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SPECIAL WEBMASTER WORLD/PUBCON EDITION +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ OPTIMIZING VISIBLE RESULTS IN SEARCH MARKETING ********************* Catch and cache past installments of SearchWrite SearchNews in the http://www.searchwrite.com/Pages/searchnews.htm ********************** ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The season's two major search marketing conferences, WebmasterWorld/PubCon in Las Vegas and Search Engine Strategies in Chicago faced off last week and SearchWrite has the inside scoop and insights just for you. The two competing trade shows found themselves on a collision course when event planners were unable to reconcile different dates for the annual events. A battle for presenters and attendees ensued. Only one critical question remained: Who would go where? WebmasterWorld/PubCon clearly emerged as the victor. Organizer Brett Tabke proudly announced the Pacific time zone show as the biggest PubCon ever. The vast Las Vegas Convention Center was a fitting venue facilitating the first time a search keynoter was given both a standing and a flying ovation with pigeons soaring inside the cavernous convention hall. Matt Cutts, Stephen Spencer, Rand Fishkin, Vanessa Fox, Todd Friesen, Bruce Clay, Jill Whalen, Gord Hotchkiss, Greg Boser, Jim Boykin, Aaron Wall, Dan Sundgren, and, of course, your celebrity editor (not to mention a long list of other industry luminaries) all opted for the All-Star West team while the east succeeded in attracting only a few, stalwart reserves like Mike Grehan, Brian Eisenberg, Shari Thurow and, yes, Danny Sullivan. What was odd is that Danny (the godfather of Search), had been disenfranchised by SES owners, Incisive Media, and has since founded his own network of conferences dubbed Search Marketing Expos or SMX for short. Was Danny simply being loyal to the expatriated brand's trade show or was this a contractual appearance clause? Sullivan is now readying his first major West Coast show, SMX West for San Jose this February and will be back in Seattle in June for SMX Advanced. <http://www.pubcon.com/> p.s. Congratulations to Google co-founder Larry Page who got married on Sir Richard Branson's Necker Island in the Bahama's while both search conferences were underway. The bride is Lucy Southworth, a graduate student at Stanford University. Bono, the U2 singer, was a guest and was expected to perform. The Red Hot Chili Peppers also played at the reception.
PubCon kicked off with a keynote address by Craig Newmark the founder of the wildly successful Craigslist.com. You may have caught Newmark on Charlie Rose a few weeks ago when Charlie asked "Why is Craigslist successful?" They have 9 billion pageviews per month right now running your generic Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Perl. They also have an awesome caching system (that they'd eventually like to make Open Source). The server farm consists of 120 generic machines at a colocation facility. And yet, it's still running on PINE. So why is Craig'slist successful? It's an inspirational concept of shared values, according to Newmark. In 1994 while working at Charles Schwab, Craig was active with evangelizing news groups. To give back, he started an email list sharing with friends about events in the San Francisco area. Word of mouth spread the list and people asked to put things for sale, jobs on the list. Today, the internet is everyone's printing press and Craigslist is fulfilling the community publishing role for local community announcements, classified advertising, events, personals and help wanted. No matter where you are in the world or your cultural background, ordinary people are getting together and changing things on a massive scale. Craigslist is an agent for that change, Q: How can Search Engine marketers ethically use Craigslist to use links? A: It's simple common sense stuff. You go to the site, you pick out the city you want to advertise in, you pick out the categories and check them out. Check out how people use that category and post your ads there. The idea is that every site has its own culture. Every site is a place in the virtual sense and when you go to a virtual place, you try to fit in - that's how you use the site ethically.
The inimitable Matt Cutts shared the following best practices for White Hat SEO along with advice on thwarting Black Hat SEM during his PubCon keynnote: Google in China: Google recently bought g.cn in China. One of our efforts is to make it really easy to remember. We have google.cn and g.cn and google.com. You can go to either one. Google.com provides main search results but we can restrict g.cn and google.cn to requirements of the country. Best procedures when changing servers (on IP addresses): There are 3 or 4 steps. First: lower your DNS TTL (Time-to-Live) to 5 minutes. Bring up the site on the new IP address. Switch the site to the new IP address, but keep the old and the new live. As soon as you see Googlebot crawl the new IP address, you should be fine. Normally a day or two is all you need. How to report Spam results: Every Google Adsense ad -- including ads on splogs -- can be reported to Google if it is in violation of a particular AdSense guideline. First, you click on "Ads by Google" (in some instances, you will see "Feedback - Ads by Google"). Then scroll down where you can click on "Send Google feedback on the ads you just saw." After that, expand the form to "Report a violation." After you report, Google will send you a DMCA form to fill out and you may have to produce screen caps in order to validate your claim. It can take some time to get these DMCA complaints verified, but in the end, it's worth it if you're concerned that your content is being scraped and/or stolen, this is a valid resource. On Linking to "Bad Neighborhoods": How do you identify bad neighborhoods? Should you use the rel=nofollow tag attribute when linking to questionable sites or stay away from them totally? Trading links is natural and it's natural to have reciprocal links. But if you do it too often, reciprocal links look artificial. Matt's advice is if you're worried, use 'nofollow'. Using nofollow disassociates you from a cruddy link or bad neighborhood.
One of the most highly reviewed sessions at PubCon was a workshop on gathering competitive intelligence to inform your search marketing strategies and guide the positioning of your listings and landing pages in search advertising. The following reconnaissance tools belong in every search marketer's toolkit: 1. Domaintools.com: Reveals abundant information about a Web site including other sites that are on the same IP. What other sites are your competitors hosting? Find out here. 2. ranks.nl/tools/spider.html: Determine the keyword densities of your competitors' pages. Breaks keywords into 2 word, 3 word and 4 word combinations 3. sitexplorer.search.yahoo.com: Find backlinks for your competition. Yahoo reports the most important backlinks first. 4. seomoz.org/tools: Page Strength Tool ñ A variety of factors that attribute to the realtive strength of a Web page including links from various sources 5. soloseo.com/tools/indexrank.html: Allows you to see how many pages have been indexed by Google over the past year, 6 months, or 2 weeks for a site. 6. copernic.com: Track site and page changes over time. 7. Technorati.com: The ultimate in reputation management. Find out whoís talking about you and your competition in the blogoisphere. 8. google.com/alerts: Sign up for Google Alerts and learn every time a Google News or Web entry matches your query term, such as the name of ytour company, your competitor or your product name or category. 9. searchanalytics.compete.com: Type in a domain name and Compete will give you an approximation as to what key phrases are bringing traffic to your competitors' Web site. 10. touchgraph.com: A visual graph to help you locate the centerpoints of attractionto and from your competitorsí hubs. Visually indicates where competitor links are coming from. 11. google.brand.edgar-online.com: Tracking public companiesí FCC filings. 12. seekingalpha.com/transcripts: Scan through transcripts. 13. google.com/patents: Keep track of patents of your competitors. 14. oodl.com: Keep an eye out on hiring needs/trends and how, when and where your competitors are hiring.
This well-attended panel reviewed some of the best-known and lesser-known tools for more intelligent SEO and SEM. IndexTools (www.indextools.com) presents a view of your last 100 visitors in near real time. This is extremely valuable especially if you produce timely content because it alerts you immediately when things get popular. Spyfu (spyfu.com) has a simple interface with topical bid rate information for Adwords, and a breakdown of competitor sites and keywords by market sector. A deep source of metrics. Google Trends (google.com/trends) lets you search for a term and view its historical traffic. Ideal for creating a deep list of keywords. Compare traffic over time for key phrases, and use it iteratively to create a traffic list. Domain and server tools: (whois.domaintools.com/domainname.com), (dnsstuff.com), (ip-report.com/index.php) (safe IP blocks), number of sites on this IP bookmarket Backlink/Off page information: Link Harvester (linkhounds.com/link-harvester), Greg Boser's Tattler (www.gregboser.com/downloads), Hub Finder (www.linkhounds.com/hub-finder/hubfinder.php).
With Google clamping down on paid link buying, what strategies remain for acquiring paid links and what alternatives are the most feasible? In-Content Links: LinkXL.com purchases links in the existing content of Websites related to your site that don't openly buy or sell links. Why in content links? They are naturally relevant. Economical Alternatives to Buying Links: Syndicate content on other sites since to build authority, generate traffic, and flow PageRank. Buy competing websites or mature, expiring Websites within your category. Use effective public relations techniques. SearchWrite recently added ListLogix Media Management to its arsenal to build editorial link backs from press placements and site links. Other paths: Pay attention to niche directories. Sponsor events and advertise. Create compelling contests and award programs - even if prizes are virtual if the right people seed the idea, it can be highly acclaimed. An example is the Web2.0 awards from SEOmoz. It produced a ton of great links. Create useful appliances or info guides to give away (downloads are big). Affiliate programs - the more people who see you, the better you're going to do.
Google's Matt Cutts: Google's recent toolbar update was intended to reduce visible PR based on sites selling links. Google DID NOT visibly reduce PR of ALL sites that they caught and Matt didn't want to give a percentage. It was a shot fired across the bow. Going forward, Google is likely to continue this practice of visibly showing some portion of sites where it feels the owners have violated link selling protocol. Reporting Competitors' Paid Links: According to Matt, do it because it's in your best interest to see your competition receive lower rankings; do it because you want the Web to be a better place and to make the jobs of the search engines easier; the argument of "honor among thieves" is a fallacy - nobody should legitimately believe that paid links make the web a better place (from a SE perspective); send reports through your Webmaster Central account for faster response times. Potential penalties for link buyers and sellers: PR might be a penalty, but there's more - removing athe ability of links to pass value, but don't show anything visibly; remove the ability of the links tp pass value and downgrade the visible PR in the toolbar; remove the ability of the links to pass value AND penalize the rankings of the sites/pages being linked to AND/OR the site(s) selling links; remove the ability of the links to pass value AND remove the offending site(s) from the index. Eytan Seidman from Microsoft Live Search also shared his perspective:
Google's Tom Leung is the Product Manager for Google Website Optimizer. The free marketing tool has two testing modes -- A/B/C page testing where different landing pages are tested against one another in an AdWords campaign, and, secondly, intra-page "Multivariate testing" where the basic page layout remains the same but different elements (photos, headlines, calls to action, colors) are tested. Why test?: Driving traffic is just the beginning. You invest in SEO and SEM resources for 100 percent of your visitors. Your pages may lose more than half their visitors in mere seconds. Most that do stay may choose not to convert. (The industry average for converting customers is 2-3 percent.) Why bother bringing more visitors to a site that converts poorly? The goal is to evolve your landing page presentation and content with continuous improvement so that you drive the right traffic to your site. The process is to measure & analyze site activity, test changes and implement winners. How Google Website Optimizer Testing Works: It's as simple as pasting a piece of JavaScript. Each version of the page has a unique sticker to identify it by. Visitors arrive on your site and are shown a random version of your landing page. The testing tool reports you what percentage of users converted based on that version of your page. After the test runs for awhile (typically an average of 100 conversions), Google Website Optimzer populates the reports for you. What to Test?: a.) Conversion Cocktail: Headline/Image/Call to action. Those are the top three variables to test. b.) Use of trust seals and other third-party endorsements. c.) User testimonials, d.) An inspirational vs. fact-based Pitch, d.) Use of a YouTube video f.) comparing inclusion of a navigation bar on landing page (for access to rest of site) vs. controlled navigation. Best Practices in Testing: Test a small number of variations: Rule of thumb is less than 100 conversions per combination. Test big changes: If you canít see difference between two combos in 8 seconds, visitors probably wonít either. Consider early indicators if you donít have enough conversions: If youíre selling a $100k software package or a small business with modest volume, optimize for conversion indicators such as request info, view product details, etc. Donít jump to conclusions: Less than 2 weeks is no good, focus on absolute conversion difference, donít get too excited by sliver of green.
What is an absolute link? What is a relative link? Why should you care which one you use? When it comes to how you set up the links on your web site, itís important to use an absolute link (which means that when you link to another page on your web site you specify the complete URL in the link like http://www.yourdomain.com/page1.html) whenever possible. A relative link is when you have an internal link and you only specify the page URL and not the full URL in the link (for example, a relative link would be when you only link to page1.html). Bill Hartzer relates a horror story that informs why he believes you should always use absolute links whenever you can. According to Hartzer: "If you use relative links you can suddenly lose all of your rankings in the search enginesñit has happened to me and was a nightmare for a few weeks until I got it all straightened out. All of a sudden one of my prized domain names stopped ranking in Google. I couldnít figure it out. Great rankings for several years and bad rankings all of a sudden. I finally searched for the domain name in Google and found that they had indexed the entire site without the www subdomain." "I then found that there were a few links to the non-www version of the site. I figured out that because there were links to mydomain.com and because I was using relative links the search engine were allowed to spider the site thinking it was mydomain.com and not www.mydomain.com. Suddenly Google chose mydomain.com and threw out www.mydomain.comñthus my bad rankings. I fixed all of the relative linking on the site and made sure all the internal links went to www.mydomain.com/page.html and not page.html. After about two to three weeks I finally got back my search engine rankings back. As a result, I will never use relative linking again. Thereís not actually any search engine rankings boost per se when you use absolute versus relative links. However, when you use absolutely links you make sure the search engines know which ìversionî of your site to index. Yes, Google has a Canonical preference in Google Webmaster Tools but not all sites have used the tool and other search engines are unaffected. You see, if someone links to your site using domain.com rather than www.domain.com, the search engine will follow the link and start crawling. If you use absolute links then the search engine will crawl your site and only see the pages as www.domain.com/page.html. If you use relative links the the search engine could crawl your site as domain.com/page.html, which is probably not what you want. Most of your links from other sites will be linking to www.domain.com, not domain.com. If the search engine decidesñfor whatever reasonñthat they index your site with domain.com and not www.domain.com, then you could suddenly lose all of your search engine rankings because the non-www version of your site is indexed and the www version is not and you donít have many links to the non-www version of your site. Itís important to be consistent in your internal linking, and itís vital to make sure that all of your internal links specify exactly the domain name of your site so thereís no question of which pages to index. ******************************************
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