SEO Writing 101

by Rob Garner , Wednesday, January 30, 2008 Whether you believe Google bombing  still works or not, the fact is that more conventional SEM tactics such as SEO and PPC are alive and well in their power to increase the search engine visibility for various types of digital assets.  While Google’s January 2007 publicity effort around a specific algorithm to neutralize link bombs caused many online activists to give up on linking initiatives, many others have branched out to new search tactics, including SEO, tagging, blogging, social media optimization and Google Earth.   Noted Google bombers like OpenLeft’s Chris Bowers are also starting to sing the praises of another quick path to number one: Google Adwords.

The most famous case of activism in the search engines is the Google bombing campaign for the phrase “miserable failure.” This was a targeted effort by thousands of bloggers and Web masters to point as many links as possible to President George W. Bush’s bio page on Whitehouse.gov, so that the page would rank #1 in Google for the phrase.  In what was likely the first act of “presidential SEO,” the White House responded with a page redirect.  From Search Engine Land:

“The Bush Administration almost certainly tried to alter Google results itself through a change it made to the White House Web site in September 2006. It redirected the Bush bio page to a general page about all U.S. presidents. [That] move would likely have condemned future U.S. presidents to also be ranked for the term.”

Others have become targets of “miserable failure” link bombs as well, including Michael Moore and Jimmy Carter, whose pages catapulted to the top of the SERPs.   At this writing, the presidential bio page site is still ranked at #3 in MSN, and #1 in Yahoo (for more, read Danny Sullivan’s recent post on the first anniversary of the Google bomb diffusion).

Going beyond the Google bomb

In order to better understand how various other tactics have been used in the search engines, here are some examples that display a particular social, political, or consumer activist goal:

Adwordsbombing in Ohio.  Chris Bowers details an aggressive paid search stacking campaign by his group, Blogpac, in which Google Adwords ads were placed on the term “Bob Latta”, a candidate in a special election for Ohio’s 5th District Congressional seat in December 2007.

Operation Clambake.  Anti-Scientology Web site Xenu.net ranked highly for Church of Scientology-related search terms and phrases in Google, resulting in one of the first publicized hand edits, though engineers later reversed it.  The Church of Scientology continues to be the target of a group called Anonymous, which is using Google bombs and YouTube as its tools of choice.

The Martin Luther King link bomb.  Blogger Tim Hoffman led a campaign to get an anti-MLK site out of the MLK keyword space, even enlisting Robert Scoble for the cause.

Jeff Jarvis and his computer warranty woes.  Blogger Jeff Jarvis was not happy about how he was treated by his computer manufacturer’s customer service department, so much so that he punctuated one high-ranking blog entry with this consumer search activist tinged comment: “Put that in your Google and smoke it.”

Appeal for a jailed blogger, via Adwords activism.  Jon Garfunkel used Adwords to help assist a detained Egyptian blogger.

Amazonbombing.  If you buy into the notion that Amazon is a vertical search engine for books (I do), then here is an example of tagging activism.

David Berkowitz, consumer search activist.  Fellow Search Insider David Berkowitz recently used natural search to alert unsuspecting buyers to a Craigslist scammer.

Google Earth Activism.  Wall Street Journal reporter Kevin Delaney writes about how environmental group Appalachian Voices is using Google Earth and Maps to show how mountain tops have been razed for their natural resources.

Ethan Zuckerman on “Why Genocide Is Worth At least A Buck A Click.”  Zuckerman used Adwords to create attention for conflicts in Africa, and is also mining the data for analysis.  He details his campaign analysis in another sobering post, entitled, “Famine, $0.45 per click and rising. Genocide, down $0.03 per click to $0.28.”

With the increased use of a variety of tactics in the noncommercial keyword space, I think we are seeing the beginnings of a much bigger trend in search that defies simple categorization as “link bombing,” or even “search marketing” or “search advertising.”  Over the next two columns, I will continue to explore some of the elements and motivations of online activist’s search campaigns, and how these campaigns shed light on the value of search engines — value that is often overlooked in commercial SEM.

by Anna Schibrowsky, Friday, Jan 25, 2008 8:00 PM CST

CSS to separate layout from content, text-heavy content (instead of images or Flash) and alt tags on images all play nice with search engine spiders and increase your rankings. Plus these same design and content best practices are good for everyone, especially for mobile device and screen reader users.

Just when website designers thought it was safe to assume viewers had broadband connections and video plug-ins, along came web-capable cell phones and PDAs. These devices are on “dial-up” connections and many don’t display graphics. Even on the ones that do display graphics, the tiny screen makes it impossible to appreciate them. Like the old days of 14.4 modems, text content is king.

Computer users with visual disabilities use screen reader software that reads text aloud to them. Screen readers can’t interpret images, so text links instead of graphics and descriptive alt tags on images and video are critical for this audience. Screen readers also stumble over inline layout code, so separating your layout into a separate CSS document helps too.

by Aaron Goldman , Wednesday, January 23, 2008 Yesterday I spoke on a panel titled “Search Engine Pricing: Click vs. Action” at the Digital Media Measurement and Pricing Summit. Unfortunately, my Search Insider deadline was prior to the session, so I’m not able to share the outcome. Nonetheless, I think the topic makes good column fodder.

Shortest Panel Ever?

The session was billed as a discussion about the various pricing models used for paid search. More specifically, the focus was on the potential for CPA (cost-per-acquisition) to become the default format for buying/selling paid search ads.

I have to admit, when I was first presented with the topic, I thought to myself, “This will be the shortest panel ever.” I couldn’t think of anything to contribute beyond, “CPA? Never gonna happen.”

As I procrastinated on preparing for the session, I came up with some other topics that could vie for the “Shortest Panel Ever” award:

- Black Hat SEOs Share Tips for Creating User-Friendly Site Content

- Advertising Tactics Deployed by Google to Create Consumer Awareness

- Successfully Monetizing Facebook: Case Studies

- Barry Diller Keynote: Proven Strategies for Gaining Search Market Share

Inspiration, Move Me Brightly

As is often the case, fellow Search Insider Mark Simon sparked some thoughts and helped me formulate a POV. In a recent column, Mark speculated that the purchases of DoubleClick by Google, Atlas by Microsoft, and Right Media by Yahoo will lead to “insider data trading.” He suspects that search engines, armed with data showing what marketers are paying for search ads on other networks, will artificially inflate their minimum keyword bids.

Personally, I don’t think the Big 3 would go that route. They have too much to lose if they get caught — not to mention their search platforms are plenty profitable with an open marketplace dictating rates. That said, CPA pricing would eliminate many concerns over one of the biggest conflicts-of-interest pervading these acquisitions — search engines owning marketer’s conversion data.

CPA (Cure for Potential Abuse)

As long as paid search is priced on a CPC basis, the potential exists for the type of price-fixing Mark suggests. However, if marketers only paid for actual conversions, it wouldn’t matter what the engines set their rates at. In the CPA model, marketers define what they are willing to pay for a specific conversion activity and (presumably) bid to the threshold of profitability.

Let’s explore the ramifications of CPA on the core constituents of the search ecosystem…

1. Marketers. CPA minimizes the risk involved with buying media on a CPM or CPC basis and makes it easier to project results. And for those brand marketers who aren’t looking to drive a direct conversion or sale, the “A” in CPA could be defined as any valuable consumer action — registration, video view, store locator, or even the original click.

Another tangible benefit of CPA to marketers would be the end of click fraud as we know it. With publishers no longer being compensated for clicks, there would be no incentive for rogues to artificially inflate click volume. Now, it’s possible “action fraud” might emerge as the bad guys deploy humans or bots to complete various activities beyond the click but, assuming the action each marketer is paying for is not made public, this would prove to be a very tedious endeavor.

2. Consumers. From a consumer standpoint, a CPA platform should lead to more targeted ads on SERPs as well as richer post-click experiences. As the engines tweak their quality scores to give more weight to landing pages and click-paths, they will prioritize ads that “convert” at a strong clip — or have a high-enough bid price to cover a poor conversion rate. Either way, the result will be fewer and fewer affiliates and made-for-AdSense sites appearing on the SERPs.

3. Search Engines. There’s a reason more and more budget is being poured into search each year. It’s because search works. And by “works,” I don’t mean it drives clicks. It drives actions — meaningful actions that bring value to brands. Today, only the marketer profits from these actions. Assuming marketers are continually investing in search because the value of the actions outweighs the cost of the clicks, the engines are not being compensated for the full value they are delivering. In addition, with marketers bidding on different actions for the same keyword, the engines’ effective CPM is likely to increase.

Will CPA Get its Day?

There are a couple macro trends that lead me to believe a move to CPA might be in the cards. The first is consolidation in the space. For the first time, each of the Big 3 owns reputable ad serving technology. Not only does this provide access to conversion activity, but it delivers more reliable data that marketers will accept for billing purposes. The second is a movement toward transparency that’s pervading all facets of the marketing landscape. The inherent conflicts within GoogleClick, MicQuantive, and YahRightMedia demand a level of transparency heretofore unseen in the search space. There is simply no more transparent pricing model than CPA.

I’ve clearly only scratched the surface here on the primary drivers behind CPA and the implications if it becomes the default model for paid search. And I’ve focused mostly on the benefits of CPA to the ecosystem. It is certainly worth exploring the downside — namely, the potential for marginalizing agencies and the challenges some marketers might encounter achieving scale.

Hopefully, my panel will have fleshed this topic out a bit further and, assuming that’s the case, I’ll continue down this path in my next column. If, however, it turns out to be the “Shortest Panel Ever,” I’ll forget all about the letters CPA — until April 15^th, that is!

by Anna Schibrowsky, Tuesday, Jan 22, 2008 3:30 PM CST

Landing Pages (Intentional)
Most businesses cater to 2 or 3 different audiences that search and buy based on different needs and concerns. Individuals need an emotional connection. Businesses look at the bottom line. Government has standards to meet. You need a separate landing page for each audience. These segmented landing pages should include keywords that the audience searches for and selling points that will close them. Be sure to put a strong call to action on every landing page.

Landing Pages (Accidental)
Every webpage on your site is a potential landing page, so every page needs clear navigation and a strong call to action. Think about your press releases and technical documents. They contain plenty of content and keywords to get search engine spiders’ attention. Do they also contain the information that a prospect needs to take the next step?

Landing Pages (Prevention)
If you have webpages or online work areas you do not want appearing in search engine results, there are a couple things you can do. A robots.txt file in your web folder tells spiders where they are not permitted to crawl and index. The rel=”nofollow” tag was developed to prevent search engine spammers from exploiting blogs and forums to increase their page rankings, but it can also be used to keep spiders from ranking pages you don’t want pulling traffic.

by James Palmer

Want some really great keywords to use in your SEO? Here’s a couple of places you probably haven’t looked: your server log and your PPC campaigns.

Your Server Log

If you already have a Website, you already have an excellent source of keywords on hand ready for you to use. The server log keeps track of how many people visited your site each month. It also tells you what keywords your visitors used to find your site.

In other words, these are keywords your prospects are already using to find you! Why wouldn’t you want to use them in your SEO?

If you’re not sure how to access your server log, contact your hosting provider.

Your PPC Campaigns

If you’re using PPC campaigns such as Google AdWords to drive traffic to your site, and you’ve been diligent about creating and testing your campaigns, you’ve got a great source of keywords to use in your regular SEO. Take those keywords that you’re paying money for and use them to get better free natural search results.

By putting either of these tips to work, you’ll have enough powerful keywords to use in your search engine optimization that will drive tons of relevant traffic to your Website.

by Lisa Weinberger

While writing for different clients, I always ask the client their preference of how often would they like their keyword(s) used within their copy?

Some clients are unsure and say, “You know how many times, I trust you.”

Although this is a wonderful compliment, here is one way I determine how often keywords or phrases should be used within the copy. I analyze the topic or genre by doing small research into the search results and what the competition is for the keywords that the client has sent. If the client doesn’t send keywords, either I conduct keyword research or from my analysis, I decide on which keywords should be used in the client’s copy.

Depending on the amount of words being written for each article or Web page, determines the amount of times a keyword should be used. The days of keyword stuffing are over BUT their are many ways that the search engines will pick up the site pages organically by adding 3-6% of keyword density.

Later on we will discuss keyword placement and many other techniques centered around SEO.

by Anna Schibrowsky, Saturday, Jan 19, 2008 10:00 AM CST
If you think you might want to start a website, DO IT NOW! Register your domain and pay for your hosting immediately. (This costs about $70 for a year.) Write 3 or 4 paragraphs about your venture and post that as your index (home) page. Don’t worry about design. Do it today.

Now, while you’re figuring out the details and designing the perfect website, you’ve provided content for the search engine spiders to feed on. It takes 90 days for all the top engines to crawl your site naturally. You can bid on placement to get your site ranked at the top from day one, but it will cost you. Keep in mind you’ll have to pay for bids on Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask and others. I’d rather put my money into an early start, which gives me results on all the search engines.

This isn’t a silver bullet. It’s just a cost-effective part of the plan. When you get your operation up and running, you can see where you’re ranked. Considering your budget and your growth projections, then you can decide whether to invest in paid placement.

by Mark Walsh, Thursday, Jan 17, 2008 8:00 AM ET

SOME 40% OF WEB SITE operators have launched mobile sites and another 22% plan to do so in the next year, according to a new JupiterResearch study.

“This number is relatively large given that the experience is not yet mature today and likely reflects mobile versions that consist of frames and offer a kludgy user interface,” states the report titled “Mobile Web Sites: Designing for Mobility.”

Driving the growth of mobile sites are factors such as the expansion of 3G networks and smartphones and improving prospects for deriving revenue from mobile advertising. Jupiter estimates that increasing page views and usage will push annual mobile display and search advertising revenue to $825 million by 2012.

Still, the study found that only 29% of Web sites going mobile were developing the ability to provide user profile information to ad networks to monetize page views. Among advertisers, only 3% were placing display ads on mobile sites, and 4% on carrier portals.

M-commerce also has a ways to go. About one-third of Web sites surveyed let users make purchases via mobile phone. “Instant transactions and the ability to drive shoppers into nearby stores are opportunities for mobile site operators because mobile consumers are more likely to search for items they can purchase immediately through their phones,” according to the report.

Web site operators are still more focused on improving the consumer experience than monetization. That’s the right approach, initially, according to Jupiter Research Director Julie Ask. “First focus on the user experience. (Mobile sites) need to build page views before they’re worth monetizing. They should have a longer-term plan in place, though, for advertising,” she said.

To that end, Jupiter advises companies to optimize their mobile sites for both mass-market and high-end devices. That means designing both more WAP and HTML versions of sites, especially since most phones don’t yet support full Web browsing. Given the limitations of the mobile screen, controlling the volume of site content is key–as is providing functionality that lets users share content like photos and video clips.

When it comes to budgeting, be prepared to pay anywhere from $20,000 to $100,000 to build a basic mobile site. And since cell phones are well-designed for online search, promoting the mobile version on the wired site is also advised, along with pushing out links through text messages.

Mark Walsh can be reached at walsh@mediapost.com

by David Berkowitz , Tuesday, January 15, 2008

IT MAY BE PRACTICALLY impossible to track down online scammers, but as people become savvier in how to use search engines, some scams can be contained. I found this out firsthand when two reports of a Craigslist real-estate scam came my way.

The reports were from people close to me who were separately listing their homes for rent on Craigslist, and they each received similar emails. One email, signed by Dr. Dennis Johnson, started, “Hello, I come across your apartment advertised on the internet and i am interested in renting it, please let me know if it is still available. I will be signing one year lease for this unit and will be staying with my wife and daughter, and will be willing to offer you 2 months rent plus the security deposit in order to secure this unit prior to our arrival.”

The scammers, assuming there’s some group of them going about this (various signs such as inconsistencies in the exchanges indicate there are multiple perpetrators), include some other facts that they happened to Google, though their information isn’t always current. In one example, the scammer posing as Dr. Johnson mentioned that Merck CEO Raymond V. Gilmartin would make arrangements on his behalf — a pretty impressive connection. Gilmartin is actually the former CEO, one who ironically resigned when Congress started investigating safety issues with Vioxx. This would be comical, except that these scammers are targeting people who are vulnerable and want so desperately to believe that they’ve found a renter.

The email correspondence in these scams proceeds until the scammer says he’s sending a check through some circuitous route, which he does manage to send if the correspondence goes far enough. The sender, however, mistakenly overpays the victim, so the victim has to then send the difference back. If the victim goes through with it, the loss tends to amount to a few thousand dollars.

When these scams were brought to my attention, I was relieved that my friends figured out the ruse before sending any money out, but as we were all shaken up and had little direct recourse to pursue the scammers, I realized there was one way I could help. One of my friends sent me the entire text of his correspondence with the scammer, and I posted it in full on my blog with a summary of the scam, omitting my friend’s personal details. I didn’t care in particular about informing my blog’s readers, as it may or may not have mattered to them. Rather, there were four or so readers I hoped would catch it — Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Ask. Humans, at first, were irrelevant. If the search engines could access the post, then other people would be able to see it in time.

That’s exactly what happened. That blog post and a follow-up have attracted a number of people who searched for information about what they suspected was a scam and wound up with the proof to confirm their hunches. Several of these visitors have in turn left comments with other aliases used by the scammers and other pertinent details, giving the engines even more content to work with. One commenter named Jodi wrote, “[I] just had the same thing happen to me…just received a check for $9000 and was asked to send $3000 to a furniture company by Dr. Scott. i was suspicious as i hadn’t received my application or any personal information back from him so i googled him and found your blog.”

It’s incredibly empowering to be able to share information this way. There were so many other communications channels available that wouldn’t have been nearly as effective. Trying to tell friends about this would have fizzled quickly, as it wouldn’t have been relevant. Craigslist can’t do anything to police this, and they already include warning messages in emails that come through the site (one warning message even said “AVOID SCAMS BY DEALING LOCALLY”). If someone completely fell for the scam and tried to seek financial recourse, it’s unlikely any local or federal investigators would track down a $3,000 check that clearly wound up further overseas than the UK (in one of the many incredible aspects of the scam, these people posing as British doctors have no grasp of the English language).

By telling Google, the information is relevant to people when they need it, and it’s accessible to people who are several degrees of separation away from me. For any sort of information that retains value beyond the day it’s created and that is most valuable to people in very specific situations, there is no better way to reach them than by funneling the content through an online communications channel optimized for search engines. That can apply to holiday recipes, product manuals, local business reviews, and countless other forms of content.

When you have something to share that’s truly valuable, you may or may not need to tell a friend, but you definitely need to tell a search engine.

David Berkowitz is director of emerging media and client strategy at 360i. You can reach him at dberkowitz@360i.com, and you can read his blog at MarketersStudio.com.