SEO Newsletter | Volume 58 | August 15, 2008

BruceClay.com.au

In this issue (printable version):

FEATURE:
The Introvert's Guide to Conference Networking

BACK TO BASICS:
The Big Three Webmaster Tools Roundup

THE USUAL: Coverage of this month's
hot topics, shuffles, sound bytes, shindigs, attaboys
and word on the wire.

FEATURE: The Introvert's Guide to Conference Networking

Conference networking is one of the most compelling reasons for professionals to attend events in their niche. However, for introverts, the only difference between conferences and your horrifying experience as a 13-year-old in P.E. is that you wasted a considerable amount of money to feel tortured and uncomfortable.

Allowing yourself to fall into the Introvert Trap during conference time will hurt not only your personal brand, but the brand of your company as well. It's time to take back control. When it's conference time, introverts must put on their game faces and learn the tricks to making connections with ease.

BACK TO BASICS: The Big Three Webmaster Tools Roundup

Search engine optimisation professionals are part artist, part scientist. An artist’s inventiveness comes into play when finessing modifications and creatively addressing site visibility. The scientist’s skill is required to perform tests, analyze stats and manage technical aspects. Like any scientist, for an SEO to do her job effectively, she needs to be armed with a powerful arsenal of tools. Fortunately for SEOs, there are a number of tools at their disposal, including those provided by the three major search engines.

This overview of the webmaster tools offered by Google, Yahoo and Live Search describes the diagnostic, statistic gathering and submission tools available to webmasters and SEOs who sign up for accounts and verify their site control. It’s worth noting that all three sets of tools allow the data to be downloaded into spreadsheet applications.

Hot Topics
The Battle for Authenticity in Social Media

Consumers turn to social media for information about the products and brands they're interested in. It allows for powerful word of mouth and viral success that marketers couldn't get otherwise. As a result, search marketers have become very aggressive with their efforts to leverage social media sites to help their clients get links and to increase their search engine rankings. Sometimes they end up throwing ethics to the wind in the process.

Proving You Are Who You Say You Are

The issue of fake avatars in social media has been front and center since June's Search Marketing Expo Advanced when using fake avatars to push your brand was discussed during the controversial Give It Up session. Over the past few weeks, it's been brought back into the spotlight with Michael Gray recently arguing that fake avatars are no different than a politician setting up a Twitter account.

Lisa Barone from Bruce Clay was quick to disagree in her post entitled The Use of Fake Avatars In Social Media. Lisa argued that the difference between a manufactured social media profile and a brand ambassador is that brand ambassadors provide a lot of value to a social community. They give members someone to interact with, reach out to, and support. Fake avatars don't. That sentiment was echoed in Li Evan's post I'm a Social Media Goody 2 Shoes... And Proud Of It!

Being Genuine, To Yourself and Your Company

Even when you're talking to a real person and not a fake avatar, it can be difficult to maintain authentic relationships online. Corporate bloggers feel the pressure to maintain authentic blogging and represent their brands while not losing themselves. Social media enthusiasts struggle to build Social Media Relationships Without a Face and put the "social" back in online interactions. And we're all struggling to remind ourselves that just because we can't see the people we're interacting with online, doesn't mean we shouldn't be respectful of their feelings.

That sentiment was also expressed by Donna Fontenot when commenting on the viciousness that had found its way into the SEO blogosphere and social media outlets this summer. Donna vowed to no longer take part and urged other search marketers to do the same.

Focusing on the Connections That Matter

The social sites themselves are now joining the fight to promote authentic social relationships, with both Twitter and Pownce recently implementing limits for how many people users can follow.

It's clear there's a battle in social media right now as aggressive marketers attempt to forge as many relationships as possible to get the most reward. But like with all things, it's often quality and not quantity that matter. Social media is about community and participation, the more time spent communicating and providing value to other social media members, the more your knowledge and personal social credibility increase. But that participation has to be real. Fake avatars aren't going to cut it.

Programming Note: The SEO Newsletter continues its monthly publishing schedule and will be published on or near the 15th of each month. By adopting the monthly publishing date, it will allow us to maintain the integrity and authority of the newsletter, while accommodating heavier travel schedules and increasing internal demands. You'll still receive the same great SEO news and educational articles, just in a thicker, more comprehensive format.

Shuffles

Internally, Bruce Clay, Inc. welcomed search expert Scott Polk to its team as a Senior SEO Analyst.

Bill Baker was named Chief Technology Officer of social media monitoring company Visible Technologies, Mozilla's VP of Engineering Mike Schroepfer joined Facebook, Twitter architect Blaine Cook joined Yahoo as a rails developer, Michael Adair left Google to join Glam Media, and Marshall Kirkpatrick took a position as VP Content Developer for ReadWriteWeb.

In a surprise move, Kevin Johnson left Microsoft. Richard Kimber left Google to join Friendster, Yahoo's Adam Hyder left to join Jobvite, Chad Dickerson left Yahoo for Etsy and Ryan Block stepped down from Engadget.

In corporate mergers, launches and acquisitions:

Google paid $140 million for Russian contextual ad platform Begun.
Microsoft released BrowseRank, began testing the self-service ContentAds, and launched an impressive update to its Microsoft Live Search Webmaster Center.
AOL launched its new photo gallery Pixcetera, as well as new versions of social news site Propeller and AOL Video.
The IAC began monetizing Bloglines.
Respected industry email list LED Digest went from daily to weekly.
Apple finally joined the blogosphere with its "news" page MobileMeStatus.
PodTech was bought for a mere $500,000.
LinkedIn and the New York Times announced a content partnership.

Sound Bytes

If you like what you read in the SEO Newsletter, there's more where that came from. Check out SEM Synergy every Wednesday at 3:00 pm Eastern and Noon Pacific on WebmasterRadio.fm. Bruce Clay and the other hosts discuss industry news, SEO tactics and marketing trends, while expert guests share their insights on methods, best practices and upcoming events. Check out the show schedule below for a look at recent shows and upcoming topics.

August 6 (Listen now)	News	Scott Polk	Different Types of Training
August 13 (Listen now)	Black Hat, White Hat	Kevin Ryan	SES San Jose Preview
August 20 Live from SES!	Chris Winfield	Cindy Krum	David Snyder
August 27	SES San Jose Recap	Guest TBA	Bot Herding

Got something to say? Contact the SEM Synergy team and share your thoughts, comments and questions. You might even hear your question answered on the show.

Shindigs

If you're in the San Francisco area, WordCamp will take place this weekend and boasts an impressive list of speakers.

Search Engine Strategies San Jose is getting ready to take over the city on August 18-22. Bruce will be speaking on the Black Hat, White Hat: Playing Dirty with SEO panel. You can also find Bruce Clay Writers Lisa Barone, Susan Esparza and Virginia Nussey on hand to provide full liveblogging coverage and tune into a live-from-the-floor edition of SEM Synergy.

If you are going to SES San Jose, you'll want to make room for the IMNY Charity Party being held on Monday, August 18. All proceeds will benefit the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and The Children's Hospital of Denver. Also happening during SES San Jose is the 2008 Google Dance and the Bruce Clay-sponsored Search Bash. You can find the full list of official SES San Jose events in the Search Engine Watch forums.

Next month, Search Camp Philly will debut on September 6-7, BlogWorldExpo lands in the Las Vegas Convention Center on September 19-21 and The PPC Summit will be held in Los Angeles on September 25-26.

Hitting in October will be SMX East in New York City on October 6-8 and ScarySEO in Florida on October 24-25.

If you're going to SMX East, be sure to stick around for SEOToolSet training on the East Coast happening on October 9-10. Registration is open for both SMX and Bruce Clay's East Coast SMX training on the SMX Web site.

Programming Note: Bruce Clay's UK SEO training class previously scheduled for 9-11 September has been canceled. Details for a 2009 training date are currently being worked out. Watch the blog and the SEO Newsletter for updates.

Attaboys

Google calmed search marketers' fears by selling off Performics, the search division of DoubleClick, to Publicis Groupe this month. We also saw Google announce the ten grand prize winners for the first ever Google Highly Open Participation Contest. Congrats to everyone involved.

After months of public battles, Yahoo and Icahn finally resolved their dispute, which also gave Icahn a seat on the current Yahoo board.

Yahoo opened up the Yahoo Accessibility Lab to help Yahoo employees understand what it's like to surf the Web as a disabled Web surfer.

TechCrunch revealed that Facebook has become both the fastest growing and largest social network in the world.

Finally congrats to search blogger Jordan McCollum who welcomed new baby Rebecca into her family, as well as to the High Rankings Forum and the Cre8asite Forums which turned five and six, respectively.

Word on the Wire

Peter Kafka shares the rumor that more cuts are on the way from Yahoo, while there were lots of rumors that Time Warner was getting ready to split AOL and sell it within a few weeks and that Google was in final negotiations to buy Digg.

eWeek's Eric Jackson predicted that Microsoft will make another Yahoo acquisition offer next year once Yahoo cuts more of its staff.

A thread broke out on WebmasterWorld suggesting that Google is getting ready to start indexing audio files as text, while another asked if Ask.com had stopped crawling the Web.

If you have any questions or comments on any of the articles above or if you would like to suggest topics for future articles, please contact us at Bruce Clay Australia

FEATURE: The Introvert's Guide to Conference Networking

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by Lisa Barone, August 15, 2008

You shell out $1,500 to attend your industry’s premier conference, go through the hassle of coordinating time off work and accept that you will be paying out the nose in travel, eating and lodging expenses. Then, when you get there, you don’t speak to anyone in the sessions and spend the afterhours hidden away in your hotel room flipping through the same nine television channels. For three days, you avoid the Birds of a Feather lunches, hold up the walls during social functions and effectively meet no one.

Allowing yourself to fall into the Introvert Trap during conference time will hurt not only your personal brand, but the brand of your company as well. It’s time to take back control. When its conference time, introverts must put on their game faces and learn the tricks to making connections with ease.

Trick 1 – Show up Prepared: One of the most effective ways to calm pre-show jitters is to show up prepared. You’ll only have a few days to meet everyone you want to meet and attend all the events you want to attend. Optimise your schedule by taking a look at the conference agenda a few days prior to the show and marking down everything you want to hit. Take care to check who’s speaking on which sessions and which will be crawling with major industry reps. Once you’re armed with all of this, create a list of everything you want to do and everyone you want to meet while you’re in town. This will help keep you on track in the midst of all the craziness and serve as motivation to get everything on your list covered. It may sound a bit corny, but keeping a conference score card will go a long way in making sure you leave that conference feeling like you’ve accomplished something.

If there are certain people you want to meet, don’t just stalk their schedules; research them so you have something to bring to the table. If you want to meet Michael Gray of Wolf-Howl.com, know that the button to push is Google’s over-dominance on the Web. If you want to meet Bruce Clay, know that he’s passionate about white hat and ethical search engine optimisation. Striking up a conversation is often as easy as knowing what to talk about.

Trick 2 – Start Branding Yourself Before You Get There: It’s a lot easier to introduce yourself face-to-face when you have an Internet brand to lean on. A few weeks before the show start reaching out on the social networks and let people know you’ll be there. Twitter it. Plurk it. Join that conference’s Event page on Facebook. If there is no official Event page on Facebook, create one. Make plans to meet up with people before you’re even in town. Start researching who the best connections in your industry are. Who will be able to help you promote your company and your goals the most? These are the folks you’ll want to score face time with.

Use this time to start talking publicly about the projects you’re working on and get some buzz going. If you’re about to release a new blogging widget, plan the release date around the conference. Land in town with something to say.

Trick 3 -- Attach Yourself to an Extrovert: As crazy as it may seem to introverts like us, there are actually people who enjoy being the center of attention. Armed with this knowledge, I’ve found that one of the best ways to network and work a room is to attach yourself to an extrovert. Extroverts love meeting new people and will jump at the chance to walk you around and introduce you to everyone they know. It’s perfect for introverts because they get to meet everyone in the room without ever having to do the actual introduction. And if you’ve already branded yourself beforehand, folks will be excited to meet you and immediately bring you into conversation.

I’ll share a secret with you – I applied the extrovert technique back in 2006 at Search Engine Strategies Chicago. It was one of my first conferences and my first attempt at networking in the search engine optimisation industry. One of the first people I met was extrovert Todd Malicoat. Knowing that I’m quite shy in person, I quickly attached myself to him and asked him to introduce me to people. He graciously obliged and that night introduced me to everyone in the room. I was able to ride his coattails all night and share smiles with everyone I had read and heard about online but didn’t have the courage to approach myself. It was a networking success.

Beware when using the buddy system, though. Sticking with an extrovert is different than simply huddling in a corner with another nervous soul. Unless you have been surgically attached to the friend that dared come with you, you do not have to stand by their side the entire night. In fact, you shouldn’t. Doing so is a great way to ensure that you only speak to one another or those you both know, without ever meeting anyone new. As comforting and warm and fuzzy as it feels, you want to avoid this at all costs.

Trick 4 -- Have A Gimmick: There’s a reason the search engine optimisation community has seen hat bait, drink bait, a klog and yellow shoes paraded around the conference grounds. Having a gimmick makes it easier for you to approach people and harder for them to ignore you.

Think about it: If you were attending a networking event and a smiling face approached you and asked you to pose for a photo holding a potato, you’d do it, right? Of course, you would. Why? Because it takes more effort to decline the offer than to say yes and grab that potato. And once you agree, you’ve opened up the door for that person to hold a conversation with you and explain what they’re doing. It also ensures that you’ll remember their name and face the next day when you spot them walking around the conference hall. That’s the power of having a gimmick.

Be careful when applying the gimmick technique. Everyone has different tolerance levels and there’s a fine line between being funny and being annoying. Opt for something quirky and unobtrusive like a T-shirt with a provocative saying or something that promotes a cause that benefits someone other than yourself.

Trick 5 -- Don’t Use a Gimmick: As effective as the gimmicks above can be, people grow tired of them and see them as fake. Often your best bet is to be genuine and yourself. Be confident knowing that you don’t need to force people into silly hats to get them to pay attention to you. Sometimes a firm hand shake and a warm smile over introductions is all you need to forge a real connection with someone. From there it’s all about good social graces and lots of friendly smiles.

The worst thing you can do is leave a conference with regret, kicking yourself for missing out on a chance to chat with Matt Cutts or Kevin Ryan one on one. Meeting people and sharing work and life war stories is too valuable to pass up simply because you’re an introvert. When you meet someone at a conference, you’ve met them because you both have similar interests and are involved in the same industry. Use that as your common ground to spark up a conversation. When it comes to conference networking, there’s no room for shyness. Be confident and break out. Your personal brand will thank you.

[Next week is the big Search Engine Strategies show in San Jose. If you’re getting ready to attend, keep an eye out for members of the Bruce Clay team. We’d be proud to be your extrovert!]

BACK TO BASICS: The Big Three Webmaster Tools Roundup

By Virginia Nussey, August 15, 2008

This overview of the webmaster tools offered by Google, Yahoo and Live Search describes the diagnostic, statistic gathering and submission tools available to webmasters and SEOs who sign up for accounts and verify their site control. It’s worth noting that all three sets of tools allow the data to be downloaded into spreadsheet applications.

Overview and Diagnostic Tools

These tools report when the page was last crawled and any Web crawl errors encountered by the search engine spider. As webmasters and SEOs will want the crawling of a site to be as comprehensive as possible, awareness about crawl errors is key to addressing and remedying any issues that may cause incomplete crawling.

Google Webmaster Tools

After you sign in and select your site in the dashboard, you will be brought to the Overview page. Here you’ll see listed the date of the last home page crawl, the index status of the site and the number of Web crawl errors. Crawl error information is broken down as follows:

Errors for URLs in Sitemaps
HTTP errors
Pages not found
URLs not followed
URLs restricted by robots.txt
URLs timed out
Unreachable URLs

Related to crawl statistics, a robots.txt file will instruct spiders not to crawl or index certain pages. The Analyze robots.txt tool can be reached through the “Tools” tab and can help webmasters ensure they are not blocking pages that they do want crawled and indexed. Under the “Tools” tab you can also set the crawl rate, remove URLs from the index and set your preferred domain (i.e., indicate a preference for the www version over the non-www version of the site).

Yahoo! Site Explorer

As with Google, sign in and click “Explore” next to the site you want to research. This will bring you to what will be referred to as the site’s main Explore page for the remainder of this article. This page provides the number of pages on the site that have been indexed, the number of backlinks (or inlinks) to the site and any sub-domains of the site. All indexed pages are listed, and, when hovered over, options to see more details are available, such as the date the page was last crawled.

Live Search Webmaster Tools

Again you will need to sign in and choose your site from the Site List page. You will arrive at the Summary page that lists the date the home page was last crawled, the number of pages indexed, a domain score, any pages blocked by robots.txt and the last crawl date of the top five pages. Clicking on the “Crawl Issues” tab will bring you to the following reports, which can be additionally filtered by sub-domain or sub-folder:

Pages not found
URLs restricted by robots.txt
Long dynamic URL
Unsupported content-type

Similar to Google, Live Search Webmaster Tools includes a robots.txt validator that reports any incompatibility issues with the file and checks which pages are being blocked for crawling by MSNBot. The validator can be reached through the left-hand navigation on the main tools page of Live Search Webmaster Center.

Site Performance, Link and Statistic Gathering Tools

Top search queries, crawl stats, index stats and internal and external links are provided by the tools that fall under this category.

Google Webmaster Tools

Clicking on the “Statistics” tab will bring you to an overview page, from which you can choose to see reports on:

Top search queries: Results are based on the last week. The top 20 search queries for which your site appeared and the top 20 queries that users clicked on to reach your site are listed along with the ranking of the page as it was listed in the search results.
What Googlebot sees: Available statistics in this category include the common words and phrases in the site’s content and external anchor text to your site.
Crawl stats: This category provides the Googlebot activity on your site for the past 90 days. You will be informed of the number of pages crawled per day, the PageRank of your pages and the page with the highest PageRank.
Index stats: This tool will provide you with information similar to what you can find using Google Advanced Search. Examples of results for the site:, link:, cache:, info:, and related: operators are provided.
Subscriber stats: Sites that publish feeds will be provided with the number of users subscribed to the feed using iGoogle, Google Reader and Orkut.

By clicking on the “Links” tab, you will see an overview of the link statistics available: pages with external links, pages with internal links, and pages that may be used as Sitelinks in Google results.

Yahoo! Site Explorer

After selecting “Explore” next to your site URL on the My Sites page, click “Inlinks” for a list of the pages linking to your site. Along with offering a comprehensive list of inlinks from all pages on the Web, links from within the domain or a sub-domain can be filtered out of the results. Inlinks can also be limited to a single URL or provided for the whole site. By filtering out the backlinks from your own domain you can view inbound links coming from external sources.

Unique to the three sets of tools is Yahoo Site Explorer’s ability to view the backlinks going to URLs other than your own. While information on the inlink data of your own site may prove useful, the ability to gather parallel information for competitors is equally valuable.

Live Search Webmaster Tools

Reports on backlinks, outbound links and keyword research can all be collected with Live Search’s set of tools. After selecting the “Backlinks” tab, all Web pages linking to your site will be listed. Backlink results can be filtered to include or exclude links from top-level domains, sub-domains or sub-folders. Clicking on the “Outbound Links” tab serves up a similar list of the pages your site links to, which can again be filtered to include or exclude links from pages of a specific TLD, sub-domain or sub-folder.

Finally, analyze the performance of your site for certain keywords by clicking on the “Keywords” tab. From here, enter a keyword into the search field to see what pages of your site Live Search considered most relevant for queries using that keyword.

Submission Tools

By way of Sitemap, site feed and Web page submission, the major search engines help webmasters and SEOs share information about their site for the potential of more complete indexing.

Google Webmaster Tools

From the “Sitemaps” tab you can submit your XML Sitemap feed to Google. As mentioned earlier, go to the “Tools” tab to submit your preferred domain or remove URLs from the index.

Yahoo! Site Explorer

Click on “Submit Webpage or Site Feed” from the site’s main Explore page to submit the URL of a Web site, Web page or site feed that you would like to be crawled by Yahoo!

Live Search Webmaster Tools

Under the “Sitemaps” tab, submit your XML Sitemap feed to Live Search. The search engine also offers a ping service to notify MSNBot of changes to an existing Sitemap or the addition of a new one; simply enter http://webmaster.live.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?siteMap=[your sitemap web address] in your browser.

Conclusion

The various webmaster tools provided by the three major search engines show how the search engine views the site, aid in diagnosing problems and allow webmasters to share info in an effort to support more complete indexing of a site. Just as search gives users a tool to conduct research, gather information and purchase products and services, the search engines offer the Web’s content providers, webmasters and SEOs the tools necessary to efficiently direct the power of search.