Just Back From Search Engine Strategies Conference

Change always seems to come along just when you’re getting comfortable with the way things used to be. So it was that a couple of weeks ago Google announced universal search.

Hey folks, I just got back from a Search Engine Strategies conference which featured participants from Google, Yahoo and Msn. The most entertaining presenter by far was a chap from the UK, Darran Snachford, representing MSN. But young Adam Lasnik of Goolge was also good and quietly authoritative. Anyway, there are a few good tidbits for you in today’s post.

Here’s an interesting tidbit from the conference. Only Google matters? Shame on you? We all lament the power of Google (70% market share) at times but if you want to make more sales you’d best attend to your status at Msn and Yahoo. It turns out that while most people search using Google, buyers often make their purchases on Yahoo and Msn. Why? Well, there may be several reasons but Google dominates search largely through the week and during office hours with a lot of folks doing searches at work. But when potential buyers go home in the evenings or on the weekends, many are using Yahoo or Msn perhaps because they use Yahoo or Msn for their mail programs. Google never really pushed mail or chat options like the other two engines. So, the lesson, don’t ignore your Yahoo and Msn rankings. And, apparently, visitors to your site from Msn will spend more time on your site than if they arrive from other engines. Just because Google gets about 70% of the internet traffic doesn’t make them the only important engine.

Well, let’s get back to Google’s launch of universal search. It’s Google’s new architecture for blending traditional web results (i.e. web sites) with content from images, maps, books, videos, and news. This is all just in the beginning stages but to see its impact do a search for ‘darth vadar’. You’ll see the usual web results but just above that you’ll see Image Results and above that a link for Video. If you do the same search for Steve Jobs you’ll see an additional News option. If you then decide you need a nice Santa Fe Vacation your search will find the usual web results along with Google Local (which has been around for a while) and Google Maps. It’s nice to see one of our program partners (http://www.casitas.net) listed as #1 in the Google Local listing. Well, all of this will change the face of search engine optimization as you will now be advised to optimize not only your web site text but your images, video (maybe you should get one), news/blog releases and try to exploit your geographic location a bit more by joining Google Local (available to Google members). You should all be Google members.

The other thing you might consider doing is jumping on the social media bandwagon. Why do I feel I’m getting too old for this stuff. I think I kinda hoped all this stuff would just go away like a faded fad. Actually, most ‘new’ things have been around for a while. I think the first social media web site I was ever invited to join was Linkedin.com and that was years ago. A much more cutting edge one I'm just checking out now is Fast Pitch Networking. Blogs are a form of social media and I started mine in 2005 though this is my first new post since August of that year. I got lazy as the Blogger format didn't suit my Apple Mac but now it's dead easy. Though I still kinda just want it all to go away. Well, it hasn't gone away and if you haven’t heard of sites like http://www.digg.com or DEL.ICIO.US you might want to check them out as they are hot, hot, hot.

For some folks these sites might just be cool social networks but in the world of SEO they are potentially powerful ways to acquire links and traffic. You could describe it all as a way of increasing your link popularity by word of mouth. I first heard about Digg from one of our program partners, David Williams, a few months ago (he'll do a blog set-up for you starting from $395 and I know him to be 100% professional). Anyway, when he told me about Digg he asked me to sign up, read his article and vote for it. So, that's the idea. Write idea an article, post it on your site (or blog), have someone recommend it by submitting a link to it for you at Digg, ask your friends to vote for it which in turn increases the article's rankings on Digg. That will help people see it and then to visit the link where the article is published (on your site or blog) and maybe they will even link to it in articles themselves or posts themselves.

I'm going to do this for the release of my new SEO book so I will show you how it works in another newsletter maybe in a week or so. Don't worry about getting this all at once. But let me run it by you one more time as apparently Digg has been a good factor in boosting PR.

What you need is an article and a place to publish it (either your web site, a blog, or someone else's web site that has already posted something you've written). Then you get someone to (or maybe discreetly yourself) post a link to it in a Digg posting making some personal comment as to why they found it interesting. You then tell your friends to log in, read that comment and vote for the article. That will tend to heighten its visibility and bring it to the attention of other Digg members and you are off to the races. Remember, that a lot of this is self-serving. Some of the articles that people write are just comments on some other articles they've recently read. But in serving their own purposes they may end up linking to you and help you with your one way link building.

If any of you are interested in forming a group to exploit social media I don’t mind organizing it. We have around 600 partner web sites in the links program and if I collect all the email addresses from those of you interested in joining digg.com then any time you get something listed there I can forward your notice to the group asking them to go and vote for you. Of course, this all presumes that you have time to write an article or can pay someone to do it.

To give you a feeling for social media type sites, here are a couple more:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/
http://www.boingboing.net

And, if you're not aware of the blog search engine check out Technorati!

I'd like to end today's newsletter with an illustration about the links program. More and more I'm getting testimonials from long term clients that the program is helping. The reality is that there are a number of factors involved with success and our program plays a role in that but other factors need to be in play as well (e.g. optimization, crawler-friendly website, etc.) But I want to give you an example from the links program. Go to Google and type this into the search box: link:www.hiddenconcepts.com

You will see that the above program partner is PR4. You will see a partial display of credited links (Google only provides a sampling). What you will notice is that every one of those links (except for one) are from our program. Now, that would not be surprising if our links program was the only one the client participates in, but do the same search at Yahoo and you will see that he has been credited with 3,091 links at Yahoo. He's been busy! No more than maybe 170 of those could be from us. Yet in the links Google displays, only one non-program links displays, the rest being ours. Of course, quantity doesn't really impress Yahoo either and Yahoo will give very little weight to those 3000 links but this does give at least some sense that our program works on Google in a way that few do. Oh, FYI MSN no longer displays credited back-links.

Look for another newsletter in about a week as I play with digg.com around the release of the new ebook.

CHEERS,
KEN