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29 June 2009

Why the new HTML 5 specification will have high importance to Video and SEO

The latest buzz in IT, in case you haven't heard, is that HTML 4 is on its way out and HTML 5, which is still a work in progress (according to W3C it will be complete by late 2010), will in the near future be permanently cemented as the new HTML standard.

Photo by jonsson via Creative Commons

This news would usually mean more to developers and designers but for those in search engine optimisation it's time to step away from your screen and latest link building scheme for a minute (after you finish reading this blog of course!) and consider how the new standard will affect SEO.

HTML 5 will introduce new elements and attributes that will contain more semantic tags to describe the content or objects within them. For search engine optimisation this means additional data can be added for embedded objects such as video or audio. With video as an integral element of blended search, this is exciting news for those interested in video search optimisation.

Advantages of the new

• The new

Photo by believekevin via Creative Commons

So what do these

[video src="://www.bruceclay.com.au/fictional/examplevideo.avi"
alt="My Video Example"
height="320"
width="240"
title="The Fictional Video About The HTML 5

Whilst video has taken a little longer to take off within Australia it's becoming increasingly obvious its popularity is growing fast. Of the Top 10 Oceanic web sites researched by VIEW index in April 2009 it was found that 80% of sites has video on their site (60% had video on their homepage).

The sites surveyed were:

• Google Australia
• eBay.com.au
• Ninemsn
• News.com.au
• The Sydney Morning Herald
• Yahoo! Australia
• Trade Me
• Real Estate Australia
• Australian Broadcasting Corporation
• The Age

Therefore fellow SEO's if you haven't started paying attention to optimising video content within a site you better start now. HTML 5 is on its way and it brings more promise for open source video and an easier solution to add video to web sites. Video search optimisation is no longer an SEO element that can be ignored.

Posted by Grant Hilton on 06/29/09 at 10:46 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
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23 June 2009

Search Engine Optimisation Recap

Stories, news, and other notable items from the past week, including : HTML 5 video tags to be released in 2010, 7 unruly tips to creating successful viral videos, new ways to PageRank sculpt, quality SEO pays for itself and the Nofollow Kerfuffle.

Photo by cobalt123 via Creative Commons

HTML 5

HTML 5 (HyperText Markup Language Version 5) is the next major revision of the core language of the World Wide Web, HTML. HTML 5 provides a number of new elements and attributes that reflect typical usage on modern Web sites. The video tag is supposed to replace Flash by linking to video files in the same way that the image tag links to images. Key Elements of the HTML 5 tags include:

• In a year or so HTML 5 will be released and it will specifically contain tags for audio and video

• Soon video can be added to a page via

• It will be important to search engine optimisation because every piece of audio and video can be specifically tagged and have attributes, such as meta-data, title, alternative text, etc, built into the tag making it far more noticeable to the search engines.

• Following is an example of the new HTML 5
< VIDEO> Tag:

• There is speculation that this will negatively affect the popularity of Flash videos.

Creating Successful Viral Videos - 7 Unruly Tips.

The focus below is specifically on tips for viral success of videos - how to produce and distribute a video that will get people talking about and sharing the content.

1. Get under the skin of your audience-think about the type of viewers you're hoping to reach and find out what they like to talk about with their friends.

2. Choose appropriate viral triggers-once you've got an understanding of what makes your audience tick, you'll be better placed to identify the viral triggers most likely to hit your target audience's sweet spot.

3. Turn the volume up to 10-once you've decided on your viral triggers, focus on making them as strong as possible.

4. Take it straight to your audience-it's often difficult to predict exactly where viral activity will take off, so it's a good idea to adopt a multi-platform approach to viral dissemination.

5. Make it portable-do allow downloads, embeds, comments, and use URL shorteners e.g. bit.ly to create Twitter-friendly links.

6. Get your timing right-at every stage in the process, timing is crucial.

7. Work those viral hotspots-once your clip is out there, be sure to track where the viral activity is taking place in order to identify and capitalize on niche communities where the clip is proving particularly virulent.

Google Says: Yes, You Can Still Sculpt PageRank. No You Can't Do It With Nofollow.

This post starts with a quote from Matt Cutts that states "So what happens when you have a page with "ten PageRank points" and ten outgoing links, and five of those links are Nofollowed?
Let's leave aside the decay factor to focus on the core part of the question. Originally, the five links without Nofollow would have flowed two points of PageRank each (in essence, the Nofollowed links didn't count toward the denominator when dividing PageRank by the outdegree of the page). More than a year ago, Google changed how the PageRank flows so that the five links without Nofollow would flow one point of PageRank each."

Another interesting question came up on Matt's blog

Q: Okay, but doesn't this encourage me to link out less? Should I turn off comments on my blog?

A: I wouldn't recommend closing comments in an attempt to "hoard" your PageRank. In the same way that Google trusts sites less when they link to spammy sites or bad neighborhoods, parts of our system encourage links to good sites.

Rand also brings in some classic techniques to sculpt PR:

• Option A: An embedded iFrame on the page containing the links you don't want the engines to follow (remember not to link to the iFrame URL, and potentially block it using robots.txt)

• Option B: Links that call a Javascript redirect script with access blocked for search engine bots (as Google is also now crawling basic javascript and counting links through it)

• Option C: An embed in Flash, Java or some other non-parseable plug-in that contains the desired links

• Option D: Settings that turn off links for non-cookied or non-logged-in visitors

Rand also posts a comment of Danny Sullivan's from Matt's post:

"Rather than clarify things, I feel like this is what your post is going to do -- cause people to consciously reduce the number of links they allow on their pages. We're going to see an increase in iframe usage or other techniques to reduce links and flow more PageRank to the remaining links, for those who really worry/believe in such things."

Quality SEO Pays for Itself

Cost is usually the wrong question to focus on when choosing a search engine optimisation (SEO) firm, as it implies you are buying a commodity. Strategic effectiveness and search marketing profitability impact are much more appropriate questions. The following are factors why confusion is created in the SEO firm selection process:

• Most executive management teams don't yet fully understand the economics and far-reaching business implications of SEO
• Search engine marketing's transformation of legacy enterprise profitability is in its infancy
• Most people outside of the search engine community do not fully appreciate the magnitude of the shift from push to pull marketing
• Management teams must understand SEO to effectively manage it
• Measuring SEO is still an imprecise art form, which Google appears determined to prevent from becoming a science
• Search engine marketing might be the largest change management project in history
• Executive recruiting needs to look beyond the job title to hire effective search engine marketing leaders
• Search marketing-centric organisations will outperform

Once understood, it becomes quite clear that SEO is a senior level strategic activity affecting enterprise profitability. The selection process followed should reflect this fact by being as granular and comprehensive as possible. With the result being the best possible SEO firm is selected for the firm's needs.

Following the Nofollow Kerfuffle.

Talking about Matt Cutts PR admission (more than a year ago, Google changed how the PageRank flows ) - if this really did happen 1 year ago how can an industry, that is so hung-up on testing, not have realised this?

Scenario 1: Matt Cutts is Telling the Truth

1. Maybe PageRank sculpting itself was not doing as much as people thought.
2. Maybe it was, but there are too many variables at play with the sites that were using it, so the change in Google's algorithm went unnoticed among other shifts.
3. Perhaps in the process of implementing the PageRank sculpting, the SEOs made other changes to the site's structure that did have an effect, which still worked even after Google's changed algorithm.

Scenario 2: The Competitive Advantage Theory

In this scenario, Cutts is still telling the truth, but it turns out that some SEOs already knew Google had made the change, but kept it to themselves. [Raise your hand and say 'I' -- Kate]

Scenario 3: The Conspiracy Theory

The conspiracy theory version of this situation says that PageRank sculpting works, and works so well that Google is uncomfortable with so many SEOs using it. They think that Google never changed its algorithm regarding Nofollow, and that it still works fine, but Google is trying to dissuade SEOs from doing it.

Scenario 4: The Pity Theory

A final scenario goes like this: PageRank sculpting with Nofollow never worked, and Google is finally letting everyone know they're wasting their time. While it was fun to watch SEOs debate the intricacies of a technique that took lots of time and energy, Google started to feel bad for sending them on a wild goose chase for so long.

From the amount of articles centered on the change of the Nofollow attribute and its effects on PageRank, there still seems to be a fair bit of confusion and consternation regarding this matter, any new significant developments will be covered right here on the Bruce Clay Australia blog.

Posted by Marc Elison on 06/23/09 at 8:10 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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19 June 2009

SEO A-Team

Ten years, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire... The A-Team.

If that intro gives you the nostalgic tingles like it does for me AND you are interested in SEO, then you may very well like this post. I have fastidiously researched all the members of the A-team and using advanced and very technical psychometric algorithmic analysis matched them to well known practitioners of SEO. [Yeah... right - Kate]

The A-TEAM Intro - More amazing videos are a click away

So without further grandstanding I give you the:

THE SEO A-TEAM

Bruce Clay as Col. John "Hannibal" Smith

In every fun Friday post I am contractually obligated to make Bruce the leader of whatever imaginary/fantasy team I am making, I kid, but Bruce is a great choice regardless. It may be the similar salt and pepper hair with the same suave side parting that the duo share that does it or the fact that Bruce is a natural leader whose plans (seo strategies ) always deliver. Bruce just like Hannibal "loves it when a plan comes together." Btw I dont condone cigars but it is really difficult to find a picture of Hannibal without one.

Rand Fishkin As The Face (Lt. Templeton)

Face is the smooth talking, charismatic and charming ladies man of the A-team. Now I know Rand is happily married, but have you ever heard Rand speak? That guy is one smooth operator, soothing clients fears with his easy going manner while still being recognised as one of the "Faces" of the SEO industry. Both Rand and Face have the enviable ability of making their organisation (SEOmoz and the A-team respectively) look good on all fronts. Once again the fashionable (in the 80's) side parting makes a comeback with both Rand and Face doing it justice. They even both have their own fashion accessories, Face has a different lady on his arm every A-team episode while Rand has his yellow Puma's that he wears to every SEO conference.

Mike Motherwell as Capt. H.M. "Howling Mad" Murdock

Murdock is the team's pilot and who has been declared insane and resides in a mental institution. The first name that came to mind when picturing Murdock is local boy Mike Motherwell. I have seen him moderate a few sessions at SMX Sydney as well as being part of the site clinic at that event and as SEO's go he is pretty crazy(to be honest we are not the most adventurous bunch so that is not saying much). Some of the gems he came out with while commenting on www.eatout.co.nz during the SMX Sydney site clinic allow me to make the comparison. They both have almost encyclopaedia like-knowledge with Murdock knowing everything about most things mechanical whilst Mike has the same volume of knowledge about all things SEO-related .

? As Sgt. B.A. "Bad Attitude" Baracus

Try as I might I couldn't think of anyone who quite cracked it as the iconic B.A. Baracus. Nobody I could think of could quite deliver the phrase "I pity the fool" with such deadpan seriousness as BA did, so I am asking you dear readers to help me come with somebody in SEO who in any way reminds you of BA.

Matt Cutts as Colonel Decker

So a bunch of elite, soldiers of fortune running around helping the downtrodden and persecuted to break free of relentless hardships such as low ROI on their websites. There can only be one person chasing them down. I give you Matt Cutts as Colonel Decker, this man has only one objective, to hunt down and capture the A-team for the crime of buying links and using white text on their client's pages which they didn't commit.

Hope you enjoyed this little trip down memory lane in homage to one of the best T.V shows ever created.

Posted by Marc Elison on 06/19/09 at 6:30 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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17 June 2009

SEO Roundup-Part 2

This is part 2 of the SEO roundup for the week ended 12 June.

SEO Challenges of Restructuring a Site

Photo by Perrimoon via Creative Commons

Restructuring a site can present some major search engine optimisation challenges. It is one thing to make simple changes, where a page on the new site corresponds exactly to every page on your old site. But it's much tougher when you're making more fundamental changes to the layout, organisation, and content of your site.

If you have a reasonably popular site, it has several assets that are put at risk when you change its structure:

1. Users will have bookmarked pages on your site. When they attempt to go to that bookmark, you want to make sure they still get to the content they want.
2. Pages from your site show up in search engine results. When users click on these, you'll want them to find the right pages on your site.
3. Other Web sites link to your site. Yes, you want people who click on those links to get to the right pages in the new structure. But more importantly, you want the search engines to continue to map those links to the most relevant pages on your Web site.

Bottom line: there's a lot at stake when you restructure a Web site. Success requires a full understanding of how to map the content from the new site to the old site, and building a 301 redirect map that thoroughly maps links from the old site to the new one.
Let's break down the approach to doing this well:

1. Wherever possible, create a one-to-one mapping of pages from the old site to the new site. This means finding pages that are identical, or substantially similar to the old ones.
2. Analyse all the remaining pages to find ones that you can redirect to the correct category. An example of this might be individual product pages you had on the old site, but on the new site you offer only a higher-level page for that category of products on the new site. In that case, map the product pages on the old site to the surviving category page.
3. Make sure that all the remaining pages are redirected somewhere. For most sites, the place where you should send this redirect will be the home page. Note that if you also change the domain in this process, you may also want to implement a catchall redirect that sends all pages not covered by your explicit redirect rules to the home page of the new site.

When you must prioritise, here are a few techniques you can use to make sure you've truly covered the most important pages:

• Go into your Web analytics tool and identify the top pages receiving traffic.
• Go into Google Webmaster Tools and get a list of your external links, so you can identify all pages that have received external links.
• Use Yahoo Site Explorer to identify the top pages listed there. Site Explorer tends to list the most important pages first.

Most of Bing's Tools are from Live Search

Bings Local Business Centre:
The way to get to the local business centre in Live was to go to https://ssl.search.live.com/listings/BusinessSearch.aspx which is now redirected to https://ssl.bing.com/listings/BusinessSearch.aspx which also means if you had a Live Search Maps listings, you automatically also have a Bing listing.

Bing Webmaster Tools:
The old Live webmaster tools was at http://webmaster.live.com which is now redirected to http://www.bing.com/webmaster, the features are still the same, except the new logo on the top left.

China keeps blocking

It seems that as of today, the Chinese authorities have blocked internet access to Twitter, Flickr, Bing, Live.com, Hotmail.com and several other sites. Wordpress , YouTube and Blogger are also blocked.

Hulu Traffic Coming To A Halt?

Hulu, the greatest video site we can't access from Australia yet, has finally had its quick growth halted according to Comscore with a loss of visitors between March and April. The loss equates to approximately 1.4 million visitors but streams were still up at 397 million.

In other news Hulu have just released Hulu Desktop which allows people to access tv shows without browsing directly to the site. I would assume this would take visitor numbers off the site whilst stream statistics would remain unaffected. For more information see: http://www.hulu.com/labs/hulu-desktop

YouTube XL On The Big Screen

Just when you thought you couldn't get enough of YouTube, they have released a version (made 100% in Flash) that is optimised for television viewing - YouTube XL. Basically you can now connect a web-browser capable appliance and access all of the YouTube content. Some of the optimised features specific for tv include larger video players and navigation controls (larger text and viewing area), continuous viewing of videos and "no page refresh". From the look of it there is nothing new or groundbreaking here compared to the normal site except it is strange that no HD playback exists for XL.
http://www.youtube.com/xl

Bing Video Search

We all know Microsoft recently released Bing but did you know it comes complete with Video Search? Christophor Rick from ReelSEO states that many people are praising the live video preview on themouseover feature which oddly enough doesn't work in Firefox. The Bing video search provides options to filter down results by length, screen size, resolution and source. Sources that the search is pulling from are MSN, AOL, MTV, Hulu, ESPN, YouTube, MySpace, DailyMotion and MetaCafe.

Christophor then goes on to say how he conducted a search for "Wolverine" and discovered that Bing has the largest set of results (more than Blinkx and Google). However, he notes that Microsoft has some serious filtering still to do as many of the videos in the search results are duplicated but on different sites.

How Top Websites Use Online Video

This article is based about VideoBloom which is a company that measures and indexes how much websites integrate online video into their website content. Their predictions from this research form the VIEW index and the latest data is below:

Here is a Breakdown of How Top Websites Apply Web Video
1. 34% Promotional Videos
2. 31% Demonstration Videos
3. 28% Information Videos
4. 26 % Entertainment Videos
5. 22% News Videos
6. 4% User Generated Content (UGC)
7. 3% Other

Google promotions in all their glory

A very cool Google Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjeCmHwqVpU&feature=player_embedded (clearly designed by marketers)
A very un-cool Google Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE0KNvECG2s&feature=player_embedded

That is a wrap for this week, we hope you enjoyed the different articles we found interesting this week, check back next week for the new SEO roundup.

Posted by Marc Elison on 06/17/09 at 12:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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16 June 2009

Mobile advertising guidelines-AIMIA Conference

On Wednesday 10th of June I attended the AIMIA conference regarding the launch of the AIMIA mobile advertising guidelines to support the growth of mobile advertising in Australia.

Photo by William Hook via Creative Commons

The guidelines follow the Mobile Marketing Associations (MMA) guidelines however in addition these guidelines have been tailored to the Australian market. The guidelines cover the following topics:

• Text , banner , creative , MMS and SMS advertising
• Some technical aspects
• Blackberry and iPhone
• Measurements
• Reporting
• Consumers

As usual I was expecting something revealing, lots of stats and international data comparisons. That really hasn't been the case, however the conference has been informative on many different levels. There have been presentations from carriers, publishers and industry brands. The most interesting presentations I believe were from Kelly Alai, managing director of Communicator and Naomi McLean Campaign manager at HSBC Bank Australia Ltd. Kelly showed an interesting graph representing the growth of publishers and WAP traffic volume since May 2008. As you can see from the graph below taken from Kelly's presentation, there has been almost a 180% increase of active publishers and 300% growth of WAP traffic.

Noemi McLean showed the evolution phases of the HSBC Premier mobile websites launched in 2007. One year after the launch the company went through a trial and refresh phase by doing some mobile advertising with banner ads and sms. In 2009 the company is going through an expansion phase by using new mobile advertising tools such as widgets with the aim of increasing leads.

Jon Slade, head of mobile advertising and marketing at Ninemsn gave some useful tips on the future of mobile advertising. Jon in his presentation stated that "First mover advantage in a vertical market will be gained by brands who commit to a mobile strategy early".

Is mobile commerce already a reality?

The main focus of mobile advertising at this stage is brand awareness as it is too early for CPC and CPA models. In the Q&A session someone talked about measurability in terms of CTR and conversions. Conversions seem to be pretty high on mobile as well as CTR. I suppose this is quite normal in a market with early adopters and a small volume of competition.

So what's next in mobile advertising?

Kelly mentioned that videos will be the next big thing within the next 6 to 12 months, but what about search? Well Google ads at the moment are still not available to target Australia, and SEO on mobiles is still pretty new and it still seems to follow the same rules of the normal search engine optimisation. See some tips on SEO for mobile sites. Kerry Field, partner of Innovation at Mindshare, said search that is important and it never needs to be underestimated.

How can we target mobile users?

This wasn't really discussed during the seminar, however I found out some interesting data coming from a research based on the habits of European mobile internet users. Apparently users who are over 55 prefer visiting weather and trading stocks sites, and accessing bank accounts through their mobile. Younger mobile users prefer visiting social networks sites. This would strongly indicate that mobile content can now offer great opportunity to marketers to target their audience.

http://www.nma.co.uk/advertisers-should-target-mobile-web-users-by-age/3000357.article

Posted by Raffaella Bronzi on 06/16/09 at 11:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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11 June 2009

Search Engine Optimisation Roundup-11 June 2009

Once again the Bruce Clay SEO analysts have collected and collated all the latest search engine optimisation news from around the globe. Following are extracts and the main points of the blogs and news sites followed. This is part 1 , part 2 of the roundup will be published towards the beginning of next week.

Photo by End User via Creative Commons

Nofollow and PageRank sculpting change

The rel="nofollow" attribute was first launched in January 2005 and was a valid way to reduce the importance of links to low priority pages and therefore increase the relative importance of the links to more important pages. The technique became known as PageRank sculpting.

This week at the SMX Advanced conference in Seattle, Matt Cutts gave a hint that the nofollow attribute is less effective today than it used to be.

Later, Cutts addressed the issue again in a Google Webmaster Help video, saying that PageRank sculpting will still work but not as well.

Basically, using nofollow will still prevent PageRank from passing from the linking page but PageRank is no longer "saved" to be used by other links on the page.

Rand Fishkin suspects the change is because many people have been abusing nofollow with regard to internal links to attempt to game Google as well as abusing it in the sense that they've actually hurt their site's relevance and quality in the results.

The funny thing about this, is that if Google really has changed and therefore treat nofollows as link "sinks" that consume PageRank but don't flow it, they're really only screwing over the sites that are only semi-familiar or semi-serious about SEO. Savvy SEOs are just going to go back to the old method of PageRank sculpting that existed long before nofollow - creating links that robots can't see or follow (in Flash, in external Javascript calls that are blocked, in plug-in content, etc.) to get around the issue.

Microsoft's Bing falsifies Site Data to Increase Click Through Rates.

It looks like Bing has begun manipulating their own search results to increase CTR.
If you search for Bruce Clay for example, bruceclay.com.au appears with the following title:

But if you search for the url, results show the correct page title:

Automatic keyword insertion?

JavaScript crawling improvements

Google has been crawling some JavaScript for a while. Primarily, they have been extracting very simply coded links. As of today, they are able execute JavaScript onclick events.

Some examples of code that Googlebot can now execute include:

These links pass both anchor text and PageRank. Funny aside, I tired to manually put the code in and almost broke the blog, kids dont try this at home.

Page Speed

• Page Speed is a Firefox Add-on integrated with Firebug
• Page speed give you immediate suggestions on how you can change your web pages to improve their speed
• It also identifies issues such as JavaScript and CSS loaded by your page that wasn't actually used to display the page which can help reduce time your users spend waiting for the page to download and display
• Why you should use it? Make your site faster, keep Internet users engaged with your site, reduce your bandwidth and hosting costs.

Google Local - Out of Date, Riddled with Spam But Absolutely Worth It

The post starts off by mentioning the 2 reasons we need to care about local search

1. Unbranded traffic-Over the past 6 months or so Google has become incredibly aggressive with displaying local results in the main listings. These almost always come in the form of a 10-result one-box. The 10-box is sometimes the very first result that users see - even appearing 3rd or 4th in the 10-box can generate more clicks than a #1 ranking in the organic results just below. That's pretty staggering. That means that for these super competitive travel queries, if you want traffic you need to be optimising for the 10-box before you think about optimising for the regular organic listings. But wait, trouble is on the horizon because Google is becoming even more aggressive with its 10-boxing and it's starting to display 10-boxes on regular search results without a geographical modifier if Google knows where you're searching from.

2. Branded Traffic-Ok sure, generic queries are generating 10-boxes so that gives me some potential to aim for, but surely my navigational branded search queries are safe, right? Right?! Unfortunately not, when one searches a brand with location in it, often the map result appears above the regular organic result.

Problems with Google local

• Spam, and Lots of It
-Spam in the main index
-Spam in the details of the Google Local Index

• Language
-So Google Local, which you'd think would be designed to handle local queries, actually sucks really badly at local language searches. The problem is that, as far as I can see, there's only one Google Local index worldwide compared to all the local indexes you get for google.co.uk, google.fr, google.com, etc. This manifests itself in a few ways, but the most important one is this - only one language version of a page can be listed in Google Local. Then you get a combination of .com (English) and other language specific results.
• Verification
-If you have a large number of geographical locations (physical stores or hotels, for example), then registering them individually can be a real pain. Imagine having to coordinate hundreds of different local verifications all with consistent data and accurate information.

Quickwins

o Don't rely on a bulk upload unless you have to
o Only create one listing for each individual location
o Think about using KML Geositemaps if you have many locations - If it's unfeasible to register all of your properties individually (or even while you're putting that process in place), consider using a Geositemap since this should be more trusted than the bulk upload, as it relies on the same sitemap file verification process which is intrinsically more trusted than the upload process since it's tied to your domain.

10 Social Media Maxims for Marketers

Social media has overtaken pornography as the number one online activity, according to Hitwise data. Following are a list of points to take heed of when planning a social media strategy
1. Successful marketers will be more like Dale Carnegie; listen first, sell second.
2. Consumers are looking to peers for recommendations on products, services, health issues, and more via social media. Only companies that produce products and services of great value will be part of these conversations; mediocrity will quickly be eliminated.
3. Social media's ability to quickly disseminate information among friends and peers helps eliminate different people performing the same tasks (multiple individual redundancies), whether it's researching the best vacation spot or smart phone. This results in a more efficient society.
4. The old adage that you can only have two of these -- cheap, quick, or quality -- doesn't hold true within social media. It's possible to have all three.
5. Successful social media marketers will function more like entertainment companies, publishers, or party planners rather than as traditional advertisers.
6. With the increasing popularity of e-books, there will be new digital media placement opportunities for brands. This is very similar to product placement in movies, only this is for books, and the placements are clickable and measurable.
7. The most successful social media and mobile applications are those that allow users to brag, compete, or look cool by passing it on.
8. The transparency and speed of information exchanged within social media mitigates casual schizophrenic behavior. Having a "work" personality and having a "party" personality will soon become extinct. People and companies will need to have one essence and be true to that essence.
9. Being "well-rounded" as a company or individual is less beneficial. It's more productive to play to your core strength. This differentiates you from the competition.
10. Companies that produce great products and services rather than companies that simply rely on great messaging will be winners in a social world. The social graph is the world's largest and most powerful referral program.

Part 2 to follow shortly......

Posted by Marc Elison on 06/11/09 at 2:30 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
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5 June 2009

13 reasons why I love being in SEO

So another fun Friday post today as we all enjoy watching the clock before the start of a three day weekend! There are many different reasons why I enjoy the search engine optimisation industry, here are my top 13 reasons. Why 13 do you ask? Well traditionally 13 is an unlucky number, Friday the 13th, Apollo 13 and I, for one, am prone to tempt fate on occasion. [Great... so the Bruce Clay Australia blog dies because Marc is a bad-ass. Awesome. - Kate] An interesting aside: the origins of the number 13 being considered unlucky normally derives from the fact that there were 13 people present at "The Last Supper" in the Bible and Judas was the 13th person seated at the table. Enough history
let's talk SEO.

Photo by MAMJODH via Creative Commons

1. I get to write, a lot - Now I know there are those of you thinking "im reading his blog, of course he gets to write, thank you Captain Obvious" well yes you would be correct but what you dont know is that I actually really enjoy it. I find it a very cathartic exercise and in my opinion it is a pretty good way to spend my time. [The corporate blog; an excuse for someone who thinks they know it all but can't get enough people in the office to pay attention to fulfil his engrossed egoic needs... But we humour him cos it helps build backlinks ;) - Kate]

2. The competitive nature - If SEO was a medical discipline we would definitely belong to the surgical rotation. I say this not because we are cutters and hackers of websites but because of the competitive nature of the industry. So it is with SEO where we all compete in the rankings game, clawing victory from not only each other but also the search engines (aka referees). And for what if not self-actualisation? [Our clients... Marc. We do it for them - Kate]

3. The unexpected joy of job title recognition - Normally when someone not in the web industry asks me what I do for a living and I reply 'search engine optimisation', a look of glazed confusion comes over my companion. It's that feeling of delight I get when somebody actually understands 'search' as 'search marketing' (and not a sub sect of 'market research') which is enough to keep me coming in on Monday mornings.

4. Criticising peoples' websites - Some people have a nasty streak and develop into captious critics. Now there is an outlet for all that angst, it is called SEO website reviews. This is where an SEO analyst will systematically break down a site into its smallest parts and criticise each part of the website. This does have an altruistic motive though; we break down the site in order to build it up again, better, stronger and supremely well optimised.

5. We unite people - It's not what you think, we unite both Marketing and IT in a mutual dislike for the SEO practitioner. While we strut around the clients office proclaiming our SEO best practice advice, demanding complex and expensive changes and normally stretching an already stretched resource, we feel the glares of frustration from both ecommerce and infrastructure managers. However, with a bit of SEO Training they become like putty in our hands, and end up being major champions of the SEO process.

6. You're hot then you're cold - You could be biggest, hottest brand in the search industry but if you neglect that industry for even a day you will start to slip. Similarly a new kid on the block could come up with some arbitrary technique or tool and revolutionise the game, doesn't happen often but it easily could. The fix? Attend conferences, keep up those hours of daily reading and interaction (AKA beers) with other people in the search field.

7. The systematic logic process - I have a funny joke to start this off with. What do accountants use for birth control? Their personalities :) If, however, you have the logical, methodical and rational thought process normally associated with accountancy then chances are you're well suited to SEO. Theming - the grouping of likeminded keywords under the most popular word for that topic - sublime in its simplicity.

8. We get instant gratification (almost) - Everyone in this new media age loves instant gratification. We, in the SEO industry, are no different. We can see the results of our blood, sweat and toil pretty quickly by running, and re-running our ranking monitors.

9. Rand's Facial hair - When I grow up that's the kind of designer stubble I want.

10. The Conferences - This has been my first year of search conferences and I have got to say what alot of fun. While officially I am there to live blog the real fun starts when the conferences finish. Discussing sneaky linking tactics with a well known SEO celeb over tequilas, exposing the virtues and best places to party in Sydney with a senior Google engineer; at the end of a search conference you never know where you'll end up.

11. All the information is out there and most of it is free - There is no official accreditation for SEO currently and to be honest I dont think there needs to be. There is a compendium of great information, techniques, tools tips and forums out there to help you get your start in SEO and best of all its mostly free. Not even just a start you can become an expert if you are willing to dedicate the required time to the art of SEO. [Errr we do the SEOToolSet training certification, not to mention SEMPO... Granted it's not that big. YET. - Kate]

12. Girls Girls Girls - We SEO analysts are the Casanovas' of the online world, members of the opposite sex swoon to us and hang on each word we eloquently spout, they follow us around at conferences hoping for just an iota of our attention...............What, Where, How? Oh no, fell asleep at the desk again, was a lovely dream though.

13. The staff at Bruce Clay Australia - You guys make it all bearable and more so than that, enjoyable.

Well I hope you enjoyed that, my magic 8 ball tells me the 13 worst things about being an SEO is coming up soon, so keep an eye out for that.

Posted by Marc Elison on 06/ 5/09 at 2:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
See more entries in Industry News

4 June 2009

But Its Not Google - AKA Bing

So a couple of websites have been flinging around the fact that Bing is actually an acronym for "But Its Not Google". Well that much I'm sure of but what can Bing offer the web world that is different from its previous incarnations (MSN, Live and Kumo)?

First of all Bing takes a page out of Wolfram Alpha's book by calling itself not a search engine but a "decision engine". One thing I did notice while doing some research is that Wikipedia is not given nearly as much priority in Bing as it is in Google. This has an impact for SEO because suddenly we can actually rank our clients in top place for informational based searches (in Bing at least) without those pesky Wikipedia entries.
[Speak for yourself buddy, my clients always outrank the weed of the internet! - Kate]

Some of the features have not yet been rolled out in Australia yet. Below is an example of a Bing search made from Australia for "John Howard".

Probably the most significant change is that Bing now organises search results into categories, however this is one example of Bing Functionality that has yet to be rolled out in Australia, the following search engine results page appears on the same "John Howard" search but conducted through a US proxy:

Note the category menu on the left hand navigation bar, it will be interesting to see how long before all of Bing's functionality is rolled out worldwide. Another interesting fact that comes out of the launch of Bing is that they are using Yellow pages to render their maps and local listings, could this be the boost that Yellow Pages has needed for the past few years ?

I found a pretty cool feature on the image search section whereby the scrolling is infinite i.e. you never get to the bottom more and more images kept appearing, well up to 1000 images anyway, this is a blessing for someone who hates hitting the next button. The news functionality is pretty limited and cannot even be compared to the Google news functionality. Some really cool features Bing offers are:

• Watch video preview in search results
• Find web pages that link to documents, MP3s, Videos, zips
• Save images & pictures as your search the web
• Get live search results as RSS Feeds
• Limit your search to website that offer RSS Feeds

You can find out how to do all of these functions at this Windows Live Search (now Bing) Tricks blog post.

It seems that Microsoft has included some of Powerset's LSI features in Bing to help with the analysis of search queries in terms of deciphering what the searcher is actually after. One nifty feature is the mini snippet you get when you hover the mouse over the right hand side of any results, below is an example:

Greg Sterling at Search Engine Land did a very thorough side by side analysis of Google and Bing with some searches, the main point to take away from this analysis is that Bing does offer results that are highly competitive with Google and in some cases it offers features that are more user-friendly. In addition Microsoft's API will allow programmers to use the many powerful features of Bing within their own applications. I found a great mash up here, which allows you to view both Google and Bing's search results. See how cool this is:

In terms of design, I like it, I like it alot. It does borrow pretty significantly from both Live search and Google but the whole minimalistic design with the constantly changing background picture creates a simple yet enjoyable and dynamic interface.

In terms of how Bing is going to affect our search engine optimisation efforts, that question is actually fairly difficult to answer. Apparently Bing indexes pages that have a 301 re-direct on them as opposed to the page it is directing traffic to. This Bing review notes that "Bing depends more on the location of the content, jobs, product reviews, travel decisions and health keywords. This may mean that content heavy blogs may just miss the Bing boat". Thoughts on Bing as Related to SEO & Optimization blog entry on Bing comes up with the following conclusions regarding Bing and SEO:

• Inbound Anchor Text seems to be weighted heavily
• Lots of weight seem to be given to keywords in domain names
• It seems fairly similar to the old MSN and Live Search
• It does not value general domain weight/trust as much as Google
• The title of a listing will sometimes feature inbound anchor text instead of the