Let me begin by stating upfront, I do NOT consider myself a Search Engine Optimization expert.  In a previous life, I worked for an SEO company and have done SEO for a number of years, but there are many folks who are far more knowledgeable than I am on this subject.  There are also a number of slimy, snake oil, unethical people who give used car salesman a bad name also working in the SEO industry.

What I would like to do is share with you my take on SEO.  I am going to start by not pretending that there is some kind of secret sauce, there isn’t.  No-one has a special algorithm, decoder ring or the phone number to Mr. Google.  Very simply put, this is my opinion on where to start and how to move forward to effectively compete on your most important keywords and phrases in the search engines.  Here are my three simple truths on search engine optimization.  I do want to warn you before you continue reading, you are not going to like what I have to say.  As long as we are clear, let’s continue.

1.  Google is all that matters

When I use the words ‘search engine(s)’ I am referring to Google.  Yes, there are other search engines out there, but they really don’t matter. 

“You are talking crazy there Cord!  This is one of the last employees left in the search department from Yahoo! and I take offense to your last remark.”

“Hello Mr. Cord, this is Steve Ballmer at Microsoft.  We have this great new search engine named Bing. How dare you say we don’t matter. Bing is even fun to say.  You try it, Bing, Bing, Bing….”

Sorry Steve and Last Yahoo, but it’s true and here’s why:

1. Newsflash:  There are more searches done on Google each day than all the other search engines combined.  They dominate the search market.
2. If you achieve strong visibility in Google’s natural search, you will absolutely be doing well in the other search engines.

I guess what I am trying to say is when that SEO firm you hired sends you a ranking report and calls out that one keyword moved from #25 to #5 in Alta Vista, you shouldn’t get that excited.  Is Alta Vista still around?

2.  Your website must technically work

If your website was developed incorrectly and does not allow search engine spiders or bots to easily index or read your website, you’re toast.  You could have the greatest website ever created, if the bots cannot index it, you will have no visibility in the search engines.

An easy way to confirm your website is being indexed as long as your site has been around for a little while is to go to google.com and do the following search:  site:yoururl.com

Make sure you replace yoururl.com with the domain of your website.  This search asks Google to show how many pages it has indexed within the domain you chose in your search.  I did a search using Marketing Hipster, site:marketinghipster.com. As you can see by the screen shot, it returned a result of 960 total pages in Google’s index.  If the number of pages in your search seems low or is at zero, you might have a problem.

Alright, you have done your search and your website is being indexed by Google, outstanding!  Now all we need to do is get your website competing on your most important and relevant keywords.  This is where some might suggest “optimizing” your website by focusing on things like meta-tags, alt tags, site map, page names, search engine friendly URL’s, etc. etc. etc.  Please don’t get me wrong, all these items have merit, but they are not going to have a great impact on effectively competing on your important and competitive keywords.

You have only so many hours a day to focus on SEO if you are lucky.  My recommendation would be to spend them working on things that will deliver you the best results possible. You want to compete on relevant terms in Google, in my humble opinion, there is only one thing you should focus on, drum roll please…….  CONTENT.

This is why I warned you.  I know this might be a bit of a letdown as there is nothing earth shattering about content.  I told you there is no secret sauce, you want to compete, you need to put all your available time and effort into developing well written content that your readers will find interesting and want to share.

3.  Content, Content and oh by the way, Content!

Two things determine your rankings and visibility in Google:  content and links.  You need well written, interesting content that includes the keywords and phrases that you want to compete on.  That’s it.  Write kick butt content with your keywords and you will get the visibility you are looking for.

“But wait Cord, what about the links? How do I get them?”

Right, well lets first make sure everyone is clear on what a link is. A link is when another website takes the time to link to a specific page on your website.  Google believes that if someone has taken the time to link to your website, you must be offering something of value and will reward you with better rankings and visibility.  There a number of ways to get links and there are some really strong folks who have written great articles on linkbait, but if you write well written, interesting content, people are going to want to share that content with others.  That sharing will deliver you links that Google loves and will reward you with better visibility.

I know I am making this seem simple when it is not.  Writing great content is a huge challenge, but that is my point.  My experience has been that people tend to focus on the other things like meta-tags because it is easier to do.  Though in my opinion, your valuable time should be spent on the research and development of great content giving your target audience something to talk about.

I have a number of friends who are true experts in this.  If you would like further help, contact me and I will be more than happy to make an introduction.

So what are you still doing here?  Get writing!

Any feedback and/or disagreements are welcome in the comments below.

I tend not to really focus any of my time or attention on SEO or search engine optimization here for many different reasons. The biggest reason is that SEO is seen by many as just tricks and scams to get better natural positioning in the search engines. And unfortunately, some search engine optimization companies and people have said and done things that have put themselves on the same levels of honesty as used car salesmen.

Rumors are running rampant that Google is preparing this weekend to update their page ranks and every SEO and his brother are scurrying like roaches when the lights turn on to do everything they can to get their page ranks increased. I have been reading articles by people using terms like “link trains” and “link baiting” and I finally decided I wanted to say a thing or two about SEO and about some of the buffoons who are seen as “experts” in this field.

You want to learn about SEO and how to do it right, here it is:

1. Build a web site with technology that will allow each and every page of the site to be read and indexed by the search engines.
2. Architect the site so that each page has the appropriate navigation so not only search engine spiders, but also real live users will be able to surf the site easily and quickly.
3. Write great content that users will find interesting and that they will want to recommend and come back for more.

That’s it. You can make it a lot more complicated, but it isn’t. It’s not about gaming the system and seeing how many links you can get and writing articles that use the same word 400 times in it. It is about very simply building a solid web site on the back end and then writing content that your target audience will want to read and interact with. It is time for people to realize that getting into the top 10 of natural search results does not guarantee success. How many times have you gone from a search result to a page and thought, “What a piece of crap” and closed that page and moved on?

Some of these SEO gurus really blow my mind. I was reading an article today on a site which is ranked under 3000 in Technorati. The guy has over 2000 blog reactions, but he has under 250 people registered for his RSS feed and a very low Alexa ranking! He has gamed the system with BS link scams, but he has absolutely no readers, no community, in other words he has nothing.

All hacks off the stage!

P.S. There was absolutely no chance that I would link to any of the hacks I referred to above and give them yet another link.

Technorati Tags: SEO, search engine optimization, natural positioning, search engines, Google, page ranks, link trains, link baiting, Technorati, blog reactions, RSS, link scams, community

As most of you know, Jerry Yang co-founder of Yahoo! has taken back the reigns of Yahoo! after Terry Semel stepped down as CEO. There is a great deal of speculation of what Jerry is going to do with Yahoo!. Some of the speculation includes Rupert Murdoch selling MySpace to Yahoo! for a 25% stake in the company. Another highly talked about area is whether Yahoo! would make more money by outsourcing search to Google.

These are some HUGE questions, but before Jerry tackles anything of this magnitude, I think he needs to take a breath and focus on some basics. So I have put together my own little Jerry Yang To Do List.

Jerry, this is for you:

1. Clearly and concisely explain to his employees and share holders what is going to be his main focus for the next 30, 60 and 90 days. Not some high level BS, but be specific. State what you want to do and then come back and communicate what you have found and what you believe it means at the end of each time period.
2. Once you have done your initial exploration, again communicate both internally and externally what direction the company is going in. If you are going to be a content player then state how you are going to do this. What changes will be made immediately and what your expectations are.
3. After you have stated what your vision is and where the company is going, make sure that every employee, manager and director are proceeding down the road that you just mapped out. I have several colleagues who work for Yahoo! and bar none their biggest complaint is the lack of communication and understanding throughout the company. No-one works on an island, define where everyone needs to go and then make sure it is enforced on every level.
4. Begin reaching out to the people most important to you – your users. Begin a conversation, start actually wanting feedback and even more importantly, when you get feedback, do something with that feedback. Make changes, send responses, start showing that under your new regime, Yahoo! is going to get back to focusing on your customers, the people who come to your site each and everyday.
5. Start kicking people in the ass! Yahoo! needs to get back to start up mode and regain that sense of urgency that they lost so long ago. You guys are entering a fight for your lives and every employee needs to understand that. If they don’t because they have lost that loving feeling or have made too much money, it is time to kick those albatrosses to the curb. It’s time Yahoo! gets hungry again!
6. Pick some priorities and make things start to happen now. You have some incredible properties like Yahoo! Mail, Flickr and MyBlogLog that have been languishing under the old Yahoo! regime. It is time you recognize the importance of these and other properties and put the pedal to the medal and get these guys rolling. Get these properties out in front and let them lead as they once did.

That’s it Jerry. I know it is pretty basic, but I think right now Yahoo! needs to go back to the basics. You have any questions, please feel free to drop me a line, we can chat.

Technorati Tags: Jerry Yang, Yahoo!, Terry Semel, CEO, Rupert Murdoch, MySpace, Google, To Do List, Yahoo! Mail, Flickr, MyBlogLog

Last week, I posted a story about the little spat that Google and eBay were having, well eBay followed through on their threat and pulled all of their PPC (Pay per click) or sponsored links off of Google. Before this, eBay was one of Google’s largest PPC spenders. Now what is incredibly interesting is this article in the New York Post that states based on Hitwise numbers, not only has eBay’s traffic numbers not decreased, but they actually slightly increased since the PPC ban began!

According to Bill Trancer, GM of Hitwise, “One reason appears to be that much of the traffic that goes to eBay from Google comes from people performing free searches rather than clicking on the paid search ads.”

This brings up a number of questions and issues for other large ecommerce web players. What I have believed for a very long time is that PPC is a short term solution to gain visibility in the search engines, but long term, if you have a large enough site and do the basic search engine optimization techniques that everyone should do, large web sites will gain a great deal more visibility and traffic from natural search results. More importantly, those natural search results are free so they have a much higher ROI than the paid links.

I also believe for large players like eBay and other big e-tailers, having PPC links actually is hurting them as users will click on a paid link instead of their natural link just a couple of places down on the page. Let’s also not forget that Google has been the king of the mountain for PPC for a very long time and if these traffic and revenue numbers do not decline for eBay, it could seriously put into question whether Google’s PPC is really worth the amount of money companies are paying.

This might be a good thing for everyone as I think all companies just like people need a humbling experience to bring them back to earth and make them realize no-one is invincible including Google.

Technorati Tags: Google, eBay, PPC, Pay per click, New York Post, Hitwise, ecommerce, ROI, e-tailers

Let’s file this one under “It’s About Time”. Yesterday, Yahoo! announced that CEO Terry Semel will be stepping down and will be replaced with founder Jerry Yang. This comes as no surprise as Semel has been on the hot seat for some time as Yahoo! continues to flounder with no real direction or purpose.

What I found interesting was there were a number of articles that discussed how Semel bet on content while Google focused on technology and many authors believed Semel’s bet was a failure. I disagree. I think Semel’s plan was actually the right one. Yahoo! was never going to be able to compete with Google from a technology aspect, but because of the great number of properties and partnerships Yahoo! has, they could compete from a content perspective.

Semel’s problem was not his formula, but his execution. Semel is a Hollywood veteran and I just don’t think he ever truly understood that you cannot run an Internet company the same way he ran a movie studio. As most of you know, the internet moves at much greater speeds than areas in the offline world. If you want to compete, you need a great sense of urgency and the ability to understand what users want and give it to them the first time, on-time and correctly.

I have never seen under Semel’s reign any kind of urgency from Yahoo! across all of their properties. We can look at numerous examples including the much delayed release of Panama, the slow and incredibly poor launches and integrations of Yahoo! Mail, Flickr and most recently MyBlogLog.

I still do not think it is too late for Yahoo! They still have a stable of great properties, they just need a real leader to get the company and personnel back on track again.

One last thing, Jerry Yang posted a letter on the Yahoo! blog.  I particularly liked this line, ” A Yahoo! that executes with speed, clarity and discipline.”  I guess we will see.

Technorati Tags: Yahoo!, Terry Semel, Jerry Yang, Google

Hey folks, let me start out again by apologizing for the lack of posts over the last week or two. As I stated earlier, I have been in the process of launching a couple of campaigns for my clients and just have not had the time or been too brain dead to write. Good news is both campaigns are off and running and I can guarantee you that you will start seeing daily posts again.

I read an article recently on PC World where they tested all the search engines and then gave their thoughts and feedback. The article is incredibly in-depth with a great deal of information. While I found this article interesting, I believe their research and results are flawed. Comparing search results from search engine to search engine is so Web 1.0. I think what the author and PC World failed to take into account is that what I might be looking for could be dramatically different than what somewhat else is looking for.

Let’s me give an example. If I do a search for something that is in the news, let’s say I search for “Bush NRA”. No matter what search engine I am on, the results will show me links to multiple articles all across the internet. What is important here is that based on who I am and my beliefs, I would choose certain places to read and certain places I would not want to read. Personally, there is no chance that I am going to read an article from Fox News. I know the kind of slant they put on all their news, so even though they might have an article that Google determines is the best result for my search, I would have no interest in reading it.

My point is that the days of comparing search results are over. What is coming and coming right now is the day of personalized results. Search engines learning based on my searching and what I click on, what are the most relevant results for ME! The best search engine is the one who offers each searcher the best results based on who they are and what they are interested in.

That is what I believe web 2.0 is all about. Each one of us in charge of what we see and read based on our individual and personalized interests. It is no longer about what Google deems to be the most relevant, it is what I and you deem to be most relevant.

Technorati Tags: search engines, Web 1.0, PC World, Fox News, Google, web 2.0

So this weekend I was reading a post that Matt Cutts posted to his blog discussing the validity or (the lack there of) for paid links, PayPerPost and review sites. Pretty much he called all of them spam and even suggested ways people could report these links as he was, “excited about trying some ideas here at Google to augment our existing algorithms”.

After I read that sentence I prepared for the blogosphere to EXPLODE! When anyone who is involved with SEO  hears Matt Cutts or Google use the word algorithm, you immediately move into a code red situation. People is SEO companies across the world start worrying, planning, posting on discussion boards, chat rooms and blogs. Guys are chain smoking and others have those full body signs on with them reading, “THE END IS NEAR!”.

Ok, that might be a wee bit of an exaggeration, but just by a little. So there is all kind of articles being written on this. So far my favorite is Andy Beard‘s where he calls out Matt Cutts and Google. That’s right folks, when Beard gets done with them, Matt Cutts and all of Google will be Andy’s bitches.

Technorati Tags: Matt Cutts, PayPerPost, Google, blogosphere, SEO, Andy Beard

Google has just rolled out over the last couple of hours, MyMaps. Integrated with Google Maps, this allows you to create your own personalized maps with arrows, shapes and placemarks to be shared online. You can also use satellite images for your maps as well. According to the documentation, these maps can be integrated with YouTube and Google Video.

Technorati Tags: Google, MyMaps, Google Maps, YouTube

TechCrunch posted a great article a couple of days ago focused on Google‘s new PPA (Pay Per Action) service. I don’t think this should come as surprise to anyone in this industry. You knew eventually Google would have to do it. If it helps smaller businesses with issues like click fraud than great. The only people who should be really concerned are the affiliate networks who might be in real trouble.

What I think is significant about this announcement is what TC discusses towards the end of their post – Google’s announcement of their new “Text Link Format”. What this means is the days of the Adsense banner sitting on the top, bottom, left or right hand sides of a web page are over. Now when a publisher users certain words in a story they post, those words will be underlined and when rolled over, a Google PPC or PPA ad will pop-up.

Why don’t we check out Google’s “Our Philosophy” page, shall we?

“From its inception, Google has focused on providing the best user experience possible.”

Really? So you’re saying that when someone is trying to read something on a web page throwing up pop-up rollovers in their face is the best user experience????

“While many companies claim to put their customers first, few are able to resist the temptation to make small sacrifices to increase shareholder value. Google has steadfastly refused to make any change that does not offer a benefit to the users who come to the site”

Huh… It sure seems like this decision has done exactly that! You sacrificed the user experience to increase shareholder value.

“Advertising on the site must offer relevant content and not be a distraction.”

Now I did not graduate from Stanford with a doctorate in everything, but Larry and Sergey can you tell me something more distracting than a fricken pop-up?!?!?!?!?!

Google tried to bury this information within a larger announcement an old trick that has been used in PR for years. In politics, they call it “taking out the trash”. They did this to try to avoid the scrutiny and discussions within the blogosphere. I am hoping that my article among many others will not allow them to sweep this issue under the rug.

Technorati Tags: TechCrunch, Google, click fraud, affiliate networks

Them fighting words to many people I know, but that is what Anthony Fallon, CEO of Warrington Web Works, a UK Web Publishing company said in a recent article. His article discusses how a friend of his was quoted a price of $29,000 from an SEO firm which they guaranteed top 10 results on Google. He believes no-one can guarantee top 10 results on Google, not even Google itself.

“She should not be considering search engines as the only way to get traffic to her site. All the big high traffic sites have links from other sites and social bookmarking sites where the content has been considered of value and/or interest to visitors.”

He wanted to prove his point by asking people to do a Google search for the term, “SEO Mind Crime” which was the title of his article. He posted it on February 21st and his article is presently number 2 in Google for that term.

We have seen several debates in the blogosphere whether SEO is the holy grail or a total waste of time. In my opinion, I think it is somewhere in between. I believe SEO is not a marketing tool that by itself can make a companies web site money like it once could. I believe SEO is a structure or a foundation that every web site should plan for before even one line of code is written. In today’s world, I believe SEO is important to ensure that the pages on your web site can be read and indexed easily by the search engines. The days of the high importance of meta tags and keyword stuffing are over.

Simply put as it has been said time and time again, content is king. The success or failure of a site begins and ends with its content.

What do you think?

Technorati Tags: SEO, Google