life in search dot com

Working as an in-house SEO has it’s pro and cons. While it is great to dream stuff up and pass it off to IT or Development for creation and implementation, I often feel that I am missing out on learning how to do things myself. Until recently, my day-to-day SEO tasks were limited to on-page optimization, organic link development, and performing site audits. While working on any specific site, I would produce recommendation reports and pass them off to another department for implementation. So when it comes to performing certain technical tasks, I have limited practical experience.

That was my primary motivation for launching this blog; to force myself to learn how to do new and exciting things outside of my comfort zone. I also have certain reservations about doing anything beyond the basic whitehat stuff while working on somebody else’s sites. Now I have the opportunity to experiment with various shades of grey, without the fear of compromising or tainting sites belonging to somebody else. This is also my first foray into technical webmastery and working on the Wordpress CMS. I must say, I absolutely love working with Wordpress!

I was experimenting with a number of plug-ins before I pushed this site live, and I came across a dirty little plug-in called WP-Autoblog. Once it has been installed, it gives the user the ability to enter a list of RSS feed addresses. It will then go out and fetch all of the posts in the feed, republish them to your blog, and trackback each post in the process. I know, I know…it’s absolutely filthy. But it’s kinda cool, too. Obviously, I would never knowingly appropriate other people’s content. I know how challenging it can be to come up with quality, unique content on a regular basis. I also know how frustrating it can be to have somebody come along and dupe it.

But, my mind works in shady ways at times and I can see this as being very useful for doing trackback spam. So here’s what I have in mind… Like I said, this plug-in actually fetches and posts automatically once the feed address has been input. I would like to use this to post to a specific category that is not accessible to users or the bots. I would then like to be able to generate 301’s on the fly, based on the postings made with this plug-in. It should work something like this - fetch feed and post to /spam/, 301 all requests for /spam/ to $ page. Anyone out there willing to hack this plug-in for me? If I use .htaccess for my redirects, how do I get it to automatically update with each new post? Can I use wildcards? Hopefully, the .htaccess pimp can help! This is probably very simple to do, but I could use some direction. Any takers?

“Propaganda is neutrally defined as a systematic form of purposeful persuasion that attempts to influence the emotions, attitudes, opinions, and actions of specified target audiences for ideological, political or commercial purposes through the controlled transmission of one-sided messages (which may or may not be factual) via mass and direct media channels. A propaganda organization employs propagandists who engage in propagandism—the applied creation and distribution of such forms of persuasion.”
—R.A. Nelson, A Chronology and Glossary of Propaganda in the United States, 1996

I have been daydreaming a lot as of late, and I recently came to wonder whether or not SEO’s are the new propagandists? I spend far too much time studying the serps, and I am frequently amazed at how thin content sites with no decent links can rank for some relatively competitive terms. What amazes me even more, is how similar sites can rank for VERY competitive terms on the strength of aged, yet spammy links. Oh, to be a filthy rotten spammer ten years ago!

I’ve been in search marketing for a couple of years now, and my only regret in this business so far is that I didn’t get in the game sooner. Due to the heavy significance given to “trust” and “authority” in the current Google ranking algorithm, “aged” and “trusted” links are worth many times their weight in gold. You can rank for some serious money terms with a handful of good links, some decent on-page SEO, and a crusty, old domain. Don’t even get me started on parasite SEO and reputation management.

There has been a longstanding relationship between the techniques shared by both propagandists and marketers. In fact, one could go as far to suggest that marketing, advertising, and public relations were all born of the perception management techniques perfected by the war departments of various states…both failed and existing. How do these techniques apply to search marketing? To begin, we have to understand and acknowledge the role that search plays in modern life.

Search has displaced every traditional information source in our society; people no longer look to broadcasters or journalists or libraries for their information. The natural instinct in our modern culture is to search for information using a search engine, and to determine the relevance of that information based upon our own personal preferences and tastes. The user is now in a position to determine the legitimacy of their information sources.

Or are they? With millions of websites on the internet today, all clamoring for a position on the first page of the search engine result pages, does the average user actually look into the legitimacy of the sites providing the information they seek? Does the average user expect that the search engine has provided them with the absolute most relevant search result? Does that same user blindly trust the search engine to determine the legitimacy of a source, instead of digging deeper into those results to determine for themselves the most legitmate? Does a top search result imply that the search engine itself has given a specific webpage it’s stamp of approval with regards to relevance?

For anyone working in this business, the answer would be a resounding “NO”! But for the average user, the less than savvy user, I would argue that they do perceive the #1 position to be held by the most authoritative source as it relates to their query. I touched upon this idea in a previous post. In that instance, the site in the first position for the query “global warming” was owned and operated by the energy lobby. Is the energy lobby really considered, by the search engine, as being the most trusted source for information about global warming? Not likely, but to the average user, it would appear to be the case.

Which brings us full circle to the notion that SEO’s are the new propagandists. By nature, search engine optimization is precisely about using various techniques to propel a website into the top position in the search results, and crafty SEO’s have learned how to play on the weaknesses inherent in the search engine algorithms. Search engines currently employ a citation based model for ranking a particular website or page. The number, authority and trustworthiness of those citations are what help websites rank for particular search terms. On the web, those citations are called links.

With an election looming in America next year, I have to wonder if Google is trying to reign in the potential for SEO’s to play a decisive role in swaying the public vote, with their recent attempt to defeat the tactic known as GoogleBombing. The relationship between search marketing and propaganda is one I intend to explore further, but for now I leave you with the following video on the history of propaganda. And as always, your comments are most welcome!

One of the most achingly beautiful songs I have ever known…

There have been a number of high profile news items this week, each of which touched upon the politics of the web and internet marketing in a unique and interesting way. A handful of prominent bloggers have been discussing the implications of a new law, currently under review in the US Congress, that would force internet opinion makers to “register” with the government in the same manner as a lobbyist is required. WebGuerrilla breaks it down for the masses in a sweet post entitled “Why Most Bloggers are Complete Idiots“. In this case, I have to wonder if those considering the support of this bill are complete idiots? The post was inspired by an insightful thread over at Threadwatch, which referenced an article at CNET and a site called Grassroots Freedom.

While this news in and of itself caused a flurry of keyboard activity, some other seemingly related developments transpired. Allow me to preface this by stating that, as a Canadian, I have very little interest in American politics. Having said this, I will admit that I am both amused and dismayed by the political process and the state of public affairs in the West and beyond. Oh, yes! I am more than just a little bit cynical about the role of the public interest in the current political climate. There is no public interest, my friends. There are only special interests…and this is especially apparent in modern American politics. As the beatnik author William Burroughs once said, “Once the law starts asking questions, there’s no stopping them.”

By now, you must be wondering what politics has to do with social media. Be patient, faithful readers. Aside from the introduction of this incredulous bit of legislation, two other (albeit less) significant incidents occurred during the past couple weeks. First off, Barack Obama announced his intention to run for the democratic nomination…on YouTube.com! Welcome to America 2.0! This is the first time as far as I know, that a politician has, through the use of an interactive, online community announced his/her wish to become the next President of the United States. God Bless America!

Not to be outdone, Hillary Clinton announced (about a week later) that she, too, would really like to be President one day. Make no doubt, I think she could be a serious contender. I suspect that she has a lot of resources and talent behind her. I would like to congratulate her, in fact, for having some hip, cool, web savvy folks giving her campaign advice. Just yesterday, Hillary made her first foray into the world of online campaigning. It appears that she is attempting to engage the community over at Yahoo! Answers. She is appealing to the folks over at Yahoo! Answers for their opinion on possible improvements to the American health care system. Smart. Very smart.

It is very interesting to me to note that two of the main contenders for the democratic nomination have embraced social media as a platform for political campaigning. It is absolutely brilliant, in fact! It makes a world of sense, doesn’t it? It gives them immediate reach to millions of potential voters. It gives them greater mindshare with a smart, passionate, educated demographic. It gives them an opportunity to truly connect with people the way many people today connect with others; using this wonderfully liberating communications tool we call the internet. Now if one of them could somehow convince Oprah to get in the game and become their potential vice-president, I think they would pwn the White House! You heard it here first, kids!

This week, I have been delving into widgets and widget marketing (for lack of a better phrase). You have all seen widgets before; they are the cool little mini-apps that you might find on your favourite websites or blogs. If you have a Mac, you can find them on your own desktop. If you have a PC, you can download Yahoo’s Widget Engine to give them a test drive. You know…Widgets! Everyone seems to be talking about widgets lately, so I thought I would chime in with my .02.

Once upon a time, there was little internet startup called MyBlogLog. They built this neat little widget that you could plug into your blog, which showed photos of all of your friends and acquaintances (who also happen to use the “service”). Now, everyone that comes to your site can see just how popular you are. **sigh**

The story goes a little something like this. MyBlogLog went live in June of 2006. A bunch of people tried it, because it was all, like, new and cool and shit. Bloggers, and most notably SEO bloggers, adopted it. Yahoo saw the SEO community and the internet opinion makers embrace this groovy little app and bought them for 10 million just a couple weeks ago.

This is a relatively trivial tool developed for egomanics by a unknown company that somehow…miracuously…saw their product or service or whatever it is, go viral. They tipped! I was stupified when I heard about the sale. What made this product stand out among the others? Perhaps it is the user data that Yahoo! has placed such a high value on? People have been building cool little web-apps forever. We built one a couple years ago for a fundraising site, but it was intended as a link development tool. We got a few thousand links out of it…mission accomplished…but surely not worth 10 million dollars. One could certainly buy a lot of links for 10 million dollars!

The following is a collection of posts and articles on widgets and widget marketing:

Yahoo Desktop Widgets

Opera Browser Widgets

Firefox Browser Widgets

Widget Box

Widgets Lab

Wid Sets

Wikipedia on Widgets

Widget Toko

Read. Write. Web.

Sexy Widget

Valleywag on Widgets

Todd Malicoat on Widgets

Stephan Juhl on Widgets

Michael Gray on Widgets

Abhilash on Widgets

Micropersuasion

A VC Blog

I don’t know about you, but I am dreaming about the potential of widgets…

I just came across an interesting, new Canadian social media site that you should all check out. Strangely, I discovered this site via Adwords. Now I consider myself an extremely savvy web user, and I am rarely enticed to click on an ad…unless it is a competitor, in which case I am happy to make them pay for my clicks while I learn about their campaigns and landing pages. For the record, I do not endorse clickfraud in any way, shape or form. Use a proxy, kids. The neato thing about this particular click, the one that brought me to their site, was that it was contained in my gmail. Would I be going out on a limb to suggest that Google considers me an “Influencer”? LMAO!

Now, back to the new social media site. It’s called “The Influencers” and it was started up this past summer by a fellow named Sean Moffitt. His company is based out of Toronto, Ontario. He has been working in WOMM (word-of-mouth-marketing) for a few years for some large, Canadian brands and appears to have had some success in this space. According the story in the National Post, he and his business partner took on a number of clients together. Eventually, they parted ways and Sean launched his new site, and from what I can tell, it is a really cool idea.

According to their site:
The Influencers is the first and only Canadian community dedicated to helping start, seed and spread these conversations among the “high priests” of word of mouth - Canada’s opinion leaders. Unlike mass marketing, we focus on starting the “person to person” word of mouth grapevine by:

• Attracting, recruiting and working with a gifted network of Canadians - The Influencers. They are at the epicentre of word of mouth conversations: people who attack life, like to get involved (and early), explore, connect, lead opinions, are curious about new things and act as a potential army of word of mouth evangelists waiting to be inspired by stuff that comes across their radar screens
• We put The Influencers, in touch with new, cool and conversation worthy stuff occupying places within Canada’s most talked about subjects. People forget boring and average stuff - instead, we find the stuff that gets people excited, stuff that solves problems, stuff that’s new (or newsworthy) and stuff that’s relevant to Canadians
• Finally, we provide our Influencers access to exclusive opportunities to experience and collaborate with exciting products, ideas, services, retailers and businesses from the very start; encouraging feedback, helping fan their enthusiasm for spreading honest and positive word of mouth and by doing so, providing chances for reward, fame, influence and charity support.

So I signed up. You should check it out, too. Surely, we are all about gaming social media when the opportunity presents itself. I haven’t a clue how the social element of their service works, but I’ll report back on it in the near future. Honest. As a marketer, I am always looking for new and interesting ways to push ideas and products. Have you noticed any cool, new sites or online services lately? And, Sean, if you happen to read this…I would be happy to assist you with your SEO efforts. You need some links, dude!

Yeah! Yeah Yeah!

I miss you, sweetheart. Let’s talk…

When I was hired at Geosign two years ago, I spent a lot of time studying the work of the masters. If it was not for people like Todd spreading the good word about effective search marketing tactics, we would all still be building reciprocal links. While Todd and I have spoken only briefly, I feel I have heard his voice time and time again. That’s one of the strangest aspects of the blogosphere, in my humble opinion; how you can feel you know somebody without ever having developed a proper friendship.

When I first started in search marketing, I had some difficulty cutting through the noise in the world of SEO. If you have ever spent any time at Webmaster World or any of the other webmaster forums, you would agree that there is a lot of opinion and conjecture floating about the search industry. Finding the “signals of quality” within the internet marketing community can be a challenge, to say the least. I was fortunate, in that I was surrounded and supported in my education by some of the industry’s leading SEO rockstars. One of my first assignments under Sugarrae was to commit myself to reading the blogs that she considered authoritative on a daily basis. Todd’s was one of them. I couldn’t have hope for a better education.

Anyways, that’s enough about me for the time being. Recently, Stuntdubl was featured in an interview with that dude from WebProNews. They’ve been producing some quality videos lately, and I highly recommend that you check them out. It’s a pretty sweet interview, and contains some sound advice for getting the highest ROI out of your anti-social media activities. Neil Patel is in it, too. Listen and learn, kids!

In my previous post, I made mention of a particular set of search results that I found rather disturbing. One of the sites I work with is called the Renewable Planet. It’s a supercool Google mash-up of renewable energy projects that is trying to raise awareness about the critical environmental issues facing the citizens of the world. The editor of site, Katy McEwan, approached me a few months ago with a strange discovery; the site ranking #1 in Google for the query “global warming” appeared to be heavily engaged in a disinformation campaign against global warming activists on behalf of the multi-billion dollar energy industry. The site was called globalwarming dot org (*no links for bad guys*). Check it out for yourself. As of today, the site is no longer ranking; not even in the top 30. And rightfully so!

On some level, I am somewhat disappointed. This was going to be a HUGE story! This was going to be my coming-out story; my first big break as an investigative journalist/blogger! Prior to my discovery, Google announced that it was their intent to make a significant investment in green energy production at their Mountain View “campus”. It was a perfect story! Here, I thought I was in a position to call out Google for discrepancies between their corporate beliefs and their search results! This would have been a Digg-worthy post, make no doubt! But sadly, it wasn’t meant to be. It’s nice to know that certain search engines actually put some effort into providing relevant search results. Which brings me to our friends at MSN…

While I was somewhat let down that this juicy story turned out to be a non-event, there is a positive side to the story. After finding that the site in question was no longer ranking in Google, I decided to check the other engines. Yahoo! was okay; the site was nowhere to be found. MSN, on the other hand, was still ranking this site at #1. My story was still alive! Thank you, Microsoft, for giving me the opportunity to point out your irrelevance in search. For anyone who spends any time studying the serps, this should come as no surprise. MSN has, since it’s inception as a search engine, provided the worst results of the big 3. Whether they are ranking Blogspot splogs using javascript redirects, or simply showing 404 pages in the top 10, MSN seems light years behind the other engines with regards to quality search results. The moral of the story? Don’t always trust the #1 search result to be the most relevant to your query…especially at MSN.