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Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC? While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies -- and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets.
I expected a bit more class from Google. That would be like Microsoft publishing this
Could Google now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with ignoring copyright and establishing a virtual monopoly on text links? While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Google has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies -- pushing the rel nofollow tag, telling people broking ads similar to Google's ads that they must mark paid links in a human readable way, then banning or demoting webmasters for following that advice, and paying criminals to steal their content and wrap it in Google ads.
However, after four months of review, including discussions of various possible changes to the agreement, it's clear that government regulators and some advertisers continue to have concerns about the agreement. Pressing ahead risked not only a protracted legal battle but also damage to relationships with valued partners. That wouldn't have been in the long-term interests of Google or our users, so we have decided to end the agreement.
I was a bit disappointed when I saw Rand out yet another website recently. Why was the site outed? Because they were ranking for SEO company and Rand didn't feel that their backlinks should count (and Rand wanted another excuse to promote his new LinkScape tool).
In his post Rand...
claimed that the site ranking #1 for SEO company was an embarrassment to Google and other search engines
wrote "Outing manipulative practices (or ANY practices for that matter) that put a page at the top of the rankings is part of our job"
wrote "Isn't the goal of a successful web marketing campaign to build a strategy that is legitimate to survive a manual review by the engines and strong enough to be defensible even to those who peer review or investigate?"
While some may not feel the post was outing, that was the intent of the post...to cause harm to the business highlighted, and to do so for potential personal profit. As Nick Wilsdon wrote:
Yes, Google probably already knows about them but that's not the point. Once a SERP or a naughty company becomes a public embarrassment, it then gets "cleaned up". Google can't be seen to be gamed. There's an element of politics involved.
ShoeMoney also spoke about that topic in this video, titled Don't Make Google Look Stupid
And that in itself becomes an issue. Sure most of us want to be able to have our sites pass a hand review and stand the test of time, but when things are covered with a negative connotation from a negative frame it makes Google more likely to act against the "spam"...even if it was something that was fine for years.
I had a lively conversation with a search engineer about one of my sites where he stated that he thought the site's marketing tactics were a bit spammy. 2 other search engines chose to promote that same site editorially with shortcuts. Because of who owns a site it can be seen as being spammy, while the same site is seen as the clear cut category leader worthy of promotion by other search employees who do not have anti-SEO goggles on.
Where this "out everything on principal" strategy goes astray is when a person's assumption of how the algorithms and editorial policies should work do not match what the search engineers believe. To appreciate that, consider the SEO Book affiliate program. It passed PageRank for years. And then Rand outed it and it stopped passing PageRank.
Recently Rand wrote that Google engineers said that affiliate programs should pass PageRank. So based on what Google engineers say in public, editorial links promoting my affiliate program should pass PageRank, but because Rand chose to out it, it probably never again will.
Shockingly, when asked point blank if affiliate programs that employed juice-passing links (those not using nofollow) were against guidelines or if they would be discounted, the engineers all agreed with the position taken by Sean Suchter of Yahoo!. He said, in no uncertain terms, that if affiliate links came from valuable, relevant, trust-worthy sources - bloggers endorsing a product, affiliates of high quality, etc. - they would be counted in link algorithms. Aaron from Google and Nathan from Microsoft both agreed that good affiliate links would be counted by their engines and that it was not necessary to mark these with a nofollow or other method of blocking link value.
Editorial affiliate links should count, but it was Rand asking "who does Google come down on" that was intended to harm my business to give himself a better competitive position. It was similar to the strategy of blasting Aviva to promote a list of directories people should buy - a profitable strategy, but not one with a north pointing ethical compass.
As to the absurdity to claiming that as a professional SEO's job to police the organic search results...I can only assume that a person stating such has never had a site hand edited (while seeing factually incorrect sites with spammier links and worse site designs continue to rank in the same results). If you read the Google remote rater documents you can see how things are open to interpretation. If you read the remote search quality rater documents leaked from 2003, 2005, and 2007 you can see how they changed over the years.
Years ago I might have thought reporting all spam was a good idea, but after experiencing and seeing the arbitrary and uneven nature of the editing it is not what I would consider a relevant mindset for SEO in 2008. When I was starting out in search my mentor told me "you can't really appreciate how the game works until you lose a site" and once you do, feeling like it is your job to out spam seems a bit small minded and short sighted.
If Rand really believes that "Outing manipulative practices (or ANY practices for that matter) that put a page at the top of the rankings is part of our job" then why does he offer a testimonial on the Text Link Ads website when Matt Cutts has clearly stated that buying text links is manipulative and outside their guidelines? Does he turn in his own clients for link buying?
Patrick's dedication to providing excellent services echoes in all of his employees and the company as a whole. Support and response times are exceptionally fast, and the process of buying links couldn't be easier. - Rand Fishkin
How can you suggest people should buy links and then out them for doing so? Someone is either being intellectually dishonest or economical with the truth.
In the following interview of Jon Stewart, Bill O'Reilly mentioned that Jon's audience was younger and left leaning.
Recent research from a survey of 3,036 Americans confirms that people who contribute content to the web are skewed toward being young, left-leaning, and more passionate about the sites they contribute content on.
Most frequent contributors are different from the average web user. They're more ethnically diverse; more technically skilled; more likely to be single; more likely to work in technology, entertainment, or communications companies; and more likely to be Democrats. But most of all, they are younger than typical web users. Half of the web's most frequent contributors are under age 22.
The common stereotype for the Digg crowd also applies across many other sites and industries.
That's not to say you should try to appeal to the Digg audience, but if a disproportionate amount of content is created by young liberals then there is business sense in appealing to that demographic. Appealing to the 10% of people who create content makes you look better to the other 90% of people who use the web.
If you look at a traditional user adoption curve the people to the far left are the people who have blogs and the people who leave feedback on other websites. The interaction with the loud users is what helps potential customers build confidence. These loud stakeholders are influencers.
A site which has more user generated content on it has the following benefits
a broader range of unique textual content to rank against (which helps it build a larger organic audience)
built in social proof of value/cumulative advantage (people think it is popular, and perhaps more authoritative, because others contribute to the site)
built in loyalty (people who contribute to your site have a vested interest in spreading the word about your site, and seeing to the success of your site)
more editorial reviews that turn searchers into shoppers into buyers (reviews increase consumer confidence and make them more likely to purchase)
more inbound links (people are more likely to link at a page full of editorial reviews, and the people who review products are more likely to own websites)
faster and cheaper market feedback
a broader reach with new releases (particularly if you build an audience by offering an email newsletter or a regularly updated blog)
lower traffic acquisition costs, lower marketing cost, and higher value per visitor (due to many of the above points)
The Rubicon research also states that young people are more likely to be influenced by online reviews, and are more likely to search online for support issues...so having a search accessible FAQ section can drastically lower customer support costs.
Since we have a number of popular Firefox extensions, I frequently get asked how to update Firefox extensions. Rather that writing 3 emails a week I figure it was quicker to jot down a quick blog post. To update or uninstall an extension you first have to click into the add-ons panel.
When you get inside the extensions area (by following the path highlighted above) you will see an Add-ons window with a Find Updates button at the bottom of it. That is an easy way to update many extensions at once.
The other way to update or uninstall is to scroll on an extension and click on it.
If you left click, Disable and Uninstall buttons will appear.
If you right click on an extension you will see a menu pop up with the option to Uninstall the extension. This menu also gives an option for you to Find Update.
Any time you do an update or uninstall you have to restart Firefox for it to take effect. If you uninstall an extension that you want to reinstall, go to the source where you downloaded it from to be able to reinstall it again. Instructions for installing an extension are well laid out on the SEO for Firefox page.
In years past Consumer Reports WebWatch studies showed that consumers struggled to differentiate ads from organic search results and that "more than 60 percent of respondents were unaware that search engines accept fees to list some sites more prominently than others in search results."
Since those studies Google has changed the background color on top ads from blue to a light yellow color that is hard to notice on some monitors. Changing my contrast setting from 50% to 55% it is hard for me to see the edge of the sponsored box...it simply bleeds into the organic search results. Google interviewed German searchers to ask if they noticed the yellow background on sponsored links and got a negative answer:
INT [interviewer]: “Why do the results on top have a yellow background, did you notice?”
TP [tester]: “I didn’t notice this.”
INT: “What does it mean?”
TP: “It definitely means they’re the most relevant.”
Google has done studies on the the brand lift of search, but it only tells part of the story. When one considers that
many searchers do not know where the paid ads are,
people will be searching more on mobile devices,
maps and other verticals will eventually have ads integrated in them, and
...it is going to get much harder to compete for attention in big verticals unless you have the best visitor value and can afford PPC, or you build a formal partnership with the search engines.
To see where this is headed check out the Yahoo! Search results for a popular band, and see how Yahoo! turned their search results into a useful interaction AND an advertisement for Rhapsody - allowing searchers to play songs directly in the search results. Large portions of the search stream (lyrics, music, entertainment, sports) are going to be directly controlled by the search engines that keep users on their network longer and the second click.
* at least in the mind of searchers tested by Google and used in Google promotions to promote paid search advertising.
Shoemoney is giving away a free ticket to ThinkTank, a free form gathering about Internet marketing on September 26th through 28th. My wife and I will be attending as well. Check out the official Think Tank site for more information.
An SEO Book reader has ported over SEO for Firefox to make an Opera SEO extension. I have not tried it yet, but if you are an Opera fan let me know what you think of it.
Dan Thies recently launched his Stomping the Search Engines 2 video series with an interesting business model...the buyer only has to pay $10 for shipping and handling, and is added to a continuity product where they buy a print magazine about marketing each month.
In Macropayments Cory Doctorow highlights the incremental costs (and flaws) of an artist acting like a publisher selling information at a low price point. Truth be told I stretched my limits under my old business model and the new one is much better...proving his theory correct.
In this video David Heinemeier Hansson highlights why most start ups that charge money for their products do better than the start ups that aim to make everything free and make everyone happy.
To appreciate how bad free can be (in the wrong context), think of how good many of Amazon.com's reviews are, and then read the drivel in their political forums. Same site, same audience, and yet one is remarkably intelligent while the other is equally banal and belligerent.
I few posts back I mentioned that Amazon's Mechanical Turk would be good for some SEO processes. It looks like people are already using it to spam social media. As sock puppets rise up many of the broad/general social media sites will get polluted by increasing amounts of spam.
My latest column on SEL was about how you have to give your SEO as much information as possible if you want them to solve your problems in an efficient manner, equating a broken website to a sick patient.
I got mentioned in the media 3 or 4 times last week and just finished my last interview (at least for a while). It is hard when you get used to doing interviews with friends or talking to the media because it is easy to be unprepared for the other. With reporters you have to be guarded because they often aim for a misquote because that sounds more interesting, whereas you can be really open with friends.
In Leonard Klaatu's article about Bassackwards Business Model he mentioned me a bunch, but did not interview me...he didn't need to though as I think he understood my philosophy and strategy, perhaps better than I do. :)
If you are going to SES please support Todd Malicoat's IM Charity Party on the 18th. I won't be attending SES, but I should be at the IM Charity Party for an hour or two.
Amazon's Mechanical Turk fully launched. It has to be good for a lot of creative publishing ideas...the most obvious are spamming opportunities, but I have not tested the upper limit of quality yet. Have you?
Zappos is practicing the ugly anti-marketing art of line extension, by selling laptops. Did you know that before ketchup Heinz was a leader in the pickles market?
I just got done talking with a pretty sharp reporter about some SEO stuff. He had done far more research than most reporters I talk to, but still had one big misconception about the field of SEO...thinking it was largely about mechanical processes, hidden text, and other such tricks.
Market research, site structure, and on page optimization are important. Doing them well can double or triple the earnings of a site, but when you get into the big fields where people are deeply passionate or interested links are needed to win. And those links are often a reflection of our emotions.
When you look at your site do you find anything that is emotionally engaging? enraging?
As the web gets more efficient and search engines gather more data, those who evoke emotional responses will keep gaining marketshare while bland webmasters fall quietly into the abyss.
Shane Pike recently blogged about selling one of his sites to Internet Brands. The site he sold was the one that let him quit his job. I gave him some tips on how to build traffic and increase monetization during a 15 minute chat at Elite Retreat in December of 2006. He quickly took my advice to heart and is a richer man for it. Here is his revenue graph from that site
But where he really made a killing was when he found investment bankers to help him sell on a nice multiple of that
If you believe your site could sell for more than $100,000, you’re throwing money away if you don’t use an experienced broker or investment banking firm to help you sell it. Because they’re much more adept than you at running an efficient process, finding potential buyers, and maximizing the bids from those buyers, they make up their fee many times over.
For example, this whole process started when I received an unsolicited bid for the site. Before all was said and done, though, my representatives had secured not just one, but two final bids that were ten times that initial offer. I couldn’t have gotten half that on my own.
A bunch of goodies recently. I still have about 5 pages worth of links saved up, but figured it was a good time to share some of the new and the old. Rather than pounding out 10 blog posts I figured it would be easier to write a nice list of attention worthy items.
Eric Enge recently interviewed Yahoo! Search's Priyank Garg. If you read one SEO article today read that one! His past interviews of Bob Massa and Matt Cutts are not to be missed either.
Yahoo! Search BOSS is an attempt at opening Yahoo! Search up to third party start ups and niche players which can add their own flavor to Yahoo!'s index. More coverage at SearchEngineLand.
This ProBlogger video shows how you can embed Amazon product ads inside a video. Exceptionally compelling strategy for affiliates aiming to sell high priced software and things like digital cameras, especially if they have a loyal following.
they turn users into evangelists by making it easy to contribute
they have so many inbound links
where possible they replace their outbound links with links to more internal Wikipedia pages (I just saw a page on performance based SEO pricing models, which seems outside the scope of the goals of an encyclopedia)
when they do link out they use nofollow
Nofollow is the flip side of paid links - you pay content creators for a while (with links), and then stop paying them while keeping their content.
In an attempt to follow Wikipedia's strategy (but with monetization) Mahalo...
is creating a bunch of easy to read how to articles (though I am not sure I would trust a guide covering how to invest online from a person who is willing to spend a couple days writing it, for less than $100)
now allows people to recommend links without logging in
allows anyone to create new pages
In the past couple years Google has killed many paid link sources, and stripped PageRank from most general directories and most article directories. Given how much harder it is got to get clean links, some SEOs will be tempted to add content to Mahalo hoping for the outbound reference link, but in a year Mahalo will likely claim they need use nofollow to stop spam, so the opportunity is probably fleeting.
We recently added support software for SEO Book members. It is powered by Kayako SupportSuite, which is perhaps a bit more than we need as a 2 person business, but I think the software is fairly powerful and looks quite professional. :)
The only downsides were that it took me a while to install it and we are running out of room in the sitewide navigation at the top of the page...one more item and the formatting dies!
Yahoo! is back around the $20 range again today. If Microsoft could find a way to buy them they could quickly gain some search marketshare, but presuming Microsoft builds a memorable search brand they could probably catch up through other acquisitions cheaper.
I think rather than buying another overpriced ad platform a cheaper way to attack Google would be to buy some of the leading editorial brands/sites that dominate Google's organic rankings. For far less than the $47 billion Microsoft offered for Yahoo! they could buy...
Expedia (currently valued at $5.2 billion) and have a leading role in the travel market. I think something like 40% of internet commerce is travel.
Monster.com (currently values at $2.24 billion) and have a leading role in employment and education.
Bankrate (currently valued at $700 million) and have a leading role in the mortgage and consumer credit markets.
WebMD (currently valued at $1.64 billion) and have a leading role in the medical market
IAC (currently valued at $5.38 billion) After IAC spins off many of their other units this price might go cheaper. Google paid $1 billion for 5% of AOL. Microsoft can get 100% of Ask (with more marketshare than AOL) for not a whole lot more, giving them significantly more marketshare than they currently have and an actual brand in the search market. Plus IAC is buying Dictionary.com and some other generic high traffic sites.
The New York Times (currently valued at $2.25 billion) and have a leading role in the news market. If they wanted to they could buy it out, spin out About.com as a Microsoft owned web property, then set up the NYT as an industry non-profit that monetizes via a longterm ad arrangement with Microsoft.
I think those companies add up to around $17.4 billion. Pay 50% over market value to close the deals and they could have all the above for $26 billion, giving them a leading position in most high value markets and $20 billion left over for marketing, branding, and buying further assets.
Is the above strategy crazy? What would you do if you were Microsoft?
When people are angry they are anything but rational, so the amount of brand damage they can do for you is near limitless. Imagine if a person or small group has reach to a group of people entering your space, and tells them that you are unethical, a liar, worthless, etc.
If such a statement is contained then no big deal, but if it starts spreading as common knowledge people will just assume it is true. For every person creating media there are 100 people quietly consuming it, and if you are successful and have mindshare people will try to tear you down every month.
When Unprovoked Try to Be Empathetic, if That Does Not Work, Then Consider Highlighting the Issue
If they are already creating unprovoked brand damage then they are probably angering other people too. If you can't clear it up directly it might be a legitimate strategy to call them out on it such that other people they offend down the road will discover your brand. Another popular strategy is to ask friends to clear it up if you want to keep yourself removed from the conflict.
Do Not Make The Google Engineers Editors Angry
We are all flawed, and the goalposts are always moving. One day we are at the top and the next day people are surprised at the fact that we are a spammer.
One of the things that is most likely to kill a successful SEO job is boasting about the ROI and/or how easy it was. Ever since Google started aggressively editing the search results the difference between a successful strategy and an ineffective one is often one blog post. Brent Csutoras gave a lot of great examples of strategy gone awry in his STFU post.
People Inadvertently Screw You
Back around 2004-2005 Google was having issues with 302 redirect hijacking, so I made the SEO Book affiliate program use 301 redirects. I mentioned that those links passed weight in our online SEO training program. 301 redirecting affiliate links is a popular way to build link equity, but after Rand used my site as an example in the following video those 301s no longer pass PageRank.
People Trash Your Site as Spam to Justify Their Spam
Many years back Jill Whalen and I had a falling out because I was bidding on people's names via AdWords, and she did not like it. She thought it was scummy for me to bid on other brand names, but she had no desire to police her affiliates when they did the same. To this day she still slings mud at me, calling me a black hat, etc.
Public Online Communities Eat Their Young
Dan Thies, who wrote an ebook a couple years before me, had to battle through some nastiness as well, so I am not sure what percent of what I dealt with was natural feeding off the young or if the people complaining about me were actually mad at me. Given that they didn't mind when they profited from what they did not like, I would guess that it was mostly the former.
The big issue with eating your young is that you never know when it will come back to haunt you.
Someone Might Become a Star
Some people who get established allow their egos to grow beyond any rational limit, and are nasty to many new people entering their field. But the thing is you don't know who is going to become a star down the road, and who will have the influence to crush or embarrass you.
Consider how Shel Israel angered Loren Feldman years ago. Shel had long forgot doing so, but then Loren registered ShelIsrael.com and put up a sock puppet show that lasted for months!
That conflict just ended, but the associated brand damage will last for years. Here is Loren's take on why he did what he did:
When I first started my career, you made it a point to bury me online, and more importantly back channel as well. This is a fact. You and your crew went out of your way to take food off my plate. I never forgot that, and now you have something you’ll never forget.
Communities Are Full of Cliques
One of the things I struggle with in the SEO field is that so many of us end up doing so well that sometimes we let our egos get ahead of what made us do well and we forget where we came from. And so I hear negative stuff about interactions between many friends. Its hard to be empathetic when it seems everyone has wronged others at some point in time. I know I have screwed up more times than I can count, and much of the conflict ends up being drama for the sake of marketing.
PageRank was, is, and will always be a flawed concept. In some cases the best person wins, but in many cases the best person loses because they were not good at public relations and marketing - or because they made somebody angry, and they decided to blackball them.
Some of the top communities in the search marketing field do not get along well. Incisive Media employees and Third Door Media employees are banned from attending each other's conferences. Ever since Danny stopped doing the Search Engine Strategies conferences I have been asked to speak a grand total of 0 times. Guys like Graywolf and I were replaced by sponsored panels.
So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged.
and
Those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.
Nick Carr, who I was lucky enough to interview a few months back, wrote the cover article for this month's The Atlantic. His story, about how the web is reshaping our minds, is important to consider from both a sanity perspective and a marketing perspective:
The Net’s influence doesn’t end at the edges of a computer screen, either. As people’s minds become attuned to the crazy quilt of Internet media, traditional media have to adapt to the audience’s new expectations. Television programs add text crawls and pop-up ads, and magazines and newspapers shorten their articles, introduce capsule summaries, and crowd their pages with easy-to-browse info-snippets. When, in March of this year, The New York Times decided to devote the second and third pages of every edition to article abstracts, its design director, Tom Bodkin, explained that the “shortcuts” would give harried readers a quick “taste” of the day’s news, sparing them the “less efficient” method of actually turning the pages and reading the articles. Old media have little choice but to play by the new-media rules.
You can learn a lot about how ideas spread by playing on the web 16 hours a day, but many of the best ideas are either recycled from other markets and/or sparked by deep thinking from reading about other markets and determining how those markets & ideas intersect with your own. When I play online too much I start to feel stagnant and like I am not learning anymore. Reading a good book cures that.
Wikia recently announced that their search service was finally almost worth using. It is easy to rate and vote sites up to the top of the search results. When they have limited marketshare they will not get much spam. As they start building marketshare will they be able to get enough people engaged in the project to fight off spam? And who defines what is spam anyhow?
You can comment about the results, rate a result, spotlight it, and add images to it. With over 100 edits so far today, SEO has to be one of the most frequently edited pages. I am not sure if voting is cumulative, but please vote for SEOBook just in case. :)
Here is an image of a couple results for SEO. Notice how I put my logo in the SERPs
If this project gains any momentum and they provide a list of most frequently edited search results you can expect that to be a nice list of commercial keywords, much like Mahalo!
Wikia Search also offers a nice keyword suggestion tool in their Bloom tool, which shows related search queries based on an input query.
Roger Montti offers an insightful post on link building for new websites in 2008. If you have no traction you need to find a way to buy/beg/borrow/steal attention. Use that exposure to spread content that turns people on / gets them excited / evokes an emotional response / ties in with their worldview and identity...and watch the links flow like wine.
Debra mentioned how she sometimes has a hard time telling people that their sites will not get links because they are boring. I actually enjoy doing that because it forces them to take some ownership over their own success (it is hard to drag a company across the finish line if you are an outside consultant - much easier to win if they are at least willingly walking in the right direction).
The way I teach people that concept is I remove them for their ownership role. I ask "If you did not own this website why would you tell other people about and/or want to visit it at least once a week?" Once they can answer that question honestly with something that is inline with their market it means they have something worth marketing.
Steve, an all around great guy and moderator of our forums, made a great thread in our local website marketing forums worth checking out if you are a subscriber.
Google is hyping image pattern recognition technology they call VisualRank in the media. Either they are about to improve their image search or they want us to think they have the most sophisticated technology.
Brief synopsis of how AdWords has changed over the past couple years - killing off many of the bottom feeder advertisers. The long tail of SEO keeps growing, but PPC is a winner take most game...from head to tail.
Breaking the Digg Code - free guide to getting the most out of Digg, though if you market an SEO site it is not worth marketing it on Digg. The average small-minded short-sighted Digg user thinks all SEO is spam - they are a reflection of the dumbest and loudest parts of society.
Use Intwition to see what posts from a site got the most Twitter links.
Seed Keywords is a cool tool which allows you to pass a question on to friends or customers and ask them what they would search for to solve a particular problem.
Yahoo! may announce a deal to carry Google ads in the next week, according to the WSJ:
While a broad search ad pact would likely attract intense antitrust scrutiny, the options Google and Yahoo are discussing include a nonexclusive arrangement that they believe could satisfy regulators, say the people familiar with the matter.
The basis of such an arrangement would be a real-time auction system that would choose the most lucrative ads for any given consumer query from among those sold by Yahoo, Google and any of their competitors, the people say. Microsoft, for example, could potentially connect to the Yahoo system and have search ads it sold displayed alongside Yahoo Web search results, under an arrangement where they likely would share ad revenue.
We're really focused on this huge opportunity before us, which is automating the trillion-dollar industry that is advertising. We won't get all of that, for sure, but we should be able to get a significant part of that over the lifetime, certainly of my service to the company.
Google's position on top of the web allows them to monitor any area of growth, and give themselves the first slot for any area they want to compete in. If they are uncertain of their competitive positioning they can list a couple other competitors alongside until their internal stats show their product is superior. Free exposure and free benchmarking are great advantages.
Their relevancy standards and universal search product allow them to vote for or against any type of information or company. From a business standpoint, anything they buy or launch can be tightly integrated in the search results like they did with YouTube and Google Checkout.
Their protective moat extends out from that position with the following assets
the default video hosting platform
the default display & contextual ad networks
the default blog feed management company
the leading feed reader services
the default web analytics service
the default mobile operating system
the default standard for map sharing
free payment processing for non-profits (good for public relations and a cheap way to buy market exposure)
(soon to be) the default web development platform - Google App Engine
Given the size of that moat and diversity of their offerings, holding Google stock is like holding a mutual fund with a long position on the web. As SEOs we monitor Google too closely to talk about why and what they are penalizing and how to get ahead, but I think you can learn more about marketing by watching what they do to build their brands and dominate their markets, and try to do the same in our markets.
When you have a well known brand, a good idea, and do an aggressive launch sometimes your idea sticks as the default answer for that question. You end up owning ideas - sometimes for years. In some cases idea ownership requires extensive maintenance costs, but in many cases there is little ongoing cost.
Even if a domain name costs $50,000 or $100,000 it is only $8 a year going forward.
A good site design might cost $5,000, but earn you that much each month.
Some software tools and downloads rarely need updated.
The difference between an average blog post and a piece of feature content might only be 8 hours of production and 4 hours of marketing.
Once you have default status in a category the web's network economy works for you and works against the competition.
if you already rank that exposure can become self-reinforcing (until someone creates a better idea)
if you are already well known it is easy to get listed in DMOZ and get other trusted 3rd party citations
if you have a well known brand you can charge more and be selective with who you sell to
if you have a lot of exposure people new to your field are likely to quickly run in to you and help promote you while they learn from you
TechRepublic asks "Will the Google revolution engulf IT departments?" Each time I write a newsletter, about 80% of the items are about Google. They keep innovating faster than other companies their size. Here are some examples of things they have done over the last ~ 2 months.
Added a search box for site search inside the search results, giving Google a second taste at displaying ads even on navigational queries for a specific website.
Started crawling site search forms on trusted sites, which (along with sitelinks, universal search, Youtube, and branded video ads) distributes more traffic to large trusted sites and business partners, with less traffic going to smaller websites (search keeps getting more editorial).
Offered App Engine, which provides free hosting to developers (in exchange for being stuck on their network and letting them spy on your usage data and growth).
Created a marketplace for people building on the Google network.
Begun policing widgets not on their network, a topic that deserves its own post.
Not only are dumb companies buying into the everything Google strategy, but even some semi-intelligent ones are. After logging into Dreamhost recently I was shocked to see them integrating Google apps and email on all customer domains. What happens if/when Google buys GoDaddy? How does Dreamhost compete when Google gives away hosting as a loss leader?
There is big risk to Google consuming the web. The issue is not only information diversity and innovation, but what happens when your Google account gets hacked? I regret my reliance on Gmail, but am unsure how to fix it.
Dan Durick posted about how the economy can affect search behavior. Look at the numerous sources and graphics included in his post. It adds a lot of depth and credibility to the piece, because it relies on third party data and is more work than a typical spammer is willing to do (though many low level linkbaits do source 3rd party stats as a strategy). Anytime you add in 3rd party data you become a guy speaking truth and teaching rather than the salesman. Just by glancing at that blog post and knowing what you already know about search and market research data you have a big advantage over 99% of your market.
Lee Dodd announced the "Biggest Webmaster Forum Contest Ever!" offering over $25,000 in prizes, and 5 chances to win a free 3 month trial of our SEO training program.
While I signed up nearly a year ago, I just recently started using Twitter. As a marketer I find it both interesting and fascinating...as it is more transparent than most social networks are. People often write back and forth using @username when they want to send another person a message, which sometimes draws you into other conversations. And since everyone you follow is someone you know or related to someone else you know it is really easy to get pulled in. And the social pressure of being associated with everything you do (no anonymous domain registration here folks) prevents Twitter from becoming a spam filled mess. Maybe there is some way such a system could be applied to search?
People can subscribe to get short blurbs from you (and whoever else they like), and the system is almost instantly self-correcting. It is the complete opposite of email spam hype marketing - if you want off the list you get off the list. If I were to spew nothing but hollow hyped up marketing messages nobody would subscribe (and many would unsubscribe). Conversely, if I help give people a laugh (and share the goodness of pearl drink worldwide) people subscribe. Next to peace and SEO, pearl drink is the best thing you can spread.
Ok...back on topic, so where was I.... I recently started using Twitter. From a social network and marketing standpoint Twitter is worth checking out and understanding. If you would like to check it out you can sign up here, and if you want to follow me, I am awall19.
And by far, Neil Patel is out in front on the "people subscribed to" list, with over 8,000! I think (once he finds time to) he will finish up writing that final blog post about stopping everything else in favor of reading Twitter 23.9 hours a day. ;)
Hitwise shows plural keywords drive more traffic to shopping sites than singular terms. Perhaps singular versions tend to be more navigational and brand related, whereas plural terms are more informational and transactional in nature.
Mark Cuban offers a killer quote on the failed branding of newspaper blogs
Never, ever, ever consider something that any literate human being with Internet access can create in under 5 minutes to be a product or service that can in any way differentiate your business. ... If I worked for the NY Times, or any other media company with any level of brand equity, I would have done everything possible to define the section of our website that offers ongoing as anything other than a blog. I would make up a name. Call it say.....RealTime Reporting.
Indeed it is hard to demonize blogs as being inferior while integrating them into the company under the same name. :)
The Google
Eric Schmidt spoke on video about Google Health about 2 weeks ago. Interesting to think about how Google can provide cloud computing services to any complex or high value vertical (like employment, education, health, financial services) to gain major mindshare and a new revenue stream. And after getting all the publicity Google for some reason took their video down...hmm. Why did they do that?
When a former Google customer (someone who has quit AdWords out of disgust) asks an SEO to help “get free search traffic from Google” it represents a person who is no longer willing or able to play by the established rules. It’s not a sign of criminal intent, mind you, so don’t go hyperbolic on me with the BlackHat WhiteHat stuff. But from a demeanor perspective, that former customer is willing to try things outside of the “let’s do business together” avenue, without telling Google, and recognizing that he is now in competition with Google, his former business partner.
No More Abandoned Carts - even VeriSign is getting into creating quality linkbait. This is what corporate linkbait will look like in a year or two. And like it or not we are probably going to need to be at that level if we want to keep competing.
A year from now heavily advertised linkbait followed by a 301 redirect will be one of the most potent SEO weapons on the market.
In addition to Bulgarian, Dutch, French, Italian, and Slovakian, readers have already volunteered for these languages: Portuguese (Portugal and Brazilian), Spanish, Russian, Czech, Swedish, Tagalog, Croatian, Japanese, Romanian, Danish, German, simplified & tradisional Chinese, Croatian, Indonesian, Hungarian, and Polish. Are there any other languages where you can help translate it?
My goal is to make this the most widely available document on SEO across every language possible. For each language it gets translated into, I will donate $50 to Amnesty International. The first translation in each language will also be referenced from the original guide, which has a lot of traffic and link equity.
Some readers who came across The Blogger's Guide to SEO asked me if it was ok to translate it. It is Creative Commons licensed, so please feel free to. Please comment on this post referencing the language you are going to translate to. I will link to translations from the official guide, which has many thousands of inbound links and hundreds of daily pageviews, so it should send some traffic to your site.
Wired considered it spamming when Search Engine Land mentioned that people can submit articles to the Wired How-to Wiki. That same Wired now offers a guide on how to 'Google Bomb' an Enemy. For those scoring at home, Wired does not really care about spam...they just want controversy and pageviews.
Following last year's pillage of general web directories, Google reset the PageRank on many article syndication directories to PR3 or PR0. EzineArticles did not get edited, perhaps because they have more stringent editorial guidelines, they were a known market leader, or they were a Google case study. Just about every other article syndication directory did.
About 3 years ago I create a directory of directories so I could keep track of new directories. But very few of the directory owners considered editorial quality. Eventually they started polluting their directories with site-wide links to payday loan websites.
On the paid side some people who had success creating one low quality directory decided to create a dozen more pay for inclusion websites, often cross promoting them with discounts...after you buy one they thank you and offer you the ability to buy inclusion in the other dozen at half price.
And on the cheap end, it got to the point where lots of companies like Directory Maximizer do directory submissions for a dime to a quarter each, allowing you to space out the submissions, mix anchor text, and mix listing descriptions. And while many of these services claim to be "SEO friendly" and offer services in bulk, you can see that a search engineer might not hold the same opinion. :)
By the time a technique is cheaply and reliably outsourced the value has already been diminished or will soon become worthless.
lower cost and automation means more people will use the technique
the lower cost often appeals to those making lower quality websites
the more people who use a technique the more likely it is for search engineers to kill it
Andy Hagans used to charge $900 for doing a couple dozen article submissions, and back when he did it, it was probably worth it. He marketed it to highbrow clients who used it to promote quality website. Lower end webmasters probably could not justify paying $900 for that service.
And you could get a hand rolled product of similar quality to what Andy charged $900 for, but at a price $870 cheaper from We Submit Articles. About a month after I showed Andy that We Submit Articles website, where someone was selling services similar to his for $30, he changed his model to promote linkbait stuff, moving himself up the value chain, creating something that is much harder and more expensive to replicate.
Article submission software and article remixing software came out, only making the issue worse. Andy probably could have continued his old model for another year and been fine, but he knew that Google would eventually pull the rug out from under it. It took a while, but the article directories had their PageRank edited.
Search engineers can't stop everything, but by the time a technique is cheaply and reliably outsourced the value has already been diminished or will soon become worthless.
lower cost and automation means more people will use the technique
the lower cost often appeals to those making lower quality websites
the more people who use a technique the more likely it is for search engineers to kill it
When you think of the web from that perspective it is easy to see why my current business model is so much better than the old model. The community interaction allows for deeper understanding, and helps people move past using just the techniques that are quick, cheap, and easy.
Parasitic hosts and upload sites, social media sites full of spam, endless cross-referencing internal tagging, blog carnivals...all are quick, cheap, and easy. What do you think is the next quick, cheap, and easy marketing technique that Google will kill?
When I was on my multi-month critical review of Google a few months back, I frequently highlighted how the perception of spam or quality was often associated with the brand (or lack of brand) behind the content. Stuntdubl wrote a post about brand size reviewing engineer double talk and how brand perception may control the sustainability of your site.
Many people and many sites disappear. For how long just depends on who was behind the infraction and how real their site looks and feels.
About a month ago I asked a friend of mine if he knew that one of his sites got banned from Google. He said no. Then he went and looked at it and asked "why the f*ck did they do that?" His site that was penalized was exceptionally similar to his sites that still rank, with one big exception. It used a default Wordpress theme. Thus it looked like it was probably spam to a search engineer or under-waged remote worker judging a bunch of sites in a rush.
As soon as human editing becomes a big piece of search, humans start thin slicing and start making errors. Once you are gone will anyone notice? Can you escalate the issue to a high enough priority to get your "glitch" fixed?
If you have any top ranking income earning site that exhibits the following traits, look for your income to drop sharply sometime in 2008.
has a default Wordpress design
has multiple hyphens in the domain name
exclusively monetizes via Google AdSense, placed top and to the left in the content area of the page
does not have a clear way to contact you
lacks an about us section
is registered with fake whois
Some cops enjoy handing out speeding tickets. Thin slice your site as though you are a search engineer who enjoys killing spam, but has a quota to kill 1,000 sites a day. Does your site pass the sniff test? Are there areas that could use some improvement?
The democratic nature of the web is a unique concept, but Google no longer uses that line in their marketing brochures. Sometimes the web needs defused.
If you have something that makes money, you need to make it look like it is worthy of its position and earnings. Or else Google will exert as much editorial influence and quality scores as they can to take $$$$$ from you, all in the name of what's good for the customer and helping out "mom and pop webmaster".
After all, when Google Local, YouTube, Google Knol, Google Shopping, and Google Checkout are fully integrated next to AdWords, mom and pop webmaster won't even need to own a website. They can do everything they need on Google.com. How benevolent.
The semi-legal and illegal spread of copyright information keeps driving value toward the aggregators. Google, which already has a music search service and owns YouTube, is looking to give away licensend music to win marketshare in China.
Vivendi SA's Universal Music and about 100 other foreign and domestic record labels have been working with Top100.cn, a Beijing-based Web site that currently sells licensed music downloads for 1 yuan (about 14 cents) each, and Google. Together, Top100.cn and Google would provide free MP3 downloads with value added services, people familiar with the plans say. The new search options, for example, promise to give users free access to a database of information about their favorite artists -- from concert listings to links to special ring tones.
If Google licenses lyrics and allows user feedback on songs, they prettymuch aggregated the entire value stream in that marketplace, at least outside of experiencing live music. Fierce competition for attention will drive virtually all publishing models in that direction. What do you offer that is live or that aggregators can't take from you?
Some people are saying that Google #6 issue was just a glitch and not a penalty or a filter. And sure, according to Google's current classification, that change was a glitch.
But lots of glitches have commonalities amongst the sites that were hit. Like many of the sites that got hit by that #6 profile were in some ways stale. And perhaps stale was just a symptom of dated SEO strategy.
You can learn from glitches, because many times glitches show you where and how Google is trying to shape the web. Glitches are side effects of algorithms with a targeted intent, but with too many unintended consequences and/or casualties.
Look back a couple years, and at one point in time SEO Book was not ranking for SEO Book while Paypal was not ranking for Paypal. Add on a bit more market feedback from other sites that were hit and it seemed sites were getting filtered out for having their anchor text too well aligned. That glitch was fixed in a few days to a month (depending on how far over the line your site was and how important your brand was) but the underlying idea of whacking sites for having anchor text that was too focused was indeed a direction the algorithms moved.
Look back a few years more to the Florida update. Some people called pieces of it a glitch or thought that the whole thing needed to be undone. Sometimes lowering the keyword proximity of a page title that was not in the search results brought it back to ranking. And yes the update was too aggressive and they had to back off of it. But filtering out unnatural copy was indeed a direction the algorithm moved.
Glitches reveal engineer intent. And they do it early enough that you have time to change your strategy before your site is permanently filtered or banned. When you get to Google's size, market share, and have that much data, glitches usually mean something.
I was just voting on the PPC section of the SEMMYS and I saw some new posts I liked a lot.
It is not the comprehensive list of all the best posts of the year, but most of them are of great quality and well worth a read. It is nice to read the best stuff someone else spent a whole year digging up. Great job Matt.
Search Engine Watch lost its magic glow the day it got scummed by SEMPO. A friend pointed me to a 3 part series on Search Engine Watch about how you can't learn SEO from a book. The author of these articles used the same articles to recommend you get certified from the SEMPO Institute. Coincidentally, the author's profile mentions that he is an author for the SEMPO Institute.
But, to be honest, SEMPO saved my life. If they hadn't sent my wife an SEO who got her site penalized she probably never would have found me, bought my book, started chatting with me, and saved my life.
People who are well established can trade on reputation and attract strong enough clients to not need to perform tests to learn the algorithms intimately well.
Recently another well known marketer put out a video saying domain names were irrelevant to SEO. Then they got feedback from viewers who said they thought that statement was wrong. And then their reply sent to thousands of members on their list included
It's true that your domain name has no REAL effect on your SERPS.
That answer is intuitive, but it is also incorrect. The only way one would claim that as fact is if one has not done any testing recently.
It is one thing to be wrong, but it is another thing to be wrong, be called out on it, and stand by your incorrect claim. People are spending good money to read incorrect and/or outdated information. Unfortunate really, but if you are already doing well you don't need to track and test every little thing to keep doing well. Very few gurus openly sharing information have thin affiliate and newly launched test sites that back up their claims. But it is getting harder to succeed with thin affiliate sites as Google becomes creative director of content development.
Share REALLY Good Tips & Die
Most established people are too lazy or too busy to do in depth testing. And if they are doing it, they probably do not want to share it publicly. Share a hole and watch it get plugged. After a search engineer reads your blog and destroys one of your sites you mentioned, it makes it much harder to want to reveal tips and algorithmic holes with hard evidence behind them. Show your proof and watch Google burn it to the ground. Even if you know what you are doing you can't overcome a hand edit unless it was unjust AND they care enough about your site to let it rank again. You were right, but only until you opened your big mouth. :)
Much of the game of relevancy is a mind control exercise. The conversation revolves around debates including "should be" or "in an ideal world" rather than "how it is".
The Endless Sea of Tests & Noise
People newer to the field have less to risk by being aggressive, place a lower value on their time, are generally more excited about the pursuit, are more willing to try things that established people may not, and are more willing to share their results. But many of them have limited exposure, limited confidence, and/or are drowned out by an endless sea of incorrect information. With so many people saturating the SEO market it is getting harder to be the person first with the scoop. Today blogs are a lot like forums were a few years back. There is no way you could ever get any work done if you subscribed to all the SEO blogs, so it is impossible to read all the information.
Marketing, Marketing, Marketing
If you create a public facing SEO brand, so much of your time goes into brand management and marketing that it is hard to have time to launch many new sites unless you have scaled out a staff. If you have scaled out a staff, you must keep more of your secrets to yourself, because getting a site burned or losing a competitive advantage not only hurts you, but also hurts everyone who works for you. This really hit home after Google killed a site that I had a team working on.
I Was Just Looking At Your Site!
Some of the people who introduced themselves on SEO Book recently mentioned that they were in fields or owned sites that directly competed with some of my sites. If I share all my best ideas with them for free on the blog and they share almost none of their best ideas with me that gets a bit hard to compete with them on my secondary sites, especially if I am competing with them and search engineers decide to pillage my sites. ;)
More Work for Less $ = Bad Trend
The market is getting more competitive. So longer hours are required to achieve similar profits from thin sites. People who see and feel this trend are not only working extra to make up for it, but are also working extra to establish a firmer foothold for the future. 1 hour of work today may be more effective than 2 hours of work next year, or 3 hours of work the following year. But after you get that network effect behind a site the ball is rolling down hill. Gravity is on your side.
SEO as a Subset of Marketing
As it gets harder to fake it people make more legitimate sites offering more value. But as their sites become more embedded in the web doing SEO tests related to links become less and less
