Notes From SES Toronto 2009
Published June 8, 2009 @ 16:52 in SEO: Search Engine Optimization
I mentioned in my interview with Andrew Goodman that I'm attending the Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo Toronto 2009 today and tomorrow. I'm throwing down a quick entry with some thoughts about search engine marketing and e-marketing in general, and then we in Raging Storm have a game to play.
I still think they should rename this show the Google Strategies. Yahoo! Canada is exhibiting, as is Microsoft Bing, but it's all about The Google. Over 80% of all Canadian searches now happen in Google. There was much chatter about Adwords and their Quality Score, and how blended search is changing things up on us emarketers.
Everything changes so quickly, yet a few constants remain true. You need good, keyword-rich site content, you need good site and page architecture, and you need quality external links. As complex as it seems, it really is that simple.
I help people and small-to-midsize companies optimize their site for search, and two things I strongly believe were validated by the speakers today.
- Create lots of good content on a consistent basis and you'll grow your lucrative long tail while naturally building inbound links
- Optimize your site for people who use search engines, don't optimize your site for search engines
One day, when I have some free time, I'm going to finish polishing off marketingboon.com and properly launch it. One day...
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Did You Know About Wolfram|Alpha?
Published June 8, 2009 @ 15:53 in SEO: Search Engine Optimization
I've been attending the Search Engines Strategies conference all day today, and I'll write a bit more about that later. In one discussion about the future of search, a panelist mentioned Wolfram|Alpha.
I'll admit, I hadn't heard of Wolfram|Alpha. I wrote down the name and Googled it at the next opportunity. It's an online service that answers factual queries directly by computing the answer from structured data, rather than providing a list of documents or web pages that might contain the answer as a search engine might. It was only unveiled to the public last month, so I'm not that far behind the times, but I was surprised I hadn't heard of it.
Their goals are lofty:
Wolfram|Alpha aims to bring expert-level knowledge and capabilities to the broadest possible range of people—spanning all professions and education levels. Our goal is to accept completely free-form input, and to serve as a knowledge engine that generates powerful results and presents them with maximum clarity.
Wolfram|Alpha is an ambitious, long-term intellectual endeavor that we intend will deliver increasing capabilities over the years and decades to come. With a world-class team and participation from top outside experts in countless fields, our goal is to create something that will stand as a major milestone of 21st century intellectual achievement.
I just Wolfram|Alpha'd my given name. No wonder I know so many Mikes!
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May 2009 Organic Keywords
Published June 1, 2009 @ 14:36 in SEO: Search Engine Optimization
According to Google Analytics, here are the top ten keywords that brought people to this site in May 2009.
- edgefest 2009 lineup
- toronto mike
- big shiny tunes 2
- wedding songs 2008
- cool wedding songs
- big shiny tunes 2
- humble and fred podcast
- the champ radio
- good wedding songs
- 1050 chum
The Edgefest 2009 entry had been getting a lot of traffic in early May, peaking on May 9th. I did a little digging and discovered there's another Edgefest 2009 by a different Edge 102.1 in Dallas. No foolin'. Here's the poster.
As for our Edgefest, I think I'll go if I land tickets. A nice and sunny Saturday in a field watching Billy Talent, Metric, Alexisonfire, The Stills, Arkells and k-os doesn't sound so bad.
If I gave you a ticket, would you go?
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Bing Search Engine (Formerly MSN, Windows Live and Live Search)
Published June 1, 2009 @ 11:57 in SEO: Search Engine Optimization
Google has been my search engine of choice for most of this decade. Before that, I used Yahoo!. I don't believe I've ever used a Microsoft search engine for non-work purposes.
Microsoft has never got search right. They keep trying, bless their little hearts, and every few years we get a Microsoft search re-branding as they launch their latest Google-killer. This time, it's Bing.
It's live right now at bing.com. Go ahead and pay a visit while curiosity gets the better of you, it's unlikely you'll ever go back. As Google-killers go, this is pretty underwhelming.
If you're one of the 0.35% who used Live.com for searching the web (note: figure completely made up for comedic purposes), I have bad news for you. Bing is the new Live Search, which was the new Windows Live Search, which was the new MSN Search.
I'll let you know next month how many visitors came here from Bing. Personally, I preferred the codename Kumo. Microsoft couldn't even get that right.
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Interview With Andrew Goodman About SEO, PPC, Twitter and Jays
Published May 19, 2009 @ 12:12 in Interviews, SEO: Search Engine Optimization, Twitter
Next month, I'll be attending the Search Engines Strategies 2009 Conference and Expo here in Toronto June 8-10. Now in its 6th year, the event is organized and programmed by Andrew Goodman, the SES Advisory Board and SearchEngineWatch.com, the leading authority on Search Engine Marketing (SEM), including SEO and PPC. That very same Andrew Goodman, founder of Page Zero Media, was nice enough to answer a few questions for me.
Toronto Mike (TM): In my 9-5 job, I spend a small fortune with Google Adwords. What changes would you like to see from Adwords to improve the tool as a lead generator?
Andrew Goodman (AG): Changes? The tool itself has very few glaring shortcomings. It's been a direct marketing tool serving the custom needs of a million customers who collectively spend over $20 billion a year on the channel, with good reason. We'd all love clicks to be cheaper and we'd all love more customers to buy from us, but AdWords features are of course robust, especially the reporting.
As companies increasingly get leads from their "brand" keywords (though some companies debate that), it's important to see full attribution so that mega-high-intent keywords share some of the credit with earlier research keywords and even other digital campaigns. That's gotta be a priority for the AdWords team (crediting assists, etc.).
TM: In the PPC universe, can one live on Google alone? How important are the other other search engines in terms of securing eyeballs?
AG: Easy question. For now, the others have weak market share, and are not very important. We'd all love it if they could improve.
In a general sense it's not healthy to be dependent on any one marketing channel or any one vendor. But in most markets and most verticals, if you're talking strictly about paid search, then 85%+ of your spend ought to be with Google. Anything else flies in the face of measurable search market share and measurable campaign performance.
TM: I love Twitter as a broadcasting system to the masses. I'm trying to see how the corporate world can harness the power of Twitter. How do you see Twitter helping the corporate marketing world?
AG: Yes, for the same reasons that email or RSS can be a great extension of corporate communications if the purveyors of the message or conversation understand the opt-in, permission-based, respectful requirements of the medium.
That's going to be an interesting, ongoing conversation. Mark Evans will dig into this a bit at SES Toronto. Do you want to be following some lame corporate logo (Whole Foods Says X) or a personality (Juanita at Whole Foods says Y)? Not an easy one. I'll leave it to Mark to elaborate.
I've always been amused by Steve Rubel's take on corporate identities in social media. He had this funny line about how cartoon characters shouldn't blog, and no one REALLY desires to follow the Michelin Man. And if Mickey Mouse were to blog, the requirements of authenticity would require the "real" Mickey working at Disneyland to moan: "I'm schvitzing in this suit and these kids are punching me! This sucks!"
TM: How do you stay on top of the highly guarded Google algorithm when it comes to organic rankings? SEO techniques seem to change on a regular basis. How does a web author stay ahead of the curve?
AG: On one hand, you take the wisdom of crowds (even if that means collected expertise of the top SEO people), but then, it's kind of interesting to try to distinguish between uneducated ramblings and mob mentality on forums, and real, principled expertise.
Is it good to be an independent thinker? Sure, to a degree. And then again, siloed thinkers inside IT depts. may ignore the collected expertise of top SEO people. It's important to be plugged in, to understand where we have strong consensus, and where we have reasonable grounds for debate. And where certain assertions are 100% based on superstition.
A good friend, Mike Grehan, author and expert on all things search technology, takes the tack of listening very closely to what search scientists say.
I've always sort of leaned in that direction. You want to understand the principles underlying search, and take into account some combination of the principles search engines want to pursue, and your judgment of what the economics of the situation and the adversarial game nature of the situation will create in the real world. Everyone in this game is in there trying to "read the tea leaves," and I'm not sure why it is that some are better than others at continuing to read them reasonably correctly.
Remember back to the infamous Florida update. That and subsequent Google algorithmic "crackdowns" caught a lot of clever SEO's off guard. They grew accustomed to their warmed-over linking tactics working, etc., and then as Google inevitably got better at evaluating the true worth of certain sites and pages in the consumer's eyes, wham! a bunch of "optimized" sites got hit. But to not see that coming was to assume that short-term tactics would last forever, in the absence of sound, integrated digital marketing strategy. It's not long ago that people thought hidden white-on-white text, text hidden in CSS layers or in comment tags, etc., was a "clever" SEO strategy. Maybe if you're setting up throwaway microsites for poker gaming, but not for the rest of us. Sigh.
Believing what Google says flat-out (that is, they say X, they mean X) is also a pretty good idea. On the paid search side, you can point to a few publishing business models that were earning $20+mm a year for their small owners just buying and selling clicks in 2004-2006. In the more recent period 2008-2009, the same businesses earn 95% less than they did before. If Google explicitly states something is against their rules, and the CEO is telling the national press why that is the case, they mean it.
On the paid search side you can go on Google's Inside AdWords blog and discover that Google actually has a hate-on for certain business models. Needless to say that poses a major challenge if you run one of those kinds of sites: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2007/09/websites-that-may-merit-low-landing.html -- and amazingly, some people are dismissive, and conduct their affairs like that's just an opinion. (Google's opinion is never "just an opinion," unless perhaps in a court of law.) When the "tea leaves" are actually there in black and white and in English, they don't need a whole lot of interpretation. Call it a Google Slap and Tickle or Quality Score Madness, call it what you will, but they're not kidding around.
Back to SEO. While I wouldn't exactly suggest you can learn everything you need to know about SEO from Google's "Webmaster Guidelines" page, it is the case that there are solid principles underlying great SEO... with micro-tactics being only slightly important in the mix. Information architecture and site performance tuning, for example, are part of a solid SEO foundation, but how many companies even know what those are? We have a session on this at SES Toronto anchored by the popular Shari Thurow.
TM: How about a hot PPC and SEO tip for the readers of TorontoMike.com?
AG: User experience issues - if you take care of them - can indirectly lead to better search rankings and PPC efficiency. On the SEO side, clean up code weight and make pages load faster and you may see a nice improvement in rankings. On the paid search side, similar basic fixes can lead to higher conversion rates.
That's the thing that companies don't want you to tell them: the magic isn't magic, and there's real navigation, marketing, and testing that goes on. You don't fire all your SEO effort into a silo called metatags (very little or none of it, arguably) or keyword "stuffing", and you don't get 100% success with PPC by building long keyword tests or some other one-dimensional philosophy. They both require a full effort, involving many moving parts.
TM: You're a Toronto guy. Are the Blue Jays for real this season?
AG: Dude: they are totally for real. I've been to the ballpark three times already and I expect to be back to quite a few more before season's end. We can talk about individual player performances and the amazing patchwork pitching staff, of course... but what strikes me as giving them that slight edge is Cito's and the coaching staff's leadership. Showing confidence in players and giving them philosophies to work with pays off, but so does firm control, being pretty ruthless with personnel at times. You'll notice they haven't given Brandon League many innings because he hurts the team with his wildness even though he can throw 100mph. Overrated BJ Ryan gets sent down to AA with an "injury" but the real reason is: he's sucking canal water and there are no special rules for high paid busts. Gotta love Cito. Go Jays!
I'd like to see Alex Rios become more disciplined at the plate. Currently, he is shining mostly on pure talent. Imagine if he combined that with focus and discipline.
Thanks, Mike, for the opportunity to share my thoughts.
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SES Toronto
Published April 17, 2009 @ 19:02 in SEO: Search Engine Optimization
I have one of those jobs that didn't exist when I was in high school. I'm an eMarketing Manager. You take search marketing expertise, add a dose of HTML / CSS / PHP / Photoshop / Movable Type geekery, throw in mad webmaster skills and polish it all off with that shiny U of T English Major Honours B.A. that proves you can write your way out of any jam.
That first part, the search marketing part, is constantly changing. I use this very site to keep my good eye on Google's algorithm ensuring I don't miss an SEO beat, and I'm always learning more about PPC and the latest social media tools, like Digg, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. That's why I always try to make it to SES Toronto.
This year it's June 8-10 and I'm getting an opportunity to do do a Q&A with the speaker of my choice. I'll blog about the show and share some of the tips, tactics and strategies here.
Related entries:
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