Here’s a handy tool for those trying to find out if names have been taken across social media channels. Here’s a handy checker which informs you what’s been taken. Try it out here: usernamecheck.com
The behemoth that is SMX had to be tackled one day in my so far shortish career in SEO. This report here won’t specifically talk about what I learned at the presentation – I’ll leave them for other posts. What I will talk about here is my thoughts and feelings about the event as a whole.
I’ve usually tagged onto the end of UK events in the various pub excursions in LondonSEO, however, it was time to get in the main event. When I first got there, you do get that uncomfortable feeling that you don’t know anyone and a little anxiety creeps in. That very soon disappears (after a morning cuppa tea). I believe Jill Whalen wrote an article once about survival in the big world of SEO expos awhile back but the big tip is to be yourself and meet n’ greet. I don’t think anyone has big ego issues so there is no reason not to shake a few hands and wear a big smile. I didn’t take up an observation I note from some people to wear the most outrageously bright outfit; a form of SEO peacocking. Perhaps next time:) I met several people and got on fine. I even met some Twitter followers of mine and it is pleasant to see them face-to-face .
In terms of the venue itself, it was a little too grandiose for my liking. It was comfortable enough and at least it was on my same tube line as where I lived and worked, however, it did suck out some of the conference atmosphere I felt. It was kinda awkward as well for delegates to ask questions in a big hall with only one microphone to go round.
Next few posts would be more about my interpretation of the presentations and advice. A big thanks to all those I met and made my conference networking experience an enjoyable one.
I’ll be writing in much more detail in regards to my recent SMX London experiences. However, for now, here’s a nice shout from Will Cricthlow of Distilled about gaining some insight about site abandonment. He highlighted a link here as part of his presentation about Demographics. This info will help you guage from a series of metrics your level of how successful your user finds content and also help you get a little insight from the user as well. All free tools so you don’t really have an excuse not to use any.
Cuil launched today with some pretty decent coverage from the SEO press. However, today’s launch didn’t go according to plan as the server fell over itself due to high traffic! Not a great start to something being touted as a Google beater. I’m sure it will be back soon.
Danny Sullivan has written a good article testing the relevancy of searches compared to Google. Check it out here.
UPDATE: The site is now working but www.cuill.com with the two ‘l’s doesn’t even redirect to the main domain: www.cuil.com! Talk about branding issues! It seems Cuil does have its fair share of domain problems, being the unforunate spelling error could lead you to a hardcare porn site. FAIL AGAIN!
UPDATE01/08/0: www.cuill.com now redirects to www.cuil.com
Google has since launched the idea of ‘Universal search’ over a year ago and was detailed in a highly specifically by the chaps at Search Engine Land. So to re-cap, Universal Search was effectively a way of Google blending more search information in to its SERPs. By adopting this new feature, a user can access vertical areas associated to their search query, such as Book searches, video news or Maps . For instance, when a person types in “Star Wars”, he’ll not only get a few website links as expected but a whole raft of links to YouTube and News results as well. If a person types in a location like “New York”, the location map turns up at the top o fthe first page.
Now that Universal search has matured over a year what have the benefits been and what insights can SEO consultants gain from Google’s experiment on delivering for their cilents? Without doubt the changes last year has made search a richer experience for users of Google. It certainly helps that maps and news have blended in to the results. However, for SEO it means so much more. Let’s take on some examples. Back to “Star Wars” example; as an SEO consultant, we have to work out why some listings achieve greater ranks then some. Other considerations have certainly become more paramount in online marketing. Youtube listing ‘Lego Star Wars’ appears mid page with a nice thumbnail and make no mistake, Google favours its own products and would prefer you to see video from YouTube. Evil, I know and I’ve certainly never seen any other video networking site appear in this way. If we tap in a location like “New York” again, the local map will always appear at the top for 98%. Some movement in the rank maybe experienced but that is not the point. Google deems that the location map is the number 1 thing people will look for. Again, what does this mean to SEO-ers. Well, geo-targetting your website has been a buzz word for the past few months. Google has been known to take into account the ip address and references to physical ‘bricks n mortar’ addresses. Certainly people listing businesses on Google Maps helps in getting some exposure for your website in the SERPs.
Newer additions of Universal Search were launched earlier in the year. With vertical search expanding into product searches, a search result may include listings from Google Shopping section. Blog search listings were also blended this year into the SERPs, however, surprisingly the search “Star Wars” brings no such results considering the fanbase associated with the topic and neither do product searches appear. Perhaps it possibly could mean that Google considers the websites listed already are far more informative then any blended listings they provided? Odd behaviour anyway.
Occasionally, there are times when you learn a thing or two regarding SEO. This post here: http://tinyurl.com/5rb58g reveals some top tips to help keyword analysis for those times you get those pesky KW mental blocks!
If there wasn’t any further proof that domain names have a major impact on rankings, check this out:
Look! No optimised title or relevant description tag.
Everyone with some reasonable computer knowledge has downloaded torrent files before. Rocket science it ain’t! One thing that was noticed when trying to download films was that when a user activated the .avi file a message came up saying that this movie clip had to be viewed by a certain program. “Download program here” the page announced! Now the lure of seeing the latest movie isn’t that strong with me and it certainly isn’t strong enough for me to trust some weird HTML page telling me to download a dodgy viewer program I have never heard of. But unfortunately it is for some, in fact, 530,000 computers according McAfee, the security company which says that the number of computers infected with Trojan viruses. These viruses are not malicious as in stealing data. They simply serve advertising. Could there be more than meets the eye here?
According to the Guardian, last year Media Defender was exposed as deliberately placing thousands of dummy media files into the path unsuspecting downloaders. They did this on the instruction of the big media corporations. This of course, simply changed the way Torrent sites operated with many now putting a ratings system on files so users can give the thumbs up or down (also can be manipulated though it’s something of a fight back). Hmm, dummy files and now possibly virus hit files?
Big Companies can take even more drastic measures. The MPAA(Motion Picture Association of America) recently successfully sued TorrentSpy for $110m on grounds of Copyright infringement. They are now actively targeting Pirate Bay now for $15m of lost revenue. The Torrent Spy case has effectively opened the door for companies to go after Torrent portals. I predict that a few of these sites will eventually disappear but the internet is a big place and there’s always somewhere to hide in most cases.
Now, lets look at this in a different way. Despite, companies crying foul of Peer-to-Peer torrent wares destroying their businesses, we still have of plenty of success stories. The latest Grand Theft Auto game generated a staggering £255 million sales worldwide and the latest Iron man movie took $98m worth of ticket sales over three days. This isn’t pocket money for the big companies. At the end of the day, if the product is good, we’ll want to see it, play it, listen to it. However, the torrent sites are only the tip of a big iceberg. The big corporates will always have tricks up their sleeves but Torrents are here to stay.
Semantic search has been the focal point of some intense blogging and opinion of late. What is semantic search? Essentially, it disseminates meaning of words and their context within the text to determine whether it is relevant to the search query or not. This is different from the approach given by Google which uses link authority to determine higher ranks.
As widely reported in the tech media in March, Yahoo has begun adopting some of the key aspects of semantic search into their engine: . Amit Kumar explained the shift in the Yahoo! Blog: http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000527.html. Through supporting microformats and a variety of web standard friendly practices, Yahoo! Search intends to to use this to increase the quality of information given to the user. An interesting note which I noticed was that fact that Yahoo! will embrace the Dublin Core initiative which has been discounted by myself as just code padding and superfluous to the crawl process given that the HTML meta tagging are already well established. I could be wrong there but now that Yahoo! Search has been opened for third party development anything is possible to improve its search services. Before we know it, the ability to tag and label content on a page will be widespread and will have to factored in on any optimisation process.
Google has recently been noted to have improved their own semantic search routines with stemming (e.g. run vs runners vs running) becoming more sophisticated. Also, recently Google group members noticed that synonyms (e.g sprinter) are now capable of ranking for sites. These observations bode well for the future of semantic search but will Google ever dump its PageRank formula? Unlikely given that PR has been a lynchpin of Google since day 1. Certainly we’ll expect the handling of semantic search to get much better over time
Remember days before social networking as we know it today. Well, forums are still very much alive a well and us SEO marketers still find them a source for our information and amusement. But fourms by nature must evolve and although the basic premise of a forum has not changed, it’s governing rules certainly have. The typical forum owner is well aware of flaming but also spamming. Any whiff of porn or commercial linking with no intention of furthering the conversation thread, then in comes the moderator and the post is gone within the next ten minutes. It certainly isn’t an outright tool for SEO link building. It is certainly rare to see forum posts ranking highly
However, there are a few tricks which a modern SEO-er can employ to get the most out of forum linking. Take for instance a great site called money saving expert set up by Martin Lewis back in 2004. He’s managed to build a very authoritative and quality website helping people manage their finances better. Over the past few years studying client’s analytics I have noticed significant spikes in traffic to their websites which can be cultivated just by having a link on money saving expert forum. These links come through totally legitimate reasons ie. people wanting to talk about latest ads or products they have seen. However, a forum like this would probably see spam coming a mile away. I have devised a way to approach forums:
Thread Baiting
Firstly take your website (or whatever) and take careful consideration about related themes. For example; a competition about how many keepy-uppys (football term) you can do in a minute. This competition is organised by a famous brand. The direct approach for a link would kill off any interest and alert moderators to spam. I’ve seen the direct approach crash and burn time after time. In this instance, firstly, I would go and post a link to a YouTube video of a professional footballer performing this skill. I would go in the forum and post the youtube link and say how fantastic it is. This should start the ball rolling so to speak.
Posters take up the thread and then respond. It doesn’t matter if they say the Youtube vid you posted is good or bad. Although, I’ll have to say mildly negative is better as you can go back in with another YouTube video. Don’t worry at this stage, just keep the thread growing.
The point where you have to move in is a tactical one. You don’t want to kill the conversation and you don’t want to reveal your purpose too late when everyone has gone. When the time comes, go in with your sales pitch although never, never ever sound formal. A forum is like an informal chatroom. Play innocent and always sound upbeat. At the end of the day you’ll have a popular thread and people clicking on your link. Lovely traffic into your intended website.
