Archive for December, 2009

Recently SEOmoz posted about running a test that proved their thesis that nofollow PageRank sculpting still works (while actually only proving issues with sample size & methodology). But the issue of “proving” things with SEO publicly is typically a misguided one.

It is so hard to control variables in tests, and even if you could set up a control set many test types would be isolated to fictional words. But the issue with that is that the relevancy algorithms can change based on your location, the location where a particular keyword is commonly searched from, how many other competing results there are for that query (and what those other sites are changing while you test), and whatever algorithm shifts happen in Google while your test is going on (like promotion of certain vertical databases, baking in new pieces to the relevancy algorithms, improvements in related vocabularies, introduction of new penalties and filters), etc etc etc

But lets ignore all the above and pretend there is a way you can isolate variables or you notice something new and different and important. What happens when you mention it? Typically people tell you that you are full of crap, even when you are right.

Even if the test they did was legitimately scientifically valid they still likely would have got mocked for their efforts, just like I did in the above image (when I was right).

And the more data you share to “prove” your case all you are doing is lessening your competitive advantage over other market competitors. Lets say I wrote a blog post about “5 surprisingly strong links you can use to spam Google with great results” … well after I publish that the same day Google engineers will torch those link sources. The net effect of such efforts would be:

• wasting my time and money and competitive advantage

• harming a business model, business, and/or website that was helping me
• making Google look stupid (and having them dislike me)
• wasting your time (and a link source you could have used)

It is one of those rare lose/lose instance where literally nobody gains (unless it creates a self-serving controversy).

In what other “science” could reporting your results instantly alter/destroy them?

One conference I went to a while ago I only went for 1 day instead of 2. And then I saw on Twitter someone complained about me not showing up. Then I looked and saw that one of their sites competed with one of our sites. Was I really going to benefit by speaking on a panel where I give a direct competitor (with VC backing, decades of cumulative experience, more algorithmic leeway, etc.) any SEO tips? As an SEO that also does publishing you are only sacrificing your future revenues and your future net worth if/when you review competing sites and tell them how to compete better against you.

In the SEO industry it is hard to land 5 figure clients. But it is easy to build websites that make that recurring. You just have to put the time and effort in. But the only reason to share new and useful tips publicly is self-promotion. But even that is often a misguided effort because earning money servicing the SEO market is a bit like squeezing water out of a rock. People have free in their mindset and are irrationally stuck on free rather than the benefits of spending to save time and grow and earn more. Sorta self-defeating and certainly misguided if you take it too seriously, which is why I have been looking to build out other sites in other fields too.

I used to dislike misinformation in the SEO industry, but I have since come to realize that the more misinformed the public is the more opportunity there is for me. If it wasn’t abstract and full of misinformation then someone overseas would be doing it for $5 a day and I would lose most of my income. So I say lets see some more bogus scientific studies. Let there be published book authors telling you that the best backlinks to get are the ones which are shown in the Google link: search.

If the end value is $10’s of Billions but the market sets a price of free, then misinformation is a big piece of the price…that is basic economics.

The money doesn’t care how it got into your bank account (as long as it was legal). And you don’t have to spend a lot of time backsolving everyone else’s success … a lot of that time would be better spent building your own success. Truthfully most people who are successful can’t even tell you why they themselves are successful. Worse yet, the “scientific” case study earns nothing while the non-scientific site with tons of traffic (built through small incremental daily improvements by an amateur) can earn a lot of money.

Years ago I gave away so many valuable tips that simply just created competition for myself. (And eventually I woke up to that when some of the people who would contact me begging me for discount SEO services while claiming they were broke also sent buy requests into other sites I ran that they didn’t know I owned). There are lots of other issues like non-disclosure agreements that mean nothing when someone has access to your stats + owns competing sites, fake investors who try to scam you for your information, etc etc etc.

I still love this site as though it is a child…it was the first site that really helped build me into a position where I had more options and opportunity than time. And due to our current pricing point filtering out most of the SEO market the forums are still a great place for me to learn more

But, truth be told, in the SEO industry (as a service provider) almost everyone who comes to you likes to pretend that they are poor. They want to discount the price to nothing to help discount risk, but rarely (if ever) do they want to remove all risk and give you a piece of the upside for the millions of Dollars worth of extra profits you create for them.

But the cool thing with search is you can start off small and grow to compete. Sure it is always getting more competitive, but publishing tools are improving rapidly. If a person could read the archives of this blog for years and not be able to make money from search it simply means they lacked effort. Search offers so much opportunity that even without talent eventually anyone can stumble into something that works for them.

And that is the thing about SEO. Search offers so much opportunity that even without talent eventually anyone can stumble into something that works for them.

But they have to have the right mindset to succeed.

Dear sirs explain me all link buildings method are crucial to make me riches. Is very important Aaron Walls personally answers me this free and promptys … well that is not the right mindset, is it?

Investing time and money and effort and blood and tears…that is the right mindset. If you got nothing then you got nothing to lose. Give it your all.

Lots of the most interesting bits that you learn are from accidents that happen with experience. Accidentally blocking a part of your site in robots.txt, doing something weird with a redirect, having your host go down and getting your site crawled in a weird state, etc etc etc. Screwing up is where you learn a lot because that is where a lot of the surprises are. And it is far easier to learn when you are working on a number of sites at various stages of development…it gives you lenses through which to view search.

What works for one site might not work for the next. What works for one person might not work for the next. But there are many models that work and paths to success. Some people succeed because they are simply the best, or they love what they do, or they show up every day for years and years and years. Others succeed due to their irrational bias and ignorance. And some people were just early to the market and sorta fell into success.

One company spreads hyped up misinformation to an audience of ignorant drones who spread the misinformation, the next buys old domains that are heavily linked to and then pours garbage content into them using an assembly line sort of production model, the next has a person who does black public relations and tries to take down other industries (while learning their business models and working to clone them).

And yet other people are popular just because they are popular. Or because they were born rich and launched a sex tape on the web (complete with bogus fake legal stuff just to suck in more press coverage and “build the brand”).

Is SEO scientific? Yes, in the same way that sociology, psychology, and economics are scientific. But economics is referred to as the dismal science.

Anything that involves understanding human behavior and trying to influence it is not just science. It is also an art.

Here is to hoping you have a healthy, happy, profitable, and ARTISTIC 2010

How Do You Do Local SEO?

It’s quite clear that local SEO will be *one* of the places to be in 2010 and beyond. Need convincing?
Check out:

 

• Google and Yelp’s failed deal – If local search was unlikely to see a decent ongoing up tick, Google might not have as much interest in acquiring a site like Yelp. Even if Google was just buying Yelp out to remove competition for it’s own local stuff, it still shows an acknowledgement that local search is quite important.
• Google’s Flat Rate Local Adwords Pricing Model aimed at local businesses
• Google’s Local Business Center is becoming a more and more robust service.
• The local 10 Pack continues to show up in general service related queries. Local SEO is also about gaining visibility in Google’s 10 pack and maps in general so it is equally as important to be optimized for your geo-specific keywords as it is to be set up to succeed in the local pack

Speaking of the local 10 pack, it appears to have done part of its job for Google. Consider the following from TMPDM/ComScore

So Google’s maps increased sharply, likely due to the local 10 pack being shoved down people’s throats. I happen to like the 10 pack to some degree, more when I type in a town/city + service instead of my town + service because lots of times they pull from my IP which is a ways away from where I am now, which kind of renders the initial map findings a bit useless for me. I also like it much better when it takes up #4 in the rankings rather than having be at spot 1 or 2

The Process

One of the nice things about local SEO for me is that I don’t have to fuss around with a bazillion different keyword tools, cross reference data points, wonder which data sets are more accurate (and which ones are entirely useless), or spend time creating a site structure which ultimately has to be redesigned after finding some some of the keyword data was rubbish.

There are a few ways get a general idea of which keywords you should incorporate in your campaign. You can use tools like Google Trends, Google Insights, as well as PPC campaigns. You can also look at competing sites to see how they structure their page or site in order to target specific keywords.

A Case Study

So you just spoke at a local chamber of commerce meeting in your hometown of Atlanta and now you have the locals all fired up about search marketing. You end up landing a client named Mary Smith who owns Peachy Insurance Agency which has offices in Atlanta, Savannah, Macon, and Athens.

Mary has decided her agency is going to focus on vehicle insurance only. So she asks you to begin the process of figuring out which keywords best suit her goals. Will it be broader geo-local keywords (on the state level) or pursuing really local keywords (down to the town level) or both?
In this case, we have to figure out if car insurance or auto insurance is the more popular keyword in this specific area. I would start with the Adwords Keyword Tool to figure out if there is any big difference from a broad perspective

It appears that the modifier georgia and “auto” is a bit more popular (but it is pretty easy to work in other variations like the state abbreviation into your on-page copy)

Then I would head over to Google Insights for additional data points, one targeted to the state and one broader country wide search with local modifiers

Broad Search with modifiers

Broad Keywords but geo-targeted by region

Lastly, from a tool standpoint, I would give google trends a shot. They break out volume by town/city but I would still test that heavily in Adwords.

My next step would be to type in some keywords, since the difference is not huge and trying to target both might be a good move

Note the local box on the more niche, local search. Also, note how some sites target both car/auto. From a relevancy standpoint, Mary’s site should be able to do pretty well in these SERPS as a local resource guide, a local insurance agency, and a site which is not essentially a lead generation site. If Mary can create content which is valuable to the local community, earn local links, promote the site in local communities, etc.. she should do pretty well when compared to either thinner affiliate sites or one page off-shoots on a large lead generation domain.

Georgia Auto Insurance

Georgia Car Insurance

Atlanta Auto Insurance

Atlanta Car Insurance

The best way to figure out local keyword volume, or really any keyword’s volume in most cases, is to set up an adwords campaign. I like to set up 2 PPC campaigns:

• Campaign 1 – no radius targeting, targeting keywords with specific geo-local modifiers (georgia auto insurance, car insurance in atlanta, etc)
• Campaign 2 – targeting by maps (state of Georgia and specific zip codes) with no geo-local modifiers (auto insurance quotes, car insurance quotes) etc.

So that second option will probably be fairly pricey but the long term payoffs of making sure you or your client are optimized for the correct keyword variations in your market are much bigger than any nominal PPC campaign costs.

Conclusions

So the volume might not be huge but keep in mind this is a local insurance agency. They may not be able to scale their operation with a huge firehose of traffic (say the 10’s of thousands places like Geico and Progressive receive per day), it is all relative.
You might proceed as follows:

• Go with the state level keywords on the home page and try and grab the exact match if possible (either GeorgiaAutoInsurance.Com or GeorgiaCarInsurance.Com depending on what your PPC campaign tells you has the higher volume)
• Target towns/cities on individual pages like peachyinsurance.com/atlanta-auto-insurance.com

Most of the time local SERPS are ripe if you can figure out which angle you want to pursue, be able to execute it, and have a client willing to spend some capital

Must have resources, for me, when launching an SEO campaign is to browse through the local search ranking factors and see how I can apply them to my client’s site. Also, I am a big fan of Andrew Shotland’s Local SEO Guide & understanding Google maps & local search.

When Twitter announced The Fledgling Initiative in October—making and selling wine to benefit an organization called Room to Read, I was thrilled. This past month, my enthusiasm and commitment increased dramatically when I had the chance to visit some of the sites where Room to Read works in India.

Teachers and students in Hardiwar gave me the warmest of welcomes. I was given the opportunity to help children read books in English and one group of students even inited me to sing a song for them. My performance of Itsy Bitsy Spider (see above—pit stains included), sent the kids into fits of laughter.

The schools in these areas face incredible obstacles but the community approaches problems with passion and vigor. One school was having trouble with a dangerous elephant so parents volunteered to take turns walking the kids to school and would even sleep there for a night or two. When I was little there were snow days but nothing like this.

Seeing kids get excited about learning to read made my heart skip a few beats, and made me feel proud to work at a company that chooses to partner with world-changing organizations like Room to Read. Here are some of the photos from my trip and you can learn more about Room to Read at their web site.

Every Thursday is Tech Thursday where we share a random assortment of technical links we found and liked.

• Lifehacker has some good exercises to do to prevent carpal tunnel syndrome.
• The Conservative Party of England offer a one million pound prize for the best crowdsourcing application – I don’t think restyling Twitter will do it though.
• Usereffect has a nice free 48 page ebook that is Guide to Low-cost Usability Tools.
• The Oatmeal has a great poster to remind people of common misspellings.
• One hidden gem of OSX: the DigitalColor Meter allows you to pick a pixel on the screen and get its RGB value.
• An interesting way to release the archive of a magazine – the National Geographic Archive from 1888 to now is available as a 160GB hard-drive.
• Getting started with Git on Mac OSX is what it says on the tin.
• Simply Linked is a pretty nifty solution if you want to collect some links without drowning in spam.
• Project 52 is a site where you can pledge that you will write some cool small article or tutorial every week of next year.

You can propose links to us on Twitter (@YDN) or try bookmarking them on delicious with the tag “forydntt“.

Thanks to everyone who tested 2.9.1 Beta 1.  We’re following that up with Release Candidate 1.  RC1 contains a few more fixes, bringing the number of fixed tickets up to 23.  If you are already running Beta 1, visit Tools->Upgrade in your blog’s admin to get RC1.  You can also  download the RC1 package and install manually.  If all goes well, 2.9.1 will be here soon.