very hard to make the reality of SEO work interesting to anyone other than a geek.

I get frustrated reading about how nasty the SEO sector is and then go to work trying to dispel a multitude of myths. I am even more frustrated seeing others who call themselves SEOs using similar methods and techniques as those mentioned in the Traffic Power vs. BatteryFuel motion. I receive countless unsolicited emails offering me a magic solution to get the StepForth site placed in the Top10, (a position it has enjoyed for more than three years now). There are still reports of cold-call sales techniques and even reports of sales people using threats of Google displacement as technical extortion.

This is the stuff that gets written about in the mainstream press and that's the impression potential clients have when warily approaching a legitimate SEO vendor. As we do a lot of work with small businesses, we hear from a growing number who know they need their websites optimized in order to compete in their sector but don't know who to trust.

My nephew and I were talking about responsibility the other night and we came up with a new word, one that fits a lot of situations, including that faced by the world of SEO.

I have a hard time believeing that nobody else has yet used the word but if the major search enignes and a prestigious American University are to be believed, the word only exists as a spelling error. I checked the word through Google, Yahoo, Ask and the Princeton collection of every dictionary imaginable and couldn't find a reference for it so I am going to try to coin it, if only to teach myself and my nephew a lesson about idea propagation and mass media.

Responstability. A loose definition might read: Actions or decisions of a responsible nature that lead to greater stability in one's life or community.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: "Responstability" in Writing and SEO

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Ask.Com is advertising. It recently released two commercials intended for US audiences, both of which use monkeys to express ideas an older English butler could not.

The idea is that search is evolving and Ask is ahead of the game when it comes to serving up information in ways its users want. Two features of the Ask search interface are mentioned in the ads.

The first is the binoculars feature that offers a quick glimpse of an image of sites in the results. The images are often older and do not necessarily correspond with the current or cached version of the site, but it does save users time by showing them a vision of the site before they surf to it.

The second feature mentioned in the commercials is the Narrow Your Search option, which gives users a series of alternative keyword phrases to search under, adding common words to entered search queries.

Ask is growing more popular in North America and Europe . Its fresh advertising campaign should help spread the message of Ask as a credible alternative to Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Animals in Pants - Ask Ad Spots

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Microsoft's Mistakes Proving Costly

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

A couple of days ago, I received a call from a west coast reader who works as a corporate recruiter. She had been asked to find an in-house SEO for one of her clients, a medium sized corporation. After recommending a number of SEO/SEM related forums and Ed Lewis' SEO Consultants Directory, we started to talk about the cost/benefit of hiring an in-house SEO and outsourcing the work to a consultant. As our conversation moved from point to point, a number of issues surrounding hiring in-house SEO talent emerged.

Today the trend leans towards hiring in-house. A quick glance at employment websites such as Monster.com or Workopolis.ca shows a growing list of positions for SEOs who have two or more years of experience. The demand for experienced search marketers far outstrips the supply of really good practitioners, a situation evidenced by SEO salaries ranging from 30K at the low end to over 100K at the top.

As a measure of the success of the industry, entry level positions paying 30K and up show how valuable skill-sets held by SEOs are on the open market. Conversely, those figures might also indicate that the businesses hiring in-house SEOs are, by and large, ignorant of what exactly SEO means to their business.

Online businesses do know one thing with absolute certainty. The value of strong search engine placements is obvious. Websites or documents that enjoy prominent placement tend to make more money than sites lacking good rankings do. Sites that rank well on search engines have a much better chance of converting visitors to customers, simply because it is easier for those visitors to find those sites.

The value of hiring an in-house SEO shouldn't be underestimated, even if that value appears to be inflated at this time. It all comes down to trust. The services offered by a good SEO might be simple to outline but are difficult to fully understand. The search marketing industry has, unfortunately, been put in a position of ill-repute by a small number of unethical practitioners and a slightly larger number of uninformed mainstream journalists. There is also the growing legion of new practitioners hanging their virtual shingles without the requisite knowledge or background.

Though businesses might gain a measure of control by adding a SEO to their staff, they are likely losing a number of less tangible resources, along with the equivalent of a full time salary, the biggest losses being objectivity and, ironically, honesty. Employees are often unable or unwilling to disagree with a new employer or supervisor, even when the realities of the search marketing arena are called into question. It is also a daunting experience to tell your new co-workers that the site they have been working on for months is less than useful for search marketing purposes. Most consultants have no problems telling the truth about issues facing a site they are working on. It is a consultant's job to find fault. The more they find and correct, the better the relationship with their client.

This note shifted the conversation towards the benefits and dangers, of outsourcing over in-house hiring. The benefits continue to outweigh the dangers by a wide margin, assuming the organization contracted is reputable and communicative.

The primary benefit of outsourcing is that it is cost-effective. With most large scale SEO projects, the most intense work is done in the first six weeks. This is the time it takes to fully study a site, take it apart, and put it back together again in the most search friendly way possible. This is also the period most SEOs charge for. Though the expense might seem steep when seen on a service contract, it is often far lower than the cost of hiring and employing a dedicated staff person.

The next benefit of outsourcing to a SEO firm comes from harnessing the collective knowledge of that firm's staff. The majority of search marketing shops have staff members who specialize in different areas of the search marketing environment. Some are great technicians while others write good site copy. Most established SEO firms have staff members who have experienced several different aspects of the field and can call on that experience to inform their advice and decisions.

Added to the benefit of collective knowledge comes the bonus of having a larger brain trust to call upon. The field and practice of SEO is rapidly evolving. Often, a technique that worked one year is not as useful the next. Being able to draw on a group dedicated to learning and fully understanding the environment is essential to staying ahead of the curve, and thus ahead of competitors.

A third benefit comes from the professionalism with which an established SEO shop conducts its business. Needing positive client testimonials and surviving on recommendations, most established SEO shops present their information in highly detailed, plain language reports. One of our internal sayings is that we present our SEO consultation clients with a roadmap they can follow, along with a live-guide to help them along.

The last benefit mentioned in the phone call was that of long-term relationships. Most of our consultation clients retain our firm into the future. While this retention is done by monthly fee, that fee is often much lower than the cost of a full time employee.

Fostering and maintaining a long-term relationship between SEO consultant and client benefits both. For the client, the relationship plants an outside expert they can call on for an objective opinion firmly in their realm. For the SEO consultant, the relationship builds business and helps hone their constantly developing skills.

By the end of the conversation, we had settled on a compromise position for her to take when recruiting an in-house SEO for her client, which has a pre-existing IT department. The client is adamant about wanting to hire in-house. She has, by now, likely placed an ad for a SEO with three or more years of experience. When that person is hired, a professional outsourced SEO consultant will also be contracted to monitor and advise for the first year.

If the internal position works out, the client will have a well-trained staff member capable of performing SEO services for the business site. The business owner will have the knowledge that an objective (and honest) outsider is watching over things and reporting to the site ownership. While it might cost a bit more, the plan offers peace of mind for the owner.

If the internal position does not work out, a relationship with an outside firm will have been established, and a sense of continuity in the site promotion can be maintained without worry about starting back at square one.

This is the first year that in-house hiring of SEOs has been a big trend. Taking a long-view of the situation, businesses thinking about employing a skilled search marketer on staff might want to sit back and crunch their numbers to see if the cost of hiring is dramatically lower than the cost of outsourcing.

By the end of the first year, the business owner will know if hiring in house was worth the expense or not. If, as we suspect, it was not worth the expense, that outside agency will pick up a good contract. If, on the other hand, the business owner finds the expense worth his or her money, they know they have a better-trained staff member.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: SEO Consulting - Outsourcing SEO Knowledge

Friday, March 24, 2006

There are any numbers of basic, simple SEO mistakes, most of which are inconsequential, that find their way across our monitors on a daily basis. Here is a short list we consider today's Top5.

1/ Multiple Pulls from the Similar Databases

There are thousands of web-based businesses that exist to provide content-snippets for sites in specific industries. The real estate and travel sectors provide the best examples with MLS-esque listings and hotel recommendation affiliates. In both cases, websites tend to serve a limited geographic area that limits the number of options they offer. Since everyone involved in either sector wants to drive consumers to the same attractions, amenities and properties, their websites often draw from shared databases. In one extreme instance, we saw one travel page drawing from over a dozen local and international databases at the same time but presenting absolutely no original information, even in their title.

The shared databases themselves are not the problem. For the most part, they are actually very useful for agents and web-entrepreneurs. Our problem is in how they are often used by webmasters trying to set up their sites on the cheap. We see way too many sites that look exactly the same because they are exactly the same. While their color schemes and layouts might vary, the information found on those pages is not unique. Given the number of competitors looking for placement under the same set of keyword phrases, creating your own content is incredibly important. You can still use those shared databases but place them among your own descriptive content.

2/ Un-Optimized AdWords or YSM Landing or Entry Pages

An interesting effect of Google's AdWords program and, increasinly YSM, has been the development of stand-alone entry pages built specifically for users from different markets. There are two ways to work with AdWords or YSM entry pages, one that makes them part of a larger network and one that effectively blocks spiders from accessing the pages. Both are appropriate in different situations.

Regionally directed PPC campaigns can be crafted to target users from specific cities, zip codes and interests. For national chains, a visitor from New Hampshire can thus be directed to businesses based in Manchester, Rochester, Derry or Concord, while visitors from Washington can be directed to businesses in Spokane, Bellingham, Olympia or Seattle. This has led to the proliferation of singular entry pages that exist as traffic-directors but are not really user or spider friendly.

In some cases, they shouldn’t be. Unless they are part of a larger site designed for an intended audience, they should prevent spidering using robots exclusion protocols, the simplest being the "noindex, nofollow" tag.

In others cases, PPC landing pages can be part of a larger chain of web documents that provide unique and useful content to visitors. There is a very large commercial cafe company that is slowly cluing into this trend. High-end real estate, popular music and online gaming companies are also early adopters of optimized landing pages, getting the benefit of high organic rankings, amazing relevant link networks and positive notches in their site-profiles. They can also be useful for local-search listings.

3? Splash Pages

Splash pages still exist. Every year someone writes a list like this and includes splash pages as one of the most often made mistakes. The trend continues with a multitude of index pages that say absolutely nothing about the subject matter of the site behind the veil they create. Often beautiful manifestations of multiple hours of work, the page is practically useless in its present form. In many cases, the work we would need to do on the page would harm the esthetic effect the designer was trying to create. To complicate things for SEOs, splash pages often precede sites designed with a multimedia experience in mnd.

Sites designed entirely with FLASH are still proving difficult to place for most SEOs. Unless involved in the making of the files, adding header and descriptive information after the product is produced is simply not possible.

There are two ways to compensate, both of which require the creation of new documents. One is to make a series of HTML documents with the FLASH presentation embedded as part of the page and text information presented below. An other, easier way is to provide an HTML version of the FLASH show as a script for spiders to follow.

4/ Wal-Martinization Effect

Does your database go on forever? We have come across dozens of catalog-based sites that resemble online versions of a Wal-Mart store, without the vaguest sense of style. These online warehouses never seem to end showing category after category of unrelated inventory.

Like the database driven sites of the travel and real estate sectors, these sites present a lot of information found on millions of other web documents, often without the benefit of context. The difference is, these sites really do go on forever.

A better idea for owners of such sites is to separate products and focus on presenting online consumers your wares in an easier to understand format. You can make a number of stores selling items from the same database, the point is to make sites that focus on specific topics, not sites that try to emulate the Wal-Mart experience of a million and one things under one roof.

While we are sure there must be a way to work with one of these mega-base sites, we need to stress that it will be extremely expensive to do properly.

5/ Poor User Conversions, lack of ROI

By now, most established webmasters and site owners use some from of analytic tool to measure the success of their sites. For many, that tool is the stats provided by their ISP while for others tools such as WebTrends or Google Analytics compile more detailed stats.

There is one analytic that is available to a site owner that isn't found in the stats. That analytic measured is the money he or she is making from their online business. We hear from an increasing number of site owners who have good placements and relatively high traffic but report low user conversions.

From where we are sitting, site visitors are telling the site owner something and it has less to do with keywords the site places under than it does with how users relate to the site.

Rebuild and renew

The value of a search engine friendly website, document or file cannot be understated. There are more ways to get information to interested Internet users than ever before. There are also a number of ways to mistakenly impede the flow of your own information. Fortunately, most blockages are easy enough to remove but some are simply too jumbled to deal with. That's when you might want to rebuild.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Five Ways to Know If You Need A Pro

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Citing the need to build all inclusive security systems into its long-awaited operating system Vista, Microsoft Windows co-president Jim Allchin, announced that Vista would not be released in 2006.

Vista is, or eventually will be, the replacement for Windows XP. It has been five years since Microsoft updated its core operating system.

Vista is designed to help Microsoft retain a space in a marketplace that is rapidly moving online. The release date rollback is one of a long-string of push-backs in Vista's long but private history.

CNN reported that, "Allchin said the decision to delay the Vista release came after Microsoft realized that Vista would be completed several weeks later than originally planned, largely because of efforts to improve security in the new system. Microsoft's Windows operating system has been an immensely popular target of Internet attackers, leading to a major companywide initiative to improve security in all its products."

We still think they are waiting to swap Minesweeper out for Duke Nukem Forever.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Still Waiting For Duke Nukem

The word "change" has over a dozen definitions, at least according to my electronic source at Princeton University. Aside from the various nouns describing what is literally cold and hard cash, my preferred use of the word is as a verb. The following definition caught my eye this morning. It applies itself quite well to a situation facing most, if not all, established SEO shops.

(v) change , alter, modify (cause to change; make different; cause a transformation) "The advent of the automobile may have altered the growth pattern of the city""

As the automobile became the primary mode of transportation in modern urban environments, it caused great change in the way cities were built and the way we live together as a society. An invention, the car, prompted innovation, wider roads and distant suburbs. The metaphor provides a historic marker for market-forces forcing evolution within the SEO sector.

Over the past twelve months, the word change has been a mantra in the research section of StepForth's business. We have structured our staff in such a way as to provide our team with a diversity of viewpoints from my "bird's eye view" to our Senior SEO, Scott's, "reality of the trenches", and all points between. When those varying viewpoints intersect, as they often do, we know we are thinking on the right track. Similarly, we learn a lot from sharing with others in the SEO and SEM industry.

Two key topics that tend to dominate the R&D portion of our formal staff meetings and many informal discussions amongst staff members are usability and consultation. Not surprisingly, they also tend to be discussed frequently on various SEO or SEM related forums.

The first factor is website, document, or file usability . Usability is a big word that covers many aspects of design and development. From an SEO perspective, the concept of usability covers three distinct areas, search engine friendly site architecture, human-friendly layout, and well-written, optimized site content.

Most of the websites, files or documents that pass across our monitors do not meet any of the three basic criteria mentioned above. As search engines become more sophisticated and the competition for Top10 placements gets harder every day, usability concerns are a growing problem for us. While many of the sites we see might look good, the reality is they are not properly structured for search engine spiders or for intuitive human navigation.

In order to meet the obvious need for search engine friendly site design and human-friendly layout, without losing focus on the SEO work we do best, StepForth has created a new division of the company, Pure Ignition, dedicated to search-ready design and user-intuitive layout.

The addition of a search focused web design firm to our corporate family allows us to bring our services to another, much needed level without sacrificing or threatening our core SEO competencies.

Headed by Senior Web Developer, Mark Johnstone, Pure Ignition is our way of trying to bridge a "quality gap" in site design. Mark has worked with StepForth Placement for about three years, starting as an assistant SEO and eventually rising to be VP of Operations in the management of the firm. He had been a site designer for several years before taking a position with StepForth.

Having helped manage our business through the past eighteen months of growth and industry upheaval, Mark has seen and experienced all facets of the operation. Most importantly to the development of Pure Ignition, Mark served as the chair, or facilitator, at many of the staff meetings held at StepForth where he heard and/or dealt with issues presented by the other staff. He is well versed in what the SEO staff needs to see included in a file, document or website.

"I see the biggest challenge in balancing architecture, content and accessibility, "Mark said over a coffee break yesterday. "I like the idea of separating SEO from site construction or reconstruction because I think any designer or SEO that pretends to be everything for everyone is basing their services on their egos. The work-load is just too big now."

In that spirit, we believe that by building a hand-tooled Design and SEO assembly line of sorts, we will be better able to meet the needs of a broader range of clients. By integrating services between the search marketing division and the new search-focused design division of our company, we expect to deliver a far greater volume of work at relatively lower costs to the involvement of third party developers.

Before Pure Ignition was formed, our SEO staff had limited options. Our clients would have to rework their websites or we would have to do it ourselves. Neither option is particularly attractive and both present added costs to clients, often resulting in third party fees. Needless to say, the curative prescription our SEO or sales staff would offer was often too expensive for many to pursue. Hopefully, we can ratchet those added costs down while providing more speed, inter-office communication and over-all efficiency.

Another reason the firm has generated a design division is because we simply don't like to turn away good business. It runs contrary to the most sensible sides of our selves as successful persons of business. Since the autumn of 2004, we have had to turn away so many potential clients due to irreconcilable site design issues it is almost tragically funny.

Almost... We are a business after all. So are the sites we had to turn away. We've been around the block as a company and as individuals and, like all businesses, have seen and experienced our share of economic brutality. It's ugly eh? Lot 's of good people get ripped off and by the time they come to us for search engine optimization, there's little we can do to help them. Life is very real, even in the virtual world. We strive to offer our clients some form of security in the design, and promotion loop. That's the greater purpose to Pure Ignition.

That brings us to the second key change we see in our business of running a boutique SEO/SEM firm. We are doing a lot more consultation than we ever have before.

The commercial Internet has been here for more than a decade. Most businesses have established and evolved IT departments or they have an outsourced vendor for IT services. Now that search engines have become so important to their business and to their competitors, they have positions dedicated to online marketing. They love to learn and strategize, and by happy coincidence, we love to strategize and make suggestions.

The market for SEO consultation has gotten so busy that our CEO, Ross Dunn now focuses over a third of his time providing direct consultation services.

One of the things that makes consultation different from hands-on SEO is that your suggestions are being applied and worked on by other people. Using an array of website analytics, a good SEO consultant should be able to provide a working map of suggested changes and offer solid reasons for making the suggestions.

In some ways, it is also like taking a leap of faith. Really experienced SEOs talk about a feeling they get when they know they have the right balance on a page. Jill Whalen once described it as the SEO Zen Factor. When you have the right mix on a page or document, you simply know you've got it.

The business of search engine optimization has changed a lot over last four years with the greatest changes seen in the last six months. We know the environment is only going to be changing faster in the near future so we too are making some significant changes in preparation as well as in reaction to market forces. Pure Ignition is now open for business, putting the entire firm in a far better placement moving into the future.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: The Changing Facets of the SEO Business

Friday, March 17, 2006

When the management team at Google decided to take the company public in August 2004, they made the decision with the knowledge that being a publicly traded company would force them to open their doors to public scrutiny. Before their IPO, 18-months ago, Google was, for all intents and purposes, a shuttered shop from which light rarely leaked.

Now that Google stock circulates on the open market, US law requires them to file an annual report (Form 10-K) and quarterly reports (Form 10-Q) with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). These reports are made available to the public by the SEC and can also be found in Google’s Investor Relations Center. As a result of these reports, Google is no longer able to hold a wealth of information about it or its business as secrets.

Google’s 2005 Annual Report (Form 10-K) was filed yesterday, making it immediately available to the general public. Weighing in at 103 pages in 10-point font, the report contains a great deal of information about the business of being Google, and offers a glimpse of how Google sees itself.

Some of the information contained in the report is trivial. For instance, did you know that Google leases approximately 1.3 million square feet of office space in Mountain View California? It owns a further 644,000 square feet of building space near its Headquarters at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, California 94043.

The firm also leases office and research space in; Amsterdam, Ann Arbor, Atlanta, Bangalore, Beijing, Belo Horizonte, Boston, Cambridge, Chapel Hill, Chicago, Copenhagen, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Dublin, Duesseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Hong Kong, Hyderabad, Irvine, Istanbul, Kirkland, London, Madrid, Melbourne, Mexico City, Milan, Montreal, Mountain View, Mumbai, Munich, New York, Oslo, Paris, Rome, Santa Monica, Sao Paolo, Seattle, Seoul, Shanghai, Stockholm, Sydney, Tel-Aviv, Tokyo, Toronto, Trondheim, Warsaw, Washington D.C. and Zurich. Its datacenters are located in the United States, the EU and Asia.

Other pieces of information in the report are already well known. You likely already knew that Google's URL is www.google.com and that their mission is "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

If you don't know this already, you should know that Google says its "... search results will be objective and we will not accept payment for inclusion or ranking in them." It also states, "Advertisements should not be an annoying interruption. If any element on a search result page is influenced by payment to us, we will make it clear to our users." [Editors Note: Don't let anyone tell you, (or sell you), otherwise.]

There is a fair amount of information in the report relevant to SEOs and other search marketers. Ten pages of the report (pages 6 - 16) are dedicated to detailing how the various facets of Google's search engine works and how its component parts function along side each other. While it does not spell out the exact ranking formulas, a close read of the lengthy document is like a survey course in University. For some it will be an education, for others a reiteration of knowledge they already carried.

Starting with a short description of the 33 unique search applications available from the Google Home and Services pages, the report offers details on most of the dozens of software products and packages Google offers. The report separates various tools and appliances in to several categories, in order to coherently present the vast array of search tools and features offered by Google.

The specialized features included under the Google Web Search category (pg. 6) include; Advanced Search, Spell Checker, Web Page Translation, Stock Quotes, Street Maps, Calculator, Currency Conversions, Word or Phrase Definitions, Phone Book, Search by Number (phone, FedEx, Vehicle ID, etc...), Travel Information, Cached Links, Movie Information (by US zip code), Music Information, Weather, and Q & A. This section also notes that, when relevant to the search query, News, Product (Froogle), Local, Image, Book, and Groups results might appear above, alongside or integrated with, general search results.

The Web Search category also offers a short explanation of Google News, Local, Froogle and Desktop.

The next category in the report is noted as Web and Search Content (pg. 7). It lists short descriptions of Google Scholar, Book Search, Google Base, Google Video, Personalized Search, the Personalized Homepage, Google Alerts, the Google Directory, and Music Search.

Following search content is Communications and Collaboration (pg. 8), under which Gmail, orkut and Blogger are noted.

The report continues with Downloadable Applications (pg. 8) and includes detailed descriptions of Google Toolbar, Google Earth, Picasa, and Google Pack. Google Mobile and Google Local for Mobile are included in a short section under the header Mobile (pg. 9)

The next section in the report covers Google Labs (pg. 9) and offers short descriptions of some of the projects currently underway in the Labs. The projects mentioned include; a wireless platform for Froogle, Public Transit information (testing in Portland, OR), a taxi location service called Ridefinder, more Firefox extensions, and the continuing work on Google Web Accelerator.

The majority of the next three pages, (pgs. 10, 11 & 12), of the report are dedicated to Google AdWords and AdSense, offering short but highly detailed explanations of the many features and tools included in the two paid-advertising packages. This is a must-read section for anyone interested in AdWords or AdSense, including experienced search marketers. To see all the features listed in one place is a good reminder of how Google’s paid advertising machine works and why it works so well.

The last section addressing specific products or services covers Google's Enterprise search applications (pg 12), Google Search Appliance and Google Mini.

The next four pages give greater details on how Google sorts and ranks documents in its index, as well as a light shot at the SEO community. Here are a few excerpts.

On Organic (free) Search Listings:
Our web search technology uses a combination of techniques to determine the importance of a web page independent of a particular search query and to determine the relevance of that page to a particular search query. We do not explain how we do ranking in great detail because some people try to manipulate our search results for their own gain, rather than in an attempt to provide high-quality information to users.

Ranking Technology. One element of our technology for ranking web pages is called PageRank. While we developed much of our ranking technology after Google was formed, PageRank was developed at Stanford University with the involvement of our founders, and was therefore published as research. Most of our current ranking technology is protected as trade-secret. PageRank is a query-independent technique for determining the importance of web pages by looking at the link structure of the web. PageRank treats a link from web page A to web page B as a "vote" by page A in favor of page B. The PageRank of a page is the sum of the PageRank of the pages that link to it. The PageRank of a web page also depends on the importance (or PageRank) of the other web pages casting the votes. Votes cast by important web pages with high PageRank weigh more heavily and are more influential in deciding the PageRank of pages on the web.

Text-Matching Techniques. Our technology employs text-matching techniques that compare search queries with the content of web pages to help determine relevance. Our text-based scoring techniques do far more than count the number of times a search term appears on a web page. For example, our technology determines the proximity of individual search terms to each other on a given web page, and prioritizes results that have the search terms near each other. Many other aspects of a page's content are factored into the equation, as is the content of pages that link to the page in question. By combining query independent measures such as PageRank with our text-matching techniques, we are able to deliver search results that are relevant to what people are trying to find.

On AdWords:
We use the Google AdWords auction system to enable advertisers to automatically deliver relevant, targeted advertising. Every search query we process involves the automated execution of an auction, resulting in our advertising system often processing hundreds of millions of auctions per day. To determine whether an ad is relevant to a particular query, this system weighs an advertiser’s willingness to pay for prominence in the ad listings (the cost-per-click or cost-per-impression bid) and interest from users in the ad as measured by the click-through rate and other factors. Our Quality-based Bidding system also assigns minimum bids to advertiser keywords based on the Quality Scores of those keywords - the higher the Quality Score, the lower the minimum bid. The Quality Score is determined by an advertiser's keyword clickthrough rate, the relevance of the ad text, historical keyword performance, the quality of the ad's landing page and other relevancy factors.

On How Google Charges Advertisers per Click:
The AdWords auction system also incorporates the AdWords Discounter, which automatically lowers the amount advertisers actually pay to the minimum needed to maintain their ad position. Consider a situation where there are three advertisers - Pat, Betty and Joe - each bidding on the same keyword for ads that will be displayed on Google.com. These advertisers have ads with equal click-through rates and bid $1.00 per click, $0.60 per click and $0.50 per click, respectively. With our AdWords discounter, Pat would occupy the first ad position and pay only $0.61 per click, Betty would occupy the second ad position and pay only $0.51 per click, and Joe would occupy the third ad position and pay the minimum bid of $0.01 per click.

On AdSense:
Our AdSense technology employs techniques that consider factors such as keyword analysis, word frequency, and the overall link structure of the web to analyze the content of individual web pages and to match ads to them almost instantaneously. With this ad targeting technology, we can automatically serve contextually relevant ads. To do this, Google Network members embed a small amount of custom HTML code on web pages that generates a request to Google's AdSense service whenever a user views the web page. Upon receiving a request, our software examines the content of web pages and performs a matching process that identifies advertisements that we believe are relevant to the content of the specific web page. The relevant ads are then returned to the web pages in response to the request. We employ similar techniques for matching advertisements to other forms of textual content, such as email messages and Google Groups postings. For example, our technology can serve ads offering tickets to fans of a specific sports team on a news story about that team.

Another highly interesting section of the report highlights risk factors related to the business (pg. 20). In it, Google identifies Microsoft and Yahoo as "significant competition".

"We face formidable competition in every aspect of our business, and particularly from other companies that seek to connect people with information on the web and provide them with relevant advertising. Currently, we consider our primary competitors to be Microsoft Corporation and Yahoo! Inc. Microsoft has announced plans to develop features that make web search a more integrated part of its Windows operating system or other desktop software products. We expect that Microsoft will increasingly use its financial and engineering resources to compete with us. Both Microsoft and Yahoo have more employees than we do (in Microsoft's case, approximately 11 times as many). Microsoft also has significantly more cash resources than we do. Both of these companies also have longer operating histories and more established relationships with customers and end users. They can use their experience and resources against us in a variety of competitive ways, including by making acquisitions, investing more aggressively in research and development and competing more aggressively for advertisers and web sites. Microsoft and Yahoo also may have a greater ability to attract and retain users than we do because they operate Internet portals with a broad range of content products and services. If Microsoft or Yahoo are successful in providing similar or better web search results compared to ours or leverage their platforms or products to make their web search services easier to access than ours, we could experience a significant decline in user traffic. Any such decline in traffic could negatively affect our revenues."

The report also notes that Google is competing with the traditional media for a share of advertising dollars noting that Google expects the majority of ad-spending to continue to be concentrated in the traditional media.

Lastly, the report reiterates CFO George Reyes' comments earlier this month where he noted the unprecedented revenue growth rates Google has experienced over the past three years are likely to slow. The report says, "We expect that our revenue growth rate will decline over time and anticipate that there will be downward pressure on our operating margin. We believe our revenue growth rate will generally decline as a result of increasing competition and the inevitable decline in growth rates as our revenues increase to higher levels." This does not mean Google is going to stop making money or showing a profit every quarter. It does demonstrate that Google recognizes its market is maturing and serves as a gentle correction to outrageous investor exuberance.

The remainder of the document outlines Google's business structure, revenue figures from 2005 and other financial data. It is a very long and detailed read but it tells a remarkable story. Going in to 2006, Google is in excellent shape though the report does suggest it is wary of several market and competitive factors. As a chapter in the history of Google, the 2005 SEC filing is a worthy weekend read.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: The Goods on Google - A Few Facts From Their SEC Filing

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: SES China 2006

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

There are now three general types or groupings of SEO practitioner. The first group is in decline; the second in transition, and the third is just starting to find its stride.

There is a declining number of SEOs who work solely for themselves, optimizing sites targeting the affiliate marketing, casino or adult entertainment sectors. Some of these practitioners had moved to the AdSense-rich environment of the blogosphere over the past two years, prompting stricter rules designed to discourage overt content duplication and blog-link spam.

This first group has been steadily moving on to other endeavors, mostly because their working environment is simply getting too difficult to make as much money as their skills could command in other sectors of the search marketing field.

Members of the second group of SEOs, the ones in transition, work for established search marketing firms and primarily serve a range of commercial clients. This type of SEO has existed for over a decade and has been generally successful financially and professionally. Chances are the firm they work for employs less than ten full time staff members and they are likely juggling a number of client files at any given time. It is stressful, fun and enlightening work but it is also becoming more complex by the day.

For this group, the changes in the search marketplace and in the business of search marketing are proving to be highly disruptive. For established SEO firms, a feeling of being squeezed on both sides is very real.

The search engine environment has expanded enormously over the past two years. Along with traditional search engines such as Google or Yahoo, there are a variety of more specific search marketing venues to think about, depending on the needs of the client being represented. This growth is paralleled by the increasing sophistication of Internet users and online content. The practice of SEO today requires a much deeper knowledge base and more person-hours per file.

When caught between a rock and a hard place, the only practical direction to go is up. Proactive SEO firms began making changes to their operations months ago though, as most SEO firms are quite busy, signs of those changes are only recently starting to materialize in the form of new content on their websites. A number of other firms, as well as StepForth, are refocusing many of the core services they offer.

Perhaps the greatest and most logical changes for established SEO firms are found in the increase in SEO consultancy services and the growing tendency to separate site design/re-design from the SEO service process. Both are byproducts of the growing complexity of the marketplace.

Up until recently, most SEO campaigns were assumed to involve a great deal of hands-on work in and around a website being optimized. Today, it is more likely that an optimized website benefited from an SEO consultant's advice than from a traditional hands-on SEO.

As anyone familiar with website design or maintenance knows, hands-on work often takes a lot of time. The time commitment of hands-on SEO is complicated by the number of different types of CMS (content management systems) commonly used in site construction and the increased sophistication of websites written in Notepad or a web editor. Working through the various means of website construction has always been a challenge for SEOs, especially when their success is measured by site-traffic and increased client revenues.

Another factor moving SEOs towards consultancy services is the seriousness with which many clients are taking their websites. While clients tend to have more complicated websites, they also tend to have a larger staff to work on those sites. More clients have in-house IT staffs and thus, there are more rules about who can and who cannot have access to client servers than there were in previous years.

That increase in staff levels is highly beneficial for SEO consultancy services. Most of the research required to conduct a strong, ongoing SEO campaign can be done though consultancy and the time spent dealing with a more complex search marketing environment almost evens out with the time saved by having the site-administrators carry out written recommendations. As the IT departments of clients learn to fulfill many of the needs that were previously serviced by a hands-on SEO, the SEO consultant can spend his or her time improving the overall performance of the website and user-experience on the site.

As web-marketing has become more important to advertisers, a number of analytic products have appeared on the market offering extraordinary details about how visitors behave while viewing web content. The detailed information provided by analytic tools such as ClickTracks or Google Analytics is extremely important for SEO. It can help focus the user experience, and for those responsible for integrating an organic placement campaign with Pay-per-Click ad management, knowing how and where a user enters a site is invaluable.

SEO consultants act in the role of a guide and most charge by the hour but allow for retainers. As the web marketing arena grows and becomes more complex, a good guide is good to have around.

The other major change for SEO firms is the need to separate website design from the SEO process. Search friendly site architecture has always been important for SEOs and corrections to the simpler sites of previous years were more easily made during the SEO process.

Today, site design has matured into a creative science. For SEOs however, the importance of search engine friendly design, combined with the complexity of many commercial websites has made search ready site-design a specialized skill set.

This has prompted many SEO firms to draw alliances with site design firms over the past year, or to begin offering website design as a separate service. StepForth has plans in this regard which we will be announcing next week.

There is that third group of SEOs which is just beginning to establish itself in the marketplace, and they are big. Madison Avenue is coming to call on a client near you. In a bid to remain relevant to their clients, many traditional advertising firms are finding their way into the search engine marketing sphere. If you hear the phrase, "Click-marketing" in the coming years, this is the place it is likely coming from.

The entrance of large scale advertising firms to the search marketing sector will have a profound affect on the industry as it evolves over the coming years. With paid-search advertising being branded the most effective form of direct marketing, and search being estimated at a staggering $15 billion+ industry by 2010, the only question many have for Madison Avenue is, "What took you so long?"

In the end, the growth of the search engine marketing sector has proven highly disruptive for marketers working in other venues. Perhaps it is only time that disruption affects those of us involved in the industry as well. One thing it tells us with irrefutable optimism is; Search engine optimization is a necessary component in a greater technical advertising campaign.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Complexity Compels Changes for SEO Firms

Monday, March 13, 2006

Sometimes the most well thought out practical jokes trigger an uneven brand of justice that falls under the laws of unintended consequences. While not formally codified and ill defined, the law of unintended consequences is very real, as a Google-focused prank pulled by 15-year old Tom Vandetta amply illustrates.

Reading through SEO focused blog entries, Vandetta found an article that explained how to fool Google's news system by writing fake press releases. Sensing an opportunity to experiment and play a joke on his friends, the self-described "Google fanboy" decided to see what would happen if he submitted a fake Google press release claiming the 15-year old New Jersey student was Google's youngest employee.

The press release was issued through the free service I-Newswire and contained a number of spelling mistakes. Short and to the point, the release, which appeared to have been sent by a Google spokesperson Sonya Johnson (who's actually existence is unconfirmed and is assumed to be imaginary), read:

"(I-Newswire) - 15 year old student, Tom Vendetta has been hired by search engine giant Google Inc. The student will receive a lowered salary, which will be placed into a bank account for future education, said Google CEO Larry Page. When asked what role Vendetta will play at the Tech Giant's offices, Page said he wouldnt have a role at the Main Offices. Instead he would work from his home in the New Jersey suburbs. Vendetta will be incharge of working with recent security flaw's in Google's beta e-mail service, "Gmail". Google said they first found out about him when they discovered the student's blog, at http://tomvendetta.be. The media giant said they looked forward to working with Vendetta's expertise in JavaScript and AJAX."

A few hours after posting the fake press release, Vandetta logged into the news search tool Digg after receiving an automated email from MAKEBot (Digg's Spider), to find his practical joke had become a credible international tech story. Google was even displaying reference to the press release in Google News and at in the news results placed above search results relating to Google employment or hiring. According to his confessional blog posting, "At that moment, I felt my stomach knot up and my heart drop. I knew exactly what happened and knew that I would end up regretting posting that."

The prank has made Vandetta temporarily famous. His Gmail account received almost 400 emails in the first few hours. Vandetta has since had to open new Gmail and MySpace accounts. His parents are changing their phone number and he is working to re-establish a workable online identity. On the brighter side, he has received a few emails from Google employees assuring him he has not dashed his dreams of one day working for Google, as he thought he might have.

>> Check out StepForth's Recommended SEO Tools <<

While the prank was a juvenile as it was creative, Vandetta's fake press release has exposed a credibility problem for Google and might introduce new costs for search marketing firms that use legitimate press releases as a means of promotion. His experiment exposed the fact the automated system that is Google News does not verify press releases before publishing them as factual news pieces.

Google engineers are almost certainly working overtime to institute stronger spam filters and shore up the credibility of the Google News system, as they have over the years when SEOs have exposed exploitable characteristics of the organic ranking algorithm.

SEOs who use press release submission services should expect to have to submit a lot more identifying information about themselves and their clients. Requiring information such as phone numbers, addresses, contact names and positions that can be verified by electronic spiders are the most likely filtering options being discussed by Google's tech-team.

Another filter might be the disempowering or "delisting" of free-for-use press release services such as I-Newswire.com. This measure would present a hindrance to smaller companies and SEO firms, most of which use press releases properly. By raising the cost of communication, Google risks pushing many smaller entities away from an important arena. SEOs are rarely happy to present extra costs to their clients, many of which are small businesses using search advertising to even the playing field against much larger competitors.

Whatever the outcome, Google has to move to close gaps in its News aggregation system quickly.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Google News Credibility Foiled By 15-Year Old

We can only think of three reasons for this:

1. Google is retaliating against sites that ridiculed its Google China project.
2. Google has begun to implement its Google China policies in the rest of the free world.
3. A left-leaning Google employee who's got access to the database was suffering a nervous breakdown over the mockery of Marxism on our site, and so he or she dastardly removed/blocked The People's Cube, hoping to "improve" the public discourse by silencing the competition.

You tell me which one it is." (the real answer: none of the above)

As it turns out, the site was banned for a careless CSS text-hiding technique. Matt Cutts, Google's chief spam-fighter and algorithm de-mystifier explains it all on his blog. When the site is viewed through a browser that has CSS (cascading style sheets) enabled, the site looks "normal" but, when the site is viewed on a browser that has CSS turned off, hundreds of lines of hidden text and text-links are revealed.

The first moral of this story: Don't go screaming shenanigans against Google if you are playing shenanigans on them. It is bound to backfire badly.

The second moral of the story: Google is a machine. It might be an extraordinarily powerful machine but it is a machine nevertheless. Googlebot is growing quite capable of detecting and flagging spam-ridden sites, though it does take a human hand to push the actual delist button but only after the site has been flagged and reviewed for spam. That stark reality might deflate the egos of certain webmasters who claim to be personally persecuted by Google when their sites get banned from the index. The cold, harsh truth is, Google really doesn't think most webmasters are very important as individuals, especially those who are easily offended by machines.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Check Your Site Before Calling Shenanigans on Google

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: 25 Things Danny Sullivan "Hates" About Google

Friday, March 10, 2006

Does anyone remember how, less than a year ago, several commentators suggested Google was compiling a series of products that could emulate an online operating system? At the time, Google steadfastly denied such rumors. Yesterday, Google purchased Upstartle, the maker of a browser-based word processor called Writely.

Writely is an online word processor that enables multiple users to access and work on documents from any location. It can be used as a collaborative editing device and offers users online publishing options including the ability to convert Writely documents into "normal-looking web pages" or blog postings.

The acquisition of Upstartle, combined with other current and pending Google services poses a serious challenge to Microsoft's desktop oriented products. Google is clearly building a suite of branded, browser-based applications that contains several daily use products designed to capture users from Microsoft Office.

Earlier today, Slashdot published a story suggesting Google is running a closed beta test of Google Calendar, including a link to a series of screen shots. The project, nicknamed CL2, will be integrated with Gmail in the future.

The stakes for both firms are high with Microsoft preparing to release its new Internet focused operating system, Vista before the end of 2006. Until recently, Microsoft was able to bank on the storage space offered by personal computers. Its operating systems run from the hard drive and most digital documents composed by computer users are stored on those users' hard drives. The security of the hard drive dependent storage system Microsoft enjoyed is about to change radically.

At its Analysts Day, held earlier this month, Google inadvertently announced the development of Gdrive, a virtually infinite, online data storage service. A series of slides offering preliminary details of Gdrive were included in notes for one of the day's PowerPoint presentations but were later removed by Google.

"The notes were deleted from the slides we posted because they were not intended for publication," Google spokeswoman Lynn Fox said in an interview with vnunet.com. While she declined further comment, those notes also included financial projections that stretched into next year, forcing Google to file a statement with the SEC on March 7.

Shortly after the presentation, the CEO of Findory.com, Greg Linden, posted comments about them to his Geeking with Greg blog, before Google removed them. The full text of the notes from Google Analyst Day can be found here.

In his review of the deleted notes, Greg found a few interesting sentences. At one point in Slide 19, the text notes how Google is inspired by the idea of "... a world with infinite storage, bandwidth and CPU power."

Google, like its competitors, is becoming a second generation web hosting firm. Another line from Slide 19 says Google wants to be able to "... house all user files including Emails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc)."

Google's capacity to store and retrieve personal information is already being applied to the corporate world. Google Desktop 3 includes an option that allows users who work on multiple computers, or multi-user workgroups, to search for items stored on the hard drives of multiple computers. Google keeps copies of files found on computers in the file-sharing network and transfers them from unit to unit as searches take place.

One of the more interesting lines Greg extracted from Slide 19 was the idea that files stored and shared through Gdrive would become the "Golden copy" of those documents. Gdrive, like Writely is designed to facilitate workgroup collaboration, much like a central file server in most IT offices does now. The copy kept on the hard drives of members of a working group will be a cache of the most recent version displayed on that particular computer, but not necessarily the most up-to-date document.

Google Labs is pushing the other major Internet and search firms to work harder and faster. The addition of Writely to Google's stable of membership-based products raises another series of hurdles for Microsoft and might force them to refocus their Vista strategies. Microsoft was hoping to challenge Google's search dominance by integrating search within the desktop and operating system. Google appears ready to flank them by moving applications formerly found on the desktop into its sphere of search-related products. 2006 is shaping up to be a most interesting year.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Google's Growing Online Office

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

"How do I know if my SEO campaign has been successful?"

I was asked this deceptively simple question the other day. I wasn't able to give the fullest response but considering the circumstances, I gave it a great effort.

It's mid-spring in Victoria and the golf courses are playable again so I joined a friend and a few of his acquaintances for a short round on Saturday. By the time we had gotten to the third tee-box, talk had turned to Google and eventually search engine marketing in general. That tends to happen around me for some reason.

This is not a golfing story but its kernel was found on a golf course and golf is a game that is rich with metaphor. Golf, like SEO, is a deceptively simple game. On the surface it is easy enough to understand but once you get involved, you learn there is always a lot more to learn.

Like search marketing, the golfer's goal appears simple. Top placement is measured by the lowest number and a 1, 2 or 3 looks amazing on anyone's scorecard. Fortunately, it is infinitely easier to score a 1 in SEO than it is to do so while golfing. Unfortunately, explaining success in the world of search marketing, over the course of 9-holes is hardly possible. As it is in golf, success in search marketing is a very subjective thing.

To put it in a simple sentence, success equates to meeting one's goals. What those goals are, and how they help you or your business achieve a greater objective is another matter.

Pure Rankings

The easiest way to measure success in SEO is still found in pure search engine rankings. Either the site appears in the Top10 listings under target keyword phrases, or it does not. Top10 rankings are what most SEO firms promise their clients.

While pure rankings are the easiest metric to measure, they are not necessarily the most accurate one. From rankings, we learn generally where a site appears from day to day but that's all. We can never be certain that the rankings we see or record are exactly the same as those seen by our clients who might be drawing results from a different server.

Pure rankings are often the first goal of most SEO campaigns however what happens after that goal is achieved is where most SEO firms really provide value for their clients.

Visitors

The second simplest measure of SEO success is found in the log-files kept by every Internet Service Provider. When someone visits a site, the host ISP records the visit in the log-file of that site. Those logs are available to the client and the client should make those logs available to the SEO.

If the SEO has achieved high rankings under relevant keywords or phrases, there should be a notable increase in visits recorded in the site logs. If there is not an increase, there is likely something wrong with the targeted keywords or with the listing as displayed on the search engines.

For new webmasters, it is important to note that a hit is not necessarily a visit. The ISP presents both as stats. A hit is a record of a file being drawn from the server (often, several files are put together to make a standard HTML page). A visit is an actual entity (live or electronic) coming to the site.

An increase in visitors is the second basic goal for an SEO. In reality, the client might think they are only paying for strong rankings. Even if Top10 rankings are the agreed upon goal, the client is really paying for more visitors. That is what they expect to reap from their investment and, more often than not, that is exactly what they get. The question then becomes, what does one do when visitors come calling?

Conversions

Websites that rank well in the major search engines tend to draw far more traffic than websites that do not. SEOs, if successful, make client websites easier to find and therefore far more visible. Drawing traffic immediately opens an important question. Once you have it, what do you do with it?

Conversions are the most important metric to measure the success of an SEO campaign and conversions come from planning.

Experienced SEOs appreciate the value of strategic marketing planning. It is important for us to know that our clients have a long-term plan. If they don't we are happy to help them come up with one or to refer them to an expert who can. A good website marketing plan looks at how live-visitors will act while visiting the site.

Goal-Orientated Conversions

The object is to actively direct site visitors towards a goal of some sort or another. For some cases, that goal is a sale. In others it is the provision of information, the acquisition of email addresses or other contact information.

As a metric, visitor/site conversions are far more valuable. Conversions are the measurement of completed goals and good SEOs know how to help increase goal-orientated conversions.

Keyword conversions

Some keywords or keyword phrases will convert better than others. Even if one set of keywords or keyword phrases tends to draw more search-traffic, those words might not lead to successful site conversions.

When faced with a question about increased traffic that does not lead to increased conversions, we tend to first look at the keywords used to generate that traffic. Some words will obviously have a different effect on the searcher than others and might influence the course of their visit. For SEOs, watching how your counterparts dealing with PPC keyword buys can help provide clues to winning keyword combinations.

On-Site conversions

The greatest influencer of how a visitor acts when on a site is, of course, the site itself. Websites that convert well tend to be laid-out in a way that actively encourages site visitors to move from one section of a site to another.

The same principle that applies to moving spiders applies to moving live visitors. A good SEO makes site transit simple for spiders and intuitive for live visitors.

Sales

Ultimately, for our clients at least, conversions are supposed to lead to a sale. Great placements and excellent conversions are useless for the website owner who can't put food on their table. Sales are an important metric to measure the success of any advertising campaign against but, it is important to note that measuring the effectiveness of your SEO by online sales is a false metric.

The vast majority of actual sales happen offline. Take the travel industry for example. With the exception of the larger businesses operating in travel and tourism, most actual transactions will take place in person or over the telephone. I might book and pay for an airline ticket online but am much more likely to pay for my accommodation and all meals at the time of purchase. A similar transaction cycle happens in the fashion and clothing sectors. People research their clothing purchases online and buy them in a store. If your actual sales are up, chances are your website marketing efforts are at least partially responsible. If not, you should look at all facets of marketing and presentation, including the SEO efforts.

Return on Investment

By far, the most realistic metric to measure any advertising campaign against is return on investment. The basic question here is, am I making more money after investing in search advertising than I was before. If the answer is yes, chances are the search marketing component in your overall advertising mix is working well.

For me, the return on my investment of time and energy on Saturday morning has been excellent. Not only did I improve my game and meet a couple friendly business contacts, I was given a deceptively simple question to deal with.

Golf is a game of personal honesty. For a good search marketer, so is SEO. In order to enjoy success on the search engines, a fair degree of personal honesty is invaluable. Some campaigns will succeed where others fail. Some will only meet a few of their greater goals while others will ace them every time. Overall, measuring success can be boiled down to one basic but deceptively simple question, "Was it worth all the effort?" For our clients at least, the answer is, far more often than not, a resounding "Yes!"

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Measuring Success as an SEO

Friday, March 03, 2006

On Thursday March 2, Google held its second annual investor analyst day at its Mountain View California headquarters. In sharp contrast to last year's event, which saw the keynote presentation delivered by Head Cafeteria Chef, Charlie Ayers, Google executives appeared to be taking the day much more seriously. This year, the investor focused session was hosted by George Reyes, Google's Chief Financial Officer.

The Analysts day was timely. Last week saw Google stock falling quickly, down about 20% from its highest point this year, after Reyes commented on slowing revenue growth in the search advertising sector. As CEO Eric Schmidt took the podium to dispel any notions that Google was hitting a slump, Google share prices started to rise, closing at $376.45 (up 3.2% over the day).

Schmidt's goal was to assure investors that Google continues to see and pursue several avenues of opportunity. Citing AdWords delivered over cell phones, its increased presence in print and radio advertising, and Google's interest in exploring TV ad-buying, Schmidt ended his presentation suggesting Google is going to be a $100Billion company by the end of 2010.

Google, incidentally, already enjoys a market cap of over $100 Billion and sees approximately $6 Billion per year in revenues. "I'll give you the choice of whether that is $100 billion in market cap or revenue," Schmidt said, teasing his audience.

Other Google executives participated in the day-long analyst meeting. Marissa Meyer fielded questions about Google's rivalry with Microsoft, dismissing MSN’s claims that their search engine is as relevant as Google's. "The gap with the competition is as large as it ever has been", said Meyers.

Google brags about having one of the most cost-effective, scalable global networks. This claim was reiterated by Research and Engineering VP, Alan Eustace who suggested Google has a three to five year lead on its competition. "We don't think our competitors can deploy systems cheaper, faster or at scale," he said. "That will give us a two, three, five-year lead."

At the end of the analyst day, the gospel according to Google was simple. Google is growing both internally and internationally. They are developing and introducing new products at a rapid rate. Revenues are up quarter after quarter, as measured in real dollar terms and there appears to be no end to growth potential.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Google has Matured says Analysts - No More Sudden Growth Spurts

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

On Tuesday morning, Google's CFO George Reyes, suggested the extraordinary revenue growth Google has seen over the past three years might slow. He didn't say stop, or even drop precipitously; he said the word, slow.

"Clearly our growth rates are slowing. We see that each and every quarter," he told an investor conference in New York. "We are going to have to find new ways to monetize the business."

That admission was enough to spark a frenzied sell off of stocks that saw about 13% of company shares trade hands and reduced the overall average value of global major stock indexes by about 1%. Early Tuesday, Google was trading below $350 per share.

By the end of the day, Google took the initiative and issued a statement "clarifying" what Reyes was really trying to say.

"As we have stated before, monetization improvements will continue to be a key factor in driving future revenue growth,"Google said in its statement. "We still see significant opportunities to improve monetization and intend to continue to focus our efforts in this area. Moreover, as we have stated in our SEC filings, our revenue growth rate has generally declined over time, and we expect that it will continue to do so as a result of the difficulty of maintaining growth rates on a percentage basis as our revenues increase to higher levels."

In other words, Google is still making scads of money, as expressed purely by the numbers (which tend to number in the billions). Each quarter, they make a good deal more than they made in the previous quarter, when measured dollar for dollar. When analysts measure growth as a percentage of previous quarters, and then examine those percentages against each other, revenue growth appears to be slowing.

Realizing the good sense in the statement, investors clearly felt more comfortable with the tech market, pushing Google's share prices $2.18 higher by the close of today's trading, ending the day at $364.80.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
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About ten years ago my brother and I ventured to the Edge of the World. It is located a few hundred kilometers (120mi) northwest of Thunder Bay Ontario. The Edge of the World is a high cliff near the hundredth meridian, the place where the expansive flatlands, the prairies are said to begin. It marks the point where the Canadian Shield gives way to the endless grasslands and presents a vista that stretches as far as the eye can see.

From where I was standing, about two hundred meters (500') above the cliff base, eternity was a forest full of uniquely distinct trees. What is not apparent to observers standing hundreds of feet above the great forest is the action happening below the canopy. Underneath the treetops, the forest is full of life. It is an intricate network of sustentation that grows and germinates itself season after season after season.

The search engine optimization and marketing sector is rapidly approaching a similar place where the forest has become an infinite collection of pre-tagged trees. It is relatively easy to find relevant information in the first ten results at MSN, Yahoo, Ask or Google but there are often thousands of advertisers competing for the same keyword targets, each of which expect tangible guarantees their dollars will produce positive results. The rules of survival in the forest are changing quickly. There are a lot more creatures looking for food but at the same time, there are several new ways to find it, or even better, have it find you.

Many SEOs risk losing sight of the forest by only seeing the trees and not changing their outlook and expanding their skill-sets. The same can be said for small to medium advertisers who have become dependent on the paid search medium. The cutting edge of online advertising has moved well beyond the cliff face at the Edge of the World and has discovered that the world is suddenly much bigger and more connected.

The role of the search engine optimizer has changed dramatically in a very short period of time. The changes to the profession are so overwhelming I think a new chapter in the collective meme of SEO tradition is being written, the emergence of the NeoSEO.

Traditionally, search engine optimizers have operated much like hired hunter-gatherers. The professional SEO ventured into the forest on behalf of his or her clients, tracking and nailing Top10 results across all the major hunting grounds. With less competition, larger available keyword inventories and fewer options for searchers, positive results were very easy to achieve.

Today, the one-person SEO shop is a rarity as there are literally hundreds of minute tasks and several different skill-sets associated with the success of a strategic search marketing campaign. As the margins for most SEO shops are so low, they need to take on a number of clients in order to expand, thus necessitating the separation of administration, sales and actual technical production. Real business requires the diligence of corporate bureaucracy and the expansion of the search sphere necessitates specialization in specific forms of search engine marketing.

Fortunately for the traditional SEO shop, everything begins and ends with the basic rules of search engine optimization. In other words, the skill-sets developed for organic SEO are the same ones needed to form the new knowledge base, which is the product we offer our clients. Though the search sphere has expanded enormously over the past year, a number of basic SEO tenets apply to every search marketing platform. Words and word association will continue to be the basis of search but, (and it's a pretty big but), the tools people use find information, the variety of information they can access, the ways in which they use words to describe their queries, and the ways in which search datacenters relate to those words, have changed.

Searchers are approaching the Internet with a more sophisticated set of skills and options to choose from. As the mass culture begins to understand and demystify the Internet, search and information retrieval has become a multi-faceted sector no longer dominated by just Google alone.

While Google itself remains the dominant search engine, Internet users are starting to migrate to online communities such as those found at MySpace, craigslist, Orkut, Myweb and ezboard. Each of these emerging community networks provides search options for users and each offers forms of online advertising. With MySpace seeing nearly twice the daily traffic Google does, it is obvious the search sphere is no longer the exclusive domain of the search engines. Search engine optimizers need to be able to help their clients establish accounts, set profiles and manage advertising in these emerging areas. Words and word association are the essential skills needed, along with knowledge relevant to local search.

Regardless of how the searchers try to access it, they are all looking for the same thing, information. The major search engines and a number of smaller vertical search tools are capable of sorting and ranking information expressed in multiple formats. The variety of information available to the searching public is unprecedented rivaled only by the number of multimedia editing tools available for content creators. Information, or content, is being expressed and received in the form of text messages, video, audio, and still-imagery.

For SEOs, making that information available to the various search engines, spiders and bots trying to find it requires learning about tagging, linking, and blogging. It is also important to know enough about the content-creation process to understand what your clients are dealing with at any given stage of your relationship. Barry Schwartz from Search Engine Round Table provides a good, point-form coverage of today's SES session, " SEM Via Communities, Wikipedia & Tagging". There's a lot of interesting information in those points.

One of the most important, basic SEO skills is keyword research and by extension, word association. Knowing what words searchers are most likely to use when looking for your client's product or service, and then being able to find a few dozen other keyword combinations describing those products or services, is the mark of a brilliant SEO. Oddly enough, search queries appear to be going three ways, short, long, and multilingual.

In an online world increasingly influenced by micro-devices such as Blackberrys or cell-phone text messaging, a number of people are using a form of shorthand writing that often cuts out vowels, or replaces word-sounds with numbers. Search engine optimizers should expect and plan for increased use of abbreviated forms of language.

On the opposite end of the scale, search engine users are starting to be a little more specific in their queries. One of the old-school SEO techniques is the use of multiple two-keyword phrases placed judiciously throughout the titles, metas, text and links. If done properly, these two-word phrases could be mixed and matched to produce several combinations of relevant phrases that searchers might use.

Today, searchers are being far more precise when describing the information they are looking for. Instead of entering a simple query such as "artificial turf", a groundskeeper might enter "artificial turf for high school baseball". Similarly, instead of entering "wholesale notions", a quilting store might look for specific supplies by entering, "wholesale notions, markers, pens, pencils". Starting with two word phrases, three to five word strings can be extrapolated and optimized for.

SEOs should also be aware of the advances in natural language search and be able to provide multilingual optimization services directly or by reference. The Internet reaches around the world and while English remains the most-used language, business and connections can be made in many languages.

Words are just words, or so they might say, but words carry meanings that vary and they might mean something one day and nothing the next, and figuring it out is what Google does best. Well, maybe not best but, along with competitors Ask, MSN and Yahoo, they do a pretty good job of figuring out what each of their hundreds of millions of daily users are looking for.

As the Internet and its users have grown and become more sophisticated, so to have the search engine algorithms, especially at Yahoo and Google. The major search engines track every word that moves across their datacenters, looking for relationships between queries, words found in documents, and the ways those queries evolve over time. When a spider examines one document, it also examines everything linked to that document. It's rather like a hall of mirrors with each successive document leading to more links for the spider to follow.

Finding a way to mentally or automatically track how words relate to each other from document to document in a series of links is already an important skill for high-level SEOs and link brokers. As content on the web becomes more connected (think about the MP3 files found on MySpace profiles or podcasts embedded in personal or professional blogs), SEOs will need to advise and guide their clients through the forest of words, finding trails that lead to the roots, the canopy and the other flora and fauna surrounding them.

There are other skill sets necessary to speak the new language of SEO. While having well developed website design skills has always been a pre-requisite, an understanding of web analytics and site-user tracking is needed to inform decisions made during the SEO process. Making the site accessible and usable is important for moving visitors and spiders through the site efficiently. SEOs should also continue to learn as much as they possibly can about how their clients' Internet Service Providers set up their servers.

If the traditional SEO acted much like a hunter-gatherer, today's NeoSEO acts more as an advisor, often performing along side other site contributors. There are often many participants involved with an active website, most of which rarely think about the marketing end of things. As the numbers of file types and search venues increase, SEO consultancy, and the provision of direct services recommended during the consultancy has to work efficiently with the other active site contributors. StepForth's CEO, Ross Dunn spends much of his time communicating between various arms of our client's online businesses, acting as coach and sometimes as quarterback to move the team towards the goals he and the client articulate.

Today's SEO is far different from those of yesteryear. Those still standing on the cliff, facing the Edge of the World need to think about their descent into the living forest. While the view from above is breathtaking for all the trees, the real action is in the forest itself.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
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