Posted by great scott!If you hang out online much (and if you're reading this, chances are you do), you've no doubt noticed the seeming onslaught of fevered, near-rabid support for Republican presidential candidate, Ron Paul.  The Paul campaign seems to get a ton of mention online. In fact, even the mainstream media is finally acknowledging--albeit in a very suspicious manner--the apparent surge of grassroots support for "Dr. No," as he's sometimes called. ABC News, among others, did a high-profile story about the "Ron Paul Effect" and looked into whether or not the apparent surge in online support for this dark horse candidate could lead to a reciprocal increase in offline support and coverage.I decided to look at some numbers to get an idea of how real this swell of Ron Paul support is, both online and off.  Is Ron Paul gaining a huge show of support from all across the spectrum, or does he just have a small but loyal (and web savvy) following that's beaten all of the other candidates to the concept of viral politics?Stories about Ron Paul in the Reddit Hot 50 at the time of this writing: 7Stories about Ron Paul in the Digg Top 50 at the time of this writing: 0**(Apparently some of the users at  Reddit claim that Digg is automatically buryinganything having to do with Ron Paul.) If you browse Reddit with any frequency, you know that you can't close your eyes and point without hitting a post extolling the virtues and statistical triumphs (fund raising accomplishments, online debate poll victories) of Ron Paul. As online marketers, we all know the value, in attention and links, of getting a story on the front page of Digg or Reddit. In the realm of politics though, how is this attention carrying over across the web?Looking at Google Trends data, Paul hasdefinitely seen a significant increase in search volume, with apparent spikes around Republican debates (starting with the May 4th debate in California).  Rudy Giuliani, one of the Republican front-runners, barely has a pulse online according to this chart, while Democratic leaders Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have remained rather close all year.This would seem to indicate that there's been broad interest in Paul, steadily increasing after a huge spike to prominence following the May debate. But before we jump to any conclusions, let's look at some other indicators.Alexa data seems to mirror Google almost identically: a steady climb, eventually beating the Democratic candidates, beginning in May.A few spikes aside, Technorati indicates that, since May, Ron Paul has, on average, been receiving slightly less blog coverage than Obama and quite a bit less than Clinton (note the Y-axis; these graphs are not in the same scale).And lastly, according to Compete.com, which uses a variety of sourcesto derive its usage data, Paul has, you guessed it, been steadily gaining since May, but hasn't caught Clinton or Obama.So, what does this all mean? Well, it's hard to say.  The numbers above could indicate several things:Ron Paul's performance in debates and other media coverage has garnered increasing interest from the public, now approaching the levels of DNC front-runners Clinton and Obama.Ron Paul's loyal support base (Paulites) have strategically managed to create a successful viral campaign for their candidate that has made him an online darling and grabbed him a lot of attention.Fox News and others are right that Paulites haven't gone viral, they're just spamming the crap out of every forum, poll, comment thread, and social media portal they can find.Any way you slice it, Paul, who himself seems both impressed and amazed by his tremendous online presence, is on of the first candidates in American politics--whether by intention or fortune--to effectively gain political momentum almost solely through online efforts.  As the ABC article notes, for a candidate that has been called "fringe" more times than one could count, the mainstream media is now being forced to cover him, even if it's just to marvel at his online support-base and phenomenal showing in non-scientific polls. Whether out of suspicion, contempt (I'm looking at you, Sean Hannity), or amazement, the mainstream media has found an interesting story in the Ron Paul campaign, and it's all the result of his online army. The stories of record fund raising accomplishments, growing support, domination in post-debate polling, and even improving oddsamong Las Vegas bookmakers seem to indicate that the Ron Paul e-juggernaut may be on the verge of becoming a real boy.  But there's a disconnect.  In actual, in-person, scientific polling, Ron Paul barely registers.  In Gallup polls taken since March of 2007, Ron Paul has only received 1-3% from likely voters (3% in April, after the California debate attention spike, but back down to 2% by October), putting him near the back of the GOP pack. In the recent Ames Straw Poll in Iowa, Congressman Paul took 9.1% of the vote, placing him 7th; far from the lead (Mitt Romney), but ahead of better funded and less-fringe (depending on your views) candidates such as Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo. Is Ron Paul having difficulty reaching a mainstream, less web-savvy audience? Perhaps. Polling in early primary states shows Paul as barely a blip on voters' radar...not a death sentence, but certainly a difficult hurdle (witness the meltdown of the Howard Dean campaign after a few early primary losses, then remember that Paul is a Republican, where polls tend to be far more indicative of actual results). Paul's campaign, now flush with online fund raising capital, finally prepared and launched television ads last week...in New Hampshire, the fifth state in the Republican primary schedule.  This unfortunately means that Dr. Paul's efforts at a serious offline, mainstream media campaign are targeting a possible primary showing almost three weeks (and four well-publicized primaries) after the Iowa caucus, and only two weeks before Super Tuesday.  These are some ambitious deadlines, to say the least. While Ron Paul's stellar rise to internet stardom and his amazing fund raising numbers from online efforts, thanks in large part to the seemingly relentless efforts of the Paulites, will likely join the 2004 Dean campaign as the playbook for online campaigning, it may be too late to transition that momentum into real poll numbers.  Unfortunately, if Ron Paul doesn't do well in primaries, many pundits will likely say it's proof that non-scientific polls were rigged, and the "Ron Paul Revolution" was mostly smoke and mirrors from a small group of fanatical but savvy followers.  National marketing campaigns cannot live online alone. Web-based ad campaigns may represent some of the best ROI for your marketing buck, but for a campaign of the necessary scope and breadth of a presidential bid, mainstream media, particularly television, is a proven and seemingly necessary component.  That may change one day, and campaigns like that of Dr. Paul are leading the way, demonstrating that the internet can reach a passionate, motivated portion of the electorate that will speak loudly and give generously.  But whether Ron Paul is the candidate that can take that online momentum and transform it into a serious bid for the White House remains to be seen.NOTE FROM RAND: For anyone who wants it, here's the comparative data from blog & news search sources as well.Google Blog Search results:59,364for Ron Paul93,384for Hillary Clinton67,199for Barack Obama46,714for Rudy GiulianiAnother 4,570for Rudolph Giuliani43,139for Mitt RomneyGoogle News Search results:5,333for Ron Paul23,708for Hillary Clinton28,476for Barack Obama21,411for Rudy GiulianiAnother 663for Rudolph Giuliani19,480for Mitt RomneyAs was noted in the comments, we have no way to verify whether this is primarily positive or negative press, but it at least illustrates the quantity of online activity around the subject.Technorati TagsSEOmoz, Ron Paul, Republican, Primary, Polls, Fundraising, Campaign, GOP, 2008 ElectionDo you like this post? 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  Posted by vingoldI had mentioned the other day that I was changing my SEO ways.  As Gabhad correctly observed, I had spread myself too thin.This week I’ve been doing an audit of each of my sites, looking at current rankings, traffic, etc, and looking at how competitive each niche area was.  The whole process got me thinking about how we select the niches that we’re in – and whether we’re in the right niche for us.I put together this very simple and short guide to finding YOUR niche:All of us can put the things that we do into three basic circles: things we like to do, things we are good at, and things that can make us money by doing them.   Step 1:  Make a List of the Things You Like to DoThe easiest way to do this is to take a look around your house at the books and magazines that you read, at the things you collect, at the photos of places you’ve been, etc. If you’re a person who doesn’t have many books or magazines in your house – look at your browser’s bookmarks or the blogs that you subscribe to.  Anything to help you verbalize and catalog your current interests.For me – I am a bit of a book person.  My house is chock full of books and magazines.  This gave me a huge list of my interests.  It turns out I have an interest in a lot of things.  But just because I have an interest in something, doesn’t mean I am necessarily good at it.  That leads me to step 2… Step 2:  Make a List of the Things You Are Good AtIt is important to note here that unless you’re an abnormally boring person, this won’t be the same list as number 1.  First of all, there will be things you are interested in that you are not good at.  Second of all, therewill be things you might be good at that you have very little interest in.For instance, I am rather good at accounting.  But I don’t like doing it.  How do you make an objective list at the things you are good at?  You listen to what your friends and family are asking you. I’ve been a fan of Tom Petersfor about 20 years now.  One of the points he continually makes is that we should all have our own brand and be known for something.  In fact, most of us probably have a “brand” without even knowing it.One way to determine what you are good at – or known for – is to pay attention when people come to you for advice. If your mom is always calling you about her wireless network, that counts.  If a person you used to work for is calling you with a wireless network question, that counts more. Maybe you’re the expert on video games in your little sphere of influence. Or you’re always the de facto bartender at all social functions. You might even be the guy that gets called whenever someone’s car breaks down.  The point is, unless you’re utterly useless or a hermit or both, you probably get people calling you at least a few times a week asking you for advice.  To these people, you are the resident subject matter expert.  And unless you hang out with complete morons, you must have some authority on the subject.  You just need to highlight and build on this authority with your niche site or blog.  Then, start with your audience of a few friends and family and broaden it out to the world.Now, if your goal is to make money doing this, or even to break even and cover your hosting and other expenses, you need to make one last list... Step 3:  Make a List of the Things You Can Make Money DoingThis is the wonderful thing about the Internet.  With enough imagination and traffic you can monetize just about anything.  But in order to cover our bases in case we don’t get the traffic and to make this a more fruitful exercise, let's drill down deeper.  In addition to the traditional forms of blog income (Adsense, affiliate sales, subscriptions, classified advertising, etc.), there is also the selling of products and services.  If you’re good at woodworking, maybe in addition to a blog about woodworking you could sell items you’ve made, or plans for projects.  If you have a scuba diving blog, you can partner up with a local travel agent to offer guided tours and trips to your favorite Carribbean dive spots.  And, of course, if you’re an SEO, you could sell services or an SEO book (although I think this has been done).  For consultants, in addition to services, there are always e-books.  E-books get a bad rep in some segments, but they don’t all have to be crap.  And with a little extra effort you could make it a real book and just have it published on demand.  The point is to look beyond the traditional forms of internet money making that rely on a lot of traffic.  Because, in some cases, depending on the niche, the traffic just ain’t going to be there, even if you're ranked #1 for every relevant keyword imaginable. Step 4:  Find the sweet spots.Now, if you take a look at your three lists you’ll see some areas where they overlap.  Ideally, you should pick a niche that covers at least two of the lists.  Maybe it is somethingyou are good at and you’re interested in, but you can’t make any money at it.  And that doesn’t matter because you find it fun.  Or maybe you’re interested in it, and you can make money at it, but you might not be that good at it.  Then go for it, because you’re having fun doing it and you’re making a little bit of coin while you're getting experience, so it's all great.And it could be something you’re good at and you make money doing it, but it bores you to death.  If this is what you came up with, give up now.  Even if it is a niche that is wildly popular on the web, just don’t do it.  A lot of people are already working in this area of their life, and it's called a 9-to-5 job.  Who wants that?  If it were me, I’d go with something I liked, even if I didn’t make as much money doing it.Ideally, however, you’ll have one or two things where all three overlap:You enjoy it, you’re good at it, and people are willing to give you money for it.This, my friends, is when work no longer becomes work!Good Luck! Note:  If you’ve done all of the above and you think you have a good niche, go read Rand’s helpful post hereand do a little sanity check.Do you like this post? 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  Posted by MariaSEONOTE FROM RAND:The following blog post comes courtesy of Maria Balayan, who graciously volunteered to cover the SMX Buenos Aires conferencein late October.I’ve been living in the US since 1999, but I was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Every time I go to Buenos AiresI lose my routine of being online almost 13 hours a day. I miss the internet connection but I am able to enjoy other things like family, food, friends, and good weather (I live in Buffalo, NY, so imagine how long and cold winter is for me). On my last visit to Buenos Aires I had the opportunity to attend the Search Marketing Expo, the first one done in Latin America. I was lucky because I planned the trip without knowing that SMX was going to be held there on October. As soon as I found out, I asked Rand if he thought I should attend. Since I was going to be in the city, Rand thought it was a great opportunity that I couldn’t miss. I am writing this article for SEOmoz and giving you my personal opinion and experience about the event. Thanks Rand! About the location:Puerto Madero- The location couldn’t be better. Puerto Madero is one of the most attractive neighborhoods of Buenos Aires (and one of the most expensive, too).About the Audience:On the introduction, Tommy Lorsch(one of the organizers of SMX) showed slides of cartoons representing the target audience of the event. The categories were: web developers, web designers, online marketers, SEOs, and…women(?). I was shocked by the low percentage of women (less than 10%) in the audience. I knew we were going to be the minority but I wasn’t expecting such a low percentage. One positive side about this: there wasn’t any line at the ladies room. :-) At SMX Buenos Aires I met cool people with great personalities who really knew their stuff.Contributions from Speakers:Alejandro Zuzenber(from Google) on Cloud Computing: The presentation was about the evolution of the internet, how fast it has grown, and how internet access and production costs have declined over time. He also talked about Universal Search and he recommended the use of Google Labs. Some interesting data he told us (when I asked him about Google user’s profile) was that Google's search share in Latin America is 80%, which I found really amazing considering that in the US it is around 57% (September 2007, Comscore search engine share ranking).Dr. James Shanahan: His session was about combating click fraud. He explained 2 kinds of click fraud, the advertiser side and the publisher side, and why the Cost Per Action (CPA) approach may be the best solution to combat click fraud. He also mentioned that “most of the keywords hovering around $100 are for personal injury lawyers or lawsuits” (one example he gave: mesothelioma). It was one of the best presentations in terms of the quality and amount of information shown on slides. He provided interesting approaches, statistics, and examples.James Shanahan’s Presentation – SMX Buenos Aires Ricardo Baeza-Yates(from Yahoo): He talked about web spam detection. It was interesting and a little bit more technical than the other presentations, so developers were the perfect audience for his session.Ricardo Baeza-Yates’s Presentation – SMX Buenos AiresVictor Rottenstein:Interactive Workshop. He recommended resources, tools, and a methodology to start an SEO analysis. One of those sources was SEOmoz’s article about search engine ranking factors.    At this roundtable session I was able to talk with people on how useful SEOmoz tools are and in which way they can give you a good idea of your website’s strengthand the possibility to compare it with other websites. Nico, another SEO on the table, thought that the SEOmoz Quizwas really good. That was a good example of spontaneous offline viral marketing for SEOmoz. An Unexpected Surprise:The organizers had the ability to overcome an unexpected situation. An interactive workshop about SEO analysis had to become an offline exercise forced by the lack of internet service in the area at that moment. The positive side was that we were forced not to check emails and interact with others instead, which I think was the most important purpose of this event.| View| Upload your ownVictor Rottenstein’s Presentation – SMX Buenos AiresJavier Velasco (Yahoo Research, Universidad de Chile): He talked about user experience and website permeability. It was a good presentation, with examples of Chile’s newspapers and how they evolved over time regarding a search tool within the website (e.g. where this tool should be located and how should it work).Francis Petty (Lanacion.com): It was an entertaining and practical discussion about the use of 301s, flash, cloaking, urls, sitemaps, white hat, and black hat, among others. I found this presentation the most entertaining of the day.Emiliano Elias(inZearch): A valuable discussion about flash websites. I liked his slides and presentation skills.  A new spanglish term was born in SEO terminology during that panel: “cloaking whitejatero,” meaning: a white hat way to do cloaking (using flash). Could that be really a white hat strategy?Those presentations based on examples were among the best. People like examples because they make concepts easier to understand. Congratulations to Tomy Lorsch, Rafael Fernández Tamames, Mariano Amartino, and Marina Torchiari for the location, the food (very good food), and everything that had to do with SMX Buenos Aires 2007.  Spanish summaries about SMX Buenos Aires 2007 Here are a couple of blogs in Spanish that give more detailed information about what was covered by the speakers: SeoCharlie(Charlie traveled from Costa Rica to cover the event)Ruido Digital(Pablo provided live blogging from the conference)David YanoverVictor Rottenstein(SEO analysis, one of the speakers at SMX). You can see his presentation on his blog. Best things about attending an SEO or SEM event: Doing networkingPersonal interaction with references of the SEO/SEM market (the speakers)Face to face interaction, something that blogging doesn’t provide (there is an interesting blog post from Rand called Welcome to the Jungle that shows a really nice graphic about the differences between face to face interaction and blogging)Learning new stuffKnowing what others are doing (even competitors) and seeing how advanced you are on the field and where you should focus your future trainingMeeting potential clientsFor those single women doing SEO (not my case) or web design, attending these conferences could be a great opportunity to meet men JFood! At the SMX in Buenos Aires the food was really good: they provided breakfast, lunch (with Freddo ice cream for dessert), a coffee break, and networking cocktailsI enjoyed having the opportunity to see and talk with people who are in the SEO business in Argentina, and it was incredibly productive. The coolest thing about attending a Search Marketing Conference was doing networking, not virtual but personal networking.  Tips for beginners attending an SEO or SEM event: Before assisting, I recommend you to do a little research about the speakers so you will be familiar with their field and you can have a couple of questions for them in advance.Read SEOmoz Blog and other SEO/SEM sources before attending. Be sure you are familiar with basic terms because not knowing just one word could prevent you from understanding a lot of other things. I felt very confident with all the information I learnt reading SEOmoz months before attending. Experience also gives you a good base of knowledge, so the more experience you have, the more comfortable you will feel too. Take a digital camera with you: taking snapshots from slides (if you are allowed to) saves you a lot of time. Unfortunately, I discovered that when I realized I had low battery on my camera, so I wasn’t able to take a lot of pictures from all the presentations. L Don’t be afraid to ask the speaker if you didn’t understand something. That is the purpose of you being there. If you are too shy to do it, approach them after the presentation.Take with you a lot of business cards. Have enough of them! A lot of them! You never know how many are you going to need. I remember when I took a real estate license course at Buffalo, the teacher told us that he used to leave some business cards on tables when going to a wedding. He did that before leaving a wedding, one strategy he had to promote himself. I also remember he said that including your picture on business cards was really a plus, which is not common in other fields, but I realized how useful it could be when I couldn’t remember the face of one of the people I got cards from. When doing networking, first listen, then talk. Your competitor could be there too and you may or may not want to give away valuable information about your business.FROM RAND:Many thanks to Maria - here's to hoping that some of the mozzers can make it to some of the Spanish-language SMX events in the near future. I've heard from Tomy that Madrid may be ready next spring, and that's definitely high on my list of must-go places :)Do you like this post? YesNo

  Posted by Mel GrayJust a little under two weeks ago, we received numerous reports that a very large number of sites had experienced a sudden drop in Page Rank. Many immediately began claiming that Google had rolled out an update for its rank formula to penalize for paid links. Others played down these reports offering that their own sites had experienced no change at all.How do we know who to believe? How do we sort through the hearsay and report findings based not on alchemy, but instead on real science?Well luckily, here at the MOZplex,we have quite the arsenalof tools up for the job.Thanks to our users, we have amassed an impressive amount of historical rank data for domains.  We can use this data by comparing it to live Page Rank information. The difference in these numbers provides us with a point that we can use to start turning lead into gold (unless of course your page sank, then its still lead). And now on to the brass tax, our findings...These tests were run on 10/24/2007 between 3pm and 10:32pm PST32,856 domains surveyed0 experienced a gain in Page Rank1,264 experienced a drop in Page Rank31,592 experienced no change in Page Rank0% gained Page Rank3.8% lost Page RankThe above does lead one to believe that a change has taken place. What makes it more interesting is that after combing through the top 5 biggest losers, we had confirmed that they all indeed contain paid links.  This leads one to believe that perhaps there are some Rodkaspresent amongst those initially reporting the problem ;)While this isn't really at all that encouraging, it doesn't really seem as bad as some made it out to be... We then caught wind that there would be a second round of "adjustments," so we re-ran our tests.This occurred on 10/29/2007 between 12:19pm and 5:28pm PST. This time around we found that a great number of pages experienced a page rank increase.5,499 pages gained in toolbar PageRank1 page jumped 6 points4 pages jumped 5 points35 jumped 4 points211 jumped 3 points1,054 jumped 2 points4,194  jumped 1 pointBut, with the good does come the bad.9,527 pages experienced a drop in rank this time.This wave seems much more significant than the initial changes, as the differences in rank are much more dramatic. The pages that dropped in the first round fell at the very most, by 4 points. This time around we saw drops as large as 7 points. However, the pages that took those big hits don't seem to be operating under the guise of legitimacy, but rather are all parked and/or offline. A very interesting observation is some of Google's competitors dropped (albeit by a single point, but still a drop [Yahoo, Altavista, Microsoft, etc]). This could mean nothing, as Google.fr appears to have dropped ranks as well. At a glance it appears that many sites did lose page rank for untold reasons.  However, the sites that dropped by the greatest margin did contain paid links.Any other observations, additional data, or questions are more than welcome.NOTE FROM RAND:Just as an FYI - while we collect a lot of cool data like this, we'll only ever use it in the aggregate. We DO NOT use our collected data for competitive analysis, to give us ideas, or to "out" any specific sites for their actions and won't do so in the future. However, we will try to provide lots of nifty data like the above from Mel as major changes happen in the engines.My personal opinion is that based on the data we see and shared, the first rollout of TBPR data was very clearly an effort to devalue or discriminate against those sites selling links that Google felt were intended to manipulate rankings, while the second change (approx. 48 hours later) was a traditional updating of visible toolbar PageRank data.Do you like this post? YesNo

  Posted by SEO ColumbusThis afternoon I have the privilege of interviewing a web design firm for a fairly large project.  I'm currently in discussions with a company to become the COO of a nicely funded semi-startup, and unfortunately the owners of the firm have already selected a web design firm (thankfully I'm not bound to keep them in any way).  As one of the final steps before I take this role, in which I would be responsible for just about everything from the site to the office wall colors, I asked to talk to this firm myself to make sure that I feel comfortable with them and their abilities.  I have a feeling that they may have "buzzworded" their way into the gig by talking to these owners who are not extremely technically experienced.  My experience so far may help those of you that have web design or SEO firms to avoid the same mistakes. In my initial research into the background of the company, I simply visited their website hoping to find a) the quality that they put into their own site, and b) the quality that they put into their client portfolio sites.  I get the feeling after looking at both options that I will likely not be retaining their services.  The business that I am going to be responsible for will rely heavily on SEO and SEM initially while establishing a community within a certain industry. The site will contain information that does not currently exist elsewhere--lots of potential! So, you can see that I will be looking for some advanced and detailed SEO techniques being used by this firm, as well as some Web 2.0 functionality.  I was told by the owners that this company claimed that they specialize in just that.  Guess I would be in luck!  Here is what I found by looking at their own site:Title tag contains the name of the company - and that is it.  Without actually naming them here, it was a one word company name, followed by "Technologies LLC".  That is it, three words, "Blank Technologies LLC".  Come on people, if you know anything about SEO, and this is the title tag of the SEO firm's site, it's probably a good idea to look elsewhere.  Of course, all of the inner pages shared the same page title, which is always a good idea if you are secretive with your work and never want anyone to find your site.Homepage is mostly an image map, with very little text--only the street address of their location and a mailto email address (ugh, don't get me started there with the spam ramifications!) were actual text on the homepage.  Alt tags were present on some of the images, but merely repeated the words displayed on the image and usually were not valuable in terms of SEO.  Examples of these alt tags include "getting started" and "what do we do?"  Again, it is becoming obvious that "what they do" should not be confused with SEO best practices.Out of curiosity, I pulled up their source code and found that my hunch about the same meta keywords and description tags being used for every page of their site was correct.  When will people ever learn that laziness in these tags will get you nowhere?  Now I am getting a little angry with these people.  And while I was in their source code, I noticed there were no H1 tags, no CSS being used, tables everywhere, etc.  I had to stop and check my calendar to make sure it wasn't 1997.  Given all of this, I should have canceled my meeting for this afternoon and told the owners to drop this firm altogether, but I can't really do that just yet.  So I look for something - anything - that I can build off of that they might do well and for a reason why I might think they could work.  It's a stretch, but...They have lots of inbound links.  Wow, I was amazed to see how many inbound links this company has.  Over 3,000, and it is seemingly because they were able to get their clients to accept (probably unknowingly) having a link to the design firm at the bottom of every page they have.  Some of these sites are .edu pages, as it looks like these guys started building sites (likely pro bono) for fraternities and sororities at colleges and universities.  Genius!  These sites are truthfully no more authoritative than any other site, but the domain ends in .edu and cha-ching, bonus points from the search engines!  Over 3,000 incoming links and many from .edu sites is a great start, until I see that every single inbound link uses the exact same anchor text, which is... (drumroll please) the one word name of the company.  It's not even a word, for crying out loud. It's a play on words that nobody - absolutely nobody- would intentionally type into a search engine. But if you do (and as I did), you'll see that they have complete domination in the SERPs for their made-up business name.  It's painful to me at this point to see that this company is that close to really being big and yet they have no clue what they are doing.  It's like stuffing money under your mattress.  Probably safe, but you are sitting on an asset and getting absolutely nothing for it.   Looking through their client list / portfolio on their site made me even more depressed.  No H1 tags on any of them.  No keyword based title tags, no site maps to be found, no meta tags at all on some of them, no directory (DMOZ, etc.) listings, no ability to find these sites using big G even when searching for the company name, and sometimes for the domain name!  So, two hours from now I meet with this company, and I am still looking for something positive to focus on.  I didn't even touch on the web development side of things, but since I'm looking to build a site in 2007 and not 1997, I don't think they will be able to relate there, either.  I'm expecting... "Valid XHTML?  Don't you mean DHTML?  Sure, we can do that, I think."  Anyway, to anyone out there that is trying to make a living in these fields, please make sure that your own house is in order first.  You may get by buzzwording your way into some business every now and then, but if someone that knows what they are talking about ever interviews you, you could be in for a long day.  Before I take off, one final tip from this experience - if you own a web design / SEO firm and you aren't actually good at what you are doing (and I've just discussed one that qualifies), you may not want to put a portfolio of your "work" available on your website.  For interested competitors, you are providing them with a lead list as well as a "Why your current firm sucks" presentation.  Heck, this might be its own blog topic someday soon, but for now, it's off to interview this firm...  ugh.*Note from Rebecca*:Though this post is over a week old, it got a lot of positive attention from our YOUmoz community, so I thought I'd put it on the main blog for more discussion.Do you like this post? 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  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 toreach 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

  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 your 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 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 have converted the principles of successful war, as gathered by a Prussian general named Karl von Clausewitz, into a 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 startingout 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 about five. 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 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 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 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