Some time ago Google shifted from helping and enabling, to hindering, interrupting, and exploiting. The shift was quick, on a real-world time scale, but slow in search marketer hindsight. One could *almost* track the activity by plotting a timeline of Matt Cutts’ public personality changes. Matt’s public profile went from helpful, specific, and sincere to somewhat apologetic-but-still-trying-hard-to-help to a sort of frustrated-hopeful, before going into the basically-misleading mode we griped about for years, before he checked himself out on “sabattical” where he’s been for years now.

There is also that “the rise of Larry Page” thing, the “who the hell is in charge over there” thing, and the “wow is there anyone here who didn’t used to work for Microsoft?”  thing.

But perhaps most telling of all, were 1. the switch to manipulating webmasters (via the no-accountability Google Help Forums and the “trust me I’m honest” John Mueller persona), and 2. the shutting down of Google Reader.

I think the rise of the Google Ventures conflict of Interest and BigMoney lobbying are separate issues, driven by need and ancillary opportunism. You can’t have control and not pay the policy-makers, and you can’t bank THAT much cash and not invest in what you know.

They Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Reader

Google Reader (and the associated tech Google had bought up to control, such as SuperFeeder and related) was technology that web consumers used to stay connected to specifically sourced content. It was an outstanding curation tool, which of course bypasses search. I don’t think it was so much a threat to search, though… it’s pretty clear it wasn’t very widely used in Internet demographic terms. But it represented an alternative to search, and it enabled influencers to operate independent of Google Search.

The shift from helpful to hindering involves specific strategic steps calculated to stop helping and start hindering… such as shutting down curation tools and closing down tech that had been advancing the web towards better curated connections between sources (authers) and consumers (the market).

Of course there doesn’t need to be a deliberate decision to shut something like that down. Like a “donut hole lie”, where you effectively lie by leaving OUT some important part of a story, a Google manager can simply incentivize everything except a specific project, in order to kill it.

Didn’t Matter to Me at the Time

I didn’t use Google Reader. I didn’t really use any feed reader… but I have always struggled with curation, bookmarking, and keeping connected to specific sources I prefer and trust. And of course I utilized feed reader technologies in my SEO work, as much as it was helpful for advanced, technical SEO, or for enhancing reach.

But now, years after Reader was shut down and the complaining dwindled, I have had enough time to watch the alternatives not replace Google Reader.

I’ve been able to see Internet Infosumers lose focus, become less productive, demand less quality from Google Search, and change their habits to lower quality, less productive use of the web. I’m seeing them more accepting of crap answers, half-baked information pages, and unverifiable or unsupported marketing claims. Less demand for Trust Badges that used to help testify to veracity. More acceptance of the idea that “trusting what some web page said is ok, because the responsibility lies with them not me”, among the general population (in America).

Meanwhile, as in the days of Google Reader and the RSS feedreaders before it), the “smart people” have moved off the mainstream web for a larger portion of their research, to find the trustworthy content and authority. The used to use Readers to help them manage (while also using search), and now they use OtherThings to help them manage, supplementing search.

So Where is the Damage?

The mainstream is now more ignorant, less able to get informed, and more susceptible to untrustworthy or non-worthy-of-authority published content than ever before, after consulting Google Search, which has become for many “the Internet”.

Web businesses are now profiting by contributing to the very “cesspool” that earlier Google warned about… before it shifted from helper to exploiter. Google apparently decide to get into the cesspool monitization business instead f the Amazing World Wide Web of Organized Information. Of course good business practices and supply chain management would then dictate efforts to encourage more and bigger cesspools.

Was Eric Schmidt the Nice Guy?

Perhaps the most amazing aspect of this for me, is that it actually seems like Eric Schmidt, the  guy we all knew in our hearts was capable of the nastiest explotation in the world should he desire to execute in that fashion… in a Carl Rove-like way, or perhaps a Koch Brothers or Charles Manson way, may actually have done a fine job controlling his natural insticts and “being nice” to all of us while running Google.

Can you imagine?

Of Course Not

We have to wait for the final Chapters to know what is really happening behind the scenes, but it’s pretty obvious that power brokers don’t need or want an organized, democratic World Wide Web. They need a cesspool they can manipulate, and at the peak of Helpful Google, Google Search represented the perfect choke point for content curation at scale.

And content curation at scale, by and for the power brokers, is exactly what Eric Schmidt gave them.

Google is doing a good job managing SEO. It has positioned itself such that it has so much cash and so much control, that it can manipulate the search experience to counter SEO efforts, even while hurting users and in many cases wrecking the search quality,  without much risk to it’s own success.

And now we search industry professionals find ourselves dealing with a new problem: ourselves. We’ve gotten to the point where crappy, irresponsible SEO is hurting everyone. I didn’t say bothering everyone. I said hurting everyone. Hurting other SEOs, hurting marketing partners, and hurting client businesses and other players in the Internet ecosystem.

The solution is not more sloppy, deceptive, or ignorant SEO industry organizing. The solution is not pretending not to be an SEO by re-branding as Content Marketing or UnBound or whatever. And the solution is not limiting your service provision to SEO “audits” as if you were immune from the problems.

The Solution I See

The solution I think will work has two parts: 1. Let the failed & fake SEOs go away and become realtors or whatever else they want to pursue next, and 2. Stop tolerating the crap some of the remaining SEO firms put into the public eye (especially the scammers).

Is it Time to Quit SEO?

The first part is easy. Even the laziest SEOs can simply not do anything and let the losers walk. They came for the easy money and fast credibility. Now they will leave, and do the same somewhere else.

Can the Survivors Make It?

The second part might be too hard, though, because it requires some courage and some work, two resources I believe the SEO industry media and leadership lacks. And also because there are still a lot of crappy SEOs who are in denial about their ability to deliver SEO results for their projects. They are likely to hold on, band together, and pretend they are still awesome, that their SEO still works, and that the world is a happy place filled with rainbows and ponies that never age.

What is “Grey”?

It’s also not “easy” to agree on what is a scam. There seems to be a real failure on the part of many search marketing practitioners, when it comes to recognizing the color grey. Grey is not a shade of black. But it is also not a shade of white. And there is not one “grey”. In a monochrome world, such as we have with ONE SEARCH ENGINE, there is a continuum of shading from pure white to deep black. It is a FACT that the line of allowable tactics actually moves, both with topic and time.

Grey is Everything

The grey issue is super important. Perhaps a third component of a clean-up of the SEO industry should be a sort of color-blindness test, to measure whether or not we can recognize “grey” and demonstrate suitable skills to manage the shifting shade bar that is the continuum of SEO between white and black. Many of today’s self-proclaimed SEOs would fail that test, in my opinion.

I can just imagine certain players jumping in to suggest that an “ethics program” is the solution for that…. LAUGH OUT LOUD. We don’t need a badge program hidden under an “ethics” label.

If You’re Winning, You Have What It Takes

The solid truth is much simpler than that: if you are successful as an SEO, you’ve proven your ability to judge the gray, and adapt as the borders of greyishness shift with Google’s whim. If you cannot succeed in today’s SEO climate, you should move on, or “go back to school” which in this field might mean return to testing and studying.

Alas, though… so many have poor business skills as well, and so no cash in the bank to fund such re-investment. It was a good ride up till now, but if you didn’t save a war chest, it’s just basic business logic that you need to go home now, because you’re not equipped to keep playing your old cards.

But the Winners Aren’t Safe: Survivors have Bigger Problems Now

Right now, we have new big problems that will challenge even the prepared SEOs who would otherwise be able to continue successfully and prosper. We are now at a point where enough people who are NOT search marketers know enough about SEO to make big mistakes that impact the online businesses that are trying to achieve search marketing success.

Combine that with the continued presence of ineffective SEOs refusing to walk away, the seemingly deliberate abandonment of those businesses by Google, and a few well-equipped scammers boldly taking advantage with no push-back from the SEO industry players, and we have a recipe for disaster.

SEO Opportunity being Drowned in Nonsense

If real businesses encounter real difficulty achieving search marketing success, that fact is supposed to spell opportunity for professional search optimizers. When players make big bets and stall or suffer failures, it should generate great business for real consultants who know how to right the ship, and for real independent SEOs competitively working those same SERPs. But it’s not.

It’s Clean Up Time – It’s a Matter of Survival

It’s time to call a spade a spade. If your SEO practice is all about pushing tactics today until they get penalized, and then pushing the counter-tactics tomorrow to clean up after your own mess, it’s time to go home.

If you SEO consulting business is limited to audits that give you a one-way opportunity to criticize others’ work, while attempting to use the opened door to sell web development or packaged monochromatic tactical services, it’s time to get out of the way. You’re just hurting people, and abusing trust.

If your SEO business survives by collecting a front load fee (“setup” or “research” or “market analysis” etc) that you hope will carry you through to some future time when your SEO actually works, it’s quitting time. Give yourself a break from the stress… Google isn’t going to get dumber. SEO isn’t going to get easier. You don’t have a viable business.

And if you’re an association or agency or trade group and the only prospects you see for growth and survival are old school badge programs or extortion, or if you are planning to survive by selling re-packaged SEO tools, please…. give it up. It’s a dead horse.

But if you are a real SEO, get back to work. Study the SERPs, test your hunches. Over build, work harder, and just try to win. If necessary, pick a less-competitive sub vertical to re-start, just like you did last time. Hard work is the only way to recover as an effective SEO.

SEO Still Works and It Always Will

There is no reason why SEO won’t work today, just as it worked yesterday. Except for a very few keyword spaces, there is plenty of organic SERP to develop business. If your domain isn’t in the SERP, getting it there will give you more reach. If your marketing message isn’t convincing, rewrite it to be effective, or re-analyze your customer’s market to better understand their perspective. If you are losing to your competitor, figure out why. If Google is giving you trouble, solve the problems.

And if you honestly see that you don’t know what to do, don’t know why the things you do aren’t working, and don’t have a plan to change that, it’s time to get another job.

Quit Whining. You’re Polluting the Cesspool

Stop complaining, and stop being an easily-recognizable target for the increasing numbers of ill-informed business people who are making bad moves because they think they understand SEO. Left on their own, without you to blame, they will seek “real help” and that supports effective SEO and the real SEO industry.

When you publish ignorant blog posts, irresponsible claims about SEO, and rants calling for clarity from Google on SEO tactical issues,  you are just splashing around muddying the waters without any chance of taking home fish. You’re becoming a simple nuisance, ruining the fishing for everyone, for no valid purpose.

And if You were really only in SEO for the Celebrity…

If you were only in SEO because it was rewarding to be an instant entertainer, micro-celebrity, and self-proclaimed “successful Internet entrepreneur”, it should be easy to make an excuse and take a quiet exit at the top of your game.

One of the best aspects of travel (aside from, well, traveling) is that I get to meet real people in pursuit of real goals. I get to discuss SEO and Internet business, plus careers, with people from all over the globe (as long as they speak English, sigh). This includes sharing unique experiences that really cannot be observed any other way than in-person, or via storytelling. Travel is all about story telling, and listening.

With “competitive seo” there is little room for debate. It’s about winning. It’s about being in front of potential customers when they search Google, with a higher prominence than everyone else (including all of the other SEOs trying to win that audience).

You can define what it means to be “Number 1” for any given niche or keyword set or market, as appropriate, but the honest definition must match performance. The #1 spot is defined as the spot that has been observed to convert the best. The Money Spot. The best spot to win becomes the #1 spot, every time. In SEO, the owner of #2 is not a contender, but the first loser.

There is a lot of nuance in the above-mentioned concepts of “customer”, “niche or keyword set”, and “conversion”. In my experience, very few professionals have a strong grasp of overall SEO. Most are tactical practitioners focused on some subset of the above.

So it is always interesting to meet and discuss SEO with those who claim it as their profession, job, vocation, past-time or calling. I find it very easy, with a brief discussion, to ascertain the technical skill levels, experience with general or keyword-specific SEO, vision, perspective, and even the “religion” of an SEO. Which is why it’s a great idea to travel (to meet them).

One of the first things I have to ascertain about any SEO is… does he want to win, or just want to be The Winner?

Is it possible that the best SEO could be known to be a great SEO? This is a tough question that many in our industry do not understand to be difficult. In fact, many think it is an obvious, silly question. According to many I meet, the best SEOs are up on the stage, demonstrating their abilities. They are well known, admired by their peers, and both well-paid and highly-regarded.

Now we can debate at length why this is not true, how things could possible work out if it were true, etc., but it is very likely such a discussion will first be side-tracked by a second question – who cares? Clearly the famous Top SEO knows hir stuff… isn’t that all that matters? Or better yet, who cares? If I feel it is a certainty that every time So-and-So takes the stage, I learn great stuff… does it really matter if someone is a “real SEO” or just a knowledgeable and entertaining very good one?

Yes, it does. Because…money.

Only while this thing we call SEO is new and requires great learning skills and determination, will demand will be strong and salaries respectable. As the US market is learning now, if SEO gets de-mystified, or Google takes most of the “best spots”, only the winners will survive. And that forces people like me, the ones who hire “real SEOs” and put “real SEO” to work every day, to redefine “winners” very carefully.

If you are serious about SEO, are you trying to win, or just trying to be a “winner”?

If you are trying to win, good on you, mate. Best of luck, and hey, I’d like to meet you some time, when it’s convenient. I’ll buy the beer! But if you are trying to be The Winner, I’m afraid we’re in different professions. The #1 spots don’t really matter much to you, except perhaps the #1 spot for “Top SEO”, which has no value in my game.

So where does “money” come in? Throughout history, money is the means of getting things done. Money is not a posession, but a tool. For the SEO trying to win, money is a resource. For the SEO trying to be The Winner, money is a reward. There is a very big difference.

Real SEOs need the money now, to put to work on SEO. Those sacrificing everything to be “winners” will often defer what they see as rewards, for later. The budget is spent on travel, clothes, appearances, and perhaps picking up the check when dining with those who can help them move up the ladder.

But most of what we get to observe is not at that level. We don’t get to witness many true winners at SEO.

Regarding those who win at “Being The Winner”, we may see them on stage, but we don’t have access to them. They refuse speaking engagements unless they are the keynote speaker, with large audience. They require luxury suites with building and floor-level security. These “rock stars” are celebrities, but they believe they are Winners.

Try getting attention from them at a networking event. They famously refuse to “meet-up” insisting instead on only “meeting UP” i.e. accepting invitations that are “upstream” from their status.

Regarding those who actually win the #1 spots, we don’t have access to them, either. Anyone who has ever battled and won a top money spot will admit that staying there requires commitment and confidentiality, as well as diligence. SEO is constantly changing. What worked last year, is different now. No one wants you to take the stage and discuss what worked last year.  Getting up on stage and talking about what is working now won’t be good for performance.

Less obviously, it can be very difficult to discuss practical SEO matters with a peer, without revealing potentially dangerous vulnerabilities. SEOs are opportunists with skills.

It’s relatively easy to access the winners who are retired from the game. They are busy living life… just go out there and do something and you’ll find them right next to you, working hard at enjoying life and not being at work. Great resources on matters of entrepreneuring, fund raising, family and life matters, and truly wonderful footwear, but not current SEO.

If you sense this issue in your SEO life, you have my sympathies. If you disregard this as an irrelevant harangue, good luck in your quest for RockStar Status.

In between, is life as an SEO. And we must live life, for all else is naught.

If I can influence you in any way, I urge you to recognize that there are these two disparate forms of Winning in SEO. I encourage you to acknowledging (to yourself) which path you are on with your true intent, so as to help you existentially. You may live a fuller, happier existance, with less need to seek external validation (i.e. less struggle).

I admit, it also helps me put my money to work hiring effective SEOs and enabling them on paths of mutual success. But honestly that is of secondary importance. Because the greatest part of living life is sharing it with people. All of it. The good, the bad, the joys, the pain, and most of all, the wonder. And for those stimulated by intellectual discussions, it’s truly awesome to meet winners and discuss specifics of the roads traveled.

Unfortunately, those striving to be The Winner seem to be sadly devoid of the truth that is our human experience. If they have it, they’re hiding it as a secret past. If they don’t have it, they live in fear of encountering it, or in denial that it is important for their journey.

If there is one thing we can learn from video game players, it is the importance of playing the game. Stop talking about the game. Instead, be the gamer. We can talk about it later, and it’ll be awesome.

Identity. It’s central to what matters (to you). And that makes it essential to the art of persuasion.

Who I am.

Who I think I am.

Who you think I am.

Who I think you think I am.

Who I know I am not.

Who I think you think you are.

Sometimes, identity it seems to be the only thing that matters.

I’m so much better off than you because I get it – I understand how it works. I can see that you don’t get it, but I also see your internal conflict. It’s obvious, although that might be because I’m more sensitive to such cues than others.

I do believe someday you will realize it and change your ways, to be all you can be. You’ll be happier then. And so will I, because it pains me to know you could be so much more, if-only. I’m know I’m lucky, but hopefully you’ll be lucky too, someday. Maybe I can help, but will you let me?

Carrion.

I have lost a few friends to addiction, and spent a considerable amount of time learning about addiction and the way individuals get caught up in a spiral of destructive, compulsive behavior that eventually destroys them (usually after causing considerable amounts of collateral damage). Let 2013 go down as the year Google became an addict.

An addict, as you know it (someone addicted to drugs or some other “substance”) exhibits a fairly well-defined set of behaviors. Even if we temporarily ignore the following VERY IMPORTANT aspects of addiction:

• genetics and other non-behavioral factors may modulate propensity for addiction (disease model)
• addiction likely has roots in other health / mental health disorders (behavioral health, co-occurring disorders)

we still are left with the fact that addicts behave a certain way, as they spiral down into the depths of addiction towards a likely eventual “rock bottom”.  That “addict behavior” includes the following:

• re-alignment of effort from tasks of daily living to the single task of securing a supply (of drugs)
• shifting belief system that rationalizes changed behavior that supports drug-seeking (such as stealing to get cash for drugs, scamming to get drugs, ignoring needs of others/responsibilities)
• increasing desire to isolate oneself, limiting interactions (and trustful relations) to like-minded peers (other addicts)
• voluntary continuance of behavior that has serious negative consequences to self, even though aware of those consequences (compulsive, destructive behavior).

Funny how I see Google exhibiting these signs of addiction in 2013, with gusto.

Under Larry Page, Google re-aligned resources away from building the quality, innovative, and delightful search engine we enjoyed at Google.com. Google the organization pulled back on the “20% innovation” concept, and aligned creative efforts with the core business of advertising targeting and identifying prospects for advertising targeting.

Google seems to have stripped autonomy away from the individual “leaders” it hired away from their innovative startups, and assigned them to the single task of “gaining more power” over the flow of traffic and commerce on Google’s properties. Google is clearly damaging its own projects, on the way to achieving these new goals.

Aside from an elite few, many top-tier technologists who “went to work for Google” are now basically pushing advertising onto the world for a living. That damage (to staff morale, to industry reputation, to the stream of talent formerly looking at Google as a great place to work) is considerable.
Google is addicted to power and money.

Google has CLEARLY started to isolate itself from others. No longer a fun, energetic member of the web economy, Google is actually hated by many companies and company leaders. Entire industries have engaged in discussions about “what to do about Google”. Retired tech industry veterans (the ones who don’t fear Google’s wrath) openly reference Google as “evil”.

Yet, in true addict fashion, Google’s behavior suggests it disagrees with the haters. In many cases, we see Google vilifying the haters, as if Google thought everyone else was out to get Google (justifying the abusive behaviors like a drug addict justifies stealing from a wealthy friend).

Google is an addict, and needs help.

Unfortunately we know that a deeply addicted individual — one who is truly under the power of the addiction and is not able to exert free will, will not seek help. No matter how much you may plead with Google to seek help, to get substance abuse counseling, and to realize how abusive and harmful its behavior is to the rest of the community,  Google will not do it. Google will only seek more, more, more of the drug it wants.

Every addict is unique, but it is very likely that it will take a near-death experience or a rock bottom crash to make Google change its ways. And there will be a ton of collateral damage.

In the mean time, hide your stuff.

I’ve long claimed that Google’s efforts to regulate Internet publishing for it’s own commercial gain stifles innovation. I started this blog 2007 when it became clear that I needed to raise my profile as an SEO or get quietly destroyed via what could fairly be defined as anti-competitive practices. Google was getting big and powerful and had already shown many of us it would be playing hardball with any one who threatened to make money off it’s activities. That despite a managed public “do no evil” image.

Towards the end of 2007 it was clear how Google would lead, set up, and knock down SEO. Google has now completed most of that strategy. A careful analysis of the SEO world today would reveal an almost meaningless press, few if any actionable SEO guides coming out of citizen media (seo blogs), a virtual army of propagandists (some willing, many unwilling) spewing the “just make good content” junk, and more confusion than ever about what SEO is and whether or not it works, is safe, is spam, etc.

Those same actors who call SEO “spam” and proclaim a new age of content marketing based solely on a prayer that Google will reward creative content with traffic, previously helped push SEO under ground starting around 2009, where it had been and where I would have stayed had I not been forced to start blogging in 2007. Why would a sane, knowledgable, experienced tactical practitioner share actionable insights with a community of takers, who are also willing to bow to the competitor (Google) at first sign of the Almighty G being displeased?

Now, Google is larger and bolder than ever. And stifling innovation more than ever. As I casually watch the various stories of Google doing this or that, it’s pretty clear that Google feels threatened. Why? Bazillions is not enough? No, it’s not. Pride and avarice… pride and avarice. The difference today is that Google seems willing to be the bad guy, in order to secure and protect it’s control over the Internet Billions. It doesn’t seem to care that people don’t trust it, or dislike it.

In “Google yanks Adblock Plus from Google Play, Surprising Nobody“, Venturebeat reported that Google had dropped the super-popular ad blocking plugin from the downloads area developers are required to use to reach consumers. Google cited a policy violation related to conflict with Google’s commercial interests. That was the reason for the “Surprising Nobody” part from VentureBeat’s editors. But it did surprise some – those who believed Google’s promise to be open and encourage innovation. Clearly, innovation (even very, very popular innovation) is not allowed if it blocks Google from making money.

But that’s not all, folks. The ad blocking plugins have continued despite Google’s attempts to stop them. There are more of them now, and more options, and they are more popular. But the biggest one… the one that Google attempted to stifle back in March, now quietly allows Google’s ads to get through the blocker. Where it used to offer users the option of blocking Google’s ads, it now whitelists them, while still offering the users options for blocking other companies’ ads.

While the SEOs might immediately think Google’s threat of deindexing from Google search or exclusion from the Google Play download store would have been enough of a threat to cause such a reversal by the ad blocking plugin publisher, we now know it was cash. Google reportedly paid AdBlock Plus to whitelist Google’s ads. Some have estimated the saving for Google to be upwards of $800 million dollars.

Innovation? No longer relevant. Good for users? Not if it isn’t also Good for Google. And thus begins the decline of Google, in measurable ways.

We SEOs working the front lines of competitive publishing have always known that Google needs us in order to remain viable as a search engine. Now we know Google doesn’t need to remain viable as a search engine. Google search has been decaying for some time now, and will continue to decline in quality as Google manipulates publishing for advertising-driven commercial gain. It simply doesn’t matter, right now, for Google.

Public respect? Also doesn’t seem to matter so much. Cash is king. So “best for users” is no longer relevant. And I predict, as Google continues to learn that cash matters more than respect, and that users without choices really don’t need to be catered to (especially if you have the power to stifle innovation and corrupt talented disrupters), Google will strangle itself.

I’ll leave the “how” for homework, but historically it has something to do with moral bankruptcy, man’s search for meaning, the purpose of life and the man’s need for freedom/tolerance for abuse.

We can see it happening internally… Google is big and full of smart people. Some are moving towards hardware, some towards global initiatives, some towards other areas. But just as the Borg will be evil externally to protect it’s advertising cash, the organization can be expected to behave badly internally, when the ad-driven cash flow is disturbed. I think they know this… but don’t know what to do about it.

Which reminds me… sacred cows make the best hamburgers.

Note: this blog gets upwards of 40,000 spam comments per week, so comments are closed. Please discuss on social media.

A very long time ago I was a programmer. Not a “coder”, but a programmer.

In the beautiful stone and walnut offices of a global corporation, I sat at a computer desk. It was special, because it had a slide out keyboard tray, was arranged to accommodate a screen placed in front of me when I sat in the chair. My arms were placed in front of me, with my hands on the keyboard. Except for the girls in secretarial pool and the men in “data processing”, no one else “sat that way”. Within the Engineering unit, my desk was a curiosity and a magnet for geeks. It was cool. It was the future.

My manager (a chemist) was a jovial, caring guy and a company man. I remember he came by one day and remarked “so you know how to fly one of these things?”

We came to refer to it as the Helicopter. I flew the helicopter. We had a team of Engineers, managers, and support people, and now the unit had a helicopter, and I was the pilot. They had big expectations for me.The helicopter was expensive and shiny and futuristic; amazing, even. The helicopter was going to do the “heavy lifting”. It was going to “save the day” on projects we could not otherwise do without computing power. And it was clear from day one that everyone else supported me as pilot partly because they expected that, over time, I would teach them how to fly it themselves (or fly one they would get on their own desk, someday).

Fast forward and we’re all spending our days flying these things. But are we doing any heavy lifting? Are we getting the job done, saving the day, enabling the team? Or are we just “flying around” like one of those toy indoor helicopters, putzing around the room dodging lamps and co-workers’ monitors until we run out of battery power and drop to the floor? And we call it work.

More than ever, we have ways to keep “busy” with SEO. The old stand-byes “keyword research” and “competitive analysis” and “SERP analysis” can keep us busy day after day. With TRILLIONS of links in place on the world wide web, we could link analyze for weeks if left alone to our cockpits. And I suppose every one of you SEOs out there could rationalize and justify the effort and expense (and many of you agency types do just that.. for a living). The helicopter is now cheap, fast, and mobile. The fuel is cheap as well, but it turns out there are two kinds of fuel for SEO helicopters. The kind the machine needs to fly (basic software and electricity), and the kind we need to actually do any work with it (seo data sets, seo tools, and accurate and effective information). The latter fuel is not cheap at all. And it’s been getting more and more expensive.

Knowing how to fly one of these things is not worth much any more. Knowing how to get the work done is.

The next time you find yourself putzing on your computer while allegedly “working”, imagine a pilot buzzing around the landscape in the company helicopter, burning fuel and not accomplishing much besides increasing the basic flying skills of the pilot (a valid endeavor, for sure… but not “heavy lifting” and probably not helping the team save the day. Is that you? Do you deserve to be sitting in that seat? Or is there someone to your left or right who, given some opportunity, would be a much more effective helicopter pilot for your team’s ambitions?

These days I try and have as many helicopters as I can flying around the job site. I’ll put anyone into the pilot seat, and give them fuel, and get them started. Go make a difference. Go figure out a better way to approach our goal lines. Show us a better way. Do some heavy lifting. Save the day. Prove yourself worthy of the pilot seat. Go. For. It.

SEO is not about tools or processes, but people. I suspect that will increasingly become the case, as tools continue to get bigger and more complex, and more and more “pilots” spend their days buzzing around the office with their cool helicopters and fancy fuels.

Eric Enge recently published an essay entitled “Penguin 2.0 Forewarning: The Google Perspective on Links”. I know about it because Matt Cutts referred to it as a “good article”. It was about links and link building, and Google’s Penguin updates. For those who don’t know, Penguin Updates are updates Google pushes out which penalize web sites that are not big brands and which Google believes have incoming links that influence their rankings (or appear to be intended to influence search rankings).

I would like to step through the article here in this blog post, and show why I believe this is illegitimate pro-Google propaganda. I don’t know Eric personally, so I can’t speak to his character. I hope he recognizes my post for what it is – an objective analysis based on what I see in his article, and have experienced with Google over the years. I’d love to know otherwise.

Note: Eric Enge is not Google

Eric clearly states “I don’t work for Google” but he also states “let’s step back and discuss what Google wants a link to represent” as if he knows what Google wants. He also cites his interview of Matt Cutts, and as I noted, Matt Cutts issued a promotional tweet of Eric’s article. Eric’s professional bio on his consulting website highlights the fact that he interviewed Matt Cutts, and the about page makes ample reference to inferred authority via “access” to “industry leaders” he interviews. I think it’s fair to say Eric trades on the good graces bestowed to him by authority figures in search world, and so it’s fair to review his article here.

I find Eric’s article to be yet another unsettling example of Google’s direct and indirect manipulation of web publishing for its own gain, at the expense of innovation, free speech, and free enterprise.

Eric is a professional link builder, and sells his services throughout the article. That Matt endorsed the article troubles me, because the idea of select professional link builders getting endorsements from the head of Google’s team to judge websites seems very, very dangerous in a conflict of interest way.

I do acknowledge that maybe Eric doesn’t know he’s “working for Google” in the way I alluded to long ago in my tongue-in-cheek “I’m Going to Work for Google” post. With a self-proclaimed “30 years” in the industry, I think he should.

I’ll address the essay topic by topic:

1. About “Links Must Be Citations”

Eric draws parallels between a “research paper” with citations in the footnotes or reference section, and web links. He suggests

“The professor only lists (links) to the other papers most relevant to and most important to to their paper. You can’t buy that, and never occurred to researchers to try and do that with each other. This system was pure at its heart.”

Now I will accept that Eric may never have engaged in formal “research”, but I know Matt Cutts worked in a University library and knows better than to accept this simple assertion as real. Not only CAN you actually “buy” professors (and citations), the concept of citation as a measure of merit didn’t last very long in the research world when it was used as an objective measure of merit. To this day, that system has to be carefully “managed” by people, because it is not very “objective”.

Oh sure the top scientists won’t risk their reputations citing unworthy works (other than their own and those of their colleagues – which they do routinely), but nearly every other researcher routinely does chase citations (and trade them with sympathetic colleagues). When the Citations Index is used as part of review for Promotion and Tenure in an academic setting, gaming does indeed take place. Academic concepts like the “Least Publishable Unit” – that smallest amount of unique information that will justify a stand-alone “paper”, arose out of the need for more publications (and more citations) to pad the CV for career advancement. This “gaming” started precisely because publications and citations were listed as “objective criteria” for promotion and tenure.

The argument that links should be like fictional “pure” citations is part of the Google myth. Super-successful pure SEO plays like FindTheBest (which Google has promoted as a model of the future) would never survive without gaming the Google algorithm, including “unnatural” linking/cross-linking.

Eric notes that the original Page Rank algorithm was based on the idea of citation, as if that helped support his claim that “Links must be citations”. In fact, I’d suggest that the reason the original Page Rank algorithm didn’t work was because links are NOT citations.

2. About “Infographics”

I don’t see Eric saying anything meaningful about infographics in this section, but I do know that including “infographics” in a list of things to worry about is 100% in line with Matt Cutts’ (Google’s) current agenda. I do see that when he says this:

“many infographics are inaccurate or unrelated topically to the page receiving the link. Even without these problems it is likely that the great majority of people republishing infographics aren’t thoughtfully endorsing the page they end up linking too.”

it is basically a regurgitation of Google’s standard line about infographics. However, perhaps most disturbing, this assertion promotes bias.

Google is too smart to actually say that people who republish (link to) “sexy infographics” don’t actually know if the graphics are in fact accurate or not. That highlights censorship and bias. Eric’s hint at Google’s censorship of free speech and publishing is troubling. If Google can diminish the value of linking because it doesn’t believe the people actually fully-endorsed the material they linked to, consider the chilling effect on free speech and promotion/marketing. As a marketer you effectively influence the marketplace to “move them” towards your desired action (to distribute your message), but Google doesn’t believe those people actually fully understand your message, so your efforts can be blocked. Wow. That’s like a tyrant over-riding a democratic election because he feels the people didn’t really know what they were doing electing that guy. When did that become “ok”?

3. About “Including rich anchor text links inside a guest post”

Eric starts this section with a note about “The New York Times”:

“If the New York Times accepted a guest post from you, what are the chances that they would let you load rich anchor text links inside your post back to the blatant money-making page on your site? Not a chance.”

I don’t argue about blatant “make money fast” links embedded in content, but I do have an issue with claims that the New York Times linking policies are models of editorial purity. I could go back in time and pick apart the ways that institution has succeeded in influencing public opinion (for profit and / or power) and rewriting history throughout its lifetime, but we don’t have time for that and I’m not the right expert to undertake the task. I could also point to the concept of the “linking black hole” (promoted by the NYTimes) and how that has hurt the world wide web, or how the newspaper industry in general has done almost everything wrong when it comes to Internet publishing (especially serving users).

Before Google got involved, users (the ones who are supposed to be served by web publishing) looked at anchor text as a signal of what was behind the link. It was a bright and bold, royal blue, and underlined, and the text used communicated what prize awaited the clicker. There was no doubt what this meant (to the user).

This “hypertext” concept was very effective. If the New York Times followed the model of hypertext it could very easily link to “how she made $5000 in one day using her laptop” right in the middle of an essay. As long as that link produced an answer to “how did she make all that money working from home on her laptop” then everything would be fine. Merchants would make money, some readers would be served, and publishers would get a cut for disseminating the message.

We can’t do that today for no other reason than : when we do that, Google has a hard time ranking websites the way it wants to.

That’s correct. The ONLY reason is to enable Google search, as it is designed today.Don’t forget that — this entire conversation about links and publishing “requirements” is to enable Google to find and rank websites to create Google.com. Profitably. There is no other reason.

Aside from the ways that Google wants to make money for itself, or the ways that such legitimate in-line links make Google’s job of making easy profits harder, I don’t see Eric’s point about the New York Times and in-line links. That is a reason I think it might be pro-Google propaganda piece, more than thoughtful SEO article.

4. About “Guest posts that are only loosely related to the topic of the page receiving the link”

In discussing “guest posts” Eric comments on links with descriptive anchor text and says “A link like this smells more like ‘payment’ than a legitimate endorsement.”

Really this is the same Google myth described previously.. that there is some pure non-commercial “endorsement” action we should all be limiting ourselves to publishing in our articles. There isn’t, and there never will be. We are all humans, so there will always be information asymmetry and varying levels of awareness and education among readers, and society (including economies) will always be driven be people and their politics. Google knows this, and Google plays the game with its own Washington lobbyists, collaborates with world governments and organizations like the Federal Trade Commission, and engages in PR and propaganda efforts disguised as “personal blogs” and endorsements of others’ essays.

And as long as there can never be a “black and white” definition of what is “legitimate”, Great Institutions like the New York Times and Google are able to make boat loads of cash riding the undefined edges while imposing their myths upon the rest of us as suits their operational goals. I believe this “article” endorses and supports that abuse of power.

5. About award badges

Since I’m not reproducing Eric’s article here, you really should read it (go to searchenginewatch on the dot com TLD and request resource assigned URL /article/2259674/Penguin-2.0-Forewarning-The-Google-Perspective-on-Links.

The topic of “Awards badges” isn’t really addressed, but again by including it in the list, Eric has aided Google’s PR mission. We all know that citing a few extreme examples of “bad apples” is never a valid argument, but that’s what he does to suggest “award badges” are not a good idea. But, and here’s some nuance… he suggests that the award badges are easy targets for penalties “when the award badges seem to appear only on the lesser authoritative sites of a market segment“. Does that make them less legitimate?

This is a perfect example of Google’s brand bias, and another example of Google thinking it’s ok to stifle innovation (since innovations do not usually show up in the major leagues first, innovations will get stifled under this approach to defining links as legitimate).

When markets are controlled such that efforts to serve them are not rewarded until the big established brands accept and endorse them, those markets are not free. In fact, they are doomed to fail.

That’s More Than Enough

Whew. That’s all that was covered in the article, except for a final section addressing how to qualify links you’ve built to make sure they’re acceptable. I don’t really get that part, because if all of the above is true about Google, why would anyone still hire a link builder and bother to apply qualification tests to the links that were built?

Oh… I get it. Because it’s a game! I think I get it now.

The rules say only honest editorial links count, and everything else is ripe for Penguin penalties. BUT, we all know (wink wink nudge nudge) that this isn’t REALLY true. So then we need experts to tell us how to build links that look legitimate, even though they aren’t. And it behooves us to pick the experts that are endorsed by Google, since they have the best information on how the game is REALLY played. And even if we can’t be sure if they are right or not, Googlers will chime in here and there to (wink wink nudge nudge) “let us know” who we can trust.

The only part that still confuses is me is why we should ever consider trusting these experts when they publish SEO articles. How could it not be pro-Google propaganda?

If you want to discuss, please discuss on social media.

A slew of now top level domains are coming, thanks to a bold move by ICANN originally intended to spur innovation on the web. “What would you do if you could register any top level domain“, they asked the world’s entrepreneurs. Free of constraints of name availability on the standard dot com and other top level domains, how could you advance the Internet?

Despite such noble intentions, the new gTLD program turned into basically just another commercial push for more domain registrations, driven by businesses hoping to sell virtual products (registrations) to speculators and trademark defenders.

Usually speed of innovation is a key factor for progress on technical platforms like the Internet. Act fast and innovate, to build market share before competitors can muster the courage to follow along on what is likely a risky ride. Conversely, a sluggish pace  of implementation, combined with what seems to be controlling efforts stopped this dog from racing in my opinion.

Nobody can “innovate” if they have to invest cash up front in advance, broadcast their intentions, and wait YEARS while others develop copycat, competing, or parasitic business plans.

Rather than an exercise promising rewards for innovation, the new gTLD program is just more “big business” promising rewards for old-school registrars and those who follow on those established practices. Unless.

Unless Google decides to play along.

Should you pay to reserve YourTown.pizza when it becomes available? Not unless you think it will be useful. And with basically everyone using Google to find local pizza, won’t that success depend on how your web site does in Google? We’ve already seen Google manhandle Yelp in the search results… so no doubt Google’s the real player in pizza (when it wants to be).

The web marketing game remains one of “remarkable website functioning as part of a remarkable business” while “exploiting loopholes” and “avoiding penalties and filters”, whether those are artificially imposed or market natural. If you do something Google doesn’t approve of, you lose. If you piss off your customers, you lose. But most of all, far out of proportion to all other factors involved, if Google decides to give your business a boost (for any reason), you win.

That’s right.. if Google decides (unilaterally, without any obligation to notify anyone, nor any obligation to maintain anything for any reason) to boost .pizza to the top of the local rankings for “pizza in your town” searches, your .pizza website will make you a fortune. And there will be only one YourTown.pizza available for registration. Will Google do that?

Or will Google ban townname.pizza domains, again unilaterally without consequence, for any reason? It would not be unusual, since townname.pizza competes with Google as a directory of local pizza, and doesn’t otherwise reflect any unique character of the pizza business publishing on it. What will Google do?

I attended a conference the other day where the SEOs on the SEO panel noted how select SEOs were “really good friends” with Matt Cutts of Google’s “search quality team”. Wow. Which SEO would you hire… the one over there or this other one that’s “great friends” with Google? No one call them them out on it… and the web marketing game continues.

A big marketing firm recently published on it’s website that it had inside connections at Google. It claimed to be such an important customer of Google, that Google reps “often called” them with advice on how to deal with algorithm changes. Wow. What a great firm to hire, right? Of course they scrambled to take that down when it was highlighted (partly because it’s not true; mostly because of risk of fallout from being outed as manipulating the market by Google name dropping).

The truth is that Google can make or break any web strategy. Will it boost any of these new gTLDs into success? What about .pizza or .movie?

Hard to imagine it won’t take efforts to secretly “manage” some gTLDs. Google has been caught “managing” other TLDs in the past (.info for sure, probably .biz). Google has also damaged many business by ignoring some extensions while favoring others. Despite having promised to reward proper use of local gTLDs by local businesses, Google’s refusal to acknowledge .US hurt any that published on .US hoping to compete in their markets while following the “rules”. I have never seen any evidence of .US domains achieving any of the status Google granted to .com. .org, and .net, for example.

So which of the new gTLDs will be winners, and why? We’re back to speculating on domain names, just-like-before. And the big winners are the domain name registrars and re-sellers. The big losers are you.. the consumer of web domains, now forced to speculate or defend your trademarks by spending more money on domain registrations that will likely never be utilized on the web.

And then of course there’s the complication that Google also submitted applications for a set of the new gTLDs. I won’t go there.

One thing is certain: the new gTLDs could change everything, but only if Google wants things to change. What can we do?

My recommendation is to cozy up to Matt Cutts because clearly, being friends with Matt makes you a rare breed of SEO consultant. There is no doubt that the SEO on that conference panel — the one that was good friends with Matt Cutts — had a huge advantage over every other seo in the room (at least when it came to closing new business).

Similarly if you can find out what other Google employees are compromised,  get into that game as well (like that Marketing Agency claims it has done with its Google reps). That’s where the winning opportunity lies — insider knowledge of how the algorithms work is gold for SEO.

Inside knowledge of which gTLDs Google will boost is the key to winning with new gTLDs for sure.

Want to Comment? Don’t comment here.. post your comment to social media (twitter, Facebook, your own blog) to be heard. Link back to this if you want.. I’ll leave it up for a while. This is an important issue so please do speak your opinion somewhere.

The Currency of Search Marketing is Influence (and Zombies)

We all seem to appreciate the use of Zombies as models of “enemies”. If there’s one real power zombies have, it’s the power to influence people. I don’t know a single human who is aware of the nature of zombies (fast ones that can fly, slow ones that never stop advancing, all of them eat you alive, etc.) who would not run away from a zombie without second thought. More than war, natural disaster, disease or random acts of violence carried out by crazy psycho killers, to us zombies define a complete lack of “humanity”.

For years the Federal Emergency Management Association (FEMA) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) experienced difficulty getting Americans to prepare for any potential disasters, partly because we live in denial and are always pursuing “dreams”. We tend to ignore anyone who suggests things might come crashing down while we’re building wealth and moving up the ladder. That shit happens to OTHER people. But when they produced “How to Prepare for the Zombie Apocalypse”, people paid attention.

Ammunition maker Hornady successfully re-branded one of its powerful self-defense handgun rounds as “Zombie Max”, which it promotes as a way you can “supply yourself for the Zombie Apocalypse”. Of course the same product in a different box, now costs more.

Gun advocates have always had trouble picking “targets”. If you shoot for sport or as part of training in weapons handling, you shoot a target. Usually it’s paper. Range operators face complaints from advocate groups when they allow people to shoot the targets they bring with them to the range (an evil-looking street thug with a gun, who is almost always black or Hispanic; a picture of a uniformed police officer; a picture of Obama, etc). Yet when they tack up a picture of a bloody-mouthed zombie, nobody cares.

Zombies are persuasive.

The currency of SEO is persuasion, not traffic or rankings.

This is not a new realization. Many of us have studied persuasion for almost as along as we’ve studied SEO. Recently a major search conference featured an author/psychologist focused on persuasion and “the power of influence” as the keynote speaker.

But what might be new to you, is that currencies can and are manipulated on a regular basis by governing powers, which includes governments, banks, and political entities. If you can manipulate the currency, you can control the economy.

The same way we’ve seem nations “manage” currencies (China, Brazil, US, GB, etc) we see Google managing the currency of the Internet (“traffic”, via “rankings”). Traffic reflects earned attention and raised awareness, and drives commerce. We can expect Google to manipulate the currency as a means of controlling the economy. We can expect similar behavior of any large, powerful, forward-thinking, profit-oriented entity.

But the currency of SEO is not traffic. Can persuasion be manipulated?

As we prepare for “zombie apocalypse” where the currencies in play in our society face manipulation (and perhaps collapse), how will you survive? If the dollar is devalued, if massive stores of pure gold are discovered on a nearby asteroid, if Google takes away your traffic, how will you survive?

Think about your personal influence and the influence you can manage without dollars or gold or permission from Google. Think about how people throughout history have sought karma, invested in social credits, and injected good will into their communities, as a way to “prep” for disaster. Think about it.

We may be “search marketers” and “search engine optimizers” who work within the confines of an economy controlled (manipulated) by Google, but our currency is persuasion. Persuasion within a market niche transcends Google.

If you’re not preparing for a “Google Apocalypse” and hoarding persuasion instead of rankings or keyword relevance, you may find yourself walking the streets stunned and directionless, searching for your next meal. And no one will care about you.

A few frequently-asked questions with my answers, because the Blue Glass search conference is about to open for ticket sales. They only sell dozens of them, so best be decisive and act swiftly if you want to go.

No, this is not a sponsored post, and no one asked me to write about Blue Glass. I’ve been to 3 of them myself, conference traveling on my own dime as an entrepreneur/small business owner (I’ve been completely self-employed for almost 10 years now).

Q: Is the Blue Glass conference worth the costs and travel effort? 

The Blue Glass conference is among my favorite travel opportunities related to my search work, but refreshing enough to qualify as a true break from the grind. For some reason my travel schedule is always crazy busy right up to the Blue Glass meetings, but when I check in I get a total relaxed vibe. Breaks like that are needed to stay creative in this field.

For reference the other travel opportunity I rank up there is sport fishing for tuna in Miami Florida with some friends who are more thrilled by catching big fish than telling the world how great their fishing charter is… more of that same passion for the actual work, not just the marketing of it.

Maybe some day I’ll attend Blue Glass in Tampa with an excursion down to Miami for night fishing for swordfish on Marauder out of Dinner Key/City Hall. That’d be perfect!

Q: Is BlueGlass better than Pubcon? 

Yes, hands down. I started going to Pubcon back in 2003 or 2004, and loved it. The gathering of people was unique… and the tracks were good. But the low-budget nature of Pubcon has always annoyed me, and the simultaneous tracks ruined the educational experience for me.

BlueGlass is small – a few hundred, and a single track of sessions involving something like 20 speakers/hosts per day. They run one session at a time, and everyone experiences the same knowledge transfer depending on how well they listen and pick up non-verbal cues. And that makes for great between-session conversation.Where Pubcon has like 10 simultaneous sessions and everyone splits up hoping to meet up later, at Blue Glass we are all in the same pool.

Blue Glass is interactive. You can raise your hand and ask a question. The speaker will stop… and address it. But nobody does that unless they have real value to add or real clarification is needed. Why? Because of respect. The audience is professional, and the speakers are worthy of respect (and everyone can tell).

And the non-technical aspects? I despise the box lunch deli meat sandwiches put out as “food” by Pubcon. I am always annoyed by the low-budget food service at snack times, since I try and meet people during breaks and often end up getting late to completely decimated hotel snack trays and empty/burned coffee urns (“nothing but crumbs”).

BlueGlass treats attendees like professionals. Catered food, vegetarian options that actually taste good and are sometimes inspiringly seasoned, and obvious care put into snack planning, food selections, etc. It’s a pleasure to be a guest of the BlueGlass conference.

Q: Are you going to this Blue Glass Conference? 

Not this time. I would go if it were more convenient for me, but too much on my plate right now and I was at the last one a few months ago.

Q: Is the Blue Glass conference “ADVANCED”?

Bue Glass is way more “advanced” than SMX Advanced, which is billed as “advanced” when compared to SES, SMX, and Pubcon.

The reason is that the Blue Glass people are active search people. They work every day trying to get search marketing results, and then they take a break and participate in Blue Glass conference. That is a HUGE difference from the many of the speakers at SMX and SES and Pubcon, who are really “professional speakers” and part of the sales/marketing teams of their companies, paid to visit those meetings to represent their companies and drum up business.

It’s obvious to me that the Blue Glass organizers use their conference as an interview platform: they invite the best of the best to come and speak, and that provides an opportunity for everyone to meet them, interact and explore them as professionals, not just speakers. As an attendee, I get the same access (during the 9-5 and during the 7-9 dinner/cocktails) and sometimes the 9-12 parties.

I won’t name drop here (you know who you are), but at Blue Glass I’ve met personally (and now consider friends) WordPress technical experts, market research experts, SEO strategists on my “short list of people I’d like to spend 4 hours with talking shop”, and a domainer I consider a consummate domain speculator/professional. That is in addition to people I just happen to like for their personalities and perspectives on this crazy search world we all study. Note that I don’t use the term “expert” loosely.

Q: Are there things you would chance to improve Blue Glass conference? Could it be better?

Ha ha yes, of course. I’m forever a critic, and an optimizer. But I won’t disclose my comments.

One of the things that makes any conference better than the rest is the unique individuality of the meeting, which comes from those who organize it and the response of those who attend and experience it.

If your goal as an organizer is to please everyone, you will almost certainly disappoint the 10% that seek the best they can get.

if your goal as an attendee is to experience what you expect to experience, you will surely miss the 10% of content and nuance that is the gold.. the stuff your competition missed, and which can give you an edge.

I hope the Blue Glass people keep trying hard, stay a little paranoid of their competition, and keep using Blue Glass as a way to push the boundaries of search conferences. I hope they keep exploring what may be the best of each topic area that they know from their hands-on involvement in every day search marketing is important going forward. As long as they keep doing that, it’s a steal at the reg fee price.

Where else can you tap into knowledge of what the experts believe is the next important topic, and listen to the worlds best at that topic explain it and answer questions about it? If you know other good places to get that, clue me in with an email or skype or twitter or comment below.

There. Someone had to say it. I waited nearly a week. Doesn’t anyone have the balls to speak the obvious, or has Google’s troll-like man-handling of the search marketplace got you all tongue tied?

Google needs Yahoo! to exist and look viable, or else Google is “a monopoly”. Everyone knows Microsoft would drop out of search if there was a good reason. Without Yahoo!, Microsoft is actually keeping Google safe! How long could that be left alone?

And Marissa…. ahh, well, we can just as safely assume Larry & Co. desire a break from her, as we can assume she’ll be back at Google later if she doesn’t achieve incredible amazing success as a woman CEO at Yahoo!, or have that stint lead to the CEO position at HP or eBay or IBM or something else equally as Epic. She’s the Goo Girl… it’s who she is.

“If you love something, set it free; if it comes backs it’s yours, if it doesn’t, it never was.”

Received via unsolicited email today:

“I noticed that your On-Page SEO is is missing a few factors, for one you do not use all three H tags in your post, also I notice that you are not using bold or italics properly in your SEO optimization. On-Page SEO means more now than ever since the new Google update: Panda. No longer are backlinks and simply pinging or sending out a RSS feed the key to getting Google PageRank or Alexa Rankings, You now NEED On-Page SEO. So what is good On-Page SEO?First your keyword must appear in the title.Then it must appear in the URL.You have to optimize your keyword and make sure that it has a nice keyword density of 3-5% in your article with relevant LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing). Then you should spread all H1,H2,H3 tags in your article.Your Keyword should appear in your first paragraph and in the last sentence of the page. You should have relevant usage of Bold and italics of your keyword.There should be one internal link to a page on your blog and you should have one image with an alt tag that has your keyword….wait there’s even more…”

Google has created an environment where scams like this can thrive, because web site owners don’t understand what does or doesn’t matter for SEO. Experts work hard to test, reverse-engineer and develop strategies for successful SEO, but real experts don’t write about specifics in public. Tool and service vendors write specifics in order to impress potential service clients. Scam artists write detailed guidelines like the above, which are half based in truth, but primarily designed to sell 1 year contracts while the client is still naive about SEO.
I wrote about this years ago in my Market for Lemons post.

It seems this is all about to change. What might Google do to bring this under control?

• Require registration of SEO service providers- Google could create a “Trusted SEO” program, with service provider partners. Those looking to improve their success with Google would be encouraged to hire the Trusted SEOs, while all other SEO service providers would be monitored for compliance, with threat of penalties for clients and SEOs sans any two-way communications. We saw hints of this with the “pay to play in organic” inadvertently exposed briefly earlier in the year. Surely that was the smoke… and the fire must be burning somewhere.

• Publish a specific list of allowed publishing tactics, with specifics of penalties, filters, and demotions. If complex enough, this would eliminate the market for legal “tricks”, and probably last a few years before truly stifling the 80%

• Publish specific lists of “risk factors” associated with specific web sites, via Webmaster Console. Such an “SEO Score” could allow site owners to better understand and manage their risk, even when working with an SEO firm.

• Make public a list of known SEO practitioners and their web sites / clients. This transparency would strengthen Google’s traditional one-sided control of the search marketplace, while removing much of the advantage SEO firms have over naive clients. It would also hurt serious SEO consultants working “all-in”  for certain industries. Such an exposure would restrict competition at the higher levels of SEO.

• Publish a “Chilling Effects” style website about penalties, filters, and bans, using real-world examples, naming SEOs and SEO agencies, as well as domains.

• Eliminate the viability of organic, non-paid listings altogether. Google could label approved organic listings as trusted, and hide true organic listings behind an option setting. Conduct a search, see only the organic listings Google prefers, which would include clients of the Trusted SEOs program. Desire more diversity? Click a link to see the rest. Using such an approach, Google could boost all known Quality metrics through the roof, reward partner agencies and clients, while still claiming to puplish algorithmic organic results sets. Not a pretty future, but possible.

Clearly Google is making big changes and we’ll have to wait to see the final specifics. These are some ideas of how it might go… to help stir discussions. What do you see in the near future from Google? How “bad” willit get for real SEOs, versus canned SEO service sellers, scam artists, and opportunity exploiters?

Since Google got aggressive (finally) with spammy link builders and spammy article syndicators, I’m getting a lot more “offers” to write for my sites. So far nothing I would ever accept. Why not? Allow me to list just some of the primary reasons your post-Penguin link building requests suck:

1. You don’t present any unique value TO ME; it’s ALL ABOUT YOU

Your request is all about how you will write, and you will get a discreet link back to your site. Aside from the canned “I love your site” crap, there is nothing that makes me feel even remotely interested in YOUR offer.

Pretty crappy marketing. No pitch. No promises to me. No interesting value. Zero persuasion. And most of all, zero potential. I have to say, it’s like getting an offer from a street hooker while driving to work. Why would I ever engage in that sort of anonymous drive-by……? Whatever. Link whore much?

2. Your Web Site is Worse Than Mine

And I mean that in a content and seo sense, not a design sense. You’re not offering to design my site, you’re offering to write for it. So how’s your writing? How could I possibly think that what you’ll write for my site will be any better than what you’ve published on your own site? I hate to actually suggest this, but if you can’t write, hire someone. And then scam me with these offers. It’ll work better.

3. You Compete DIRECTLY with Me and My Site

This initially seems hard to believe since we are all so unique and SEO is so diverse, it happens a lot. And it is actually understandable given that YOU ARE SO LAZY. You obviously used keyword tools to find my site, and were hunting for BEST POSSIBLE MATCHES which means, naturally, you’re top prospects (according to your lazy research) are DIRECT competitors to you. Same topics, same service offerings, and even same local service area.

Why would I… or better, BECAUSE you’re obviously lazy, I know you won’t do a nice job if I allowed it.

4. You Didn’t Look At Me or My Site

Most times it is VERY CLEAR that you have no idea who I am and little awareness of my site’s perspective. Not that I’m special, but to me and my friends I am somebody. And you are not, by the way. Fix that and we might have something to discuss.

5. When you answer my reply, you show me you have no idea what I responded to

I actually replied to a few with “Maybe.. what’s the deal?” only to learn that you have no idea what you sent me originally. I will have to assume you spam so many for so many sites that you can’t keep track of unlabeled responses. Hah. Owned.

6. Your Plan Sucks

This is the biggest fail of all. What you propose (and the way you appear to execute) sucks. Your “offer” to extract value FROM my site FOR your benefit will just SPREAD your suckage to my site (and to me by association). Why would I ever…. oh never mind. You won’t get any of this.

So there you have it. Six reasons why your link building approach sucks, from my perspective.And yes, I do recognize this is very close to a Top Ten Lists for SEO post. Sorry.

Happens all the time… tourists come into my temperate rain forest and admire the trees, while missing the forest. Yes, trees are cool. But not nearly as cool as the ecosystem that supports them.

Same thing with Google. SEOs see the trees, but many are missing the whole forest idea.

Riddle me this — if you have to pee while hiking on a forest trail, where should you deposit your unwanted bodily fluids? The answer might surprise you: right on the trail. Not off in the bushes (you’ll trample a lot of ecosystem doing that) and not behind a tree (the forest-floor-rises-up-to-base-of-tree region is a very important part of the system). Pee right on the trail. Why?

Note that the trail is already trampled.. it’s called a trail for a reason. Also note that forest animals (like deer) have an often desperate need for salt. They WILL find yours, and they WILL lick it up, from where ever you left it.  If that requires scratching up the forest floor because your latent Puritanism forced you to blaze a new trail into the brush just to avoid being seen executing the same basic human functions that everyone must execute every 3 hours or so, your how-to-pee-while-hiking tactics are doing more harm than good.

A naturalist will tell you that peeing on the trail “gives” the salt, water, and other ingredients to those who need it, without any additional trampling costs to the forest. Same naturalist will note that forest trails should be serene and quiet and low-traffic, so there really shouldn’t be any discretion problem. Same naturalist will also quickly note that a trail can’t support a hundred cidiots (city+idiot) per day peeing on it, and that people who don’t get nature should limit their nature walks to well established trails designed for high levels of foot traffic (typically accompanied by porta-potties or restrooms). Said naturalist may also comment on the sterile nature of healthy pee, and the unhealthy state of most Big Mac loving city slickers visiting the Great Outdoors with their air-conditioned SUVs. Said naturalist also probably hikes in the nude, but that’s another story.

In the forest, the bigger eco system will over ride your silly rules, because your rules don’t matter for survival of the system. Your rules matter TO YOU. And that’s where the damage comes from… you only see the trees, and end up destroying the forest that supported the trees.

I’m going to say most SEOs only see trees… links, articles, attention, audience – but miss the forest, which is the ecosystem of the web of connected surfers. Most SEOs are more like Google than nature. They do what they perceive is best for themselves, or the cabal they collaborate with, and harm the ecosystem in the process.

Lately, they are dooming themselves, too, because Google’s got a plan and it doesn’t include them. As they diligently pay attention to the Google Trees (do this, don’t do that) they are ignoring the bigger forest… Google’s execution of a plan to benefit Google at the expense of the natural web.

How many times have you heard “you might have to start over” in the past 6 months? Imagine that… a suggestion that, in order to be trusted and receive search traffic from Google, you might have to abandon your domain and start over on a new one.

Seriously? A traffic broker who already successfully copies and re-purposes your content while capriciously representing you in unilaterally-edited fashion, now has the cajones to tell you to abandon your one owned asset (the domain) or lose the traffic?

Think of the forest.. the bigger picture. Does Google like that you own a domain that has brand power? Does Google like that people can “find” you without searching for you in Google’s index? Does Google like that you can choose how and what to publish on your site? Does Google like that your seemingly-wanton formatting of what you publish makes it difficult if not impossible for Google to”organize” into an efficient, searchable index?

A domain name is a handle used by the market to hold on to you. Your potential (which they acknowledge, by remembering you as a brand) is invested into your domain name. Google wants that now.

The same way the middle-school bully swings by to take your lunch money, because he can and you don’t resist, Google’s taking away your forest, one tree at a time. And many, many of you so-called SEO people out there are helping Google destroy the same ecosystem that supports you.

Google doesn’t own the web. Despite Google’s stifling of innovation for the past 5 years or so, you can still innovate if you just resist the imposing, selfish rule sets that claim to be good for everyone but are actually destroying the ecosystem. You don’t have to conform, in order to succeed on the web.

As you build websites and draw audiences, you are participating in a dynamic living ecosystem. If you find yourself on the heavily-trafficked urban trail, by all means use the facilities that have been provided for you. It’s the civil thing to do, for everyone’s sake. But if you’re innovating, and like the naturalist working to understand the interconnected web and helping it thrive, sometimes the best thing to do is pee on the trail.

Google’s Panda update has old school and new school SEOs running for the hills. They don’t know what to do to recover from Panda. The old tricks don’t work, and often appear to be the cause of the Panda penalty. Google doesn’t care – it’s busy making money as the only search engine serving the American marketplace.

I guess we’ll never know the SEO secrets to Google Panda recovery.

Did you feel that let down? That big drop in brain chemicals after you read “I’ll guess we’ll never know…” ? That’s what you do to your readers when you write crap like this. And when you call yourself an SEO, writing crap like this, you may just tarnish your brand permanently in the minds of those who actually care about SEO as a profession.

I’m seeing SEO journalists and self-proclaimed SEO experts do this… to get traffic. Of course it works in Google… Google can’t tell real content from crap content any more. But it doesn’t care. I do. And your readers do.

Now if everybody does it, will that make it okay?

I see where you’re going. If you cabal members all do it, then it will seem normal. Social norming… that’s the technique. And then we can huddle around our Seattle propaganda hub and pretend it’s all true.. congratulate each other for fighting the hard fight, and winning as “SEOs” (or inbound marketers or whatever).

Nope, sorry guys.  Dreaming doesn’t make it so. And colluding behind the scenes doesn’t make you any better as an SEO either. You probably don’t know it, but your prospects already talk about you. They listen, and then they go away (from you) and talk (to others) about how you seem enthusiastic, willing to negotiate, willing to seemingly offer guarantees and reduced rates, and earnest to work hard to achieve results. But those prospective clients also say — you don’t come across as likely to get it done.

And nobody wants to pay for services for the sake of keeping you and your team of underlings employed.

So go ahead and keep writing. Go for broke… why not “Matt Cutts and the Secrets of the Google  Algorithm” followed by “I guess Matt will take those secrets of the Google algorithm with him to his grave…“. But know this : you look like a fool. To everyone.

Google is not just a huge search engine and Internet company, but also owns an investing company Google Ventures.  Google Ventures invests in… you got it… Internet companies. How do those companies do when it comes to SEO? Come on, I know you know the answer to that!

Perhaps you start with the politically correct answer…. Google Ventures only invests in good companies, and they already know so well what they are doing they don’t need “SEO”. That perspective would fit Google’s paradigm. But it’s wrong.

Maybe you like Google but also understand that SEO is valuable (not just spammy). So maybe you said “Google probably makes sure they understand the Google guidelines, and then of course they do “SEO” but probably just-make-good-content-for-users. You’d be partially right.

Haha– some of you I am sure thought “Google probably tells them what to do, to beat the algorithm!”. Wow… conspiracy much?

Come on, seriously. Could Google really do that? I suppose if they did, they might as well go “all the way” and actually send out a team of dedicated experts to consult for the company. That way they could make sure the SEO was executed properly. Why not? SEO canbe hard to get right. And if you’re going to buy into that “Google is Evil” conspiracy stuff, why not have fun with it and create a script where Google actually helps them win?

Along those lines, here’s my super hyperbolic projection of how bad things COULD get, if Google were TRULY evil.

Google Ventures invests in a company that is run by a former SEO/SEM who used to give talks on online marketing and SEO, and then advises that company on specifics of user interface, conversion, and what we all know as “SEO”. Make that an SEO who bought a pre-existing site, and optimized it for SEO first. Oh hell why not go crazy and make it a purchased, optimized, ECOMMERCE site, commonly known as a vertical industry shopping portal.

Let’s throw caution to the wind, and pretend it was heavily curated content. Images, mostly. of course since it’s an SEO play,it’ll have SOME unique content per collection of curated images, so let’s get crazy and put that into a SIDEBAR just for fun.
Now let’s pretend Google Ventures not only helps consult on SEO issues, but even sends out experts to actually make changes to their code and design for them. In my version the former SEO guy is so happy he smiles HUGELY for the Boston Globe photographer (I imagine something like this), when they end up with what looks like an optimized, user and search engine friendly, almost-spammy website that rocks the SERPs, with a keyword density of “perfect” as defined by the Big G itself.  Hah!

It can be fun to make up funny shit like that story. I hope you enjoyed it! Hoo boy I need to sit down, I’ve been laughing so hard at the irony and cynicism in there. Wow.

Now go read this and do a little Googling of the players involved, before someone at Google pulls a Schmidt and cleans up the serps for reputation management purposes.Then, meet me inside SEOBook forums to discuss how to deal with this Google monster.

Google, Facebook, and Twitter are battling. Google is clearly the aggressor right now, unsatisfied with it’s role as “aggregator of the worlds information…. but only when the world permits it”.

Google has been pushing around web publishers and web users for the past year or so, and is now making moves to show it’s willingness to destroy the search results in order to get the social media access it wants. Presumably to make those search results better… but I’m losing faith in that. More than ever, it’s becoming clear Google is only after the money and power.

The people have spoken — they don’t like Google Plus very much. Certainly not as much as Facebook or Twitter. In fact, the people haven’t liked much of what Google has developed so far at all. Oh sure properties like YouTube and Maps are loved, but Google didn’t create those. Google Search is the only Google-developed product the masses really like and use.

And now Google is taking that away. Google just took away the meaningful, diversified SERPs that made it famous, and replaced them with junk culled from Google’s social media and other properties. I’ve already heard two people say “I hate the new Google. I can’t find anything I want”.

This is a very dangerous game for Google to play. Not sure what’s going on in that Google complex. Is it desperate?

Google did this with local last year… and that is still a mess. Google Place Pages replaced yellow pages and various other listing and directory sources. My own personal experience with Google local today? When I use Google Maps linked to Google Places and local reviews, it is wrong more than it is right. Much more. Businesses that moved a year ago, still shown at the old address. Restaurants that changed name many years ago still ranking for the old name. Lots and lots of “the wrong things” returned.

Just yesterday I finished playing tennis in Seattle, and hit maps for “tennis store” because I blame my raquet for everything. Google was useless for local commerce. I tried “tennis raquets” — also useless. What a waste of time relying on Google local! I was ready to spend up to $150 for a tennis raquet *if* I could hold it in my hand and ask about grip size and get it stringed while I waited.

My disappointment with Google for local is based in my expectations… that’s the scary part. Those searches use to work! Google used to return useful answers for searches like that!

An old Korean saying translates to “when whales fight, the shrimp’s back is broken”. That’s what we have here… Google’s gotten super greedy, innovators like Twitter and even Facebook are resisting the Borg, and Google’s getting mad and taking it’s ball home.

Grow up, Google. There’s a long road ahead and you have plenty going for you. Make search work. We’ll love you for it.

Aaron posted a great review of transparency in SEO over at SEO Book. You should read it. He goes into detail on how the marketplace seems to attach value to claims of transparency and “open” ness, even though those credits are largely misplaced. He reviews how Google abuses that to its advantage in numerous ways. I consider the Internet to be the “Land of Opportunity” since we all have so many ways we could apply our web efforts.

Transparency and Openness in SEO and Beyond

In reading the review I found myself nodding in agreement on point after point. It also reminded me of SEOMOZ, which Aaron didn’t mention by name, but which is probably the most vocal self-proclaimer in the SEO space when it comes to claims of being “open” and “transparent”. I consider them big abusers of that… “open” tools that are actually marketed via the freemium strategy, use of “dot org” domain for a clearly commercial enterprise, default “opt out” web crawler that leverages the good will of publishers to feed the commercial tools (and requires reciprocal brand promotion in order to “opt out” after the fact). I think seomoz would have been a great candidate for a case study on exploitation of “open” and “transparency”, if Aaron had needed another one.

Aarons article also prompted me to comment here about another form of “transparency” that relates to web marketing — validity of marketing claims and the inferred claims buried in testimonials.

Time and again these days we see slick tool vendors launch into the social media space with great websites and promising feature sets, accompanied by claims of value, uniqueness, efficacy, and general awesomeness. These claims are backed by testimonials from major voices. VERY OFTEN those testimonials from “major voices” appear to me to be very carefully worded. They don’t actually make any factual statements. They read like horoscopes.. snippets that sound GREAT the first time you read them, but upon analysis you can see they could apply to anyone (not just you). Here’s an example:

I have yet to see a platform on the market that can do all the things that Chirpaloo does. It is powerful!

Now it might seem I just questioned the integrity of “Patrick Mueller, Managing Director, Smly.com”. I don’t mean to… it’s just and example of a testimonial that COULD come from someone who actually uses or used the tool, or… from someone who looked at the claims and said “wow… [if it does all that] it’s way cool”.

It may also seem I am questioning the integrity of Chirpaloo, the oddly named twitter tool that published that on its home page, as its most prominent testimonial. Nope.. at least not intentionally. But I am pointing out an apparent problem with their marketing.

Chirpaloo.. a tool that claims to be awesome, but doesn’t publish a price. A tool that offers a demo video but doesn’t let you watch it. They require a sign up form (for contact information) in order to “schedule a demo”. These are not trust-instilling facts about the Chirpaloo web site. So, lacking trust factors, I must look more closely at what is offered.. the testimonials, and the specificity of the marketing claims.

Here’s another of the home page testimonials:

“We began using Chirpaloo at its earliest stages and found it an invaluable tool for our attendee marketing efforts for Pivot Conference. With the next iteration of the platform, we believe Chirpaloo will become even more valuable for us in 2012 and beyond.” Mike Edelhart, CEO, PivotCon

See? It reads like he used it during beta or alpha (not likely to have paid for it), for a specific event, and hasn’t used it since. His “testimonial” is little more than assurance that they do have something under development, and that he believes they will (eventually) have something at least more useful than it was when he checked it out.

Is that really a great testimonial? On SECOND read, does it instill confidence? One of the four best testimonials they could locate? (they selected 4 for their home page).

Pivot Conference is a branding/social media conference, so naturally the very existence of a twitter tool is relevant to them out of the gate. I’ll stop analyzing Chirpaloo here, because I’m not gaining any confidence as I look deeper (which is why I started looking… I didn’t see satisfactory trust signals). There is no shortage of incomplete, erroneous, badly-designed websites on the Internet.

And that’s the tie in to transparency and openness. If your product is amazing, let the amazingness do your marketing. If people are using it effectively, your marketing work should involve opening up access to that knowledge, not creating new content to help express that fact that you’re amazing, or get people to schedule a relatively expensive (time and attention wise) phone conference. That’s the beauty of the Facebook “like”… Facebook doesn’t promote your brand, your satisfied customers do. Facebook is enabling for that communication to reach everyone else.

Transparency in SEO World

SEO is a strange field where transparency will hurt your ability to earn a living. In SEO, there are real issues that create real challenges to openness and transparency. Aaron notes that, when he highlights how SEO firms promoting themselves as “open” and “transparent” can’t possibly be sincere, because openness and transparency in SEO destroys SEO value. But that’s not the case for twitter tools, and most “normal” Internet industries. Most industries do not have the worlds most powerful Internet company (Google) highlighting them as the biggest danger to their business profitability (something Google did in its pre-IPO paperwork – it warned investors that SEO could kill Google).

So it seems to me, openness and transparency are important. If your product is expensive, don’t hide that fact. If you hide the price and it turns out to be expensive, I have to assume you yourself have very little confidence that the market will recognize the value. THAT awareness should drive your marketing, not cause you to hide your pricing. If your success depends on people overlooking or not noticing that your service is not a very good value, you very likely have a big problem.

If your product has a lot of bugs, help everyone see the benefits of using the parts that work well. That’s all we’re looking for any way… we don’t actually want to buy your promises. We want to buy what works. If you sell us promises, we will be disappointed and it will be your [your brand’s] fault. If you sell us something that is awesome for task “A” and we discover it is indeed awesome for task “A”, but is terrible at task “B”, we can honestly evaluate it on its merits. We won’t feel cheated if we make the purchase knowing we’re buying an awesome Task “A” tool that also tries to do Task “B”.

Open. Transparent.

Exploitation of Transparent and Open Claims

On the other hand, there is one very legitimate business case when it’s SMART to hide the price, promote the promises over the facts, and present great SOUNDING testimonials from BIGVOICES instead of trust inspiring testimonials from actual experienced customers. Exploitation. Raise money, sell a product that might not be ready yet, or sell a promising product into a high-demand marketplace where there is a lot of need, not yet a lot of awareness, etc. Use “open” and “transparent” to exploit the market buyers.

Not the same as Aaron’s notes on Google, but in between my own observations about SEOmoz and perhaps the most slimy segments of the affiliate marketing world, where blatant lies and often completely fake testimonials are purposefully used to generate fake buzz and raise money from high-pressure sales.

Testimonials look like transparency, but should be real not crafted. Good ones should instill trust. Otherwise it looks like fake transparency, which is a red flag for trust. Marketing claims should be specific and demonstrable, so they empower the consumer to make a deal (buy your offering). If you can’t do that, sell what you have, not what the market wants. To do otherwise is doomed to disappoint customers, which is brand failure at best, and fraud at worst.

Credit Card Re-Billing Interview Test

One of my interview tests when dealing with affiliate marketers or people who were at some point active in strategic alliances and online marketing, involves credit card re-billing. I find a way around to discussing the amazing effectiveness of credit card re-billing, including float and slippage. Re-billing is the system of “sign up now and we’ll bill you monthly, until you cancel”. Float is the free money you make from their money, which is in your account before they use any of your services (or cost you any expenses). Slippage is the free money that you get when they paid, but didn’t consume.

The obvious part of the discussion should be, well, obvious to all participating. Free money is the most profitable revenue. I get some value from watching how a potential partner represents the credit card subscription/re-billing opportunity and their experiences with it. Not every one of them is a thief.

The not-so-obvious parts will hopefully come up in the conversation (if the candidate is at least trustworthy). That’s the connection between costs, charges, optimization of float and slippage, and management of customer accounts. It’s real work to run any business, and real work to run a very profitable business.

The nuanced parts are rarely brought up by potential candidates, but when they are, I have a candidate. Why is the re-bill so successful? Because of trust, risk, and power. The sign up is based on potential (which involves trust, as I showed earlier). Trust is also closely tied to risk. Power, which is tied to risk, belongs to me (the consumer). Take away my power, and I have risk, so I re-evaluate my trust in you.

I own my power and I own responsibility for risk. I own the responsibility for the transaction (the deal). The ONLY thing you own is the potential and the deliverable that you promised, and which I decided was the basis for the bargain. Leave me to mine, and take care of yours — then we can do business.

Re-billing? If you are trustworthy and enable me to retain my powers as a consumer, I may invest in you based on your potential to deliver, even if I know I am giving you “free money” month after month via the re-billing mechanism. It’s a deal I make, not a deal your sales guy closed, or a trick your re-bill scam pulled on me.
Open and transparent can only apply to your part — the promise and the deliverable. When you are using it for my parts (the risk, the trust, the close), you are very likely exploiting the consumer, and nothing more benevolent than that.

The phone call went something like this….

Professional Photographer: I need SEO for my website. I made it myself, but my friend is a web designer and he helped me. It’s great. Everyone loves it. Now I need SEO.

Professional SEO/Web Guy: After looking at your site and your analytics, I can tell you you need a new web site. Whatever you spend on SEO for that site will be wasted. It’s not ready to compete in your markets.

Professional Photographer: Seriously? I disagree. I just need SEO, so more people see it. Can you get me links?

Professional SEO/Web Guy: Seriously. You are already in your market, and your local data is known to search engines. Your site, however, is not working for you.

It may be working for your customers ONCE THEY KNOW ABOUT IT, but it’s not getting you in front of new customers. You need an SEO strategy. The first step any decent SEO will tell you, after seeing your current site, is that you need a new or better web site.

Links can help, but the cost of good links that last will be higher than  the cost of a new website, after about 6 months. Can’t your web designer friend  re-do your site with some SEO guidance?

Professional Photographer: Umm.. no, we’re not really friends any more. He’s busy on other stuff. So let me do SEO now and six months later, when I have tons of customers (from the SEO), I’ll spend some money on a new website.

Professional SEO/Web Guy: Good luck. I hope it works out for you.

Professional Photographer: Huh? Can’t you do it?

Professional SEO/Web Guy: Sorry. I can’t do magic without magic wands and special potions, like good web sites and pages. And they cost money to create.

Professional Photographer: Seriously dude, I just need links.

Professional SEO/Web Guy: Awesome. Good luck then.

Professional Photographer: Hey.. ok. Listen. I hired this SEO guy 3 months ago and spend a ton of money, but it didn’t really work. So I do all my own SEO now. I’m pretty good at it, actually. I spend like 2 hours a day on my meta tags and blog, and I’m like 80% of the way to complete SEO. Now I need a real SEO for the last 20%. That’s why I called you.

Professional SEO/Web Guy: Sorry, I have to go do some work.

But… if you want to chat some  more, let’s cut to the chase. Who did you hire, what did you spend (in total) and why do you say it didn’t work?

Answer that, tell me the target search query you want to rank #1 for, and tell me what you expect to spend for the next 6 months.

Do that, and I’ll stay on the line, and give you some advice.

Professional Photographer: Okay. I want to rank #1 for “professional photographer”. I hired (nobody known) and paid $900 over 3 months. I saw no traffic at all. Not a single customer. The guy stopped answering my calls after the 3rd week, for no reason at all.

I would be willing to spend that again, and maybe even a little more, if I knew I would get results. I don’t need to get to #1, but at least top 3 in Google for “professional photographer”.

Professional SEO/Web Guy: Seriously?

Professional Photographer: Seriously. I WILL pay that much. And I’ll give it to YOU if you can deliver. I’ll even pay up front after the first month, I see results.

Professional SEO/Web Guy: Okay, I understand now. So let me explain something to you.

First, SEO is optimization. It is competitive web publishing. If you have a website already, we have to be able to optimize it. Yours cannot be optimized for less than about 40 hours of work, which is at least 3-4 thousand dollars if you have someone willing to do the work. Even then, it’s not enough content nor the right content. You’ll need a lot more.

Second, your website sucks. It has technical errors, and is built on a system that needs alot of work if we are going to even try to optimize it. It was a big mistake to invest time loading your photos and writing meta tags on that system. That work will all have to be re-done. If we did work with your current site, the more we promote the site, the more problems you’ll have with it. It won’t survive even minor levels of success.

Third, if you’re really a professional photographer, why are you spending 2 hours a day on meta tags? What are your professional goals? If you prefer coding websites to taking photographs, you’re not a professional photographer, and don’t belong in the search results for “professional photographer”. If you like SEO and want to be an SEO for photographers, that’s awesome. But don’t call me asking to SEO your photography website in a secret effort to learn enough photography SEO to sell into that market.

Failed Professional Photographer now Trying to be an SEO: Actually, I’m doing really well as an SEO already. I rank #1 for some mega money terms, like “underwater photos [obscure place name]” and “nikon sb700 flash exposure setting”, which has over 650 THOUSAND competitors in Google. And that with only those 2 hours a day on SEO. Now I’m going full-time into SEO, and just need a handful of new clients to make it possible. Right now I just need links, and if you don’t do that then fine. I’ll call someone else.

Me: Great. And congratulations! That’s WAY better results than I ever expected. You know how SEO is.. everyone says they can do it. You clearly have a gift. Which reminds me…

I get a lot of calls from people looking for SEO like this, and a lot of them are people JUST LIKE YOU. They need a good SEO, with experience ranking in photography. It sure sounds like you’re up tot the task. Can I refer them to you?

It would help me a lot, since those calls are difficult. I’d love to send them direct to you, if you have the bandwidth to take on new customers.

Failed Professional Photographer now Trying to be an SEO: Seriously? Dude thanks, that’d be awesome. And I am totally up to the task. Like I said, I’m rocking the SERPs and if I can get the link building started I’m totally in the game. Thanks a lot. And if I get good customers out of it, I’ll definitely share something back with you, for the referral. Seriously. I’m very generous that way, for people who can deliver.

Me: Great. So give me your name, mailing address, and the website I can give to people so they can read about your SEO services.

Loser: “Okay….”

I got a marketing email from Hubspot today, with a headline about detecting “bad seo”. It then made an argument based on the “fact” that 20% of the queries on Google’s search engine have never been searched before. That was enough for me to recognize Hubspot as a “bad seo” vendor.

The 20% number is pure Google propaganda. “Good” SEOs aren’t so easily led astray.

I assume that at the time Google announced that “20%” statistic, it was good for Google for frame the issue that way. Tomorrow, when Google wants to give an alternative impression (for whatever reason), it will be easy to re-position that data. SEO people need to be smarter than that. Don’t believe everything Google says. Better yet, “critical thinking” is essential for SEO.

Maybe today I search “shoe repair Fort Lauderdale, Florida” looking for a shop to resole my awesome c. 1981 biker boots. That’s a new query and is counted.

Next I search “shoe repair Fort Lauderdale Florida” and, technically, that query has never been searched before. Merely a comma different, yet “not the same”. If I’m looking for a large number for my “there are a lot of new queries every day”propaganda, I increment the count.

Maybe someone searches “shoe repair Ft Lauderdale Florida”.. another “brand new, never before searched phrase”. And then how about “shoe repair Ft. Lauderdale Florida”, with the extra period? The count continues to rise.

We can see how very quickly we get way up there in numbers….especially when we are reporting percentages:

“shoe repair Fort Lauderdale Florida”
“shoe repair Fort Lauderdale, Florida”
“shoe repair Fort Lauderdale Fl”
“shoe repair Fort Lauderdale Fl.”
“shoe repair Fort Lauderdale, Fl.”
“shoe repair Fort Lauderdale, Fl”
“shoe repair Ft Lauderdale Florida”
“shoe repair Ft Lauderdale, Florida”
“shoe repair Ft Lauderdale Fl”
“shoe repair Ft Lauderdale Fl.”
“shoe repair Ft Lauderdale, Fl.”
“shoe repair Ft Lauderdale, Fl”
“shoe repair Ft. Lauderdale Florida”
“shoe repair Ft. Lauderdale, Florida”
“shoe repair Ft. Lauderdale Fl”
“shoe repair Ft. Lauderdale Fl.”
“shoe repair Ft. Lauderdale, Fl.”
“shoe repair Ft. Lauderdale, Fl”

Suddenly 20% is not a very surprising figure. There are many, many more variations but I stopped documenting permutations above because quite frankly, the way Google has been over-reacting to market dynamics lately, I’m afraid my site will be banned for spamming the local shoe repair SERPs for Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

Is it really remarkable that 20% of searches on Google have never been searched before? I honestly don’t know, because Google only released that junk statement and no good supporting data about how it was obtained. Junk science, or junk SEO, in this case. Meaningless as best, and distracting at worst.

If you start your SEO newsletter with some assertions based on such “facts”, I think you lose credibility as an SEO.

Critical thinking, folks. Think of it as a necessary tool for survival in web marketing and SEO.

Just wrote and deleted another 800 or so word blog post on SEO. I was compelled to write it, because I know that what I was reading on SEO on the Internet was incorrect, but no one seemed to notice. Writing it helped clarify the thoughts, and align them with potential execution steps that were fuzzy during the idea stage. As I wrote, I supported my assertions with rationale culled from my personal experience as an SEO, today, succeeding with Google optimization. I’m very busy, having fun, and working very hard. SEO works, but it’s not what a lot of people think it is. It’s not magic, but it’s also not a mystery.
When my post was good enough to publish, and just needed a read-through and some final editing, I deleted it. The bottom line is, why publish on SEO? If you have a good answer to that question, feel free to post a comment.

Some time ago there was a major shift in search engine optimization. SEO Practitioners moved from technical tactics to either PPC or content tactics. The reason? The technical tactics had been attacked by Google. Prior to the shift, technical SEO tactics held the following characteristics:

• they were easy to understand, if you knew what they were
• they were easy to implement, and scalable
• they were “money”, i.e. they led to earnings proportional to traffic or scale
• they were “not ugly” i.e. you could publish tactical SEO pages without being too embarrassed

Under Google’s algorithmic attacks, these tactical seo methods assumed a different set of characteristics:

• everyone talked about them as “spammy” and deserving of punishment so they took on a new spam luster (came to look ugly)
• now everyone knew what they were
• they were unprofitable unless massively and quickly scaled

For those who didn’t become professional speakers or conference planners and stayed in SEO practice, we saw a split into two camps: content vs. links. One new promotional face of SEO was “content” and especially “just make good content”. We saw everything from deep, rich content development to content “silos” to “content farms”.

For the rest, links were “everything”. Any content could rank if it had the right links or the right number of links. Remember those days? Links were king. And content was king… and I called BS. From my perspective, strategy was king, not content and not links. How did I know? Because I built sites without links, and I built sites without (much) content, and I ranked them all when they were on-target with the apparent content strategy rewarded in Google’s SERPs.

In competitive spaces you still needed links, and you still needed content, but not to earn relevance. You needed those to overcome competitors.

That is a simple but often overlooked concept – that earning rank and competing are different things. You had to earn relevance, but earned relevance did not give you top rankings unless you also overcame your competitors (who were in your way, because they had similar earned relevance or had supplemented whatever relevance they did have with additional links and sometimes semantically important content). Inefficient publishing could not cost-effectively compete. (As a side note, I think that’s why a lot of SEO practitioners became SEO tool vendors).

For years since SEO has been a strategy game — pick your opportunities, earn adequate relevance, and then overcome competition (with links/aligned content). If you work smart and hard, you can simultaneously influence the semantics of the search results when that appears to be possible.

Now things have changed again. Google has released The Panda, an aggressive algorithmic update that seems to throw away low quality web pages while keeping pages that make more sense. Google appears to be using the stick on sites that hosted alot of sub-threshold pages. At least it looks that way most of the time. But not always.

And as always, the exceptions provide the clues.

Right now webmasters are discussing the Panda update at length. I’m not drawing favors from any conference organizers so I don’t need to link out to discussions from here. You can find them if you look in your favorite community.

User signals are highly suspect… bounce rates, social media activity, and page consumption activity data such as comes from Google knowing more about you than your mother does. It’s all on the table. Great conversations. It’s almost a return to evidence-based SEO, where people actually tested things and studied. We will definitely learn alot from Panda. The links guy says it’s not about links. The content guys.. well, let’s look a wee bit closer at that group. They’re not being so public. A clue, perhaps? Buried in noise?

I’ll put this out there…. study the sites that are ranking and are obviously junk. That’s where you’ll find the clues. But hurry up, because the spam team is hard at work adjusting the algo to get those pages out of view as soon as they are known.

To say it another way, study hard the sites and Panda update, where Google updates influence search results and rankings improve optimal results and conversions. Don’t be fooled… it’s a smart algorithm, but not that smart.

And if you find yourself awash in the Panda update clues – words not the matter of course, nor might Panda order or sequential keyword stats. Behold! For optimal optimized rankings we listen to the careful and adapt around Google’s Panda… right around this point everyone knows not to continue reading. But up to here? Crap shoot. Look at what is ranking today. You’ll see it. Optimized garbage beating The Panda, mixed in with super-inefficient just-make-good-content publishing.

How to Win Against Panda: As always “just make good content” will win the battle but lose the war. Publishing special, rich, meaningful content will keep you in the index, but it’s a horribly inefficient way to compete as a publisher. Ditto for links. Building alot of quality links throws you into a competition for more, if there are other content survivors. While Google rewards you with traffic it steals the value away one dime at a time. Competing with high quality content demands placing faith in Google to be more benevolent than it has been in recent history.

The bottom line is, Google just doesn’t value your content, and doesn’t care very much. I believe Google will continue to destroy content economies, forcing a race to the bottom for writers and artists. Someday producers will wake up and demand more, but I don’t expect it any time soon.

By the way that may explain the lack of public observations from the content group. That group is comprised of the inefficient “just make good content” publishers (who wouldn’t know a Panda from a Drop Bear), the social guys fully engaged in the race to the bottom (with 60+ new articles a day), and the auto-gen guys who continue to spend on technology that scales rapidly and delivers “money in a hurry” even as the opportunities get narrower and narrower. One of those is losing the war to inefficiency. One is winning the war, but at slave wages, probably looking for an alternative exit. One is winning like a warlord, one profitable battle at a time, with little interest in winning the war, while hoping it will just keep going. Aaron calls that a black hat seo.

Is there a winning strategy post-Panda? Sure there is.. defined on a market basis, one niche at a time. Publishers still exert influence, and can still define audiences. But again, they won’t succeed if they continue to let Google define the audience or manage it. Is that in your strategy? Defining and serving the specific audiences you serve with your products and services? Forever, Google has been keen on the pigeon hole.

If you got this far congratulations. There’s no prize though. Because it’s not about Panda, it’s about Google. If in your business it’s all about Panda, take that as a sign your were in the business of optimizing Google, and the threshold just shifted, as it will do every X months going forward. That’s the game — celebrate it. Make sure the risk management is built into your business model. Nothing new there… warnings on that front have been circulating since before 2003.

If you didn’t see any effect from Panda, no need to rest on your laurels. You’re probably a very inefficient publisher, and now everyone knows it (because now you rank at the top). If there is any interest in your niche market, Google will make sure you’re next to be attacked, until the profits are removed and you can barely survive. That’s the race to the bottom. No different than any other marketplace since the dawn of currency. Google continues to believe you should be happy you rank for rainbow sandals and suggests you capitalize on it.

My advice? Manage risk, hedge bets, optimize publishing, expect change, study the SERPs, listen to Google. Or hire an SEO consultant to do that for you.

I think to Boldy Go where Man Has Gone Before.. is Foolish

Even I am too young for the real original Star Trek sagas, but I do remember the daytime TV I watched as a kid, with episode after episode of Captain James T. Kirk keeping courage, trust, integrity and humanity alive in the Universe. And of course, the call to action every episode was “to boldly go where no man has gone before“. Wow… not just to go into the unknown, but to boldly go. That takes courage.

We SEO innovators put our courage to the test constantly, pushing limits and testing both Google and the marketplace. We go where no man has gone before, and often on behalf of our clients. When we boldly go, we usually go on our own, testing the waters or innovating, uncertain of the outcomes. Since in capitalist systems reward tries to flow to risk takers, we often boldly go where we believe we can successfully innovate. There is little room in the SEO research arena for timidity.

Recently I’ve witnessed a different sort of SEO effort though. I’ve seen SEO people boldly going where many people have gone before, without full awareness of the outcomes (seo history).  I think that is the definition of SEO foolish. As my favorite ADD coach says, go boldly, but not carelessly.

The other day in an initial meeting with a web team, I boldly stated that “I know that 95% of quoted statistics are nonsense, but I say 90% of SEO materials published on the web are wrong“. I offered  a money back guarantee on that claim. It’s true. The vast bulk of so-called SEO blogs, articles, and advice proffered by web vendors is misleading at best and typically incorrect (often outdated). To boldly follow such advice can be very risky.

When a webmaster believes what she reads about SEO on the web and then implements it, she either wastes time and effort (because it won’t work well) or assumes undue risk (making changes with uncertain outcomes). In search marketing, taking incorrect actions can cost you more than not having done anything at all.

Changes to public-facing signals (which by definition are search-engine-facing signals) always incur SEO risks. If something  is misinterpreted by the search engines, it can cost you. Even if nothing changes, the wasted resources bleed power from other efforts that could have increased sales or lowered costs. And if we analyze subsequent rankings changes (which may or may not have had anything to do with the “seo” efforts) from a correlational perspective, or otherwise biased cause-and-effect perspective, such efforts can gain negative momentum and cost us even more progress.

I wrote about the way the SEO marketplace skews understanding of the SEO a long time ago in a blog post about “A Market for Lemons” and SEO consulting. The marketing materials published by SEO vendors comprises a big portion of the potentially harmful SEO misinformation out there.

Following incorrect SEO advice is a mistake. Boldly following it, can be disastrous.

SEO contrarians have been more consistently correct than SEO pundits for quite some time now. Don’t let that stop innovation and experimentation, but I suggest the following approach to strong SEO today:

• Don’t execute hard on anything you haven’t soundly tested for yourself
• Don’t trust what you read from free or vendor-sponsored SEO publications. this is a variation on the old but very sound advice “follow the money”
• Ask specific questions so you can estimate risk and reward, before you execute SEO tactics. If you don’t know where to safely ask such questions, you’ve just identified your first need: you need a good seo consultant (such as Audette Media)
• Definitely go where SEOs have gone before, just don’t do so foolishly (boldly). Test and execute, and of course double down on  things that clearly work. You won’t enjoy the benefits of early execution for long, as the web is rather transparent when it comes to SEO (competitors will see you rank and figure out what you did… and copy it).
• Learn why PPC is a valuable test tool for SEO. Join PPCBlog.com if you need cut-to-the-chase practical advice.
• Boldly Go where No Man Has Gone Before – this is great advice. Do it on separate test sites or sites you can afford to lose, and learn learn learn. And if you find you love this aspect of SEO, welcome to my world of advanced SEO and SEO research. I hope to see you in the seobook.com private forums, or in-person at conference networking events, or involved in my future SEO newsletter WebPrescience.com.

Big is attractive. Now Facebook is so big, it’s a magnet drawing attention from otherwise reasonable people in online marketing. Facebook Facebook Facebook. It was previously Social Media, Social Media, Social Media but now it’s more specific because, well, Facebook is big. Billions big.

Whatever you’re measuring, find a smaller unit of measure so you can report bigger counts. People just love big numbers. Facebook had millions of users, but now it’s valued at Billions of dollars. Billions…. wow.

So Facebook is super important. Are you marketing on Facebook?

And then the same old  discussions begin… we have a “Facebook Page” (but don’t do anything with it). We have “Facebook friends” (but not many, and don’t do anything with them). We do some “Facebook advertising” (but most things we’ve tried didn’t produce results). Etcetera.

Take a look folks, and know your history.  Facebook is a closed community. A walled garden. Like the old AOL – America Online. It needs to be big to succeed. Huge, even. It must, or it won’t work. Big big big.. huge. Everyone is on it.. you have to be on it. Unless “just about everyone” is on it, it will disappoint. Etcetera.

So what about content? Well, why should anyone be on Facebook at all? In the beginning, if “everyone” is on it, you have to be on it. But once you’re past the “hey you’re here too? that’s cool I’m here too did you know Bob’s here also?” stage, then what? That’s right.. content.  Same old same old. Entertain me. Educate me. Adore me. Make me feel special. Or… I’l go somewhere else.

So content becomes king. Just. Like. On. The. Web.

Content? What content? Well, take a look at the reports from emarketer.com on Facebook activity. Who’s got Facebook pages? Local businesses, politicians, musicians, schools…. the top list is full of community builders or community-based efforts. That reflects the comprehensiveness part of the equation — if everyone in your group is on Facebook, you need to be on Facebook. It’s audience building.

Then look at the “Ten Largest Brands on Facebook” and you see the same thing… audience building, for branding. Coca Cola, YouTube, Skittles. What used to be done with a web page on the web and TV and other media, is now *also* done in Facebook (because a BIG community is there).

Look at what people expect from those brands with Facebook pages… “77% of new media users want brands to offer them incentives online. Additionally, 28% would like to be entertained.”

Content. Constant, attractive and engaging content to keep the audience happy. Just like on the Web. The big difference is that now your content is managed by Facebook. Your audience is “owned” by Facebook. Your web page (fan page) is owned and hosted by Facebook, who by the way can wrap it in any context it likes, etc etc etc. Just like the old AOL.

A few more quotes from that article, showing how much work is associated with publishing to Facebook to succeed on Facebook:

Coca-Cola, with 19.8 million Facebook fans, used a year-long social media campaign…to keep its Facebook page constantly updated with content posted by brand ambassadors.

Sounds exactly like a regular website (if you want it to succeed). So, basically, what you have to do to succeed on Facebook is the same stuff you have to do to suceed on your website. And if your organization doesn’t make and maintain compelling content on your website, will it do that on Facebook?

Sometimes I wonder if these Facebook successes really just skunkworks, and I wonder when managers will acknowledge that it is their own people that get in the way of their own people succeeding on the web (or in front of any audience for that matter).

Many years ago, in the days when I thought I was competitive, I played racquetball. Now I realize that I was not actually a competitive person at all. I was a poser. But the racquetball experience is still worthy of re telling as a parable.

Out of college and flush enough to join a private club, I learned to play racquetball. I practiced (a lot). I got pretty good. I joined the league, and earned a reputation for being quick. I won most of my games, even in my first year of playing the game.

The club kept one high-profile glass court reserved at all times for “winner keeps the court” games. If you walked onto that court, you were challenging all comers to a “loser walks” game. Winner was king of that court, and could play as long as he could defend against all challengers. Loser walked off. I was able to keep that court as my own, frequently, despite challenges from all sorts of players.

Unlike some of the other “regulars” at the club, I played a well-rounded game. I was quick on my feet. I was ambidextrous, and enjoyed a wide reach. I executed a hard, accurate swing. I could predict where the ball would be with great certainty, and I had a good court sense (body positioning). I had an awesome right handed kill shot from my younger paddleball days, and my left handed kill shot got more reliable every day. I knew the rules, and could usually highlight the mistakes I had made in any lost game. At one point, I even thought I was “competitive” player. Sometimes I thought that I only lost when I made mistakes, or when the other guy got lucky.

Boy was I wrong.

One day I played this old timer who rarely showed up for any league play. He had a beer belly, and was way old (about 45 years old I think). He beat me handily.

I watched him beat everyone else, too, while I awaited my turn to challenge again. I lost again. And now we get to the “growing up” part of the parable.

This old guy had one move — a killer move. He could return the ball into a corner, with low velocity and low height, nearly every time. No matter what you sent his way, if he could get his racquet onto it, he’d dink it into a corner. If he couldn’t he’d take the miss and wait for the next opportunity. Obviously body positioning was important to him, so he had mastered that as well. He always got into the center court position quickly, and like I noted already, he had quite a girth.

Now any decent competitive racquetball player will tell you how to beat this joker. I discovered I could defeat him by simply returning every shot down the side wall. I’d guess which side corner he might dink into, just like a soccer goalie. When I guessed right, I’d return his dink back along the sidewall.

If I guessed right often enough, I’d beat him. He could never get from his stable center position to the wall fast enough and with enough grace to return my wall-riding return, so it became a game of one-hit points, based on guessing. There were no real volleys, and no real “plays”.

So I learned to beat him, and the loser walked. But it wasn’t fun. It was boring. Slow and stupid. And he came back next chance he got to try again. It’s all he had, and he had as much right to challenge the last winner as anyone else. I never got to know the guy, so I can’t say if  he was simple or perhaps just limited somehow and doing his best with what he had. It didn’t matter. When he was there, racquetball sucked.

Then one night he and I were the only players at the club. Hoo boy. Did I want to spend my night scoring points on single hit plays, all the way to 21, just to do it again, and again? Nope. I made an excuse and conceded the court. He could wait for someone else to play. I opted to be a loser.

I know now I wasn’t really a loser. I simply wasn’t competitive. When it came to the Challenge Court, I didn’t really “get it”. It wasn’t about being the best at playing the game. It clearly wasn’t about being the fittest player. It wasn’t about having the fastest shot or quickest feet, or best court sense or even the most experience. It was about winning. You win, you play. You lose, you go home.

That’s alot like SEO. You win, you get traffic. You don’t win, you don’t get traffic. Simple, really. It doesn’t matter how you play.

I didn’t stay a loser, mind you. I changed my game and my view of competition, and I actually consider myself to be truly competitive these days. Not at racquetball, but at many of the things I do. And that beer-bellied old guy had something to do with my competitive development. I played him many more times after that quitter day, and because of him I learned to be more competitive. I learned to enjoy beating his ass on the court. I watched him and picked apart his weaknesses. I used him as target practice… yes for the occasional bean ball, but mostly for precision ball placement. I learned to enjoy making him stretch a little too far, and move a little too far off balance. I learned to psych him out, to tease him. I got pretty good at grazing his left knee. I learned to predict two positions ahead, not just one, so I could set him up and then knock him down. I learned to win.

I got my racquetball enjoyment while playing every one else, and I learned to get enjoyment out of tiring him out early in the evening. You see, if he could play his way, he could play all night. But if I played him my way, he’d go home early and exhausted. I even remember one night when he left early, someone said “now we can play some real racquetball“.

It was all real racquetball. It was all “legal”, by the rules racquetball. That attitude that it wasn’t “our” form of racquetball is a loser attitude.

If you are a competitor, you play all comers. You might not feel comfortable against some challenges, and you might not want to play the way it takes to win, but if you are a competitor, you will. You need to win. And if you’ve got game, you’ve got a chance. Otherwise, you really should consider going home. Play on your own court, with your own rules, and have your own fun being great at your version of the game.

Now let me address the “hot point” I mentioned above, since I know some readers are probably stuck on it. I said:

That’s alot like SEO. You win, you get traffic. You don’t win, you don’t get traffic. Simple, really. It doesn’t matter how you play.

So it doesn’t matter how you play? That’s right. If you spam your way to #1, you played legitimate SEO just like anybody else. And you’ve assumed the associated risks of ban and penalty and social shun. Grab the cash while the vault door’s open.

You didn’t break any “rules of SEO”… you simply played a different way that led you to win the top spots. Google’s “guidelines” are not laws. They are a set of guidelines that enable Google to manage the eco system of Google search in a way that makes Google money. The guidelines are intended to help keep enough peace that Google doesn’t have to spend alot more money managing that aspect of the Google business.

Of course you should  never gamble what you can’t afford to lose. If you want or need to stay in the game, don’t get yourself banned or penalized.

If you elect to believe in the Almighty Google and subscribe to a “White Hat SEO” philosophy, that’s your choice. You choose to believe what you are told, and follow the guidelines. But you should be prepared to eat White Hat SEO meals at White Hat SEO restaurants. Don’t complain when the menu is limited to stale bread and off-color water.

Don’t point at your more successful (and probably spammier) peers dining at Nobu and suggest life isn’t fair, they aren’t “real SEOs” or lament the fact that Google hasn’t caught them yet.

You can trust me on this.. Google has been very busy. It takes a lot to push billions of dollars in profits all the way to the bank. Just like the old joke that Bill Gate’s would lose money if he stopped to pick up $10,000 on the sidewalk, Google is not anxious to spend its time blocking the sites that are spammier than yours. Google would much prefer you stuck with the “make good content” approach to SEO, so there was less work to do on the spam-fighting front.

By the way, what is “legitimate SEO” anyway? I think there are two primary aspects to that concept: legal and lifestyle.

Legally, if you’re not breaking laws, you’re within the law, and therefore legal. Plain and simple. Of course some countries (like the US) have corrupt legal systems so you need to be careful. It is possible for the innocent to be convicted around here. An indictment for a jury trial is a perfect example of the risks of looking too much like you’re a lawbreaker even if you’re technically not breaking the law. So you do need to be smart about more than just the legal technicalities, in order to stay “legal”. Beware that you may also win so much that they make laws after the fact and go after you for breaking them before they existed. I’ll leave the research on that for homework, but it does happen too often, and it’s not pretty when it does.

As for lifestyle, you make your bed and you lie in it. If your legal spam pollutes the Internet or causes Google to get even more patriarchal than it is, we all lose and even you have to live in the uglier world you helped create. So think about your actions.

If I know you’re behind that spammy network that keeps getting in the way of my legitimate searches, or you’re the guy that makes it impossible for me to “follow my passion” because you’ve turned my niche into a spamfest, I will definitely not want to have a beer with you at the next search conference. And if that’s not bad enough of a social consequence for you, consider that most of the SEO meetings, conferences, and communities are moderated by opinionated, experienced community members who commonly impose their SEO religions upon their communities.

Aside from the token “Black Hat SEO” invited to speak as somewhat of a sideshow act at search conferences, the respect follows those who adhere to the principles of the moderators and organizers. Disagree with the key players behind SMX or SES or Pubcon, and you probably won’t be wearing a speaker badge often if at all.

But, and I say this knowing full well a whole helluvalot of people will be pissed at the suggestion, not everyone’s eyes see the same colors. An eco-conscious father unable to feed his kids will choose to pollute for a paycheck every time he gets an opportunity. You should be aware of that, and not be surprised when it happens. In fact, I’d be disappointed in the Dad who chose to remain “ethical” and poor while his kids starved, and I think you should be too. We live in a real world, and real world guidelines take priority over Google’s guidelines.

Lucky for Google, these days Google makes the real world rules. So if Google wanted to, Google could make the world a better (less spammy) place. That’s a great seat of power to enjoy.

If the Google guidelines mattered, they’d be enforced. You wouldn’t find the spam ranking, and you wouldn’t see Google partners sharing junk content (e.g. MFA) profits with Google. Unless you think Google actually can’t do it — which I say is absurd. Google’s got the money, the power, the talent, and the drive. It’s ludicrous to think poor old Google is suffering at the will of spammers. Convenient, maybe, but ridiculous.

Chew on that a bit, and you may achieve some enlightenment about SEO. Google drives commerce. Google apportions the profits from that commerce. If you want to know the real Google SEO guidelines, follow the money. Look at who makes money with Google, and what they do. That’s the game, and it’s Google’s game.

Just like that old timer with the beer belly and the dink shot. What will you do? Quit? Go home? Play his game and lose? Complain that it’s not fair? Or decide to compete. It’s your life.

Self-admitted Google “fan boy” Ryan Singel wrote a “In Defense of Google” article on Wired.com today, calling out consumer watchdog group Consumer Watchdog. Consumer Watchdog has been very effectively lampooning Google on privacy issues lately. It must be starting to hurt, to draw such articles on Wired. Consumer Watchdog’s stuff is smart, just odd enough, sadly comical, and painfully insightful.

The latest was downright creepy… a very creative animation of Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt as the “Ice Cream Man”, that drive-around ice cream guy you don’t know but let talk to (and feed goodies to) your kids. Singel describes the artwork as “caricaturing its [Google’s] CEO Eric Schmidt as a creepy, high-tech ice cream vendor who profiles children”. Since I’m a search guy, I am very familiar with Google. I’m not a “fan” of Google’s business practices, but I am a fan of much of their work. So I “get” many of the little allusions embedded within the video that “civilians” might not get, including the FACT that Eric Schmidt has, indeed said many of the very things that this comic suggests he might say (which I assume make the caricature “creepy” to Mr. Singel).

I assert to you, Mr. Singel, that the reason this animated video is so poignant is because it parallels reality so well. The guy IS creepy to us, because of what he says, how he behaves, and how much power he has with Google.

As I skimmed through the article, I found myself contesting and discounting Mr. Singel’s statements about how unfair this characterization of Google and Schmidt is, time and again (and out loud… sorry Starbuck’s neighbors). Seriously… I work with marketers, issue framers, market shapers, and propagandists. This article is not good enough by current standards, but certainly seems to try to sway public opinion. When I got to the end of the article the kid in me sarcastically muttered “FAIL“, while the more grown-up part of me decided to comment in a blog post (this one).

A few notes… before I tire and move on to more important things.

“In the simplest terms possible, Consumer Watchdog is just wrong”

Nice try. Actually, in simplest terms, Consumer Watchdog is simply “right”. The parody is based in reality. Real factual accounts of things Eric Schmidt has said, ways he has behaved, things Google has done, and access it has to our (and our children’s) information. If it is exaggerated, skewed, biased, or even wrong on many points, it is still not “just wrong”. Next time try and use a more appropriate adjective. You can save yourself from simply being wrong.

“Have you ever actually seen ads on third-party web sites or Google’s own sites that are derived from assumptions Google has made about you based on your search history or what you have written about in e-mails? No, you haven’t. Google doesn’t do that.”

Fanboy Singel asserts this point very clearly and very early in his piece – a claim that Google just doesn’t do the sort of evil tracking the video suggests Eric Schmidt would do. As if to show Consumer Watchdog is lying. “Every search ad and every ad in Gmail or Google Images is essentially blind to who you are and is keyed off only the search term you just entered or the e-mail you just opened. That’s because Google’s ad tracking system and your Google account system are separated by design” Singel asserts.

I’ve been an SEO for a long time, and I have never, ever been able to state with certainty anything about Google’s internal practices like that. But then, Google never spoon-fed me inside information. Did this information come to Mr. Singel direct from Google? I wonder.

But no matter, because Mr. Singel authoritatively states that Google could do the evil tracking thing, and that others are doing it, and that it would be “easy” and “highly profitable” for Google to do it. Then he slips up and reminds us that Google owns a company that is doing it. Huh?

That’s right. He asserts that Google is way above the evilness of actually doing something it could easily do, is highly profitable, and easy to accomplish, and then reveals that Google owns a company that in fact does the evil deed for them.

“It does have a third-party ad service – AdSense (augmented by the Google buying DoubleClick) – that tracks what you do on the web sites that use its ad delivery technology. But those sites (with the exception of YouTube) aren’t Google owned, and that tracking isn’t anything different from what a dozen other firms, including Yahoo and Microsoft do”

That was one of the many times I muttered “FAIL”. If you’re trying to defend Google, best leave out the actual, factual, evil stuff like that.

Here’s my perspective. Google has, since it’s inception, told us how “not evil” it is.

It has repeatedly pointed to things others have done, suggested they were “worse” than whatever Google actually admitted doing at that same time, and claimed the high moral ground in public. Later, Google would change direction and execute on those same opportunities (often in a  big, powerful way). Just like that reference to Double Click not being Google (even though Google owns it) and Mr. Singel’s observation that AdSense sites doing Double-Click’s bidding aren’t owned by Google :

“those sites (with the exception of YouTube) aren’t Google owned”

They may not be Google owned, but they are paid by Google to do the tracking. It’s part of Google’s AdSense terms. Did you not know that?

As an SEO, I’ll even go so far as to say duplicity and deception seem to be in Google’s DNA, at best since Eric Schmidt came on board as CEO.

I know it’s a grand statement to say Google is genetically evil, but that’s how I’ve seen it consistently. I believe people are basically good, but they sometimes do bad things, not the other way around. Google, however, so far seems to have done all of the bad things it might easily get away with, and sometimes after earlier having publicly stated those would be evil things to do. Most of us older than 13 know such claims of “but Billy did worse” do not exempt us from social responsibility for our actions, but both Google and Mr. Singel seem to like that excuse tactic.

By the way, like Wal-Mart, Google is a public company, responsible to US law and its shareholders. If something is known to be easy and highly profitable for Google to do, and is being done by others so is presumably legal, I would be a fool to think Google won’t do them sooner or later, right? It would actually be illegal for Google NOT to do them. The only time a public company can successfully avoid doing profitable but legal evil, is if it can make an internal claim that there is downside risk associated with the profitable act. Risk of a public relations nightmare. Risk of promoting increased regulatory involvement. Risk of hurting partners or distribution channels, or other owned businesses, for example.

Just because it’s not a good time for Google to execute on an evil right now, doesn’t mean Google is above the evil act. Clearly history shows Google is very much capable of acting in its own interests at the expense of.. well.. everyone else.

Much of the details of Google’s duplicity are obscure and somewhat technical, but they are known to just about everyone who works in the Google-dominated search and advertising industry. Trust us, we’ve been there with Mr. Schmidt’s Big G and we know how the story ends.

I’d like the clarify that I’m not all anti-Google. Most of us in search and the web assume Google won’t do the worst things it can do. In fact, many of us risk our careers on that dubious presumption, despite our experiences to the contrary. The truth is, there is simply no other option given Google’s degree of control.

Many of us were very hopeful as Google got involved in things like blog comment spam, image hosting, and free Internet browser marketplace.

We didn’t need a new browser, but if Google Chrome would make the web faster, more secure, more standards-compliant and more “open”, that’d be great. Consumer Watchdog has been highlighting specific areas where Google’s Chrome browser leaks private data, even when Google claims the consumer is “safe” (such as in the Google-named “incognito mode”).

We hate comment spam. A rel attribute on an href is a relatively cumbersome thing to utilize to control comment spam, but if it removed the economic incentive for spamming blogs, that would be great. We are very wary of insider deals between Google (who already owns Blogger) and every major hosted blog provider (e.g. Typepad, WordPress), but if rel=nofollow is not really a compromise, and is really a cooperative tactic to manage comment spam, that’d be great.

Of course we knew the overwhelming driver of that comment spam was profit sharing paid out by Google through the DoubleClick-supported AdSense program, but we hoped for the better. We now know how much Google has extended this nofollow attribute to serve its own interests, separate from any comment spam hindering, and we all still have tons of comment spam.

We also loved the traffic Google sent us from image search enough to agree with Google that it was not actually hosting our images when it cached them on its servers, but rather giving us exposure (and traffic). Until of course, Google shut off that traffic stream (while continuing to host our images). Fool me once… fool me again?
Ryan Singel does to great lengths to list other presumably good, non-evil things Google does, and I can counter just about every one of them with an SEO insight that kinda shows he’s wrong. I won’t.. but I could. Okay… how about a quickie?

Google voluntarily deletes data after 18 months? Maybe, but wasn’t the public outcry originally against Google intentionally trying to save that data forever? And then for 365 days? Is the 18 month compromise really evidence of Google’s benevolence? And what about those comments from senior Google executives… that we should be glad it’s Google saving that data instead of some government? Seriously? Didn’t we already read (several times) about Google’s insider hookup (a.k.a. contracts) with the same government agencies that buy credit databases from private companies and hire contractors to exploit a loophole in civilian protection laws that makes comprehensive citizen tracking by the government illegal?

Now we have to notice that Ryan Singel isn’t speaking for Google (aside from that awkward question about where he got his insider data from). We have to do that, because statements like:

“that tracking isn’t connected with what you search for, what you do in Google Docs, what you do on your mobile Android phone or in your Gmail account”

These are likely to be flipped around in the future. Surely Google will do this someday. Why isn’t Google currently linking Android activity to tracking? Or using search activity to enhance tracking? It could. It would likely be “highly profitable”. See what I mean?

In this case, Ryan Singel may turn out to be wrong, not Google. It seems fairly obvious to me that Google knows when to hedge risk and hold back from too much aggressive invasion of privacy for huge disruptive innovations like linking every mobile phone to a tracked Internet user. But then again, I’m not a journalist. Nor a Google fanboy.

More from ConsumerWatchdog

This post is subtitled “careful what you wish for” or “know where you’re headed”.

Credentials aren’t everything. God knows our world is pretty messed up these days, and it clearly got that way via the actions of a few generations of very credentialed leaders.  From Ph.D’s to Grand Poobah’s with every sort of title in between, our “civilized” society has run a-muck with titles and credentials.

In an almost wicked reversal, our immediate environment is overrun with fake credentials. Nowadays I can place an advertisement into Fortune.com and then add the Fortune Magazine logo to my website with a claim “as seen in Fortune”. Or I can buy a set of glowing testimonials from seemingly real people for my product, without having to have any customers or even a product. It’s crazy. And it’s supported by a community of consumers behind the curve.

We don’t always need credentials to prove trustworthiness in fact, ability, experience, or legal rights. Some of the most worthy people in the universe are formally un-credentialed (and should stay that way, IMHO).

Truth is, I am actually one of the credentialing contrarians. I walked away from a nearly completed doctoral dissertation in Engineering, forgoing the Ph.D. credential after doing all of the work to pass the qualifiers, complete the formal requirements, produce ninety percent of the research and most of the dissertation work. I was a Ph.D. candidate and walked away, specifically because in my eyes, the credential failed my real-life value test. I simply didn’t want to be what I was becoming.

But sometimes, we do need some third party validation.

Statisticians lost alot of credibility in the past 100 years for numerous reasons, including alot of funny business. Today anyone with a copy of SPSS can claim to be a statistician. No one is defending the title. Not every consumer knows that an undergraduate degree is not enough to be a research statistician. Even a graduate degree is rarely adequate for research statistics work. And some people exploit that ignorance.

I’ve known Ph.D.’s who, armed with a basic grad school knowledge of statistics, invested in expensive statistical modeling software and became hyperlocal “stats gurus” in their niche communities. They bought every new advancement made by others, and brought the new idea into their own niche community. Have software, be successful. Many, many times their work was crap. Not many times, that was obvious to their peers.

Not too many people actually like statistics, so if a local guy appears to be able to get the job done and is willing to take the heat on critical review of the results, otherwise thoughtful scientists, researchers, and leaders choose to pay the man and move on.

Psychology went downhill the past century and took a lot of clinical research with it.  The field of “neuroscience” is split between scientists and pseudo-scientists, with a lot of hucksters in between. Behind the scenes you sometimes find Engineers (capital “E”, meaning they graduated from an accredited Engineering program with an Engineering degree) working in research laboratories (such as labs doing neurological research).  That credential ensures the Engineers know the fundamentals, and degreed Engineers don’t tend to make fundamental mistakes. It’s not a guarantee, but 5 years of passing hard undergraduate courses in Math, Science, and Engineering does not leave too many Engineers ignorant of the fundamentals of our physical world.

But you also see a ton of “neuroscience” laboratories doing the same sort of research, with technical experts doing the Engineering work. Specialists. Many are quite good at all the things that need to be done. Digital circuits. Analog interfacing. Computer algorithms. Fundamentals of measurements and statistics. Some of the greatest developments have come from such labs. However, an awful lot of ignorance has also stemmed from such labs, where outside opinions are often eschewed, local expertise can be overly revered, and cultures of “our way” may prevail.

Not too many scientists do great work in isolation. Peer review is important, and unfortunately, lesser-credentialed individuals are too often shut out of formal peer review processes.

In SEO, we are seeing a new age of Scientism with new applications of advanced statistical techniques coming out of so-called “research” projects. Is it valid? Does anyone know? Can anyone even check?

Is it safe to simply “pay the man” for his work, and move on with new metrics and new techniques that someone assures us are trustworthy?

History shouts “NO!” in response to that question. Where there is trust, there is an exploit. And the old adage remains true… “follow the money”.

Before you believe in new tools and techniques proffered by for-profit salesman backed by un-credentialed or questionably credentialed scientists, technologists, and statisticians, ask yourself if you can afford to trust them. If the data are incorrect, what is your downside risk? If the data are correct, where will it lead you?

If you chase search engine rankings via correlation analysis of the Google search results, where will it lead you? If you can reverse engineer the ranking algorithm by such observation analysis, to place your documents into the #1 spot, where will it lead you?

If your web site belongs there, such actions leads to success for you and for Google. If not, it leads to increased scrutiny and algorithm changes, as Google corrects itself and drops you out. If that sounds like success to you, you are chasing the fast money at the expense of stability and awareness of what actually mattered. That’s not professional SEO, and I am not addressing that.

The key to understanding the risk of correlation analysis is that even if it were valid, it assumes no basis for ranking. It works on the status of ranking sites, not the basis for their ranking. If Google were a dumb, static algorithm that might be useful. But Google is not dumb, and not static. Google broadcasts its intent to produce a user-meaningful SERP, and Google outlines characteristics of both quality URLs and URLs Google considers to be unworthy of ranking.

As dynamic as the Google SERPs are, I have a hard time believing any correlation work is worthwhile. Google engineers have frequently commented on the way the SERPs are incrementally built using filters and data from different places, under specific circumstances. In research, these are “environmental factors” and must be controlled when doing experiments. Correlation studies on data sets by definition do not control nor attempt to compensate for such factors.

I simply can’t afford to allow baseless observational analysis to drive my expensive SEO activities.

So what can be done? Certainly new techniques and analyses can be useful.  How can we manage the risk that the for-profit tool vendors may be full of baloney? How can we leverage our professional status to hedge our bets that these published “ranking factor” correlations are worth trying?

Credentials. Both hard credentials and soft credentials.

First, openly ask the question “Is he qualified to do this work?”

Why not ask? A few undergrad courses in statistics is not adequate to engage in research in statistical modeling of data as complex and valuable as Google’s index. Asking aout credentials isn’t damning. Why not ask? A serious researcher, when questioned about credentialing and demonstrated abilities, will at least seek to achieve adequate peer respect over the long term via credentialing or formal demonstrated achievements (such as published papers and peer recognized citations).

Very few are so gifted that they don’t need any additional training over time, and very few stable personalities will defend themselves with no basis. Or, we can see the sort of independent labs that evolved in neuroscience…specialists working on special topics that expect to be trusted and do not subject themselves to outside scrutiny. If we see that, we can be wary.

I can’t imagine a for-profit tool vendor unwilling to place a seasoned, respected, credentialed individual onto the public board of advisers if the staff are not adequately credentialed to satisfy our need for assurances. Sometimes that is all that is needed… let someone known, respected, and with an earned reputation worth defending, stand up for the work. They won’t do it unless we ask for it, so why not ask?

Second, ask to see real data that supports claims. It is usually trivial to produce data sets that others can use to verify findings, as that work had to be done anyway before such claims could be put in front of the public.

It is also pretty easy for you to grab your own data and ask “does it hold true with this real world data I have?” Is the claim reasonable to me in my work? if the tool fails to deliver on your real world data, you know not to trust it with…that’s right…your real world data.

Everyone gains when new research reveals new understanding, and when people ask questions. Only the for-profit sellers gain when consumers unquestioningly accept the hype and open their wallets, or encourage others to do the same.  In the long run, quiet acceptance of claims made by profit motivated sellers eventually leads to a field of pseudo science that no one believes, including your paying clients.

Silverstripe is an open-source CMS from a company in New Zealand, built with PHP on a LAMP stack. It is built upon something they call the “Sapphire MVC framework”, an object oriented PHP framework that does not exist outside of the Silverstripe CMS implementation.Silverstripe is released under the terms of the BSD open source software license.

SEO for Silverstripe CMS is not a mature area yet… most of what you find on the web for “silverstripe SEO” is marketing talk about how SEO friendly Silverstripe is out-of-the-box. That’s a good thing, for sure, but we need some real solid SEO information about Silverstripe, too.

I’ll be reviewing and modifying Silverstripe for SEO purposes, and examining the CMS and underlying framework for SEO aspects here.

• URL structure/IA issues
• duplicate content issues
• URL hierarchy & “flatness”
• technical SEO aspects
• meta management and server integration
• suitability for SEO projects (including user interface aspects)
• other

Links:

• OpenSourceCMS 4 star review of SilverStripe
• The Silverstripe WebSite

A few notes from SMX Advanced I consider important:

Google Still Insists on “No Site Search pages”

Good SEO work integrates user experience with search engine expectations. Sometimes (often?) that includes creating kick-ass site search pages for our users. We all agree that search is important, and site search is very useful (to users) for many (especially large) sites. Google even sells local site search products you can use. So when a good SEO hand-picks certain essential site search results sets and optimizes them to get indexed…. does it still violate Google’s webmaster guidelines?

Yes, according to Maile Ohye of Google (front row left). Google does not want to index search results, and the webmaster guidelines unequivocally state that site search results pages need to be marked no-index or otherwise blocked so they are not in the Google search results.

White Hatters can now go back to work… the rest of this post is just nuance.

For the rest of you: continue to properly managing your seo-friendly URLs. Maile acknowledged Google is actively testing some new approaches to handling the local site search issue, but emphasized there is no doubt that the current policy is “no search results in the index“. Read on for insights into what sort of solutions the current Google team is likely to produce and test.

Faceted Navigation is now Additive Filters (because Google says so)

The term “Faceted Navigation” refers to user nav crafted around functional qualities.. like a submenu under category shoes that offers navigation links for mens, womens, and kids. SEOs are working hard to create a great user experience, based on careful (and expensive) user tracking and behavior modeling. What Adam Audette called faceted navigation is, to put it plainly, awesome for users.

Google on the other hand… well let’s just note that while Google says some things, they often act differently. Google calls this “additive filters” and is currently investigating how they may (someday) accommodate it. Google loves name-value pairs in URLs and is very likely to produce a “solution” that relies on name-value pairs in the URL, something Maile Ohye referred to as “standard encodings“.

Drum Roll Please…..The biggest take-away from SMX Advanced for me was….

Google is increasingly a data-based company when dealing with webmasters (despite the “serve the users” rhetoric). Increasingly, Google will give webmasters marching orders that give priority to uniformity of structure, even if that trumps user experience. Watch for it going forward.

In order to maintain control, Google needs transparency in the crawl/index process. Transparency from YOU, the publisher.

Sitemaps tell Google your priorities, your freshness, and your canonicalization even before a site crawl. Microformats tell Google your content components and their purpose, separate from their context or how well your designers represented that context to users. Webmaster console identifies a person with authority for accessing your hosting server, and requires her phone number if she comes through a proxy or international network. The list continues to grow with name-value pairs and any future “solutions” this current Google technology team is considering via the name-value pairs approach : force webmasters to disclose their information architecture in the URL, so content can be parsed effectively outside of the view (URL).

That’s one reason “faceted navigation” is now “additive filters”… Google’s team  views the URL discovery process as a parsing of content (e.g. filters) and NOT a collection and presentation prep process for “views” suitable for search users. Views would be considered unique (and thus worthy of indexing and producing YOUR URLS in SERPs). Structured sets (identified by structured “encodings”) simply represent data.  As always, Google’s eyes are on organizing your information (not your web pages).

No matter how beautiful, engaging, and awesome you might make some of your local site search results sets, if Google requires you to identify them as product=shoes&color=brown instead of /brown-shoes-for-men, Google can control the data presentation layer outside of your web page.

End note: I apologize to the astute reader. You are correct… nothing new under the sun, same stuff we’ve been seeing all along, and your advanced SEO strategies probably do not have to change much based on this report from SMX Advanced 2010. But doesn’t it feel good to see things following a recognizable pathway?

Update: I’m “live blogging” my evaluation of DIYSEO.com, a new service that promises to facilitate the basic SEO kick-start for small businesses. As I sign up and run through it (as a professional SEO consultant in Seattle) I will add thoughts here, so if you are reading this on Tuesday April 6 be sure and refresh the page for the latest notes.

DIYSEO.com has been under development for a while and is now “live”. I love the concept – an easy, thoughtful kickstart to adding search engine optimization (SEO) to your Internet web site. Given the tools available these days for SEO research, and the established basis of SEO as a web business strategy, it should be possible to provide serious value through such a subscription service. Did they do it? Did they at least build a foundation for success? Is it worth $49/month? I hope to find out. Here we go.

DIYSEO Sign Up

There’s an affiliate program, which should be excellent for established SEO professionals. This promises to be the kind of service I would love to use as a reference for small business contacts. I will definitely sign up for this. Update: I hesitate… the affiliate program is part of the Google Affiliate Network, and requires an Adsense account etc. Not my favorite company for financial data. I will pass on the affiliate program for now, and pass along the feedback.
Nice web 2.0 site… promises a 27 second signup.. took me more like 18 seconds. I did have to sign up for the free trial with a credit card, but I know the people behind DIYSEO have a lot of skin in the online marketing game. No worries about handing over a credit card. I know where they live ;-)

I’ve got 7 days of free usage under the sign up, after which it’ll be $49/month. Seems reasonable. How hard is it to recover $49 per month? Given most SEO consultants charge between $100 and $500 per hour and most initial consults with an SEO cost upwards of $500, small businesses need to take risks like the $49/month trial (as do I as a professional.. I need to know the latest staus of the mythical “SEO in a Box” we expect one of these decades).

SEO Process Feedback

Wow.. that’s way cool. I just graduated “SEO Kindergarten” by adding a site for evaluation, identifying competitor sites and core keyword niche, and following prompts for some automated keyword research. And then awesomeness… it asked me to do a 1 minute optional feedback survey on that process! That’s has got to be awesome for the developers of DIYSEO… great time to ask. I will now add my feedback…

Keyword Research

DIYSEO uses APIs to keyword research tools. I think I noticed when it was returning Wordtracker and SEO Pivot results. Two things I noted as I worked with it:

• The keyword research was no better than initial runs at Wordtracker, at first, but then as I added more specific keywords I could see SEOPivot coming in (with keywords pulled from my site’s historical performance in search engines). I imagine there is no upper limit for improvements to the automated keyword research of an SEO tool like this.
• I love that the small business client is walked through this basic keyword research step! They see how “easy” automated keyword research is, but also how inefficient and time-consuming it can be.

I expect the automated keyword research to get better.

My Blog is Horrible. My old blog and its hosting are way sub-standard at this point. too slow, too slow. Alas, it is what it is for now.

SEO Middle School or Primary School

I forget what it said… that I was now in SEO primary schol or whatever after graduating kindergarten. Whatever. Building in some game theory is a great idea, but I’m not the typical doi tit yourself SEO tool customer and, well, meh.

SEO Dashboard

I am staring at my SEO dashboard for my site. Ranking reports (not available for 24 hours). Domain age, index status in Bing, Yahoo, and something called “Google” (what a stupid name). Anyway my s”Key SEO Metrics” are there, sans Page Rank (nothing shown). Bythe way I kid about the Google name. I actually know what Google is ;-)

SEO Backlinks

The Dashboard shows me 3 core areas: Key SEO Metrics (indexation & status), Rankings (not avail for 24 hours), and Backlinks (total backlinks and unique backlinks). Again, no backlink data available yet.

There is a social component.. I see a silhouette avatar and mention of forums. I can see how future clients will start here and either grow into DIYSEO as it grows, or use it as “k-12” education for SEO. Again, another stroing reason for established professional SEO consultants to participate in the community and secure a presence.

SEO Education

Okay now I see it on the right side column… SEO Steps with thevarious education levels shown with their sub-parts, with Kindergarten items checked off. Nice work on the interface. Now I need to do SEO Grade School, SEO High School, and SEO College.

Overall it shows I completed 5 of 56 steps, for 1.50 “hours logged”.. I suppose towards graduation? Will there be a party?

Spring Break

Okay it’s time for my Spring Break. I’ll return to this later, and look at what’s been updated. Then I’ll make a push to get to High School and see just what that entails.

Doing the SEO Tasks

I think this is pretty cool for customers who are adding SEO processes, but also for its potential as an SEO community project. The steps are good.. whocould argue with advice to add target keywords to your page content, consider adding target keywords to your page titles, and other SEO basics? For those just getting started with SEO for a website, the task list is great. Behind the list is the potential for awesomeness. Each “task” has a “how” link with a top on how to accomplish the task. Not everything is in there obviously. I’m sure this is a big undertaking, and I would expect them to start with basics and add depth over time.

For example, when I added this site I was asked about the platform and I selected WordPress. Now, whenit says to edit my page titles, the help doesn’t know I am using WordPress so it suggests I consult the documentation for my CMS to edit the page titles.

Newbies might think that’s a FAIL… that if it nows I use WordPress, it should provide WordPress instructions. The rest of us know, however, that the page titles are designated in the WordPress template, or perhaps within a WordPress SEO management plugin. It would be quite a feat for an automated tool like DIYSEO to know those details, yet.. do you see the potential? It’s a no brainer to watch the activity and supplement the help tips with content including links out to smarter help (such as is likely to exist inthe forums someday).

Again… SEO pros should be involved here. This system is showing customers just what it takes to be awesome at SEO, and we all know that takes talent and experience. kick start and edcuation… that’s what DIYSEO can provide, plus an interface to advanced, sometimes custom-specific knowledge for implementing SEO in specific circumstances (like whenusing SEO plugins or popular themes).

I am clearly more excited about DIYSEO for its impact on the SEO industry than client websites. More to follow.

Google has (finally!) come around and validated SEO consultants world wide, acknowledging that Search Engine Optimization is an essential ingredient of a successful web site. This took many years! Some will note that Google continued to deny the value of SEO right up until Google itself figured out how to profit from it.

Initially, in the old days, Google denied SEO even existed. They sometimes referred to a small, disjoint community of fringe webmasters “gaming the system” as if it were an annoyance for Google and something bad for everyone. Of course they did this as they built their massive monopoly on search and advertising. They also did this as insiders at Google (Google employees) build personal web empires to exploit their knowledge of how Google works both sides of the traffic control and ad publishing marketplace.

The SEO consulting field grew rapidly due to the market demand for something other than Google’s promises of riches to webmaster who simply follow the published Google rules. Clearly Google’s claims didn’t hold water. Those who executed on SEO practices outperformed everyone else, often to amazing degrees. Still, though, Google tried to brand SEO as evil (and in some cases, “illegal”). In many cases, Google was nearly forced to rewrite and update its published guidelines, as professional SEO consultants exposed situations where Google clearly didn’t behave as it promised to behave.

Eventually SEO had earned so much respect in the marketplace based on performance alone (even overcoming Google’s significant attempts to brand it negatively) that even Google had to pay attention. Matt Cutts opened a dialog with the professional SEO community, and, over time, Google increasingly acknowledged that SEO existed, was important, and that people needed to learn SEO.

Google started an SEO education channel on YouTube, addressing hundreds of common SEO issues. Matt Cutts and other Google employees contributed expertise about how SEO increased the odds for business success on the web. Google answered submitted questions, and Google employees participated in site reviews at search conferences. Google still didn’t openly acknowledge the SEO consultants, however, choosing instead to continue to warn consumers not to trust SEO consultants. For every few words acknowledging that some could be helpful, Google published dozens of words cautioning consumers of the risks of hiring SEOs or following SEO advice.

These days the marketplace has had just about enough of Google’s misinformation. Every day we read articles admonishing Google for privacy invasions, aggressive unilateral moves against select web publishers, and corporate behavior typical of yesterday’s AT&T, SouthWestern Bell, or Verizon. Google has become the big greedy insensitive corporation, despite its promises of “being good”. We are seeing reports of the equivalent of “insider trading” at Google, where Google employees help select friends and associated with SEO issues, secretly and “unofficially” at the same time that Google the corporation refuses to provide public customer support, or even a communications channel.

But now, finally, SEO consultants around the world can rejoice. Google the corporation has validated the SEO consultant. According to reports of  this Google post, Google will start offering SEO services on a limited basis (starting in Norway). Since Google always tests first and usually runs extended “beta” periods for their new offerings, it will likely be some time before we know how far Google will move into the SEO services marketplace. But one thing we know for sure: SEO is an essential ingredient of any web site, and it takes a  search professional (a respected professional SEO consultant or perhaps a Google employee) to advise business on how to SEO their web sites.

John Andrews is a professional SEO consultant in Seattle, Washington. John has been focused on Search Engine Optimization since before Google launched, and a full-time independent SEO Consultant since 2003.

Updated: The Google post was subsequently updated. I now see this (translated to English by Google):

“When we published this post, we did this in order to reach our target audience: Webmasters in the Nordic countries. Some readers misunderstood this as an indication that we introduce help for webmasters over the review of the pages; imidlertig this is not the case.  A site clinic is an opportunity for us to come up with constructive criticism and share tips on improving web pages, hopefully, can lead to better visibility for these pages. Our decision to keep search and advertising completely separated continues to be a definite fact.We should have made this clearer in the original post, and hope this post clears up any confusion.”

I received two requests to acknowledge this. I also note the language used… despite the fact that this still reads like consulting on seo matters where Google legal has imposed a clarifying statement denying any crossover between search and paid advertising, Google chooses language that claims it is the reader who has made an error (“Some readers misunderstood this…“). Perhaps Google needs to return to finishing school for a bit?