>>>>> Internet Marketing Blog

Archive for the ‘Commentary’ Category

« Older Entries

The Facebook Vanity URL Fiasco

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

At the stroke of midnight on Friday, June 12 (technically Saturday at 12:01 AM EST), geeks all around the world will frantically login to Facebook with the attempt to land as many great vanity URLs as they can. Unsuspecting businesses around the world will think they have nothing to fear. Or do they?

There is an enormous flaw with the Facebook vanity URL registration. If you intend to register your company’s vanity URL, there is a very good chance you won’t be able to. Unless your company had a Facebook page setup prior to May 31, 2009 AND has at least 1,000 fans, you will not be eligible to claim your vanity URL during the first round of registration (the second round begins June 28, 2009).

On the flipside, if you are Joe Schmoe with a dummy profile account, you can grab that same company vanity URL, no questions asked. Unless a company has registered with Facebook to prevent the registration of their business name, the vanity URL is up for grabs. Facebook of course made it so you can’t fill out their prevention ticket, unless they provided you with a registration number to do so. I know what you’re thinking, “I’ll just have my company signup for a Facebook profile and grab it.” Wrong. Facebook does not allow companies to setup profiles, only pages. And that is where this horrible fiasco will begin.

Thousands of great brand names will be available for users to grab, because so few companies actually have over 1,000 fans. And what about the companies that have over a dozen Facebook pages setup by fans that have exceeded the 1,000 fan requirement? Take Audi, for example. There are 8 Audi Facebook pages eligible to register the vanity URL /audi/. What happens if it is a “hate” account? Twilight has a fan page called “Twilight Sucks” with over 3,000 fans. They are going to be eligible to grab the vanity URL for Twilight because they meet all of Facebook’s requirements.

Although Facebook says vanity URLs are permanent and can’t be transfered, they do reserve the right to remove the vanity URL from you. There are always loop holes, of course. Take a company like SAS for example. You could create a Facebook profile with the name Sarah Ann Stevens and claim the vanity URL /sas/. It would be hard for SAS to make a valid claim to Facebook when the person who registered it was only using their initials. And just like that a Fortune 500 company vanity URL is gone.

Your last line of defense is to fill out an Intellectual Property Infringement claim. We all know how big of a pain it is to reclaim Twitter accounts, do you really think Facebook will be any better?

Update: The registration number is your registered trademark number. My SAS example is invalid b/c the URL must be five characters long.

Taylor Pratt is a Search Marketing Specialist at nFusion. You can follow him on Twitter.

Posted in Commentary, Industry News, Social Media | 20 Comments »

7 Things About Jon Henshaw You Probably Didn’t Know

Thursday, January 22nd, 2009

Jon Henshaw, full of hope!So Jeremy has tagged me and now I get to tell people things they shouldn’t know about me. Before I get into my 7 things about yours truly, I would like to preface with, “I understand if you don’t find anything I’m about to say the least bit interesting.” I can say that with confidence, because I share your boredom. I would also like to say, that no matter what people tell you on the street, I am full of hope…angry, angry, hope. If you don’t believe me, you can bite me. Oh, and if you ever use any of this against me, I will find you and bore you to death.

1. My Very Own Urinal

Similar to Jeremy’s desire to have a giant tub, I have always wanted my own urinal. Not just any urinal mind you. I want a giant urinal so big that I could dance around in the bathroom and it would still hit the urinal. I know! That’s a really big urinal! In addition to the ginormous urinal, I would also like accessories that would allow me to play hit-the-target games. I decided a long time ago that once I had this urinal in my home, I would know that I had made it in life and that I would have finally become successful. Needless to say, I still do not have my urinal.

Wide Stance

2. I Don’t Like Professional or College Sports

I suffer a self-induced disconnection from my fellow man, I abhor and avoid all pro and college sports. This puts me in awkward situations, especially in the South, where many people love their football teams more than their own mom. In general, you can ask me about any quarterback, outfielder or basketball player, and the only thing you’ll get back from me is a stare from the inner abyss of a puritanical loathing of whatever it is you just said. It’s nothing personal, I just don’t know what you said and I don’t care.

I hate sports

3. I Was An All-American Water Polo Player

You might be saying, wait a second! I thought you weren’t a real man and didn’t like sports. No, I didn’t say that I didn’t like sports, I said I didn’t like college or professional sports. But hey, I still like sports. I like them so much that I played baseball, soccer, football and as the title states, water polo. I played it in high school and my team won the state championship my senior year. I was also made an All-American water polo player! Sadly, it was the only sport I was good at. In fact, my history of sports is extreme. I either really sucked or was very good. For example, I went an entire basketball season without making one basket, even though I had at least a dozen close up shots each game. I know, I sucked!

Water Polo

4. I’ve Moved a Lot!

That’s what happens when you’re part of the witness protection program. However, in my case, we just moved a lot. In fact, I only found stability in where I lived after I left home. I lived in Birmingham, AL for five years, Denver, CO for 10 years, and Nashville, TN (where I am now) for three years. Before leaving home, it was a completely different story and we moved on average every 1 1/2 years. In total, I’ve lived:

  • Twice in Florida
  • Twice in California
  • Twice in Colorado
  • Twice in Alabama
  • Twice in Tennessee
  • Twice in Virginia
  • Once in Missouri
  • Once in Massachusetts
  • Once in Pennsylvania

moving

5. I’m a Trained Marriage & Family Counselor

I have bachelor’s degree in Human Development & Family Studies, master’s degree in Counseling Psychology, and had a small marriage and family counseling practice in Denver, CO. Yeah, bet you really didn’t know that! I love human behavior and the intricacies that make up relationships, but I DO NOT LIKE COUNSELING! Now, I’m not against counseling. If you’ve got a problem, like a husband who is emotionally crippled or a wife that’s sucking the life out of you, by all means, go get counseling! The thing is, it takes a very special person to listen to those problems day in and day out. I’m am not that special kind of person. I admit it, I prefer computers over human interaction.

uggh

6. I Was Hit by a Car and Survived!

I am so seriously cool for surviving. So I was in fourth grade and I was riding my bike like super-duper fast! My street was coming up, so I looked behind me and didn’t see any cars. I then pedaled even faster and then turned my bike left to cross the street. BAM! An elderly woman in a giant Cadillac struck me full force! Somehow, miraculously, I flew into the air about 20 or 30 feet and landed (more like skidded, ouch!) on the street. I checked my body, stood up and walked over to the sidewalk and started crying (I’m tough, but not that tough.) However, my bike was a different story. It was completely demolished underneath the car. I’m not sure how the physics of that all worked out, all I know is that I walked away from it, my bike didn’t, and I’m happy to be alive.

accident

7. I Smoked Pot in 5th Grade

Thanks to my older brother and lots of time on my hands, I smoked pot for a good portion of 5th grade. I’m not sure if it’s a big deal, but every time I tell that to people, they think it is, so here it is. I can say that I have a horrible time remembering things and part of me thinks it was because of this. I was poisoning my sweet grey matter noggin at such a precious young age. Hrrrm, now that I think about it, maybe it was because I was hit by that car. Either way, except for a few times in high school and college, I don’t touch the stuff anymore.

Stoned!

Tag, You’re It!

Okay, I’m done spilling the beans about my life. Now it’s my turn to keep spreading this “7 things” viral/meme/puke/storytelling goodness. Tag! You’re it!

Posted in Commentary, Humorous | No Comments »

Powncing Yourself to Death

Friday, January 2nd, 2009

Twitter is notorious for having their servers go down and for having a limited feature set. So how in the world did they outlast Pownce and drive them to their extinction?

Pownce had everything going for it. It had a slicker UI, an AIR app, and better uptime than Twitter. It was also a collaboration that involved Kevin Rose of Digg and it was supposed to be the Twitter-killer that nobody saw coming. However, due to numerous internal conflicts and marketing mistakes, Pownce never took off and it ultimately shut down on December 15, 2008.

Conflict

Alleged infighting with a major influencer, Kevin Rose, worked against Pownce. It spilled out publicly and ultimately led Kevin to promote the competing service (Twitter). In fact, today Kevin Rose has one of the highest number of followers on Twitter.

Branding

Twitter is a brilliant brand. Twitter is slang for chatter and tweeting is the act of chatting. It’s something that people can immediately identify with. Whereas Pownce, is well, Pownce. It’s difficult to relate to and really has nothing to do with the service. Not to mention, it sounds violent.

Features

Pownce was betting that their expanded feature set would steal people away from Twitter. Twitter can only send 140 characters of text, period! Whereas Pownce had ratings, events, files and more. To any sensible business-person or marketer it would seem that Twitter didn’t have a chance.

However, in the paradox that is sometimes the Internet, Pownce made a fatal flaw. They cut off the ability for developers to innovate, market and create buzz around the service. Sure, they had an API, but it would only allow people to tap into the data, not innovate the service.

Twitter on the other hand, possibly by accident or simply because they were distracted by server failures, sat by and did nothing. Instead, they pushed their API and allowed third party developers to create whatever they wanted. That resulted in incredible user supported tools like TweetDeck, TwitPic and TweetStalk. Twitter’s lack of interference (and lack of innovation) actually propelled its popularity.

Too Late

Sometimes you really can be too late to a party. In spite of Twitter’s service outages, their users continued to be loyal to the service and hold out hope for its improvement (it was inevitable really, just a matter of time.) While Pownce, with its lame branding, public conflict and over-developed features, wasn’t enough to dethrone Twitter. The end result was a promising competitor that ultimately pownced itself to death.

Posted in Commentary, Industry News | No Comments »

No Lip Service (Instead, Lip Balm) From Care2

Thursday, December 11th, 2008

Matt from Care2 was kind enough to send us a giant bag of lip balm! I’m not sure what kind of message he’s trying to send us, but we’ll take anything that’s free, including lip balm.

Care2 Lip Balm Bag

Inside, the lip balm says, “Simple ways to make a difference every day.” The outside cover says “Lip Service” with a no symbol over it (thus saying “No lip service.”)

Care2 Lip Balm

With this much lip balm, our lips won’t be as dry as chip until at least 2011. Thanks Matt!

Posted in Commentary, Humorous | 1 Comment »

Review of Guy Kawasaki’s New Book “Reality Check”

Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008
Reality Check Book

It’s been a while since I’ve thought about Fake Steve Jobs. In fact, the last time he was on my radar was when we helped out him in late July, 2007. Well, he’s back, sort of, and he’s in perfect form. He was invited by Guy Kawasaki to write not one, but two Forewords for his new book, Reality Check. The two forewords are appropriately (and geekily) entitled, “Foreword 1.0″ and “Foreword 2.0.”

The forewords reveal a tongue-in-cheek attitude towards the book itself.

“So what is Guy’s new book about? To be honest, I have no idea. I didn’t read it.”

However, it does elucidate what the book sets out to deliver.

“It’s an important and necessary work, one that should be required reading in every business school in the country.”

It’s a shameless claim — albeit not technically made by the author, but by Fake Steve Jobs — but it’s an accurate one. Guy has managed to stuff of all his knowledge and experience about startup companies into a thick 459 page book.

Unlike typical business and strategy books, this one presents its information in the most compact and efficient manner possible — through short chapters and tons of lists. The format of the content makes it much more digestible, while also making it a convenient bathroom book, thanks to its short and numerous chapters.

But this book is much more than a distraction in the crapper. In fact, if you were to actually confine it to your daily porcelain library visits, then your business-self is probably dead inside and this book isn’t for you. No, this book — regardless of its length — is a quick read, because you’ll find you can’t put it down.

At first glance, Reality Check is an unassuming name for a book. It’s only when you read the subtitle that you understand why you need to be reading this book. “The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition” are the words that follow the abstract title, and they are words that immediately get the attention of anyone looking to succeed and outwit their competition.

The book is organized into twelve sections. They all build upon each other and walk the reader through the start and maintenance of a successful, modern startup. Those sections include:

  • The Reality of Starting
  • The Reality of Raising Money
  • The Reality of Planning and Executing
  • The Reality of Innovating
  • The Reality of Marketing
  • The Reality of Selling and Evangelizing
  • The Reality of Communicating
  • The Reality of Beguiling
  • The Reality of Competing
  • The Reality of Hiring and Firing
  • The Reality of Working
  • The Reality of Doing Good

Getting Started, Venture Capitalists and Running Your Business

The first third of the book is focused on bringing the reader up-to-speed on Venture Capitalists (VC). It clues them in on what they need to know in regards to getting their business started and how to find the right kind of investors. The information in these chapters provides almost every conceivable nugget of information you could ever want to know about investors.

One of my favorite chapters was “The Top Ten Lies of Venture Capitalists.” There is no doubt that if any reader has ever sought funding, they’ve heard lies like, “We love to co-invest with other venture capitalists” and “If you get a lead, we will follow.” Guy demystifies the bull shit behind these statements and provides insight into what these statements actually mean.

He also holds entrepreneurs accountable, by describing the lies that entrepreneurs tell VCs. Regardless of the kind of experience the reader has had with startups, they will most likely relate to some or most of these lies. Some of the best ones being, “no one else can do what we’re doing” and “our projections are conservative.”

A difficult task for all startups is executing the plan well. Guy provides numerous examples of how to execute key components of a successful company, including how to properly set goals. He’s goes into detail about the need to make goals measurable, achievable, relevant and most importantly, rathole resistant. He states:

A goal can be measurable, achievable, and relevant and still send you down a rathole…Ensure that your goal encompasses all the factors that will make your organization viable.

Even if you execute your business objectives well, there’s still the ongoing chance that you are going to run out of money. He offers many suggestions on how to handle those difficult situations, including:

  • Freeze all hiring
  • Cut marketing expenditures
  • Get interns from local schools
  • Cut the pay of the management team
  • Get the cofounders to put more money in the company as a bridge loan
  • Do some nonrecurring consulting work to increase cash flow
  • Try to get some beta sites to pay for a pilot implementation

Intelligent Strategies for Marketing Your Company

The second major part of the book focuses on marketing. Guy discusses why old (traditional) marketing techniques often don’t work, and provides concrete examples on how to best market your company in a business 2.0 world.

A key element that all readers should take from this book is that marketers need to focus on PR (public relations), not advertising. He states:

Many companies waste millions of dollars trying to establish brands with advertising. Too much money is worse than too little, because when you have a lot of money, you spend a lot of money on stupid things like Super Bowl commercials. Brands are built on what people are saying about you, not what you’re saying about yourself. People say good things about you when (a) you have a great product and (b) you get people to spread the word about it.

Another part that intrigued me was the chapter on “The Art of Selling.” He provided many techniques that seem counterintuitive to experienced marketers, but are completely relevant to today’s marketing environment. A good example can be seen in his statement of “give customers less information.” He goes on to describe research that suggests that “shoppers with less information about a product are happier than those with more information.” He drives the point home by explaining that “when it comes to product information, more might not be more.”

A shortcoming experienced by many marketers is the lack of presentation skills. Guy dedicates several chapters to helping marketers perfect their speech and presentation skills. Those chapters alone could be cut out and made into their own Cliff Notes version of “How to Give the Perfect Presentation.”

Something I won’t go into great detail about, but is worth mentioning, is the chapter on “How to Suck Up to a Blogger.” The techniques that he outlines are almost identical to the techniques we use for our own marketing campaigns. In fact, that chapter alone is worth the price of the entire book if you want to learn how to effectively market yourself via bloggers.

The Reality of Running Your Business

The third and final part of Reality Check explores the reality of running, maintaining and growing your business. It’s contains a mixture of advice for owners and employees. The reader, regardless of if they’re an entrepreneur or an employee of a startup, will find themselves described throughout these chapters. Guy provides tips and warnings on how to conduct yourself in just about any startup environment.

He drives home the reality of what it means to participate in a startup with his chapter “What’s Your EQ (Entrepreneurial Quotient)?” It’s a mini-quiz designed to gauge where you stand in the grand scheme of things. Depending on your score, you may want to reconsider your endeavor or you might find out that you were destined to run your startup.

Guy concludes his book with “The Reality Check Checklist.” It consists of ten of the most important questions you need to ask yourself in regards to your startup company. The list is both a gut check and a possible set of marching orders. The idea is that you should be able to honestly answer each question after reading the book, and then allow your answers to help decide your destiny.

Posted in Commentary, Reviews | No Comments »

SEO Hats Are Dead - It’s All About Risk

Monday, November 24th, 2008

In the past few years, archetypes for search engine optimizers have emerged. They include a three point spectrum that includes “White Hat,” “Gray Hat” and “Black Hat.” SEO hats, like most labels, were designed to pigeonhole and simplify what a person does. However, as the practice of SEO had matured and search engines like Google continue to arbitrarily write the rules of the Internet, these labels are quickly becoming insufficient and irrelevant.

Most seasoned search engine optimizers use an eclectic approach to SEO. In fact, the techniques they use can vary in degree and can also be intensely debated based on differing ideologies. Buying links is a good example of a technique that is too diverse to gain industry consensus — something I’ll talk about more in this article.

Like most oversimplified labels, SEO Hats are also used and exaggerated for personal gain. One prominent SEO firm uses the term White Hat anytime they get the chance to speak. However, they’ve simultaneously attempted to subtly reverse-engineer Google’s algorithm and also out competitors in the public space. In this instance, the line is blurred as to whether or not that firm is White Hat, especially if their actions on and offline are anything but that.

John Andrews recently brought the issue of White Hat to a head with his recent article, “Just Make Good Content” is Bullsh*t. In it, he discusses the absurdity of White Hat SEO and calls them out as scammers. He uses the “quality content” approach as an example, and discusses how that practice can do more harm than good — or at the very least is insincere. He goes on to say:

Some might think this post is harsh…calling Google and White Hat SEOs “scammers”. Those same people will probably cite this post as “BlackHat” or supportive of Black Hat SEO. Whatever. They miss the point. I fully expect that one day, after Google has executed enough of these “contracts” that try and bind whole classes of rights holders, she will promote some seemingly grass roots effort to revise copyright laws, using something like that stupid “you have no privacy - get over it” argument. Everything else is part of the setup. The Black Hat SEOs I know understand fully that they are exploiting time-limited opportunities, just like Google does. They are far more realistic than the White Hat SEOs, who seem to think the search engines are paving a golden road to a bright new media world. They are (paving a new road), but it’s not (bright).

While John’s beef is with the invalid equation of White Hat + Quality Content = A Better Online World, my argument against SEO hats primarily lays with the concept and practice of paid links.

Why “Paid Links” Blows Hats Out of the Water

In the SEO industry, you would have to be dead or on a very long vacation to not know that Matt Cutts considers buying links almost as bad as marrying your sister and eating your dog. He even recently referenced FTC guidelines that he feels provides unambiguous guidelines for paid links (now we’re getting serious!).

The paid link war was started about a year and a half ago and came to a head (at least for me) at last year’s PubCon session on link buying. I remember vividly that Jim Boykin, of We Build Pages, stood up to present, made a statement about certain people being in the room (hint: Matt Cutts), and then said he didn’t have much to say. He then sat down after saying basically nothing. This was the same Jim that dished a few years ago at a Boston PubCon to a small group of eager attendees, but it was obvious he was nervous about the changing climate surrounding paid links.

This year at PubCon, Jim was nowhere to be found at the link buying session. In fact, he’s no longer buying links! The panel was small and consisted of John Lessnau, Rand Fishkin and Aaron Wall. John was the only person to provide any degree of substance, while Rand and Aaron’s presentations contained what seemed to be identical, watered down regurgitations of past blog entries and presentations (no offense to Rand or Aaron, because they know their stuff, but it was lackluster for sure). Matt Cutts was of course there and set the tone (in a funny way) with cracking his knuckles and pulling out his notebook at the beginning of the session.

One of the key things that was discussed by all of the panelist, especially Rand, was the concept of sponsoring. If you can sponsor a site, then they will often put your logo and a link to your website on their website. And if you play your cards right, they’ll even do an editorial about you and you’ll get even more links. This of course is a paid link. Especially since the intention was not pure goodwill, but to actually get a “dofollow” link.

The “sponsorship” technique is really no different than one of the modern techniques that most SEO specialists use already. A typical scenario involves a message to an editor, webmaster or sales contact that requests information about site sponsorship and/or advertising. After contact is established, a deal is negotiated that involves editorial content which includes “dofollow” links. Again, that’s buying links for the sole purpose of getting exposure for a website and passing link juice.

If we’re sticking to strict archetypes, then there was nothing White Hat about the sponsorship technique that Rand gave at all. If the intention is there, and it’s being given as an example of how to get a good “dofollow” link where money is exchanged, then it’s not White Hat.

SEO Is About Risk Assessment, Not Hats

SEO and related online marketing practices are about risk. For example, buying links can be very low risk to very high risk, not White Hat or Black Hat. Lower risk paid links might involve the sponsorship techniques discussed by Rand and Aaron or an offline transactions that results in a blog entry. A riskier approach may include contacting bloggers blindly about paying for links in editorial content. While a high risk approach might include using a broker that lumps paid links together in obvious “paid link” blocks.

Onsite SEO contains risks too, which is completely unrelated to hats. Modifying attributes and copy on pages can be very risky to search engine performance. Making certain changes to pages can easily trigger unknown filters (and sometimes penalties) in Google’s algorithm, resulting in devastating SERP changes.

Building links — unrelated to paid links — through the use of social networks, directories and other sites contain risks too. For example, building links on directories can be very risky, because you don’t know which directories Google likes and doesn’t like. And trust me, you don’t want to be on the ones they don’t like. How your links look and the links that surround it also place a crucial role in how Google will see them, so there is risk involved with that too. In general, low risk link building takes more time and high risk link building is more efficient.

It’s time for search engine optimizers to bury the hat. It’s irrelevant to our practice and doesn’t fit into an eclectic and ever changing field. I encourage you to focus less on the labels and more on the risk. The question should be, “how risky are you?” White Hat simply doesn’t cut it anymore and is misleading and exclusionary. In most cases, SEO specialists will find that their practice includes various degrees of risk and that ultimately, they can’t and shouldn’t be labeled.

Update

Based on tweets by Sugarae, I’m apparently rehashing a very old idea. Examples being the article No More Hats: High Risk vs. Low Risk SEO and her own quote from four years ago on a WebmasterWorld thread:

I see a lot of people turning this into a moral debate so here is the bottomline without all the opinions of ethics: It may work, but it’s a risky technique. Google won’t like it. If they figure out you’re doing it. and it could get you banned. Now you know the risk - it is up to you whether or not to decide to take it. everyone has their own “risk comfort level” - you have to decide what yours is and work within it.

So I’m late to the no hat party, but the party still doesn’t seem to be over — as exhibited by consistent references and persuasive communication to customers and the mainstream media by leaders in the industry.

Posted in Commentary, SEO Community | 1 Comment »

Attack of the Quechup Fem Bots!

Friday, November 7th, 2008

Skip to full story below the image

Quechup Fem Bots

Most social networks grow through people finding friends or people they relate to. In some cases, people will friend others solely for the purpose of expanding their reach and exposure (usually for marketing purposes). But what happens when the friending is a result of the service itself and not overzealous or spammy users? The result is a steady, constant flow of friend requests from attractive women, day after day, after day, after day…

This has been exactly the case with the social network Quechup. Since creating my account several months ago, I’ve received on average about 2-3 friend requests per day — all from attractive women. Keep in mind that other than filling out my profile, I haven’t done one thing on their site. There’s also a peculiar thing about all of the friend requests — all of the users are “Premium” users. That of course means that if I want to fully interact with them, I’m encouraged to become a Premium user myself.

I can help but think that’s there’s one of two things going on here. My first assumption is that there is a team of paid employees that are managing all of these user profiles, all of which get sent automatically to users that match certain demographics. My second assumption is that is that these are real people, but they’re being incentivized to send out requests. There’s probably a built in cap on how many requests can be sent out to any particular user per day and the users making the request are probably getting compensated in an affiliate-like manner.

Whatever the cause is, it’s consistent and frequent. That’s why I made the Fem Bot collage to help you fully grasp the enormity and frequency of this campaign. I put together all of the avatars from all of the requests I’ve received from Quechup since April 28, 2008. They are listed in order, oldest to newest, top to bottom. You will notice that I received multiple requests from the same user on several occasions.

Posted in Commentary, Social Media | No Comments »

The Trouble With SERP Tracking

Monday, April 7th, 2008

SERP TrackingThere’s an ongoing obsession with tracking search engine result pages (SERPs). Both seasoned search marketing specialists and know-enough-to-be-dangerous webmasters can’t get enough of them. So what’s so special about these stats and why do people track them?


Why Track SERPs?

There are generally three reasons why people track SERPs: Research, Trends and Performance.

Research tracking allows an SEO specialist or webmaster to know where a website ranks based on a set of keywords. It’s one thing to know if a website is in a search engine’s index, but it’s another thing to know whether or not it shows up in the SERPs. Most people want to know whether or not it shows up in the top ten or twenty results, or if it resides deep in the SERPs where nobody will ever find it?

Trend tracking looks at the affect of an ongoing SEO campaign. That campaign can consist of simply updating the HTML code of a website or involve a sophisticated online link building campaign. Regardless, it’s important to know if the campaign is affecting a website positively or negatively in the SERPs for the target keywords.

Performance tracking relates to the actual traffic that the site receives from search engines. Instead of focusing on where a website resides in the SERPs for targeted keywords, performance tracking only focuses on keywords and traffic that actually send visitors to the website.


The Problem With SERP Tracking

There are major hurdles to SERP tracking. First off, search engines don’t like it. They see SERP Tracking as an attempt to game their system and they also don’t like the burden it puts on their systems (usage that in their mind should only be used for what they consider to be legitimate requests). There have been attempts in the past to provide APIs to allow these type of queries, but search engines like Google quickly determined that their API wasn’t being used for the purposes they wanted it to be used for, and subsequently discontinued it. There is of course a large interest in having access to a commercial API for their search engine, but Google has continually shown absolutely no interest in providing that service.

The next problem is accuracy versus overloading/triggering the beast. The most accurate results are those that would appear for most regular users — ten results per page. The problem is that if you want to get the top ten results for the first one hundred results, you have to hit the search engine ten times! The easiest way around that is to get the top one hundred results from one page (a setting that an easily be made in the search preferences or in the query request of the URL). That way you only have to hit the search engine once — there’s less impact on the search engine’s resources and you have all of the data you need. Unfortunately, those results aren’t entirely accurate.

Several years ago, search engines began to implement indented results — results to the same website that were bundled together, but the second result was indented. This mainly occurs when a search engine’s algorithm decides that there are two pages on a website that deserve to appear for the same keyword search. At first, this was rare, but as time passed it became more common. So common in fact, that if you do a top one hundred search for a popular term, almost every result will have a secondary indented result. If you didn’t pick on what I just said, let me be more clear; The top one hundred search results only have 50 websites!

Indented results occur in greater numbers for result pages that have more than ten results on them. For example, if you do a search that displays the first twenty results, and if a website shows up for the sixth result and also the nineteenth (normally page one and two), the nineteenth result will bubble up and indent itself underneath the sixth result — thus making the nineteenth result the seventh result and pushing everything else down. Now imagine that scenario on a one hundred result page where all of the result’s websites are repeated. The bubbling up of secondary results throws everything off compared to its ten results per page counterpart.

Finally, the elephant in the room is universal, subscription, local and custom search results (I guess that makes four elephants). All of these results can significantly change the search results — especially on the first page. Not only that, they can work in conjunction with each other and also occur randomly.


Future of SERP Tracking Is Passive

It’s only a matter of time when even the typical one through ten search result page will become a moving target. Once that occurs, it will be practically impossible to report any results that have any degree of accuracy. Coupled with search engines’ distaste for people tracking their SERPs, it’s also a matter of time until they implement measures that will make it extremely difficult to track SERPs en masse, or at the very least, affordably. Of course, this could be years away, but I do believe it’s coming.

Ultimately, I believe that the future of SERP tracking will be done passively. Passive SERP tracking involves using the referral data from search engine traffic to extrapolate not only the search engine and keyword, but also what page and/or position the result was on. We recently created a free Pepper (stats add-on) for Mint that captures passive SERPs in order to showcase this method SERP Tracking. There are also companies, like Enquisite, that are currently using passive SERP tracking to create and enhance their own analytics.

The beauty of passive SERP tracking is that it doesn’t require using any search engine resources, meaning, it’s search engine friendly. I recently had an email discussion with Matt Cutts about enhancing passive SERP tracking. He said:

We’ve talked about doing this, although we don’t have any plans right now; how would you propose that we pass along the rank information? I can see a lot of pros and cons to any particular approach.

We (Sitening) racked our brains on how to do this — it’s not as easy as one might think — and the best we could come up with was to either incorporate it into Google Analytics (which we believe Google could easily do) or to use Webmaster Tools by appending the links in search results. For example, if you could go to Webmaster Tools and turn on the ability to track the “rank” of a link by using an appended variable, that might work. So, instead of having the SERPs return http://domain.com/, they would return http://domain.com/?rank=4 (where ?rank=4 states the rank as 4). It would be an opt-in ability and if turned on, would affect all links that appear in the SERPs for that domain. The user would also have the ability to specify the characteristics of the appended variable in order to make sure it worked correctly with whatever technology they were using. Of course, it’s never that simple. If you already have a link in your index that fits that variable (?x=#), then Google may need to add an ampersand when it appends it — or they could just say too bad, don’t use crappy URLs if you’re going to opt in for the ranking service.


SERP Tracking Should Really Be About Performance

The only SERPs that really matter are the ones that bring traffic. Although it’s nice to know where a website resides in the SERPs, if you aren’t getting any traffic from it, it’s meaningless. Ideally, if you can connect and relate passive SERP data with ongoing campaign data, the analytics can become quite useful. For example, you can better correlate campaign efforts with increased traffic and conversions. You can also use that data to determine the effectiveness of different search marketing techniques.

For Raven, we’re going to continue to use traditional SERP tracking for monitoring trends, but not necessarily for accuracy. Although we would love to capture ten results per page instead of one hundred results, it’s cost prohibitive and it requires the use of too many resources from the search engines. Coupled with the problems discussed in this article — including the four elephants — we believe it’s only a matter of time until traditional SERP tracking results will become impossible to maintain any degree of accuracy.

Although traditional SERP tracking may always play a role in the Raven suite of SEO tools, we’re going to start focusing on how we can integrate SERP trends and performance with campaign data. We believe that’s where the most valuable information will ultimately be derived.

Posted in Commentary, SEO Techniques | No Comments »

7 Social Media Websites and Their Impact on SEO

Wednesday, March 19th, 2008

“The problem with social media is… there are more people writing it than reading it.”

Mixx

Mixx LogoAfter being granted a credibility boost from the New York Times recently, it seems like Mixx is here to stay. The underdog of social networking, Mixx has a smaller following than other user generated content (UGC) sites, but was seen as worthy enough to be invested in by the Los Angeles Times.

Positive Impact

You can use Mixx’s smaller user base to your advantage. Any item that you submit to Mixx will be given a better chance of exposure, because there’s not as much competition as there is with a site like Digg. If you select your niche carefully and link to quality content, you can easily hit the front page of Mixx.

Negative Impact

Mixx can be a bit skewed. Before I wrote this article, visiting three different categories on Mixx presented the same story on “brooklyn decker. brooklyn decker topless.” Those three categories were “Random and Crazy,” “Animals” and “Odd News.” That title (and subsequent adult link) had no business being under any of those three categories and should have been buried.

Furthermore, under the “Football” category was a submission with a link to a business which had nothing to do with football. Mixx users can vote down these entries; but if they’re submitted to a niche category that isn’t too popular, those entries are going to remain visible for quite a while. Until Mixx users or entries become moderated in some kind of fashion, Mixx will struggle to compete with its more successful counterparts.


Sphinn

Sphinn LogoSphinn is a social site for Search and Internet Marketers. It’s designed to allow you to share and discover news stories, read and take part in discussions, discover events of interest and network with others.

Positive Impact

There are some really smart people at Sphinn, and if you take the time to sift through the submissions, you’re going to learn something. The leaders in the search industry are either at Sphinn or being talked about on Sphinn. Take the time to read their stories — you won’t be sorry.

Negative Impact

I often find some of the submissions at Sphinn as not “sphinnworthy”, meaning they shouldn’t have made it onto the front page. Submissions such as endlessly promoting your own work, submitting an entry about how a person has managed to reach so many number of Sphinns, and people submitting something that a search celebrity has written, knowing it will make the front page — this gets a little nauseating at times. Fortunately, I do see this as improving in the future, as a recent entry by Rob Kerry suggests.


Twitter

Twitter LogoTwitter is a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

Positive Impact

Sometimes it’s not what you say but how you say it. Twitter’s limit of 140 characters should not put people off. Think of your followers as a captive audience - they want to know what you’re doing, how you’re doing it and which web page you’re viewing. Remember, some of the most enticing advertising slogans and tag lines are short and to the point. Ignoring Twitter because of its limited character capability is a missed marketing opportunity.

Negative Impact

It’s easy to miss something if you’re not looking for it. To first put out your message on Twitter, you need to establish followers. This can be a time-consuming process. Beware of users who arbitrarily just add you to their list of followers and expect to be followed in return.

During times of heavy usage, Twitter’s servers are known to take a turn for the worst. This can be a pain if you’re at a Web conference and want to Tweet a link to a live blog. Still, there’s always mobile Twitter.


Digg

Digg LogoContrary to popular opinion, Digg is not the be-all, end-all of social media sites. Digg power users (top 100 diggers) have way too much authority on what goes hot and what doesn’t. As recently as January 2008, Digg changed their story promotion algorithm. This is how Kevin Rose described the latest algorithm update:

“As we’ve talked about in the past, Digg’s promotional algorithm ensures that the most popular content dugg by a diverse, unique group of diggers reaches the home page. Our goal is to give each person a fair chance of getting their submission promoted to the home page.”

Positive Impact

If your submission gets on the front page of Digg, expect a significant traffic increase for the website you submitted. Make no mistake, being popular on Digg can bring huge exposure.

Negative Impact

Getting on the front page is a challenge in itself. The rewards are great if you succeed, but it’s certainly not a sure thing. The recent algorithm change will hopefully see some parity and common sense in the popular news stories, but probably not.

‘The Digg Effect’. A popular story on Digg can create so much traffic that it becomes a headache - servers crash and websites go down under the weight of being dugg. If you submit on Digg, be prepared for a possible onslaught.

Unfortunately, a lot of the traffic resulting in being dugg does not get you much ROI. You’re not going to find sustainable and renewable traffic from the Digg demographic. The vast majority of diggers are after a one-time hit.


del.icio.us

del.icio.us LogoSocial bookmarking on del.icio.us is essential if you’re an SEO specialist or just an avid Web 2.0 user. The ability to have a place to store all your online favorites is not only convenient, but brilliant in its simplicity.

Positive Impact

When you submit and tag a bookmark, it provides exposure to the bookmarked website and also ensures that it will be indexed in major search engines. Taking the time to create quality tags can make the difference between getting bookmarked a few times or hundreds of times. Since del.icio.us relies on the social aspect of bookmarking, the traffic-to-user relevancy is generally pretty high.

You can also subscribe to particular tags of users. If there are only parts of a user’s bookmarks that you like in particular — say, something tagged with “SEO” — you can subscribe directly to that tag’s feed.

Negative Impact

Many users of del.icio.us are now using the social bookmarking service as their own private bookmarks collection. This completely takes away the social aspect of del.icio.us and the point of the website altogether.


StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon LogoChannel surf the internet with the StumbleUpon toolbar to find great websites, videos, photos and more based on your interests. StumbleUpon learns what you like and makes better recommendations.

Positive Impact

Dependable traffic. If someone stumbles upon your site, the chances are very good that the content is something they were searching for and will bookmark. You’re far more likely to get a renewable source of traffic from Stumbleupon than you are from being dugg.

Negative Impact

Hateful or abusive reviews. Having a difference of opinion is just something some people can’t stand. Be prepared to take some flack and be careful about which category you’re submitting to. Be certain it’s relative to the website and make sure you hit that fine balance between newsworthy content and relative information.


Reddit

Reddit LogoA source for what’s new and popular online. vote on links that you like or dislike and help decide what’s popular, or submit your own! Reddit has been in the news recently, being blamed for a new Middle Eastern conflict.

Positive Impact

There’s something for everyone. Whether you’re promoting your own website or a client’s site, you should get decent leverage out of submitted content. Reddit has ample categories to choose from.

Negative Impact

Such is Reddit’s popularity that social agendas can be pursued through the site. See ‘reddit’s leaked algorithm’. That may be tongue-in-cheek, but the intent behind it is still true. Reddit is too repetitive in regards to the news stories that make the front page. At any given time, agenda-specific news items are almost a definite for going hot. Submitting to Reddit? Try hitting up Google Trends first; you want a sure thing, right?


Article References:

Posted in Commentary, Social Media | 15 Comments »

Five Reasons Why You Should Run a “Do Follow” Blog

Monday, January 21st, 2008

Why is the Raven blog a “Do Follow” blog? The short and simple answer has to do with rewarding our blog community. There’s too many high quality comments that don’t deserve to have their links “no followed” in the comments.

Running a “Do Follow” blog does take more effort. You have to be more vigilant about the quality of comments left on your blog and you have to give greater scrutiny to external links. However, there’s excellent “Do Follow” and anti-spam tools that are available to bloggers. Andy Beard has a comprehensive list of “do follow” plugins. The list includes plugins and guides for WordPress, Blogger/Blogspot, Typepad and Moveable Type blogging platforms.

Five Reasons for Running a “Do Follow” Blog

Although I’ve already touched on some of the reasons why it’s best to run a “Do Follow” blog, here’s my full list (feel free to expand the list in the comments).

  1. It encourages quality people to leave quality comments
  2. It rewards quality commenters for their participation
  3. It improves search engine performance (if you follow the comment policy below)
  4. It helps you grow your RSS subscriptions and builds a better blog community
  5. It facilitates the purpose of linking, instead of crippling it with “No Follow”

“Do Follow” Comment Rules / Policies

Running a “Do Follow” blog does take extra effort, which is why you should have a few comment policies. These are the policies that we use on Raven.

  1. If your external link isn’t related to the genre and focus of SEO, SEM, search marketing, etc…, we will remove your external link from your comment.
  2. If your external link goes to a website that is questionable in any way — no PageRank, spammy, etc… — we will remove your external link from your comment.
  3. If your comment is unrelated to the blog entry, abusive or outright spammy, we will remove your comment.

After you change your blog to a “Do Follow” blog, make sure you submit it to the “Do Follow” Blog Directory. That will make it easier for other “Do Follow” bloggers to find your website and is also an excellent resource for yourself. As long as you use spam blocking services, like Akismet, you should be able to effectively manage the amount of spam that will pass through your blog.

Thanks to Randa Clay for the “U Comment / I Follow” badge.

Posted in Blogging, Commentary | 7 Comments »

« Older Entries