Posted by rebeccaTo cap off this gray, dreary Monday (in Seattle, anyway), I thought I'd share a hodgepodge of news, tidbits, and other things that have been brought to my attention by bloggers and colleagues lately:Kris Farmer from RazorGator won Greg Boser's SEO Vanity Plate contest, which is uber-lame because I took second place and was actually ahead in points but missed the bonus question (note to self: appease the Boser and visit the crew in California for Beer Friday).Shoemoney announced his Party Like a Rockstar at Pubconcontest (of which I am a judge). Post a blog entry on your blog by November 10th convincing the judges why you should roll with the Rockstars. If you win, you'll get paid roundtrip airfare to Las Vegas, paid hotel lodging from December 4-7, a Pubcon conference pass, and $500 spending money. And no, bribing or schmoozing me won't help you win (okay, maybe a little...).How big of an ego Googler are you? Big enough to sport the Google vanity ring? This little wonder displays the number of results on Google for your name. Think of it as bling for bloggers.My buddies at Get Elastic brainstormed Larry and Sergey's Halloween costume: "ghoul"glers. They're also giving away a $100 gift certificate for Amazon.com if you can come up with the best caption in the comments thread.Tamar shared her top 6 ideas for incredible viral content. Fun fact: the Zombie Apocalypse quiz was created by none other than former SEOmozzer, Matt Inman. For a good laugh, I recommend heading over to the Worst SEO Blog Ever. If you think you're having a bad day, head over to this guy's blog and read some of his posts. He's funny, angry, un-PC (uh, so don't go there if you can't take a joke or don't like swear words), and apparently likes to rank for "poop porn." Good on ya!Finally, some of you have been asking me to put up my link bait presentation from SMX Social Media, so here it is. Feel free to share any other interesting stuff in the comments below. We'll have more topical posts throughout the week (such as what the Mozzers should be for Halloween, how many drinks it'll take to coerce us to do Whiteboard Friday dressed as KISS [hint: a lot], and how suspicious it is that Rand and Gillian snatch up the exotic conference speaking spots [SMX Stockholm, SMX Sydney], leaving the rest of us to vie for, uh, less exciting locales [who even knew there was an SMX Hoboken?]).Do you like this post? YesNo

  Posted by Mel GrayJust a brief update to let everyone know that we now have a Premium Content RSS Feed available.This feed will alert you when new Premium content becomes available.  You will receive a notification whenever any of the following is added to the members section:New Tips & TricksNew Link DirectoriesNew Q&A DiscussionsNew ArticlesNews specifically for Premium MembersYou don't need to be a Premium Member to subscribe, but will need to be to access the content.So all of you non-Premium Members now have a new avenue of temptation for taking the plunge.To subscribe, please visit: http://feeds.feedburner.com/seomozpremiumDo you like this post? YesNo

  Posted by Dr. PeteRecently, I made the difficult decision to change the domain name of my blog and consulting website. It had to be done; the old name just didn't make sense anymore. No one could spell it, and it was terrible for SEO. Of course, I knew all of the rules of successful 301 redirection in theory, but when it came to putting theory into practice, I found myself dreading pulling the switch.There have been plenty of good articles on SEOmoz and elsewhere about the technical aspects of 301 redirection, but I felt a lot of uncertainty about the timeline of re-establishing my presence on Google (inbound links, PR, etc.). So, I decided to track my progress daily, mostly to calm my own paranoia, but also as a bit of a case study in what a 301 redirection process looks like. I finally finished collecting data when my PageRank was established over the weekend, and this article is a recap of my experience. Technical DetailsThe site itself is relatively small (my business blog, primarily), but has steady traffic and had established PR and a healthy number of inbound links for its size. The site is powered by PHP/MySQL, and I used Apache rewrites for redirection. The new domain was registered less than two months before the transfer and had no history (according to the Internet Archive), so it was "new" in every sense of the word. The transfer itself happened on August 22, 2007. I should also add that I did 3 things immediately upon relaunch: (1) I established a new sitemap and profile in Webmaster Tools.(2) I reached out to everyone in my community who linked to me and announced the change, requesting that they update their links to the new domain.(3) I updated all of my RSS/Feedburner links to the new domain. Results: Indexed PagesSo, let's talk data: the figure above shows Google's daily count of the indexed pages from the transfer until the end of data collection. Google began spidering pages on the site within less than a week of the transfer, and the indexed page count jumped to 111 (exceeding the original count of 91) on September 4th, just 13 days after the transfer. Of course, since the site is primarily a blog, the total number of pages have increased consistently over time.Results: Inbound LinksAlthough the graph over the full course of the experiment looks a bit different than the last one, inbound links also surged 13 days after transfer, jumping up to 739. Unlike indexed pages, there was no gradual increase in the preceding two weeks; the count simply registered all at once. Just a note: In the interest of keeping the graphs consistent, I left in the numbers after the count was restored, but due to an anomaly that temporarily bumped my inbound link count over 10,000, had to cut the graph off artificially. Results: PageRankFinally, the one troublesome piece of data that held up this entire experiment: on October 27th, as part of Google's recent shuffle, the new domain finally registered a PageRank, jumping back to the original PR of 5. This was an overnight jump, and is consistent with Google's past practice of updating PRs on a roughly quarterly basis (ignoring the recent update drought).Does PageRank Matter?The PR graph raises an obvious question: how did my site fare with two months of being treated as a non-entity by Google? The previous data gives the first part of the answer: even without verified PageRank, Google obviously recognized and indexed my site. More importantly, the site started to appear in search results almost immediately upon being indexed. In the first two weeks, a search for the site's name pulled it up within the top 10.In addition, I conducted a bit of an experiment within the experiment. During the month of October, I coined two phrases on my blog: "Google threshold" and "midstream usability." Both appeared near the top of Google search results within 1-2 days of the entries initially being posted, a clear sign that Google was treating the site kindly.Sometimes, It's Good to be ScaredIn this Halloween season, it's good to remember that a little fear isn't always a bad thing. You should never go into something as important as a domain change with too much confidence, but I hope that this case study illustrates that, properly planned, a full 301 redirection doesn't have to be too scary.Do you like this post? YesNo

  Posted by rebeccaLet me walk you through my morning thus far. I come into the office, log on to Trillian, and start working. I receive an IM from an SEO who makes some small talk before getting to the point: he wants me to digg/reddit about four stories. I click on the links and (pay attention here) vote for the ones I thought were interesting. I keep working. I notice that I get several email notifications from Digg, that "so and so has sent you a shout!" I click on them and see that I received several shouts from two users for the same story. And the shouts keep coming, about thirty minutes apart (about as frequent and pleasant as a pregnant woman's contractions, I bet). At this point, I'm getting a bit irritated and disable the shout feature on my Digg profile.The SEO who initially IM'd me IMs me again and asks me to vote for the stories if I haven't already, and now he asks me to comment on the stories, see if any of my friends will vote for the content, and instructs me to vote for other stories in between the votes for his stories so my activity doesn't seem suspicious. Okay, so apparently now I'm being treated like an employee and am given specific instructions on how to vote. The last time I checked, I wasn't getting paid by these SEOs to vote and promote their stories. My vote counts as one, not one + comments + 12 other votes from my friends. If you ask me to look at your story, expect one vote, if that, nothing more.That SEO's employee then IMs me and asks me to vote on the exact same story the other SEO asked me to vote on (and it's the same story I kept getting shouts for). At this point I tell both him and his employer that I've already received repeated requests to vote for this story, and that it's getting downright spammy and inconsiderate. They apologize and tell me that they'll coordinate with their team to avoid asking the same person for repeated votes. I'm left alone, until...Another SEO IMs me and asks me to look at a video on YouTube. He initially asks me if the video loads properly. I say yes and close the video tab because it looks lame and I don't want to watch it. After a couple minutes, the SEO asks me to favorite the video and give it five stars. My exact response is, "No, it's lame." He fires back with "Tuesdays and Thursdays are social days." [Note from Jeff: "You know what? Tuesdays and Thursdays are also work days!"]Okay, now I'm really getting angry. You know what? I don't care if Tuesdays and Thursdays are unofficially dubbed "social days" in the SEO/internet marketing industry--that doesn't mean you should send me 32 IMs asking me to digg/reddit/propeller/sphinn/youtube rate/del.icio.us bookmark the same stinkin' story, or that you should guilt me into voting because today's the day that people ask for votes, so I should play nice and vote up anything that gets sent my way. This is getting ridiculous. The SEO then says "don't make me beg." I respond by saying that I only vote for something if I think it's interesting, and that I'm not voting for the video because I think it's lame. He then says "SMM etiquette, you know? You do this for people who do SMM so they do it back for you." My response is less than professional:Me: WTF! SMM etiquette, my ass! I get spammed with this [expletive] [expletive] all day. That's not etiquette. Begging for a vote isn't etiquette. Ask nicely ONCE, like [name of SEO redacted] does.He takes the hint and stops bugging me.Tamar wrote a similar post about not asking her to Sphinn your stories, and I couldn't agree more (note: I am also a Sphinn moderator, so think about that before you spam me for Sphinns). At this point, it looks like I'm slowly being driven to a) dread Tuesdays and Thursdays, b) block spammy SEOs from IMing me (which I don't necessarily want to do because some of these people are my friends), or c) stop logging into my chat programs because I don't want to get spammed. Not all of my colleagues act this way. There are plenty who IM me with a link and say nothing more--they understand that I'll look at it and decide whether or not I want to award it with a vote, and they're fine with that. Some SEOs send me links to stories that I vote for every time, and do you know why? It's not because they're my BFFs, it's because the stuff they send me is interesting. That's the whole point of link bait and of viral marketing. People share things and vote for things that they find interesting, whether it's funny, informative, educational, inspiring, enraging, etc. If I like it, I'll vote it up. If I don't, I won't.I don't want to sound like a jerk, but if you're requesting votes from people you need to understand that these people are doing you a favorby awarding your content with a vote. If you keep bugging them and badgering them and incessantly hounding them to vote up your content, they're not going to want to award you with a vote any more.I'd like to close with some realSMM etiquette:Keep in mind that not everyone will put up with your spammy requests for votes because not everyone adheres to "Social Day" or thinks of it as the day to pepper your colleagues with vote requests.If you do send someone a link, send it ONCE and then leave that person alone. You've done your job of bringing his/her attention to your story, now let him decide if it's worth a vote.If someone does not vote for your content, don't hold it against him or try to guilt him into voting ("Come on, we're friends!"). If even your friend doesn't think the content is worth his time, what chance does your piece have of being interesting to the mainstream?People, please just be considerate. Just because you're my friend, that doesn't automatically mean you can take advantage of it and expect that I'm an automatic vote, no questions asked. I don't play that way, and I deserve a little more consideration than that.Do you like this post? YesNo

  Posted by rebeccaHappy Halloween, everyone! We here at SEOmoz are all dressed as internet marketers! Wheee! Did you adequately prepare for the holiday? Have your costume picked out and ready to go? Pumpkins carved into spooky jack-o-lanterns? Decorations put up? Candy purchased (none of those healthy granola bars, or your house'll get egged)? Site optimized for all that lovely holiday traffic? No? Uh oh...If your site offers some sort of holiday product (Halloween costumes, gifts ideal for Christmas, Valentine's stuff) or if you just want to write holiday-related content, it's pretty important to have your site visible in the SERPs for those search queries so you'll get optimum traffic for those terms. And, as we all know, it can take a little bit of time to get high rankings. How do you know when to start SEOing for that holiday rush of search queries? Well, a little research never hurt anyone.Here's Google Trends data from the past twelve months for the search term "halloween costume ideas."As you can see, searches start gaining traction towards the end of August and into the fall; thus, if you're doing SEO for Halloween-related terms, you would want to start building content and links towards the end of the summer so you're more visible to searchers when they think to start doing research.The same goes for Christmas-related searches. Here I looked at "christmas gift ideas":Searches start consistently increasing towards the end of September. With Valentine's Day, the searches start in mid-December:In each case, searches started about 2-3 months before the holiday, so it's important to acknowledge that and start crafting your content and targeting those keywords with ample time before the searches start gaining traction. KeywordDiscovery, by the way, also graphs search trends, so if you have a membership I highly recommend analyzing their graphs if you're looking to craft a holiday campaign:If you mouse over each bar, you'll see KWD's search count for the provided term during that time period (for example, the first September count shows 426 searches, then 741, then 917, then 2,085 as the month progresses). The chart can also be sorted by historical data (how many searches in the past year), monthly data (number of searches broken down into each month), trend (a graph of the search trends over the past year), combination (a graph of global vs. premium search data), and market share (a breakdown of which search engines were used to search for the query).KeywordDiscovery's monthly data chart:By market share:Don't take your cue from when the drugstore starts selling bags of Halloween candy--do some research and find out what last year's trends were so you're prepared this year. If you start early enough, you'll be basking in glorious search traffic while your competitors are scrambling with last minute link building campaigns three weeks before the holiday.Do you like this post? YesNo

  Posted by rebeccaI was reading through Search Engine Land today (as I do every day--kissuptodannykissuptodanny) and came across the following blurb in Stoney deGeyter's 10 Useless SEO Worriespost:Don't think that you need to optimize a page for each search engine. It doesn't work that way. Just do good optimization and all engines will rate you accordingly. Now, you should be concerned about making sure each engine finds your web site and that it is relevant for your key search phrases. But don't make drastic changes to your pages because Ask or Microsoft has you at page 2 while Google has you at the top of page 1. Not unless you absolutely know those changes won't cause a drop in your Google rankings. If you're uncertain, or if you make those changes and see Ask move up and Google move down, by all means change it back. It's just not worth it.After that, I read Shari Thurow's post, Understanding Search Usability. Here's what she had to say:Search-friendly design is user-centered or usage-centered design. The focus is on end users. Search engine-friendly design, on the other hand, is a design for information retrieval systems only. Want your web site to show up in the top 10 results in Google? Then design a web site only for Google. Want your web site to show up in the top 10 results in Yahoo? Then design a web site for Yahoo. While you're at it, design a site for Microsoft Live and one for Ask.com. Cloak all of these sites and make sure you redirect them to the "real" site when you believe you have detected an actual human user. Lather, rinse, repeat.Shari isn't saying that you should SEO for each engine per se; rather, the gist is that Google, Yahoo, and MSN users are different. Nevertheless, it was kind of funny reading what Stoney wrote and then reading Shari essentially recommending the opposite strategy. I asked my favorite Victorian SEO (other than Jen Slegg and Jim Hedger, of course), Todd Friesen, what his thoughts were, and he said, "It's not like you need a different site for MSN users vs. Google users. I do one size fits all SEO, because by and large it does."Wise words, Todd; however, this question pops up in our Q&A section and elsewhere every so often. It's interesting how many people get upset that they're ranked highly in Google, but less so in Yahoo/MSN, and whether they should have a "Yahoo" version of their site so it'll rank higher. I chatted with Lyndon Antcliffabout this, and his response was perfect: "The return is hardly worth the effort. Of course, this may change...which is the great thing about SEO. :)"Think about that. Is it worth the effort to optimize your site for every major search engine? Think about all of the things that differentiate one from another, and how you'd have to take all of those factors into account and craft several versions of your pages that you'll show to the appropriate search engine and user. "Well, Google emphasizes links but Yahoo likes keyword density and MSN prefers that you sacrifice a goat, while Ask requires jelly beans and argghhhhghhghgh..." Plus, overcompensating for one engine could tip the scale and hurt your rankings in another. I think that keeping in mind general best practices (for guidance, check out our Search Engine Ranking Factors, as well as SEO Book's How Search Engines Workpiece) is more than adequate enough when optimizing for the various search engines, because trying to spread yourself too thin by focusing on all three could result in problems across the board.Do you like this post? YesNo

  Posted by great scott!Hey Gang,Rand's off at SMX Stockholm, so you all get the Divine Miss Kelley in some hot Whiteboard action this week.  Rebecca and Jeff have been working with Carlos del Rio, second place finisher in the SEOmoz Landing Page Contest, from New Media Northwestto work on some of the SEOmoz Landing Pages. In this week's Whiteboard Friday, Rebecca shares some tips she's gatheredon creating compelling landing pages. Enjoy!Do you like this post? YesNo

  Posted by shorMarty McFly: "Whoa, this is heavy. " Doc Brown: "There's that word again; "heavy". Why are things so heavy in the future? Is there a problem with the earth's gravitational pull?" Wouldn't we all like to predict the future? Or at least be ahead of the marketing curve?As search marketers, we are rabid seekers of knowledge - any and all knowledge, that can help us make sense of our strange and rapidly evolving industry. However, our job should not revolve around reacting to the latest push by a search engine. We should be staying ahead of not only the latest search marketing changes, but as some of the savviest knowledge professionals in business, we should be ahead of marketing trends, period.With that in mind, let's look at five not-so-well-known books that can help us understand current marketing trends and perhaps even provide a glimpse into what the future of marketing looks like.Influence: The Psychology of Persuasionby Robert B. Cialdini, Ph.D.Leading off with a classic from 1984, Mr Cialdini writes about the psychology of decision making, arguing that in an increasingly complex world of information overload, we rely on single, highly representative pieces of information to make our choices. What are some of these lone cues? Cialdini introduces us to the six universal principles of persuasion, with Facebook as my example:1. Reciprocity - Will has superpoked you! Would you like to superpoke back?2. Social Proof  - 59 people have invited you to Facebook.  Would you like to confirm you registration?3. Liking - Congratulations, you are best friends and 88% compatible with...4. Authority - Danny Sullivan has invited you to join the group Sphinn...5. Scarcity - Today's new gift: Annoying Widget for $1, only 599 left!6. Commitment - Facebook isa public commitment. With our fascination for social media marketing, this book reveals weapons of influence that sales and marketing people have employed in the past and will continue to employ long into the future.Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael LewisMoneyball is a book about Major League baseball, but don't let that dissuade you from the real story - the science of exploiting inefficiencies in a market. Michael Lewis investigates how the Oakland A's, a team with a shoestring budget, is able to consistently win more games than just about any other Major League team.Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane recruits 'defective parts' that other teams have given up on, but have skills that are hugely undervalued by the rest of the league. Unlike the rest of the league at that time, Billy Beane's appraises players using sabermetrics, a form of objective statistical analysis. As the only team using this valuation model, he is able to buy players valued 'low' by the rest of the league and then sells them 'high' after turning them into ridiculously productive players.By the end of this book I was laughing at the inability of the big-spending teams to understand Beane's scouting methods. I was even looking up OBP and OPS percentages of my favorite players. But more importantly, I was struck by the similarity between Beane's ability to exploit gaps in the baseball market and the search engine and domain arbitrageoccurring in our industry. What search marketing gaps will be available to exploit in the future? Just like Beane's use of sabermetrics, I believe objective web analytics will be the foremost predictors of future performance online...Web Analytics: An Hour A Dayby Avinash KaushikNo offense to my colleagues, but working at an online publisher, I'd trade in just about every market analyst and business analyst in our company for someone with less work experience but more web analytics know-how.Failing that, I'd buy each of them a copy of Avinash's web analytics book. Forgive me as I break out into rant mode but the state of web analytics in our industry is ridiculously laughable. For one, our industry depends on data collection, whether it be through an internal web analytics package or one of  the publicly visible providers like Nielsen, Comscore or Hitwise. Yet probably 1 in 50 people understand how these vendors actually collect their data and or the discrepancies in reporting. Worse, the vast majority of companies are still using redundant metrics to set their KPIs and objectives. Page views and to a lesser extent, unique visitors, are not objective enough to solely define your company's entire business model.For the love of God, please read Avinash's book to understand the foundations of web analytics. It'll be worth it. If you still don't believe me, I know of two marketers who received salary raises (one of $10,000) soon after reading this book ;) The web analytics industry is only going to get hotter and hotter...Marketing Warfareby Al Ries and Jack TroutThe fact that this book is still in print after 20 years is a testament to its value. Long before the concept of a global economy existed, Ries and Trout were already positioning companies for worldwide marketing warfare. Ries and Trout take have converted the principles of successful war as gathered by a Prussian general named Karl von Clausewitz.into the strategic square of marketing warfare:Defensivemarketing warfare for market leadersOffensivemarketing warfare for No.2 companiesFlankingmarketing warfare for smaller companiesGuerrillamarketing warfare for local or regional companiesThere's a great quote in Marketing Warfare that I'll paraphrase:'Whenever you hear your commander say "We have to redouble our efforts," you know you're listening to a loser talk. The lights don't need to burn late in places like Cupertino. Apple wins by thinking smarter, not longer.'Just like war, marketing is not fought on a fair battleground. How is your company's marketing positioned today? Where will it be tomorrow? Advertising Secrets of the Written Wordby Joseph SugarmanRemember the influence of authority that Cialdini talked about? Well, Brian Clark of CopyBloggeris perhaps theauthority on online copywriting so when he recommended copywriting books you should buy, I barely read his review before I clicked on the Amazon linkto Sugarman's book on copywriting basics."I have a lot of copywriting books and courses, and if I were starting out fresh from square one today, I’d want to start here. Joe Sugarman is a direct marketing legend, and he does a great job of getting basic copywriting concepts across in an enjoyable way. So if you’re brand new to copywriting, start here."If you blog, write Adwords creative, create online newsletters, dream up Digg headlines, heck if you write online, you will love this book. Sugarman exposes 24 psychological triggers in writing copy, the primary purposeof every element in any ad and includes 16 examples of Sugarman's legendary direct mail ads, including some that failed abysmally. After you read this book, you'll recognize a lot of terrific techniques that great bloggers use to capture your attention. Now you'll be able to use them yourself in your next blog or ad!So, there you have it. Five more books that SEOmoz recommends a search marketer should read.  Two books on psychological triggers, a book about arbitrage, a book on analytics and a book about marketing positioning. The future doesn't need to be heavy if we have identified the latest trends before they go mainstream! Pick a few of these up for yourself or your company, the return on investment will far outweigh the cost and if you've already read any of these books, I would love to hear your reviews and similar recommendations.Bonus: How To Readby Paul N. EdwardsSo I lied. Here's an extra treat for the readers of SEOmoz. I often get asked, "How do you find the time to read all these business books?" The secret is simple, learn how to read for information, not for pleasure.Paul N. Edwards from the School of Information at the University of Michigan has written a PDF guide on how to read, in which he describes the strategy for rapidly digesting business books. The key concept is to read a business book threetimes:i) Overview: discovery (one-tenth of total time)ii) Detail: understanding (six-tenths of total time)iii) Notes: recall and note-taking (three-tenths of total time)The important thing to remember for this technique is to set a timeline for each book. If you want to read Avinash's book in 10 days at 2 hours apiece before bed, that gives you 2 hours for the initial scan, 12 hours for the detailed read and 3 sessions for note-taking. It's an effective little system once you get used to it.If you're interested in more SEOmoz book reviews, check our Andrew's youmoz reviewof Ambient Findability, Call To Action, Don't Make Me Think!, The Long Tail and The Search as well as Rand's analysis of the Jim Collins' book, Good to Great.UPDATE: A few readers emailed to say Joseph Sugarman's hardback copy is now retailing for over $150 and is no longer available direct from Amazon! I purchased my copy in March of this year for under $40, so perhaps Amazon will restock this book soon.The good news is there is a paperback version of this book available under a different name. Technorati Tagscialdini, avinash kaushik, ries, trout, sugarman, brian clark, lewis, moneyball, web analytics, book reviewDo you like this post? YesNo

  Posted by randfishFor the next few weeks, my blog posts will primarily consist of re-authoring and re-building the Beginner's Guide to Search Engine Optimization, section by section. You can read more about this project here.Part III: Why Search Engine Marketing is NecessaryWhile many readers of this document may have overcome their skepticism about the need for and value of search marketing (and specifically, organic search engine optimization), it's entirely likely that others in your organization, company, network or client meetings may have differing opinions. Thus, this section is provided to help explain the need for proactive search engine optimization.One of the most common issues I hear from folks on both the business and technology sides of a company goes something like this:No smart engineer would ever build a search engine that requires websites to follow certain rules or principles in order to be ranked or indexed. Anyone with half a brain would want a system that can crawl through any architecture, parse any amount of complex or imperfect code and still find a way to return the best and most relevant results, not the ones that have been "optimized" by unlicensed search marketing experts.Initially, this can seem like a tough obstacle to overcome, but the more you're able to explain details and examine the inner-workings of the engines, the less powerful this argument becomes.Limitations of Search Engine TechnologyThe major search engines all operate on the same principles, as explained in Part I. Automated search bots crawl the web, following links and indexing content in massive databases. But, modern search technology is not all-powerful. There are technical limitations of all kinds that can cause immense problems in both inclusion and rankings. I've enumerated some of the most common of these below:Spidering and Indexing ProblemsSearch engines cannot fill out online forms, and thus any content contained behind them will remain hidden.Poor link structures can lead to search engines failing to reach all of the content contained on a website, or allow them to spider it, but leave it so minimally exposed that it's deemed "unimportant" by the engines' index.Web pages that use Flash, frames, Java applets, plug-in content, audio files & video have content that search engines cannot access.Interpreting Non-Text ContentText that is not in HTML format in the parse-able code of a web page is inherently invisible to search engines.This can include text in Flash files, images, photos, video, audio & plug-in content.The "Tree Falls in a Forest" EffectThis is perhaps the most important concept to grasp about the functionality of search engines & the importance of search marketers. Even when the technical details of search-engine friendly web development are correct, content can remain virtually invisible to search engines. This is due to the inherent nature of modern search technology, which rely on the aforementioned metrics of relevance and popularity to display results.The "tree falls in a forest" adage postulates that if no one is around to hear the sound, it may not exist it all - and this translates perfectly to search engines and web content. The major engines have no inherent gauge of quality or notability and no potential way to discover and make visible fantastic pieces of writing, art or multimedia on the web. Only humans have this power - to discover, react, comment and (most important for search engines) link. Thus, it is only natural that great content cannot simply be created - it must be marketed. Search engines already do a great job of promoting high quality content on popular websites or on individual web pages that have become popular, but they cannot generate this popularity - this is a task that demands talented Internet marketers.NOTE:All of the above issues will be covered in greater detail in later sections that deal more directly and technically with barriers to search engine visibility and rankings. The Competitive Nature of Search RankingsTake a look at any search results page and you'll find the answer to why search marketing, as a practice, has a long, healthy life ahead:Yahoo!, Google & Live Search Results Side-by-Side10 positions, ordered by rank, with click-through traffic based on their relative position & ability to attract searchers. The fact that so much traffic goes to so few listings for any given search means that there will always be a financial incentive & monetary reward for search engine rankings. No matter what variables may make up the algorithms of the future, websites and businesses will contend with one another for this traffic and the branding, marketing & sales goals it provides.A Constantly Shifting Search LandscapeWhen search marketing began in the mid-1990's, manual submission, the meta keywords tag and keyword stuffing were all regular parts of the tactics necessary to rank well. In 2004, link bombing with anchor text, buying hordes of links from automated blog comment spam injectors and the construction of inter-linking farms of websites could all be leveraged for traffic. In 2007, social media marketing, paid link networks and vertical search inclusion are mainstream methods for conducting search engine optimization.The future may be uncertain, but in the world of search, change is a constant. For this reason, along with all the many others listed above, search marketing will remain a steadfast need in the diet of those who wish to remain competitive on the web. Others have mounted an effective defense of search engine optimization in the past, but as I see it, there's no need for a defense other than simple logic - websites and pages compete for attention and placement in the search engines, and those with the best knowledge of and experience with these rankings will receive the benefits of increased traffic and visibility.While much of the last week's news centered around the Toolbar PageRank affair (for a smart perspective, read Greg), there has been plenty of other exciting stuff from other sources:Obviously, a big story is that Microsoft is putting a load of money into Facebook, and Live search will almost certainly be a partof that site in the near future. Also - am I the only one who read about OpenSocialand yawned? (FYI - an oft-overlooked trait of mine is that I'm compelled to link to any post featuring a photo of the writer smoking a pipe)Could Salesforce Ideasactually be a useful Digg clone? I think it might well be - that style's definitely worked well over at YCombinator News(and sends us healthy traffic whenever we get a listing). John Mu notes that Googlers in the Webmaster Help forums were quite inactiveover September. I blame Susan. Hopefully, we'll see more activity there in the future - it could be a great resource for site owners (and take a lot of weight off Matt's burdened shoulders) if they could staff it (not that I can't empathize - premium Q+A has been eating a ton of time here at the mozplex, too - over 500 threads in knowledge basenow). BTW - Mystery Guest and I had a great time in Stockholm meeting John (and a couple other Googlers) - more on that later this week.Neil had some brilliant linkbait on the difference between marketing, PR, advertising and personal branding. And Mystery Guest got a present from him last week that made her heart happy - thanks, Neil :)If Rebecca were writing this, she'd tell us all to read Daniel Scocco's article on Copyblogger- "But shes''' not". Want to get insider-y with SEOmoz? Check out Will Critchlow's interview with our own Scott Willoughby.Congratulations to Thomas Bindl & Refined Labs, who've taken on some funding (from these guys) to build what sounds like very, very cool software for web marketers.Cranium has a character with a familiar occupation:) As always, feel free to add your news and links.Do you like this post? YesNo