Healthy Blog Reviews

When Twitter finally got to the point where it realized that there needed to be a next step (whether they felt ready or not they were told they were ready by everyone and their brother) they turned to deals with the search engines. It’s a rite of passage for businesses t reach the level where they can even be thought of as a viable source of information that the engines would actually pay to have. It appears as if foursquare is about there already. The Telegraph has the scoop Speaking exclusively to The Telegraph, Dennis Crowley, Foursquare’s co-founder, said that his company was in talks with “everyone” in the search space – including all three major players: Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft about a data partnership. “Our data generates hugely interesting trends which would enrich search,” Crowley said. We can anonymise data and use it to show venues which are trending at that moment. Twitter helped the world and the search engines know what people are talking about. Foursquare would allow people to search for the types of place people are going to – and where is trending – not what.” Whether or not you are buying into the ‘check-in’ craze this is important to marketers since foursquare is showing signs of taking off. It recently reached the 2 million account plateau just three months after it had hit the 1 million mark. We have seen this kind of hockey stick adoption rate in the past so it is best for foursquare to strike while the iron is hot. Of course, any deals with the engines are gambles because of the fear that the location based game is still very wide open and plans by social giants like Facebook and Google themselves could put a dent in the idea that foursquare could dominate the space. Right now its biggest threat is Gowalla but this space is so new and is developing so rapidly that there could be an unknown lurking in the bushes that could come in and do something different. In fact, one of the concerns about the whole location based craze right now is just what can be done AFTER someone checks in and gets excited about being the mayor of a place that they are visiting. Foursquare is making strides in this area which will likely determine just how far they can go in the future. For now though it’s all good as Crowley says about his current competition “We are more social than Gowalla and ultimately have different visions moving forward. They are excited about different things.” So this will be worth keeping an eye on as more and more elements of search move away from the traditional blue text link. Real estate on the first page of SERP’s (search engine results pages) for anything with a location element are already crowded with maps and seven packs and more. It sure will keep the SEO community on its toes as it tries to keep pace with the change and figure out just what a search result is going to look like in certain circumstances in the very near future. Where are you on the geo-location craze? Are you active? Passive? Waiting to see what happens? Let us know where you are at .

Tags: cloud-computing, cloud-hosting, dennis crowley, engines, facebook, Local/Mobile, location, mayor, Microsoft, Search, search-engine, seo, Social
Posted July 19, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

It seems to be clearer than ever that Facebook is really making a run at Google around search. The announcement that “all Open Graph enabled web pages will show up in search when a user likes them” this new area for search abuse optimization is now becoming a reality. All Facebook reports Earlier this week we published about the new Facebook SEO that’s possible via the Open Graph, but now it’s clear that this is the beginning of Facebook’s internet search strategy. The race is now on for publishers to optimize their sites for Facebook’s search engine. I can’t decide if this is a good or bad thing. I just don’t see how Facebook and bing are going to be a formidable opponent to Google. The trouble lies in the fact that anything that is based on end users opinions is ripe for abuse and manipulation. In order for search to be truly helpful in a broad stroke manner I believe that there needs to be as much objectivity in the results set as possible. Objectivity opens up more options to searchers because it allows for a wider scope of results to be considered by the engines themselves, not just the musings of the general public that, quite honestly, is just trying to be cool rather than helpful. All Facebook continues Under this system “link baiting” will give rise to “like baiting”, which is how Facebook determines the relevance of information. This has become a full-scale attack on Google on all fronts at this point as Facebook has officially entered the internet search market. While many of the details of the Open Graph were initially revealed at f8, it wasn’t clear what Facebook’s complete strategy would be and how big of a threat this would be to Google. While we suggested that the like had just replaced the link, it has now become abundantly clear what Facebook’s intentions are. Facebook wants to launch the social semantic search engine as we alluded to during f8. Now that the search results are officially showing up as Facebook search results, the war has begun. I think that before full scale war is declared you will need to see just how serious a contender Facebook will be for search. A few questions I have include: Just how many of the 500 million users Facebook claims are actual users of the service? That is important because the actual number of people that involved in the “system” of the Open Graph (those who understand what a Like button is) may create a skewed view of the world from a search perspective. If the Like button is the major determining factor of a search result showing up, I feel that is a very weak criteria for basing rankings in search. I am really looking for opposing views here to explain how this really is a challenge to Google. I personally would never value a Facebook search result page that is based on the OpenGraph and bing results, over a Google result set. It just seems like a mash-up of two inferior ways to tell people what is important or relevant. Also, the room for this to be abused is just too great. Lastly, if Facebook handles search like it handles privacy this could be a gigantic train wreck in waiting. Would love to hear opinions on this one. Have a great weekend. Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

Tags: facebook, facebook-icon, graph, internet, like-it-handles, open, Search, search-engine, seo, Social
Posted June 25, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

The Internet is amazing place. Only online can unicorns go in search of Candy Mountain , babies dance their hearts out, and cats can LOL . With the Internet we can connect with friends we haven’t spoken to in 20 years. And we can meet new amazing people every day. Because of all of these amazing things the Internet can do, it’s no surprise that many small business owners think the Internet can perform magic for their small business. However, what many fail to realize is often starting a business on the Internet can be more challenging than starting one off-line. It seems almost on a weekly basis I’m approached by a local small business to help build their Internet presence, and, every now and then, by an individual without a business that dreams of riches from the information superhighway. Both of these parties are looking for a simple solution to making money and think the Internet is their answer. Unfortunately, there is no magic bullet that can build a business or increase wealth. 3 Common Myths About Doing Business Online It’s cheap. I will admit that often times opening an off-line brick-and-mortar business can be costly and can result in higher overhead for long-term growth. However, if you are a budding Internet entrepreneur with absolutely no experience in web development, design, or marketing then you can expect to make a substantial initial investment to get your business started. I am a firm believer that you get what you pay for. There are many ways to start a business online for little money, but the probability of success is extremely slim because most of the cheap strategies rely on amateur labor and substandard services. It’s easy. If you build it, they will come only works in cheesy Kevin Costner films. Whether you are building a business on the Internet or off-line, you will be required to constantly market and promote your organization in order to grow. We see this attitude many times within the SEO community where business owners will build a website and automatically assume it’s a part of Google. Sophisticated SEO and Internet marketing firms spend millions a year to promote their clients’ businesses. Oftentimes an off-line business success is dependent on its location. However on the Internet, location is nonexistent. On the Internet, promotion can make or break a business. It’s highly lucrative. Most with experience will tell you that 95% of Internet startups fail with the first year of existence. Many of the 5% that survive barely generate enough revenue to keep the business self-sustaining. Very few are purchased as part of an acquisition. The truth is that most successful Internet entrepreneurs have failed dozens of times prior to making it big. It takes years of experience to understand what works and what doesn’t online. So now you see there is no magic secret to wealth on the Internet. Like all successful business endeavors it requires time and hard work. But in the end, whether you have succeeded or failed you’ll learn skills and gain experience that far surpass those that have never tried anything at all. Photo by Chris Walton Join the Marketing Pilgrim Facebook Community

Tags: barely-generate, Business, business-online, clients, internet, Internet Marketing, marketing, mountain, organization, rely-on-amateur, seo
Posted May 29, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

Google is always very busy making changes to its search ranking methodology and the mythical algorithm that everyone chases. I say mythical only because for years it has been treated as if it were something that could be hunted, captured, contained, analyzed and then completely understood. That’s the marketing and sales talk about this beast. Reality is much different. Reality is so much different that people who know more than most, like former Googler Vanessa Fox, often tell folks to not get their knickers in a twist about every adjustment in the Google search ‘ecosystem’. Last year alone there were anywhere from 350-550 changes made so there is no way to A) know all of these B) Implement all of these and C) Not go crazy tracking all of these. So when Fox penned an article over at SearchEngineLand telling us about what has been deemed the “Mayday” update it gets some attention. Why? Because this one may really impact just how SEO’s optimize for long tail queries from this point on. ……. sometimes a Google algorithm change is substantial enough that even those who don’t spend a lot of time focusing on the algorithms notice it. That seems to be the case with what those discussing it at Webmaster World have named “Mayday”. Last week at Google I/O, I was on a panel with Googler Matt Cutts who said, when asked during Q&A, ”this is an algorithmic change in Google, looking for higher quality sites to surface for long tail queries. It went through vigorous testing and isn’t going to be rolled back.” Sites likely to be most effective are larger sites that have a significant number if interior pages that are under optimized either through content, links directly to the pages and a combination of various other factors. Many people have seen significant impact on rankings and, more importantly, traffic as a result of this change. Fox offers the following advice for those wondering how to address this situation. What’s a site owner to do? It can be difficult to create compelling content and attract links to these types of pages. My best suggestion to those who have been hit by this is to isolate a set of queries for which the site now is getting less traffic and check out the search results to see what pages are ranking instead. What qualities do they have that make them seen as valuable? For instance, I have no way of knowing how amazon.com has faired during this update, but they’ve done a fairly good job of making individual item pages with duplicated content from manufacturer’s databases unique and compelling by the addition of content like of user reviews. They have set up a fairly robust internal linking (and anchor text) structure with things like recommended items and lists. And they attract external links with features such as the my favorites widget. As with any major change that occurs to the ‘secret sauce’ of ranking with Google, it would be wise to get educated on just what impact has been seen as a result of these changes that are apparently here to stay. As with everything there are two sides to every coin and the flip side of this one should be exciting for smaller players looking for an edge. The long tail has always been a target of any good SEO campaign especially by the smaller players. Now there’s a chance to make even further inroads against the big boys. Study up! Have you seen this change impact your site’s performance in Google? Let us know your experience.

Tags: against-the-big, algorithms, change, experience, googler-matt, googler-vanessa, marketing, Search, seo, update-it-gets, webmaster-world, week-at-google
Posted May 28, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

Yahoo seems to be a little confused about its prospects these days. Now that their search deal with Microsoft is approved , they’re suddenly not that interested in search , because people aren’t interested in search. (Odd how that one’s not generating the same interest as a couple years ago when Ask.com did/didn’t say they were getting out of search.) And yet at the same time, they’re releasing research that shows just how important search really is. SEO by the Sea reports on a study, to be presented today, that shows search is responsible for more than 1 in 5 pageviews online . Search itself saw 10% of online pageviews, and indirectly lead to 21% of the pageviews and about the same proportion of purchases online. They tell us that main web search accounted for 6.2 percent of all pageviews, multimedia searches take up 1.4 percent, and item searches another 1.4 percent. They followed browsing trails from these searches to the pages that searchers followed from the searches, and tell us that those pages browsed as a result of searches result in another 12.4 percent of pages visited on the Web. . . . The study also looked at “checkout” pageviews to see how often people arrived at ecommerce checkout pages, and tell us that approximately 20 percent of people making a purchase online eventually arrived at that page directly or indirectly from a search pageview. Based on > 50M pageviews collected over 8 days in March 2009, the study reaffirms the importance of search. Over the last year, social networks have continued to grow—but the two categories play very different roles. Meanwhile, if Yahoo really thought that search was on the way out, wouldn’t they have their employees sit on this research? Naturally, Yahoo is right that people are using social networks and recommendations from friends to find new websites and places to hang out—and possibly even answers to questions. But if they really think people aren’t searching, 1.) they need better internal communication, 2.) the search deal is a waste of time and money and 3.) they don’t understand how people find information in the first place—a cardinal sin in the IR industry. Even in the reports this morning, Yahoo acknowledged that people spend about a sixth of their online time searching. While they also cited stats that said they spent another third of their time communicating and half their time browsing, I think that showing that people spend a significant amount of time—but not a majority of it—searching shows how successful search engines are. Would anyone want an Internet where we spent half our time searching for something, and a minority of our time actually reading what we’d found? With these stats, it sounds like Yahoo’s trying to have its cake and eat it to: search is important, but it isn’t. It drives pageviews, but social is the wave of the future. Buy search ads, but buy display ads. What do you think? Is Yahoo trying to attack this from both sides? This looks like a case of

Tags: importance, internet, Microsoft, online, purchase-online, Research, Search, seo, study, time, Yahoo
Posted April 29, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media