Searchga.me: Can you win?




March 20, 2009 – 5:09 pm

SharkSEO recently created Searchga.me — I gave it a shot when it first came out, but had other things to move along to (it’s tough).  After a few attempts, I was about halfway through, and I picked it back up this evening.  I finally won!  And I learned a little bit about Firebug along the way =)

Can you win searchga.me?

=george

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Why Pixelsilk isn’t a good SEO CMS




February 19, 2009 – 12:20 am

After a few days of being pissed off about the “oh yay!” discussion regarding the rel=cannonical tags, I’ve finally burst at today’s article on Bruce Clay’s blog about Pixelsilk.

Pixelsilk SUCKS.  Want to know why?  From their brochure site:

Hosting

We have multiple options for hosting client sites and offer primarily a hosted solution inside of our secure hosting facility. Clients may choose to be hosted in a shared hosted environment or have a dedicated IP with their own hardware. Enterprise hosting is available; please contact us for more information on our hosting solutions.

It’s hosted.  I don’t care HOW much they let you customize, it’s BS for any legit SEO.

Googlebot: oh, hey, this site looks cool for our index and it has a ton of unique content!!!  let’s check the IP address…oh, it’s a Pixelsilk site.  semi-frowny face.  that means a shitty SEO made this site and optimized it for me.  [relevance = drop significantly]

At least, for the people who use it, it’ll be easy to modify/update your mod-rewrite rules — oh, wait, it’s a .NET CMS.  Heh, they have an API though.

Stick to Joomla and Wordpress.

=george

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Keynote: John Battelle




February 18, 2009 – 3:02 pm

Information about the keynote:

John Battelle is author of the outstanding book on how search engines developed, The Search, in which he also coined oft-repeated description of search engines as a “database of intentions.” A veteran journalist and entrepreneur, this keynote conversation will cover how John sees search developing, the challenges ahead and searches greater impact on the internet and society.
John Battelle has his finger on the pulse of the search industry.

John Battelle has his finger on the pulse of the search industry.

  • Cited an example of a recent dinner conversation where people around the table use mobile devices to add value to conversation. If somebody brings up an question or topic that nobody has an immediate answer for, everyone scrambles to use their phones to add value. This is the epitome of social search. A great example of a search application that is blazing a train: Shazaam for the iPhone. Who, if anyone will take Google’s place as the king of search? It very well might be a social search model similar to Shazaam. In any case, we will certainly be measuring the value and success of search different than we do now.
  • When do we get to the Windows vs. Mac version of search? The problem persists: When you have digitzied all of the wold’s knowledge and made it searchable, the “hunt and poke” (similar to what we see in a Windows or Mac interface) just won’t work anymore. However, right now, search is still in its infancy. We are still in the blinking cursor at a command line phase. We are going to soon shift to a new interface. It will be driven by similar parameters that drive language in our brains.
  • Let’s think about the other places search is headed. The Goog 411 service certainly wasn’t invented as a nice public service. It was created to build a database of human speech phonemes.
  • Will Twitter change search? Check out John’s From Static to Realtime Search post. For many people, the process of figuring out twitter is hard, but once you get it it, Twitter becomes extremely useful. When you have a database of real time conversation (”what’s happeneing right now”), and you can query that database, you have absolute gold. There is a massive commercial opportunity with Twitter that has yet to be exploited, and it’s all based on the same basic principles as traditional search.
  • Conversational marketing: Create media/content that adds value to online conversations. John used an example of a dinner party where a random dude runs in and yells “IBM servers are the best!” This would be totally out of place and make no sense. This is how a lot of online advertising happens. On the other hand, if you come to the dinner party with a bottle of wine and work into the conversation why yyou think IBM servers are good, assuming that the conversation is already about IBM or servers, then the endorsement becomes fully relevant.
  • Battelle’s next book: The Conversation Economy. The premise is to look forward 10-15 years at the future of search and trace it back to now in order to write a presciption for success.

-Drew

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SEO Status Report Metrics




February 18, 2009 – 1:43 pm

Agenda information here.

How are your SEO efforts going from a technical standpoint? This session looks at “status report” metrics you can tap into such as link counts, page counts and more.
Moderator: Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land
Q&A Moderator: Todd Friesen, President, Oilman SEO
Speakers:
Seth Besmertnik, CEO, Conductor, Inc.
Rand Fishkin, CEO, SEOmoz
Brian Klais, Executive Vice President of Search, Netconcepts
Kelly Kochert, Assistant Vice President New Media, NSI

This session was sponsored by Inquisit software. Many of the panelists had good things to say about Inquisit, so it might be worth checking out.

Seth Besmertnik:

  • The top 4 SEO reporting myths:
    • Every keyword is equally important.
    • All potential keywords are accounted for and known.
    • Movement outside the first page doesn’t matter.
    • Education = buy-in.
  • Far more clicks take place from natural SERP listings, but the majority of total online spend is in PPC.
  • Chasing rankings as a “killer metric” is counter productive, but it can provide insight. Rankings can be a good way to measure how you stack up against competitors.
  • SEO “snippet” optimization (”snippets” being the text - usually the meta description tag - that appears below the page’s title on SERPs). If your ranking is already secured or if you can afford to mess with your page’s rankings without reprecussion), do some A/B testing for click-through.
  • Examine where where the traffic is coming from in paid versus natural search.
  • “Destination and Traffic Modified Movement” is a formula developed by Conductor to provide more insight into ranking data. They take available metrics and go one step further to uncover more meaningful data.

 

Rand Fishkin:

  • The SEO guesswork game is over. It’s time for solid, data-driven metrics.
  • Compete, Alexa, and Quantcast all provide publicly availabe data. Quantcast’s “Quantified” metric is like Google Analytics but public. Compare these numbers against Alexa and Compete for confidence levels.
  • For U.S. traffic, Compete’s data is the most accurate.
  • For worldwide traffic, Alexa’s “3 month reach” is the most accurate.
  • For all link data that has been collected, how do they stack up against one another? Which are most accurrate and how can we determine what the real data is (versus noise)?
  • Never trust a single metric. Always compare.
  • If all metrics appear virtually the same, there are good ways to dive deeper into the data.
  • When metrics get mashed, expect better results.
  • What are the factors that best predict google rankings?
    • Links, by far (85%).
    • URL (10%).
    • Page content (5%).

 

Kelly Kochert:

  • Remember that since it will likely take more than one analytics solution to get the data that you need, be absolutely certain that you know what you wish to measure want beforehand.
  • Identify what moved the needle for any metric and benchmark traffic graphs with indications of when each tactic was implemented.
  • Align keyword traffic with ranking. Split out keywords into branded vs. non branded buckets. You should always rank for branded keywords, so it’s not worth spending a lot of time working on them (unless there is an obvious problem that is preventing them for ranking). But the should still be tracked.
  • Look at entry pages for organic traffic, and align them with keywords. Are these really the pages that are driving the traffic into the site? What are the top performing landing pages? Are opportunities being missed?
  • Site engagement:
    • Measure bounce rates, exit pages, etc. Why are people abandoning? If so, that page should be a priority for improvement.
    • Which pages and keywords lead to conversions?
    • Identify the common funnel. Is SEO different than paid search?
  • Referral sites:
    • What other sites drive traffic?
    • Look for link opportunities and where anchor text can be changed.
  • Mine internal search data. There are software solutions that specialize in just this.

 

Brian Klais:

  • The session started with the questions, “How many here are SEOs? Now how many of you feel that you are paid what you are worth.” This kick started the theme that SEO tends to be grossly undervalued. And why? Because the metrics used to create reporting, ROI, and perceived value have been weak in the past.
  • Stop talking SEO tactics and start talking performance metrics. This is how SEM does it, and it makes a lot more sense.
  • How to communicate opportunity? Use the google adwords keyword tool (using “exact match”). Don’t use Wordtracker for this. You can build models based on this data.
  • Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery are good for finding new keywords, but don’t use them for looking at existing opportunities.
  • Use CTR to set goals and estimate traffic.
  • Traffic acquisition cost: Compare PPC cost vs. anticipated organic costs, and then set goals to reduce this cost.
  • Landing page yield: Understand how many total landing pages are available. What is getting crawled? What total percentage are actually driving traffic? Look at YoY and MoM data to eliminate interfering market trends.
  • Landing page rankings: Calculate value of rankings and measure CPC.
  • Keyword coverage: Focus on non-brand phrases.
  • Incremental traffic and revenue: You cannot assume that non-branded rankings will stay constant. Always examine the YoY delta in as many areas as possible.
  • Proper attribution: The final click that causes the conversion is likely to be credited to PPC. Set up sessions and cookies to track the path to the final click.
  • ROI, (or return on ad spend): This is what is ultimately going to prove your worth as an SEO. Look beyond short-term revenue and measure all available metrics. Include the lifetime value of customer/searcher/visitor, etc.

-Drew

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Googles SearchWiki, Customized and Personalized Results




February 13, 2009 – 2:28 pm

Agenda info is here.

Google’s SearchWiki, Customized & Personalized Results - SearchWiki, Google Personalized Results and search customization based on previous queries or geographic location are all ways that Google’s “regular” results seem to be disappearing. This session looks at how “one-size-fits-all” results at Google are continuing to disappear, along with strategies on how to be successful in a more personalized results environment.
Moderator: Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land
Q&A Moderator: Michael Gray, President, Atlas Web Service
Speakers:
Corey Anderson, Manager SearchWiki, Google Inc.
Bryan Horling, Software Engineer, Personalized Search, Google, Inc.

There were two short presentations, but the primary focus of the session was Q&A.

  • The same question kept getting asked in different ways: How much is this going to affect search? The given answer was not much, but #1 position is no longer going to be winner-take-all. In my opinion, this is an important concept. Ranking will have a place, but it will mean so many different things that SEOs should no longer be relying on it as a metric.
  • There is no correlation between customized searches and AdWords. Nor is there, for the time being (which was said with raised eyebrows by the Google folks), is there any correlation to Google Checkout.
  • Danny sees big SEO and commercial opportunities with SearchWiki. At the bottom of the results page where is says “see SearchWiki results,” most of the categories are empty. Of course, nearly all of the SEO categories are full, dominated primarily by Aaron Wall and the SEOmoz folks.
  • So far, SearchWiki has been used predominately for personal use. also, for the majority of searches there are no SearchWiki results.
  • Malicious comments can be voted down and flagged as inappropriate. Google is claiming that spamming and malicious attacks are not yet a problem, but they are obviously going to be at some point soon. Google’s reply to Rae Hoffman’s question about how Google plans to control these attacks was non-specific and pretty unsatisfactory.
  • When search history is deleted, is it really erased? Yes, but only in the places where the data could possibly be associated with any of your personal information. The data is kept elsewhere for other reasons (trending, quality control, etc.).
  • Does Google’s Personalized Search interact with SearchWiki? Yes, but only in an indirect sense. If you were to vote a result to the top, this action would trump other triggers. In other words, explicit triggers trump implicit triggers.
  • There is not always a personalized search link at the top right of the SERP (to indicate that the result has been personalized) . Google will sometimes modify/alter a search without notifying the user. Google feels that it’s not worth telling the user unless the modification is significant.

-Drew

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