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Google is Skynet. Search Suggest Opinions

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 11:45:59 +0000

To know what the world is searching for must be amazing. Search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing are in that position but they’re not exactly sharing those insights. Well, except if you do a little guess work and leverage their keyword research or keyword suggest tools. For example, the suggest-as-you-type features that all the major search engines now offer can provide some interesting insight “on the fly” into what people are searching for. For quick keyword research, Aaron Wall has a Google Suggest tool for keyword suggestions that adds more options and insight. There’s some entertainment value to this as well. Start typing in “my girlfriend” or “my boyfriend” and you’ll see what I mean. Along those lines, let’s see some examples for each major search engine using the syntax, “Google is “: And what about Yahoo? Or Bing? So, we have “Google is Skynet”, “Yahoo is better than Google” and “Bing is not Google”. It’s amusing and insightful at the same time. As the clear market dominator, Google queries offer a peek into searchers’ perception of Google as a powerful force that can incite polarizing opinions. Yahoo as a long standing second in the market brings about more functional phrases and just one indication of passion for the brand. While Bing shows some negativity, the good news is that they are inciting reactions from people. Better to make friends and enemies than for no one to notice you at all. By the way, Google recently announced the addition of localized search suggest and spelling correction to the suggest features that searchers might find handy. © Online Marketing Blog , 2010. | Google is Skynet. Search Suggest Opinions | One comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

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Google is Skynet. Search Suggest Opinions

5 Ways to Leverage Real Time Search in Your Online Marketing Mix

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 12:11:32 +0000

Since late 2009 when Google introduced real time search, the concept has gained a lot of attention. Today, real time search is at the top of the priority lists for all the major search engines – Google, Bing and Yahoo!. As part of the new technology, Google is combines live updates from sites like Twitter and FriendFeed with the latest news headlines and blog posts in search results. For web searchers, real time search means the ability to discover breaking news the minute it’s happening. For marketers, it presents a whole host of opportunities to increase online visibility. Here, we’ve provided five ways to leverage real time search in your online marketing efforts. 1. Develop the type of content that supports real time SEO With real time search, frequently publishing online content becomes a must. Try incorporating these three types of content to support both traditional and real time SEO programs: Tweets and Facebook fan page updates: Micro content from social sites now has the ability to appear in search results. It’s quick and easy to frequently post Tweets and Facebook fan pages updates, so both should play a big role in your real time SEO content strategy. Blog posts: Blogging presents the opportunity to help your content rank and show thought leadership at the same time – since blog posts can offer more valuable information than micro content. Optimized press releases: By optimizing press releases and submitting them through authoritative newswires, you can help your content achieve high rankings. 2. Mobilize your fan base Creating a core group of brand advocates is important for a number of reasons. They recommend your products and services to their friends and family, defend your reputation in times of trouble and are more likely to adopt future products and services you introduce. Now add one more benefit to the list: Brand advocates – particularly authoritative ones – can link to your content to help keep in the real time stream. In addition, brand advocates who are active on social sites like Twitter can create their own content about your company that can appear in real time search results. 3. Know what’s hot in the news With real time search, it’s important to recognize both what users are searching for online and what they’re discussing via social channels – at this very minute. Create frequently updated content that speaks to the latest topics and trends, and is optimized for the latest search terms. A variety of tools exist to help monitor search and conversation trends: Google Trends : Use this free tool to find the hottest topics and hottest searches in Google Social Mention : Determine the strength, sentiment and reach for terms used throughout the social web, including blogs, microblogs, social networks, video sites and news sites BlogPulse : Find the top blog posts, key phrases, new stories and more from across the search universe or related a specific topic Delicious : See the types of content that goes wild across the social web Trendistic : Learn trending topics in Twitter over the last 24 hours, week, month or more (see image below) Trendistic shows “online marketing” trends over the past 30 days. 4. Time your content promotion efforts wisely Give your content an extra boost by monitoring when blog posts, articles and other online content are indexes in Google News or Google Blog Search. Then ensure tweets, Facebook fan page updates and other social content promotions are timed right after the content is indexed. Doing so will help you take advantage of every opportunity to appear in real time search results. 5. Optimize your web site and online content for mobile technologies Real time search is relevant on many mobile devices, including Android and iPhone devices. So Web site optimization for mobile technologies becomes even more important. Consider these few mobile SEO tips: Limit the use of images Keep the design simple and clean Test to ensure your site appears as it should across various mobile devices The bottom line is, it’s crucial to take advantage of every real time search opportunity that comes around. Remember that these opportunities won’t stick around for long – presenting themselves quickly and then disappearing. It is real time, after all. Have you implemented real time SEO into your online marketing mix? Tell us what best practices you’ve found so far. © Online Marketing Blog , 2010. | 5 Ways to Leverage Real Time Search in Your Online Marketing Mix | No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

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5 Ways to Leverage Real Time Search in Your Online Marketing Mix

BIGLIST Update: These SEO Blogs Are No April Fools

BlogPostman — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 11:33:52 +0000

On this fine April Fool’s day BIGLIST foregos the tricks and brings you yet another collection of better than average SEO & SEM blog reviews. Over the past 2 years we’ve reviewed over 1,000 SEO blogs and we offer you 5 more to add to your RSS reader and get search engine smart. Think Traffic – This blog by internet entreprenuer Corbett Barr makes some serious promises: “…teach you the techniques, tools and knowledge you need to build real, sustainable web traffic without a big budget.” Sounds pretty good to me. Corbett relates his experiences with past projects and growing an audience for Think Traffic to the benefit of readers. This very new blog offers practical tips and is well designed enough to get our top listing for this week’s review. Bryan & Jeffrey Eisenberg – Best selling author of multiple books, Bryan Eisenberg begged me for months to add his new blog to the BIGLIST. I challenged Bryan to write another best selling book, start a new company, become a keynote speaker at several popular industry conferences and lose at least 30 pounds. (Hey, we set the bar high for the BIGLIST). Of course, I’m kidding about the challenge (and the begging). Bryan has accomplished all of those things and much more while writing an excellent blog on conversion optimization and internet marketing strategy with his brother Jeffrey, who is also a best selling author, keynote speaker and online marketing strategist for major brands. Jeff Bullas’s Blog – Jeff works as a sales and marketing manager at Infinity Technologies and his self-titled blog flavors towards social media – offering examples, case studies, lists of tips posts and insights from setting aside his traditional marketing roots and current focus on building trust and relationships with customers through social media, permission and inbound marketing. CanuckSEO – Long time internet marketing veteran Jim Rudnick writes with passion and flair about “Canadian SEO for Google Success!” as well as small business, local SEM and plenty of flavorful opinion posts on a variety of search marketing industry topics. Go for the tips, stay for the story telling and enthusiasm. Honorable Mention Lip Service – Laura Lippay is an ex-circus performer, SEO pioneer, very classy woman and currently Director of Technical Marketing for Yahoo! Media. Laura teases us all by occasionally writing about life and search marketing on this blog that just isn’t active enough to be added to the full BIGLIST. But the Feb 2010 posts are certainly worth an Honorable Mention. Did your SEO or SEM blog make the cut? Share the good news with your readers using the badges page .

5 Tips To Optimize Press Releases For Search From PRWeb – SESNY

BlogPostman — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 11:58:48 +0000

TopRank Online Marketing has been working with PRWeb providing SEO consulting services for nearly one year. PRWeb was founded in 1997 to help small businesses and communications professionals leverage the web to share their news directly with the public. As part of this process PRWeb lead the way for the “direct-to-consumer” press release, enabling companies to communicate their news directly to customers, prospects, analysts and the media. During the past decade, PRWeb has reshaped the traditional press release and changed how companies large and small distribute news. Innovations of PRWeb over the years include: Search engine optimization (SEO) for press releases to increase the visibility of news in search engines like Google and Yahoo! Social bookmarking tools like trackbacks and bookmark links to take advantage of the explosion in social networking Really Simple Syndication (RSS) to increase the distribution potential of news and built the industry’s largest RSS network Allowing customers to include podcasts along with their news to increase the impact of their news release The “Feature Video” allowing customers to leverage the video content from popular sites like YouTube to bring their news to life Meg Walker, Director of Online Marketing for PRWeb lead a session discussing how to optimize press releases to gain the strongest visibility in both search engines and media. 1. Meet audience demand Prior to drafting a release, you need to understand what your audience is demanding. Meeting audience demand is integral to accomplishing your press release visibility objectives. There are many times you don’t realize there may be a hook in to reach your target, and understanding audience demand allows you to tap into it. The steps to meet audience demand include: Knowing your audience – what is it potential prospects and media are interested in? In what tone should they be spoken to? Do they appreciate a certain angle over another? Understanding is key and should drive the strategy behind the release. Be relevant – more than just understanding your audience, give them content that is both relevant and timely. By doing this, you’ll create the highest propensity your news gets picked up, shared and passed on. Satisfy customer demand – to know what the demand is, first research popular trends in search engines and stay on the pulse of your industry. By creating content that is related to hot topics you can create far more visibility for your releases. Staying up to date, informed and on the pulse of your customers is vital to connect with them through press releases. 2. Stay focused By keeping your keywords and topics focused, your release can rank better in search engines and resonate more with media. As you are writing releases, remember you are writing about one topic per release . By segmenting the message or trying to say too much at once, you dilute your key points and take a risk prospects and media will walk away without taking next steps or remembering the point. Keep it simple, focused and impactful. 3. Use images for search Images can increase the click through rate on releases in both regular and news search by 15 – 25%. It’s a simple step, but can’t be stressed enough. Additionally, using images creates more traction in media – journalists and bloggers both love images as it helps them tell their story. At PRWeb, we have seen releases that used 3 images generate more than 50 articles. We also find that many people are discovering images via image search, which then draws them back not only to the release, but to the customer web sites. Because PRWeb hosts press releases forever, your images can continue to receive both organic and image search traffic indefinitely. 4. Use videos to engage visitors By using video in news releases, we have seen up to a 500% increase in time on pages. As the web shifts to a rich media experience, bloggers, media and end users are becoming more accustomed to video. In the future, it may be common that video is included with releases. But since today it is not as frequently used, it’s a chance to make your news stand out. 5. Optimize your release Anchor text links – use 3 One to homepage – direct visitors directly to your company website. One to product page – send media and consumers directly to the product they are reading about. One to blog post – this presents an opportunity to speak to readers in a less formal fashion. With social web users and digital influencers continually expecting social content, a press release presents a great opportunity to spark interest in your social content. Alt-tag – an alt tag helps your images get discovered in search engines – all release images should be tagged appropriately. URL Keyword – top keywords can be used as part of the URL string, so be sure and include those during the release selection process. PRWeb allows you to customize this. Description Tag – add a keyword rich and compelling description tag (on PRWeb, that will become the meta tag). Title of release – the title of the release will become the title tag of the page, which is a vital element of your on-page optimization. If you have a target phrase, ensure your phrase leads the title of release. You can learn more about PRWeb at their website or follow them on Twitter .

Credible Links ‘May Improve Google Rankings’ – Impact Media (blog)

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 12:57:18 +0000

Impact Media (blog) Credible Links 'May Improve Google Rankings' Impact Media (blog) ... LinkedIn and, in particular, Twitter. Last week, Yahoo! stated on its Search Marketing Blog that both internal and external links are required if a ... Link juice - how to make people link to your website Sydney Morning Herald all 14 news articles

Do paywalls hurt social news?

BlogPostman — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 14:06:54 +0000

Today’s post comes from Elena Ziebarth, a new product development associate at SmartBrief. Last week’s paidContent 2010 conference tackled the future of the publishing industry in the digital world. The New York Times recently announced that they are establishing a metered model for their online properties, where a nonsubscriber would pay a flat fee for a month’s worth of access to its articles and blogs. A nonsubscriber that reaches an article or blog post via Google search or a link would be allowed a few free views before having to pay for the month’s worth of access. During lunch at last Friday’s event, paidContent’s Staci Kramer interviewed three members of the New York Times’ leadership — Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., chairman and publisher; Janet Robinson, president and CEO; and Martin Nisenholtz, senior vice president of digital operations — on their expectations for the metered model. Nisenholtz said about 60% of New York Times online readers access the site through the homepage — the “front door” — including many heavy readers, or those consuming more than 10 articles per month. Readers coming through “side doors” such as non-NYT blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. are negligible, and under the proposed metered model, they would have to pay after reaching a certain number of article or blog views, he said. With the recent news of Facebook surpassing Google as the top access point to news portals such as Yahoo! and MSN, you have to wonder if the New York Times metered model will actually work as intended. If traffic to the New York Times online site via “side doors” continues to grow as more and more people depend on their friends’ recommendations in Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites, will the New York Times’ meter hinder the sharing of its articles and blog posts, therefore hurting its potential for ad sales revenue and overall subscriber growth? LeAnn Prescott of VenturaBeat recently panned the New York Times’ plan, writing: “It seems underhanded for any online news site to encourage social-media sharing, but not allow everyone to read the articles.” What’s your take? Are paywalls and/or meters that control access to news content at complete odds with social media? Are big media companies such as the New York Times missing an opportunity to increase the number of their loyal readers that could come via social media channels? Image credit, enot-poloskun , via iStock

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Do paywalls hurt social news?

Dissecting the Twitter-Yahoo deal

BlogPostman — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:15:02 +0000

Two weeks ago, I was all excited about Google integrating social media with e-mail. Today, Yahoo! makes a giant stride toward integrating content with social networking and I’m, at best, mildly curious. Web portals such as Yahoo! exist to solve an information-filtering problem. In the early days of the Web, visiting a portal site such as Yahoo! saved you a lot of time, because it meant you didn’t have to visit a bunch of different sites to get all the news and other content you need. But times have changed — now we’ve got all kinds of tools to help keep us in the loop: text and e-mail alerts, RSS feeds, super-cool e-mail newsletters and a plethora of social networks. Each of these platforms does a better job of filtering information than a single, all-purpose portal, because they’re easier to tailor to the things you actually care about. Why take a step back? I’ll admit the move is great for current Yahoo! users — and adding tweets to their search results is a fine idea. Perhaps most importantly, it shows that Yahoo! still has its head in the game and is looking for ways to transform itself. But I’m not sure if this is the move that will convince users like me to give the old portal system another try. Disagree? See a key detail in the arrangement that I’ve missed? Think Yahoo is the best thing ever? Let me know in the comments! Image credit, alexsl , via iStock

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Dissecting the Twitter-Yahoo deal

Basic Tips on Web Analytics

BlogPostman — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 15:52:25 +0000

Just about every business with a web site does something to market and promote it. When those companies are asked about web analytics, it’s surprising how many look back with a blank stare. This isn’t the case with mature online marketers but it does happen a lot with new business web sites and blogs. For many companies that are new to web analytics the idea of digging in and finding useful information can be daunting. It’s common marketing sense to measure what you’re marketing, but making sense of analytics data doesn’t always find time in the mix of duties a small business or new web site owner is responsible for. The amount of information that analytics packages deliver isn’t always easy to sort through and turn into business decisions. So what should those that are new to web analytics do? Keep it simple and start off with the basics. Each analytics package is different in features, price and learning curve. I’d suggest starting out with Google Analytics as it’s free, feature rich, and not too complicated to learn. Start off by looking at the items below. Unique Visitors – Unique visitors are are an important metric as it counts everyone as one for any given time period. This means that if you had 250 unique visitors, 250 different people visited your site at least once. If your unique visitor number is low, it could mean that your site is either having issues in search engines, or need more content. Traffic Sources – Are you getting traffic from Google, Yahoo, Twitter, or other sites? Referring information can help you see where your traffic is coming from which you can then use to make decisions on where and how to promote your future content. Referring Keywords – These are the phrases that someone put into a search engine and arrived at your site with. Ideally they’d be keyword phrases that related to your company. If not, then it may be an indication that you’re either not optimized, or optimized for the wrong phrases. Top Content – No matter what size your site is, knowing what pages get the most traffic can help you when building out new pages. Using the same format, or building out content on that topic, can help drive more traffic. These are also pages that call to action (CTA) buttons should be added if you want your visitors to do download a white paper or do something specific. Location – If your business wants a strong local presence, the location area in analytics can tell you country, state and city of where your visitors are coming from. Are your visitors actually local? That’d be a good thing to know. Campaign Tracking – Track visitors from sources where you are marketing to a particular goal page or conversion. As you feel more comfortable with Google Analytics you can then start to explore other actionable data including conversions, trends and features such as the most often used search terms on your internal search engine. Features like goals, top entrance/exit pages, bounce rates, and time on site are also a good metrics to use in understanding how visitors are interacting with your content. Visit the Google Analytics Help page to find out everything you need to know to make the most out of GA. Web analytics can be overwhelming as there is a lot of information to be analyzed and then decisions that need to be made from that data. Instead of trying to jump in and consume it all, take it one step at a time.

3 Reasons PR & Communications Pros Need to Know SEO

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 14:41:31 +0000

The PR industry is in a state of flux with increasing importance on getting into the content and social web business. Consumers are spending more time with digital and social media. Advertising dollars are following. That means less budget to staff newsrooms and reporters, journalists and editors to pitch. Understanding the needs of their “customers’ customer” is essential for PR agencies and communications professionals to remain relevant and productive. “Push PR” is increasingly being complemented by “Pull” tactics – optimization for discovery. Being able to provide value is essential and here are 3 ways a better understanding of SEO can do just that. 1. Fish where the fish are. There were over 14 billion core searches in Dec ( comSore ) vs 285 million who watch TV in a given month ( Nielsen ). Consumers rely on search daily to find news and information. PR and communications types need to understand the consumer search behaviors and preferences (keywords) of their clients as well as the publications they want their clients to be covered by. 2. Journalists rely on search. According to TopRank’s “Journalist Use of Search survey”, 91% of journalists, editors and reporters surveyed use standard search engines such as Google, Yahoo or Bing to do their job. That preference was mirrored by findings in a recently published “ Social Media & Online Usage Study ” (pdf) by George washington University and Cision where 100% of those surveyed use Google to research stories. 3. Optimization is about more than SEO. Search engine optimization, digital asset optimization, social media optimization and even micromedia optimization (ie real time SEO) are buzzwords all representing opportunities for Media Relations and communications professionals to influence discovery by making it easier for various types of search engines to find, index and rank their content. It’s imporant that communications people understand the different search options consumers and the media are using to distribute and consume news. If content can be searched on, it can be optimized. That includes everything from press releases to video to Tweets. Search Engine Optimization or “ SEO ” as an umbrella term is typically concerned with any kind of work that influences any kind of search engine to do what it does best and hopefully in favor of the content being promoted. Most people mean optimizing content for better visibility in Google, Yahoo or Bing when they employ SEO tactics. It’s important to note that many publishers are already using SEO tactics to make their news stories better suited for discovery and ranking on search engines. These efforts have resulted in substantial increases in traffic to online news sites, improving the attractiveness of advertising. Digital Asset Optimization or “ DAO ” is a term TopRank has used and promoted since 2007 that makes reference to the different types of media search engines like Google have started to display (aka Blended or Universal search results) depending on the query. Search results are no longer limited to web pages and can include images, video thumbnails, news, blogs, books and local information. Optimizing for these different types of media involves understanding what digital assets can be created, keyword optimized and published online for search. Social Media Optimization or “ SMO ” is a term initially made popular by Rohit Bhargava and added on to by several others in the SEO world including TopRank. While many social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn keep the bulk of their content behind a login and away from search engine spiders, many social interactions produce content that can be indexed and included in search results. Journalists and consumers increasingly participate with social channels to watch, share, contribute and curate information. If PR and communications can understand how to influence keyword use of social content then their news will be easier for analysts, reporters and journalists to find. Here’s a story related to me by an editor in the TopRank Journalist use of search survey that illustrates the intersection of search and social media: “I was writing a column about the planned partnership between Google and Yahoo.” “I tracked down potential sources first using Google and LinkedIn, and came across a white paper prepared by a senior fellow at the American Antitrust Institute.” “While I could not easily find an e-mail address, I went to Facebook where I located him, then sent a message. He replied and we followed up with a phone interview.” Micromedia Optimization is a new term that basically means real time optimization of status updates and content sources that are indexed and included as real time content by search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. The same micromedia content can be shared and discovered on platform specific search engines such as search.twitter.com and across social networks that provide the opportunity to syndicate such content. Google Buzz, Facebook status updates and LinkedIn updates are also included in this category. The takeaway that I think is most important for communications professionals is to understand the nature of search and how to match up optimization tactics with channels of disccovery. Using keyword research for both standard search and social search optimization of news content along with ongoing web analytics and social media monitoring are key. I’ll be discussing these strategies, tactics and a lot more at SMC Louisville tonight 6:30 p.m. until 8:30 p.m. ET on at the Louisville Visual Art Association. I hope folks can brave the snow (safely) and make it out. You won’t be disappointed!

Search Engines Bringing Back Variables In URLs – At Your Expense

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:21:49 +0000

Did you realize that search engines have gone full circle on URLs in variables? It used to be considered something to avoid, now search engines are saying variables in URLs are good, as long as you use the canonical meta tag. Google is pushing them with FeedBurner and if webmasters aren’t careful, they could fall victim to a new onslaught of duplicate content issues.

One of the biggest issues with SEO is duplicate content. If search engines can’t tell which version of a document is the original or canonical version, then there can be consequences involving less than ideal search visibility. For example, the following URLs might all point to the same web page, creating the illusion that they are copies of the same thing. But in reality, it’s just one web page.

www.domainname.com
domainname.com
www.domainname.com/index.html
www.domainname.com/index.html?referid=somesitethatyouareadvertisingon

Content management systems, e-commerce stores, and dynamic sites in general, used to be big on adding variables to URLs as a way to construct search queries on content or to track visitors. Then along came advice from the search engines that said they see each URL as a unique if it has different variables. That little improvement caused a duplicate content mess.

So over the past few years, web site owners and marketers have been hard at work cleaning up their URLs, removing variables and trying to make duplicate content a thing of the past.

Then Google came out with a canonical meta tag that could be used to help fix duplicate content issues. The advice was to simply add a canonical meta tag to any page and every version of that page will be considered one. No longer will there be duplicate versions and no longer will variables be a problem in creating the illusion of different copies of the same page.

The good news here is that Yahoo, Bing, and Ask also jumped on board to support the canonical meta tag.

What we didn’t realize was Google had a hidden agenda. (In my opinion) For a few months after the canonical meta tag came out, Google FeedBurner started populating every feed that runs though their service with additional variables in the URL. These variables are then used to better track FeedBurner clicks in Google Analytics.

So now, Google is pushing out URLs with multiple variables creating duplicate content issues for anyone who isn’t using the canonical meta tag. Additionally, if you use TwitterFeed to auto post content from FeedBurner to Twitter, or even copy the URL from a feed and share it, you’re also spreading the problem.

Google then came out with a URL builder tool that allowed you to track custom campaigns in Google Analytics by customizing your URLs with additional tracking variables. This extends the potential duplicate content issue even further.

So what doess this all mean for web site owners and marketers? It means that if you’re not paying attention, duplicate content could be causing you problems with increasing frequency. Do you know if your site has canonical meta tags? It should. Do you know if your FeedBurner feed is going out with additional tracking variables? It probably is.

A Solution: What needs to happen is the canonical meta tag should become a standard meta tag in web development. It should be added to all web pages as a safety measure. It doesn’t harm anything, unless implemented improperly, so ask your developers to code it into all pages.

As for variables in the URL, they’re still not good when it comes to SEO and avoiding duplicate content issues. Short and sweet is the best way to create URLs, but on that off chance that you need to track affiliates, want to track visits to a page from a specific online or offline campaign, or for whatever reason can’t avoid variables in the URL, then they are OK as long as you use the canonical meta tag.

Like it or not, the canonical meta tag is the only way to ensure that your site doesn’t fall victim to duplicate content issues. If you stop and think about it, it is an easy solution to a big problem. And once a site has canonical meta tags on their site, using the URL builder or variables in general to track URLs can be pretty handy. Webmasters just need to remember that a variable or two may be ok for some campaigns, but we don’t want to go back to long and ugly URLs because the longer the URL, the more difficult they’ll be for search engines, and users, to interact with.

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