The Fantomaster (a fabled SEO black hat guru) really caught my attention today by noting an article on Search Engine Watch that he admired! In case you don't know when Fantomaster admires an article you can be relatively certain the article is worth a read. Written for Search Engine Watch by Rob Kerry the article titled "Playing Dirty with PPC" lays out the steps to get around the editorial controls on the major pay per click search engines.
Here are the interesting but somewhat chilling techniques that Rob outlines in his article:
How to sneak in advertisements that under normal circumstances would never make it past editorial control.
How to steal ALL of the top 10 pay per click positions.
How to get your competitor's campaign dropped in a single, swift move.
Here is the complete article to read if you are interested. Of course I don't advise ever utilizing the tactics that Rob outlines; however, I believe it is worthwhile understanding the morally challenged tactics that competitors could use against you.
Read/WriteWeb, one of my favorite blogs, just posted an interesting article on a new site called Wikirage; a site that shows what topics are the most trendy (popular) at Wikipedia.
How Does Wikirage Work? Wikipedia's detailed traffic statistics are not available to the public so Craig Wood, the creator of Wikirage cleverly leveraged the editing statistics that are open to the public to create his statistics. As a result, Wikirage creates its popularity index by identifying the top 100 pages within Wikipedia that have received the most updates; a relatively accurate indication of the topics that are driving current trends.
At the SiteProNews blog today Jim Hedger announced that his contract as the daily editor for SiteProNews was not renewed for another year.
The whole staff at StepForth wishes our friend and former in-house writer all the best as he refocuses his attentions on other partnerships and his company Markland Media based in Victoria, BC, Canada.
Nerds and techies rejoice! BUG Labs has launched its official website where they released more detail on their flagship product that, in a sense, is like the ultimate Lego for nerds and techies :-)
In quarter 4 of 2007 BUGbase will be released which will allow inventors to create an infinite variety of gizmos and gadgets from programmable building blocks. The blocks are called modules and all connect to the BUGbase which is a "a fully programmable and "hackable" Linux computer, equipped with a fast CPU, 128MB RAM, built-in WiFi, rechargeable battery, USB, Ethernet, and a small LCD with button controls. It also has a tripod mount because, well, why not? Each BUGbase houses four connectors for users to combine any assortment of BUGmodules to create their ultimate gadget."
On their About Page, the Bug Labs team coins this concept as "Community Electronics" because in addition to being able to create your own custom gadget you can also share your code and learn from others in the online community called BUGnet. This innovative move by BUG could open up a whole new level of advancement in technology where the eccentric and brilliant minds of inventors join as one to continually advance this hardware and software to unimagined heights.
In a post today dotMobi CEO, Neil Edwards announced that dotMobi would be releasing approximately 500 premium domain names to auction in the next few months. And yes, that includes Sex.Mobi.
Neil goes on to explain why dotMobi waited over a year to release these highly sought after domains: "We are a well funded company who has a long term view on dotMobi. The content publishing tools were not available last year to build good mobile content sites. It was not in the best interest of the consumer or the company to release names for sale when buyers would have had no good way to produce content."
As an added note Neil Edwards should have quieted a few naysayers out there who believe dotMobi is going nowhere; in a period of only 3 months, Google's index for .mobi pages has increased five times from 1 million pages to 5 million pages. Not bad for a relatively fresh domain in a emerging marketplace!
Congratulations dotMobi! I hope you guys make a killing on those premium domain names.
A post today at the Google Webmaster Central Blog announced that Google's Search Quality Team will resume sending notification emails to violators of Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
The notices started in 2005 as a courtesy to let webmasters know that pages have been temporarily removed from Google's index but over the past few months Google stopped sending them because fraudulent emails (that supposedly came from Google) were scaring webmasters half to death.
Google has resumed sending these notices to everyone because their current system only allows them to provide notice to website owners that have verified their site at Webmaster Central. By only using Webmaster Central they left many webmasters in the dark which had, I imagine over the past few months, increased Google's complaint file.
By sending these reports to those outside of Webmaster Central, Google is likely to re-energize the fraudulent emailers out there but that can't be helped - the unsuspecting webmaster needs to know if they have stepped over the line. Even if they are not a patron of Webmaster Central.
News of the potential Google Phone (gPhone) has been slowly but surely taking over the net over the past 6 months or so. As of late, however, the hype is louder than ever since recent (supposedly more concrete) evidence has appeared of its existence. At this point there is simply too much hearsay to really know what the heck is going on but a bit part of my gut says this may just be the biggest bad rumor ever. Unfortunately the other half of my gut wonders why Google's Marissa Mayer never actually denied the existence of the gPhone at the latest Search Engine Strategies conference.
One thing is for sure, mobile Internet use is skyrocketing and Google undoubtedly wants a sure footing in this burgeoning industry. The question is... will they meddle with the Telcos by taking their own piece of the pie or just continue to supply the ingredients?
Here are some interesting threads if you want to keep up on the latest gPhone hype:
My Prediction: Okay I am going to have fun here and try to predict where Google is with the 'Gphone'... nowhere! Look it seems bleeming crazy for Google to move on a concept that could alienate their telco partners and put them into a vertical they have little or no experience in. If they do go somewhere with this I expect it will be by way of a partnership model with a leading innovative Telco.
What Google Might Do Okay here is my serious prediction: I predict that Google will partner with a Telco to create a phone (or modify an existing one) that takes complete advantage of Google's current and upcoming web applications. The new phone will be priced well below competitors and after they get users hooked on it they will offer an innovative new concept where users receive better rates in exchange for a form of advertising (yes, advertising I mean come on, this is Google after all!). How the advertising is integrated will depend entirely on the physical layout of the phone, however, I would be blown away if the phone did not include an iPhone-like larger than life touch screen which would (theoretically) allow similar ads to what we experience now.
Google will likely make the home page default to a mobile Google page with optional personalization enabled; but they will stress the usefulness of personalization because it will enhance the user experience by providing higher quality results. The phones will become your daily update on all things online including weather, flash news, scheduling, where to go (using GPS built-in or optionally added), email... etc.
Oh and of course Google will not make these great phones available in Canada because Google likes to forget about their Northern neighbors.
What Do You Think? Is the Gphone all a bunch of whooey or are you betting on it? Drop a note!
by Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth Web Marketing Inc. Celebrating 10 Years of Web Marketing Excellence
I caught an interesting seminar today called "SEO Through Blogs and Feeds" with Stephen Spencer, Rick Klau, Doug Hay and Greg Jarboe on the panel. The following are my point by point notes that stood out as noteworthy. Some of these tips are mirrored in my 3 part tutorial on blogging called Blogs 101 but as always some great new tips popped up.
Key Tips For those in a rush or who have already read my blogs 101 article the following tips are very worthwhile reading - if just for their importance as reminders:
It is extremely important that RSS auto-discovery tags be placed in the header of every page within a website that has feeds available. By doing so you will provide users and search engines alike with a simple method of being notified that you have RSS feed(s) and it will allow immediate subscription without fuss. In contrast simply having a RSS logo hyperlinked with a feed provides little or no benefit and does not provide auto-notification that a feed is available.
Furthermore it is recommended to create a unique auto-discovery tag for each available RSS feed and place them all in the header. If you think you have too many then I would recommend choosing the feeds that are most relevant to the page content.
A WordPress plugin was noted called the "SEO Title Tag Plugin". This plugin really impressed me because it allows WordPress users to see and individually customize the title tags of every post within the associated blog; without a doubt a powerful capability since title tags play a significant role in rankings.
If you use paid Press Release services to disseminate your latest company news then it also works to your advantage to create a separate blog specifically used for your press releases. In this regard you can use the associated RSS feed to get some free publicity by submitting it to blog directories and other blog-syndicating properties.
If you are finding it difficult to get the word out about a particular piece of news then Greg Jarboe has a great idea for you: track down the key bloggers that appear to be driving the news in your industry and contact them with your story.
If your story interests even one of the bloggers and gets published then you could get a massive amount of publicity for zero dollars.
During the presentation of this concept Greg Jarboe utilized a powerful online tool called BuzzLogic to identify which people drove the latest news in key topics. Unfortunately BuzzLogic appears to be priced well out of the capabilities of many small businesses (at $12,000/yr minimum) so I will provide a very basic free alternative to determining the leaders of a particular topic.
Step 1) Search in your favorite search engine for the particular topic. Within the results separate the blogs from the other content. If you do not find at least 10 bloggers then try search again with different wording for the same topic.
Step 2) Look at each blog individually and look for indications of readership or popularity. For example perhaps one of the website has a Feedburner subscription counter with the blog's current readership OR take the URL of the blog and conduct a backlink check on Yahoo using "linkdomain:www..com" (without the quotes) to see which blogs have the most inbound links. Sort these blogs according to their popularity.
Step 3) Find contact information on each site and then contact the writer(s) starting with the most trafficked blogs and pitch your news/idea/story.
Note: I am not saying the steps above have anywhere near the quality of results that a full-fledge program like BuzzLogic has but it is certainly a great place to start.
Promote your latest blog posting by taking advantage of a popular blogger's vanity. Compliment them within your key article (somehow) using their full name and perhaps provide a link back to their website. Chances are that the blogger often keeps an eye on blog postings or sites that utilize their name. When they visit your posting there is a good chance they will read it.
General Blog and Feed Optimization Tips:
Providing full text feeds was noted regularly throughout the presentation as a far superior method for creating backlinks and getting found online.
Your blog feed should have 20 or more items never the minimum 10.
Provide a feed for every category your site/blog offers.
Ensure that you create keyword rich blog posts and ensure that your brand is well represented within the text.
Ensure the most important keyword/phrase is listed in the blog title.
Optimize Your Blog's Linking Structure For Best Results
Provide a listing of the top 10 posts within your site so the stories do not get buried in archives or category pages. If the articles are performing well it is just logical to keep them in plain view to get more mileage from them.
Use Tag Clouds and Tag Pages to increase the possible routes to your valuable past content.
If you are using WordPress as your blogging tool it is a great idea to install the "Sticky Posts" plugin which allows you to 'stick' an introduction or key post at the top of each category page.
Addressing Blog Duplication Concerns By opening up categories (a.k.a. 'labels' on Blogger) to the search engines you increase the likelihood of having a great deal of duplicated content. Fortunately the search engines have, so far, been quite clear that duplicate content in blogs is not a concern because it is a natural consequence of labeling. That said, there was a WordPress plugin noted that would allow you to create controlled article excerpts (or teasers) within the category pages. It is called "Optional Excerpts" and by using it you can maintain the authority of the core posting since the label pages will only provide a teaser versus the full text of the article.
Well I am at Search Engine Strategies San Jose; the weather is beautiful, the company great and the discussions so far excellent. The following are point form notes from an interesting seminar that discussed how search can be used to aid in branding instead of just as a direct response sales vehicle. Each point, stat or anecdote is in itself intriguing but overall add up to a helpful overview of how to use search to brand. Please brace yourself, however, this discussion went to many edges of the marketing universe so this post will have gems from many disciplines.
URLs vs Name Brand: the big advertisements are more often recommending prospects search for their name online rather than provide a URL. This is because a high percentage (sorry can't remember the #) of prospects cannot remember the URL later but have little problem remembering the brand.
Cover Your Assets: When advertising offline make certain to buy paid placements for the many potential misspellings from your campaign. This recommendation also includes purchasing the applicable misspellings of the campaign URL for those that use it. If you fail to cover these gaps you can lose a substantial number of potential buyers.
The Special K Campaign: One of the speakers noted a branding campaign that many of us likely witnessed during the 2006 Christmas/New Years season by Kellogs. The concept of the popular TV commercial was that Special K wanted to help you in your bid to become healthier. The crossover to the Internet occurred when anyone typed in "Special K" into Yahoo (who was a participant in this campaign) they were provided with a co-branded customized search result page that provided targeted routes for users. One such route was to a forum area where users could get help and ask questions about their bid to get healthier. The other was a co-branded tips section where there was plenty of advice on snack eating, associated diets, food myths, etc.
So what does this branding campaign demonstrate? Special K took an approach that is now the spirit of social marketing; they were not directly asking people to buy Special K but they were building credibility for their brand by partnering with their prospects in their bid to get healthier. Brilliant!
A Funny Bit About Contextual: I have never been a big fan of contextual advertising so when the search agency representatives on the panel were asked how they felt contextual worked into their marketing plans I perked up. What I heard made me grin ear to ear... the panelists seemed a bit perplexed for a moment and then in their own turn essentially said contextual advertising was only considered with any money that was left in a campaign. In other words.... forget about it unless you have some pennies to spare and you want to really blanket the world.
How will the growth of universal search affect paid search marketing?: I was surprised by the answer to this question. Essentially the agency panelists agreed that universal search could be bad for paid advertising. The reason they cited was the more accurate organic search becomes the less likely it is that searchers will act on paid advertisements. I was surprised more by their candor than anything. In my opinion they are entirely correct which is why I firmly believe that organic search engine optimization is a key component to every online marketing campaign.
Yahoo Universal Search: Yahoo representative Kelly Graziadei noted that Yahoo is currently testing various forms of universal search within its results. One such example can be seen by searching for "Transformers". In this instance Yahoo has decided to keep the top 10 organic rankings intact but they have preceded them with a graphic enticing viewers to check out the movie trailer to the popular movie or see reviews and find show times in their zip code.
Local Better than International: Scott Linzer, Director of Search Marketing at Universal McCann loosely noted that the campaigns which made the more time consuming foray into creating locally targeted campaigns experienced a better bang for their advertising dollar in contrast to the more common national approach.
PPC and Organic are a Logical Pairing: both of the agency advocates noted that even after achieving a #1 ranking for a specific term there are direct benefits to continuing with a paid campaign for the very same term. To back this up they stressed the benefit of multiple locations for branding but they made an additional point that I thought very logical: the content within paid advertisements are easier to control and to revise to improve clickthroughs than organic rankings currently are.
What is a Reasonable Conversion Percentage?: I asked Scott Linzer this question and his response was that 2 percent was a reasonable conversion expectation for a paid campaign. Any lower than 2 percent requires serious scrutiny and continued testing. Of course, I expect no one ever stops testing. I should note that the company Scott works for, Universal McCann, handles a great deal of Microsoft's paid advertising so I was happy to get his opinion on this question.
There you are ladies and gentlemen. I will have more to come on Wednesday. For now I am signing off and preparing for the next day of fun. All the best, Ross Dunn.
Next week I will be attending the Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose. I will be covering the event as Press so you can expect some interesting updates over the course of the week - but I can't promise when.
If you happen to be in San Jose and want to hook up please email me - rossco at stepforth dotcom and hopefully we can arrange a time to meet.
For all those marketers out there: my writing focus for this trip is on the vendors that compliment my company's SEO/SEM clients and in turn my readers. Pitching other SEO/SEM companies is not in the cards.
In my recent article "Is Wikipedia Corrupt?" I asked other online encyclopedias to speak up and introduce themselves so that users could explore alternatives to Wikipedia. The lines had been silent until I received a kind introduction to an alternative site called Citizendium from the founder, Larry Sanger. Incidentally, and quite ironically, Larry Sanger is the co-founder of Wikipedia and another property called Nupedia.
Anyway, it is time for me to leave the stage. Here is Larry's excellent introduction to Citizendium (opened in March 2007) which appears to be a worthy alternative to Wikipedia:
The short version is on our front page: We are an encyclopedia project, and more.
We are a different sort of Web 2.0 project:
* We aim at credibility and quality, not just quantity. * We offer gentle expert oversight. * We use our real names, not pseudonyms. * We're collegial. We have added over 2,600 articles since November 2006.
More detail from our About page:
The Citizendium (sit-ih-ZEN-dee-um), a "citizens' compendium of everything," is an open wiki project aimed at creating an enormous, free, and reliable encyclopedia. The project, started by a founder of Wikipedia, aims to improve on the Wikipedia model by adding "gentle expert oversight" and requiring contributors to use their real names. We have over 2,600 articles and hundreds of contributors. But we will avoid calling the Citizendium an "encyclopedia" until the project's editors feel comfortable putting their reputations behind that description.
We believe this project is necessary, and justified, because the world needs a more reliable free encyclopedia. We hope to create one by giving people a place to work under the direction of experts, and by expecting personal accountability--including the use of real names. In short, we want to create a responsible community and a good global citizen.
What's our goal?
As to quality, our goal is to capture humanity's multivarious understanding of reality, and thereby to paint a maximally broad and detailed portrait of our universe as accurately as we understand it. An indispensable means to this end is the involvement of many experts who will help guide and, ultimately, approve many of our articles. We expect our approved articles to be, in the long run, as authoritative, error-free, and well-written as encyclopedia articles can be expected to be.
As to quantity, we hope to grow to hundreds of thousands of articles within a few years, and millions a few years after that. This is not the traditional goal of encyclopedias, which has been to offer up only mainstream views of the most important aspects of the most important topics. Cheap disk space and bandwidth, and the potential of participation by ultimately millions of people, means that we can capture humanity's understanding of reality with far more nuance and detail.
We also want to create a new sort of online community. We welcome experts as well as the general public; we will be built not by top-down orders but as and where contributors wish to work; and we will be organized as a republic governed by a rule of law. This last means that there will be no "dictators," but a regularly changing group of people tasked to manage a public trust in conformity with a relatively stable code of rules. It also means that we will have very little tolerance for the sort of immature disruption and abuse that plagues so many other Internet communities.
I do my fair share of web marketing reading on a daily basis and lately I have noticed more and more writers stating that search engine optimization (SEO) is no longer as important for online success. This spin may make sense to those writers (and their financial goals) as they try to push industry cash flow away from SEO but I disagree wholeheartedly and throughout this posting I will explain why. And I assure you that despite my own inherent bias it will all be very logical and undeniable.
Not As Important? No, SEO is FAR More Important than Ever Before! Search engine optimization (SEO) "is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results" (src. Wikipedia). By this definition alone SEO is a requirement for any website that wishes to be successful within organic search results. This is especially true since the competition for online visibility is fiercer today; because previously uncompetitive terms have become over saturated with late-comers to the perceived 'gold rush' of Internet commerce. As a result, websites need the best optimization possible to have any hope of standing up to the competition.
Successful SEO has Evolved As with any growing technology industry competent SEO companies have had to evolve their search engine optimization practices to include the latest tools that improve SEO results. For example, when a SEO campaign is conducted today StepForth Web Marketing Inc. has far more information to access and evaluate the success of a campaign with analytics sources like ClickTracks or Google Analytics. In addition, keyword research tools such as Keyword Discovery and WordTracker have revolutionized our capability to find qualified keyword targets and ultimately increase the effectiveness of campaigns. As a result, SEO campaigns can now be far more targeted and effective.
These invaluable new SEO tools aside, the search landscape has played a major role in the evolution of SEO as well. Nowadays SEO companies have been forced to adapt to new forms (formats) of search results and, as a result, less space now is made available in the traditional search engine result pages (SERPs). This is due to the inclusion of other forms of media (i.e. video, images) and personalization but the goal is still the same; targeted visibility leading to higher traffic volume.
The Revised Guide to SEO With the addition of new tools and the search landscape constantly changing and evolving so much over the past 10 years the techniques of applying quality SEO has also followed suit, but the fundamentals remain the same. The addition of a SEO manual at this stage of my posting is not an option; however, I have provided a couple examples below. For a more diverse explanation please see The 10 Minute Search Engine Optimization which I updated a few months back with many of the best practices.
>> Example: Local Results Over the past couple years Google has started showing differing search results to its users depending upon their locality; all a part of their bid to personalize search results to create a more effective search result. If the website to be optimized (i.e. www.victoriastuff.ca) would benefit from being found more readily by people searching from its locale then it is important to consider this when optimizing the website.
SEO Tip #1 for Local Rankings: Make certain that each page specifically includes in textual format, not as part of an image the complete address to the company's physical offices. This information can be added to the footer; there is no need to make it front and center which could take away from other, (perhaps) more important content.
SEO Tip #2 for Local Rankings: It is as easy as pie and totally free to add your business to Google's Local directory which will often provide you with a free top ranking if you do it right. Here is more information on getting your free Google Local listing.
>> Example: Blog Optimization Over the past few years blogs have virtually become required for any business that needs to build online credibility and free incoming links (from those who reference posts). With this great new marketing tool, however, comes a set of best practices for optimizing a blog so that each post has a high chance of obtaining visibility. Indeed optimizing a blog is, in its nature, an evolution of SEO because optimizers have to consider how the content will perform on site as well as on other sites that may syndicate the content. Okay, optimizing content for syndication is not anything new but it definitely is far more common than ever before. Furthermore, SEOs now sit in an educational role more often than before because they have to teach the blog writers (who may be writing posts multiple times daily) how to optimize their content on the fly.
Again a complete tutorial on blog optimization and promotion is not practical at this point but here is a comprehensive three part tutorial on blogs; including setup, optimization and promotion suggestions.
Conclusion: Do You Have Doubts About the Importance of SEO? So after all of that do you have any doubt that search engine optimization (SEO) is any less important than it was? Indeed, would you agree that SEO is more important than ever before due to the need to secure every advantage possible in a competitive marketplace? Either way I would love to hear your considerations in this regard.
According to a fascinating release from search marketer Dan Thies, Google has been aware over a year now (that he knows of) of a method to destroy a website's ranking. The method is called proxy hacking.
What is a Web Proxy? First, it is important to understand that in their simplest form proxies are servers that act as a relay for Internet requests. Web proxies are often used to allow people to surf the net anonymously by forwarding their requests for content and then delivering the content to the users. This is similar to sending mail to a person through the post office except that in this case there is no return address or any identifying information. For a more detailed explanation here is Wikipedia's definition.
Here is essentially how this Google hack works:
All is well; your website is www.xyzname.com and it is currently listed in the top 10 in Google for 'xyz'.
A hacker comes along and decides that your listing for 'xyz' needs to be removed (perhaps for competitive reasons or out of spite). So the hacker gets Google to spider your website through a proxy. The address that Google would be given to index might look like this: www.proxysrus.au/proxy/www.xyzname.com/
When Google indexes this new URL it looks legitimate and Google's filters will soon recognize that the content being indexed is exactly the same as www.xyzname.com. As a result, in the cases that have arisen so far www.xyzname.com loses its ranking and the freshly indexed proxy URL has effectively eradicated the competition.
So how is this hack technically accomplished? Well I am with Dan Thies on this one, I have no interest at all in sharing the specifics because the last thing I want to do is enable more evil in the world. In addition, since I have never seen such a thing done I can only postulate how it would be accomplished. That said, I think it is reasonable to share the problems that would need to be surmounted to make such a thing work:
When the proxy URL is requested the server would have to provide the search engines with zero suspicion that a proxy was delivering the information. This includes URL syntax, URL length, server header information and latency.
The proxy URL would have to appear authoritative.
The proxy would need to be able to thwart the proxy hacking prevention measures that Dan has laid out within his informative article. At this time it appears the only proxies that are having some success are the ones that strip all browsing information so that the 'hack proof' sites cannot tell whether the traffic is legitimate or not. If they can't tell then they will not know to block Google from spidering their site through the wrong URL. Again even that attack has been rebuffed by Dan and his team by enabling noindex and nofollow tags on his client's sites UNLESS a verified search engine is visiting.
The above info is really only a snippet of the whole story that Dan told. I highly recommend reading his article and considering some of the preventative measures he outlines if you think you are a victim of this technique.
According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index Yahoo has edged out Google by 1% for customer satisfaction this year: Yahoo 79%, Google 78%.
The rating system the ACSI uses is complex and listed here and their source for data is noted here. Essentially their scoring focuses on: customer expectations, perceived quality, perceived value, customer complaints and customer loyalty.
See the chart below for more detail on the other search engines reviewed.
Blink
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Google
Simpy
Spurl
Y! MyWeb
At the SiteProNews blog today Jim Hedger announced that his contract as the daily editor for 
Thanks to