Take Heart! Google’s Own SEO Efforts Suck Just As Badly As Yours!

You’d think that with all the seo conferences Google sponsors and speaks at, it would have at least some grasp of basic search engine optimization techniques, right?

Yeah….no.

<a href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/03/googles-seo-report-card.html”>According to a <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/27789378/Google-seo-Report-Card”>self-examination, Google is about as bad at seo as any multi-billion company. In fact, you might argue that Google’s seo efforts are worse than most. After all, pretty much everyone knows that a well structured Title tag format is key to good rankings, right?

Well, apparently not all of us:

OK, let’s stop it right here. I grew up in England, so maybe things are different in the US, but 10/100 only merits a "Needs Improvement"?? If I achieved a 10% on anything in school, it would warrant a smacked bottom and no dessert! Needs Improvement is a little understated, don’t you think?

OK, back to the <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/27789378/Google-seo-Report-Card”>report. It’s worth taking a look, not just because its fun to snicker at where Google failed, but it includes a lot of practical seo advice.

Lastly, I’ll leave you with this opened can of worms. If Google’s seo is so bad, how are any of its 100 products able to rank in its own index, without a little manual intervention?

(via)

AOL Wants To Be Your Local Reporter

AOL has gotten some heat about their plan to <a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/12/aols-seo-strategery.html#comments”>overrun the Internet and in effect, the search engines, with waves of content. Many people are not keen on this plan hatched by Tim Armstrong and company to generate content at break neck speed. While it may not be popular that’s not going to stop it from happening.

Now, AOL has another content that is getting a “no comment” from AOL officially but is being reported by The Business Insider as part of the plan to bring the troubled Internet company up from the ashes. Interestingly it is going to be centered on AOL’s Patch service that Armstrong had a vested interest in at one point. Hmmmm.

According to an internal communication with employees, AOL (AOL) plans to expand Patch, its network of local news blogs, from 30 sites to “hundreds,” by the end of 2010.

The goal: “To be leaders in one of the most promising ‘white spaces’ on the Internet.”

In the same communication, AOL said it wants to be “the global and local leader in sourcing, creating, producing and delivering high quality content.”

Are you ready for AOL to be your hyperlocal reporter / blogger? It will be interesting to see how they intend to pull this off since it will take actual people in the markets to source and generate this content in order for it to be relevant.

What is your take on AOL’s push to become the global and local leader in content?

Google Pays $50M for an Anteater

Remember when I asked if social search engine Aardvark might suffer from "participation fatigue" as its members grow tired of answering the questions of others.

Yeah, you can forget about that, because Aardvark was just acquired by Google for a cool $50 million.

< I can hear CEO Max Ventilla now: "I’ve got your participation fatigue, right here, Andy!" >

Anyway, I thought Google was out of the "using humans to answer questions" business? I thought all of our search problems were going to be solved by robots and algorithms?

I have no insider knowledge on why Google made the buy, so I’ll just wildly speculate as normal.

Perhaps, it’s because Aardvark was gaining ground in the mobile search space. Something I speculated a couple of weeks back:

Combined with the revelation that more people use Aardvark on their cell phones than their desktops–which some predict is the future hot area for search–and you could easily surmise that Aardvark is poised to kick Google’s butt.

Not that Google had anything to fear now, but it was probably a shrewd move to pay $50M now and get one competitor out of the game. Hmm, I wonder if they’ll acquire KGB next?

Now we just have to see what will happen to Aardvark. Will it become the next Dodgeball or GrandCentral?

This is No TOY STORY, Twitter’s Prospects on the Way UP with Pixar CFO Hire

<Somewhere in Twitter HQ>

“So, Ev, if I understand you correctly, there isn’t actually any revenue to count at the moment?”

“No, Ali, we hired you because we were hoping you’d bring your collection of Pixar dvds in for us to watch when the Fail Whale appears.”

If it’s not Ali Rowghani’s movie collection that Twitter wanted, it must be that the microblogging service has hired the Pixar executive because–gasp–Twitter’s primed to make some actual profits!

“Ali will be an important member of a growing team focused on creating value for our users and capturing the financial opportunities that result from it,” Twitter CEO Evan Williams said in a release. Rowghani had been at Pixar for nearly a decade. “His thoughtfulness on retaining a great culture to work and staying consistent with our principles will also be a significant contribution.”

To infinity and beyond!

Here We Go Again: Another SEO Trademarker?

That’s right, folks, you’re all once again about to lose your right to use seo to refer to . . . well, anything. Back in 2008, one “intrepid” “seo” decided he’d trademark the term and impose standards on the rest of us. That didn’t pan out, so <a href="http://searchengineland.com/another-person-no-ones-heard-of-tries-to-trademark-seo-34109″>someone else has taken up the case.

Or not. Apparently this person is confused about what, exactly, seo will stand for once it’s trademarked. In the original filing, Search Engine Partners/Shangri-La Boutique filed as seo standing for “Search Engine Optimization,” which the application claimed they first used in September 1996, and first used in commerce in September 1999. The filing also includes a pseudo mark (this is supposed to apply to other words that are pronounced the same way) of “Strategically Elevating Optimization,” which a company SEP acquired used as a slogan on its invoices.

Interestingly, the invoices, from January 1997, are for a 30 keyword seo campaign. (With a money-back guarantee!) However, in the same amendment filing, they claim that “In 1997 the service known as search engine optimization was called web site optimization among several other terms because the process of optimizing websites ‘offsite’ did not yet exist because search engines like Google that look for ranking factors outside of the websites themselves did not exist” (emphasis added). And perhaps most interesting, as a <a href="http://searchengineland.com/another-person-no-ones-heard-of-tries-to-trademark-seo-34109#comment-8510″>comment on the Search Engine Land points out, the invoiced domain would not be registered until seven months after the invoice date.

I love this. Most people rag on seo because they think it’s all on-page stuff. No, no, says this person—seo only refers to off-page efforts! (And if you’d like the history lesson, Google began in 1996 as a Sergey/Brin research project called “BackRub,” which counted backlinks to rank content.) And it’s so effective, we can use it on websites that don’t even exist yet! (I’d check Archive.org, but it says robots.txt has blocked the Wayback Machine for that domain. Good. Job.)

The filing claims that seo was in common use, but it didn’t stand for anything until that year, and no one knows where it came from. The evidence includes a full proposal for the prospective client. Other than on the invoice page, the term “seo” is never used in any form—”web site optimization” is the preferred term.

It’s really tough to choose a favorite part of this case, but if I had to, I’d go with the biography of the filer. Among his credentials listed on his website:

• one of the first published search engine optimizers (seos) and search engine optimization consultants
  • The citation provided as evidence? The URL for the Search Engine Consultants page at Wikipedia. Guess who isn’t listed?
• He already holds the trademark on this term, and has since 1996! Unfortunately, that’s news to the US Trademark/Patent Office. Despite the fact that holds the trademark, “it seems to be between he and a Jason Gambert.” Sadly, he’s not joking
• After 10 years away from the industry, he was recognized by Wikipedia as an seo. Guess who doesn’t even have a page on Wikipedia? And not for lack of trying: the deletion log shows that a page about this guy has been deleted five times for copyright infringement, blatant advertising, and not meeting inclusion guidelines for biographies.
• He created seo 2.0 to deal with Universal Search.
• Nowhere on the page does he use the phrase “strategically enhancing optimization,” but he uses “search engine optimization” many, many times.
• He “managed to optimize his own name so well that Google now recognizes it as a keyword.” And the evidence is a screen shot of Google Suggest, where he’s entered his first name and the first three letters of his last name, which is seven letters long (and the results estimate? 1350).
• Of the 53 citations on his biography, 35 are the URLs for articles in Wikipedia which give definitions for a term (including “Active duty” and “Base (chemistry),” which actually isn’t used in the biography). None of the citations are active links.

I’m not sure we need to worry too much. He’s been working on this trademark application for a year, but it doesn’t look like he’s making much progress.

Here’s the problem: In the US, you can’t register something that’s merely descriptive or generic. (Well, you can register a trademark on something that’s descriptive—if it’s become primarily associated with your business by consumers at large. That’s just not going to apply here.)

In June, the USTPO rejected the application as too descriptive/generic, hence the filings to prove the use of the term in commerce, and the addition of the pseudo mark [as mentioned above, the pseudo mark was included in the initial filing]. The most recent word from the USTPO comes from November 30 (emphasis mine):

While applicant’s response includes arguments and evidence against the rejection in the June 22, 2009 office action of the Section 2(f) claim based on insufficient evidence, it is still unconvincing. The rejection is hereby continued and maintained due to the new issues raised by the response below. As stated in the June 22, 2009 office action, applicant’s arguments and evidence against the descriptiveness refusal were not persuasive and will be addressed pending applicant’s response to the new issue below raised by applicant and when the application is not in suspension. Applicant did not respond to the prior pending applications likelihood of confusion advisory (no response was required yet, and 3 of the 5 potentially cited applications have abandoned) and the information requirement (a response was required). The descriptiveness refusal, the information requirement, and prior pending applications likelihood of confusion advisory are hereby continued and maintained.

The only response so far has been to change address.

Feel free to read the <a href="http://www.trademarkia.com/seo-77643198.html”>250 pages of the filing. It’s not quite as dumbifying as Gambert’s filings—and hey, there are pictures!

Cup of Joe: Your Business Needs To Be Like a Wet Noodle

As I write this post, it is my birthday, and there is a White Russian with my name on it, after this post is done. So you will have to excuse me if today’s column is a bit short, but I have a party to go to!

Even though all of the data says something different it is clear that the life span for most small businesses is incredibly short. Yep that’s right, people fail all the time.

If you ask most defunct small business owners why they failed, they will point towards one or two key areas of their business. Some will say that they didn’t have the right marketing mindset, others might say they didn’t have the right product. And all of these reasons may be true. But one thing that many won’t even recognize is because their business wasn’t flexible.

Flexibility is important in a small business plan but is often times overlooked. Many times we focus so much on our core products or services that we build a mindset and infrastructure that limits our ability to be flexible when needed.

So why is it so important to be flexible? It’s important because you can’t control markets. It’s important because you can’t force people to buy. It’s important because no one can produce the perfect product or service. It’s important because your competitors might be better than you.

If you want to keep from failing all you might have to do is hustle. But if you want to <a href="http://raven-seo-tools.com/blog/2478/the-ethical-dilemma-of-providing-marketing-services-and-tools”>grow your business and create more wealth then try being flexible too.

Hoo Gives a Hoot About AOL’s Owl?

Do you like peep shows?

How about a sly peek at what could be part of AOL’s broader strategy to flood the web with contributor-generated content and monetize it?

Well, AOL built Owl as a testing ground for its SEED platform–or, as <a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/12/aols-seo-strategery.html”>some people are calling it, its “craptent” platform. The site, according to an AOL insider, “is not currently being used,” but it gives us a sneak peek at how AOL plans to distribute content across the web.

What’s interesting is that SEED gives AOL the ability to create and syndicate content to sites such as Owl, with very little set-up costs. After all, Owl looks like a pretty slick site, but clearly AOL didn’t have too much invested in it–if it could so easily afford to let it lie fallow. I suspect we’ll see AOL build dozens of these sites–Hawk, Pigeon, Chicken, Yellow-nosed Albatross–the possibilities are endless!

In the meantime, you’ll just have to sit back and wait for AOL’s new strategy to unfold. In the meantime, you can catch a glimpse of what’s to come. Here’s Owl’s most popular article to date:

The Right Way to Pop a Zit

…who knew there was a wrong way?

Google Didn’t Lie After All

Two weeks ago, it looked like Google might have been . . . well, fibbing. Back in June, the search engine announced that they would no longer redistribute “link juice” around nofollowed links, effectively deprecating the practice of PageRank sculpting. But late last month, it <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/blog/pagerank-sculpting-with-nofollow-still-works”>looked like the technique was still effective when seomoz published some research to that effect.

Not so much, it turns out. Today, Mozzer Danny Dover revisits the tests he used in the original post and shows that <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/blog/an-update-to-our-testing-on-pagerank-sculpting-with-nofollow”>the results were, in fact, inconclusive.

The short reason is that the test didn’t include enough data to be statistically significant. He’d have to repeat the test with 168 domains (instead of the 20 he used) to assure that the results were meaningful and not merely a fluke.

Apparently, there’s been some backlash against Danny and seomoz for their innaccurate information. Danny didn’t realize his error until Darren Slatten corrected him in the comments two days after the post had gone live. Naturally, it was too late to unring the bell—and a number of people were very upset that seomoz would post something misleading or outright wrong.

In his correction post, Danny points out that this is just another example of the power of the Internet. I think it’s good that Danny did more than just update the old post, also publishing a new post to correct the misinformation (and apologize). Two weeks after the correction is fairly quick to reanalyze the data, though it’s possible he could have acted even faster. This is also a microstudy on reputation management and transparency, something we’re a little passionate about around here.

As a reminder, back in August, Matt Cutts told seomoz that it’d be okay to keep nofollow links in place, though when building new sites or redesignin old ones, PageRank sculpting shouldn’t be a consideration.

What do you think? Did everyone handle this situation well?

Cup of Joe: I am Awesome, and This is How I Remind Myself

<snarky>

So we all know how incredibly awesome I am, right? Well, even though it’s painfully obvious to me and you, I still like to remind myself from time to time. I do this by re-reading my favorite tweets, taking really good pictures of myself at my new favorite social media site, and sometimes late at night, I call my cell phone and leave a message on my voicemail just so I can listen to how awesome I sound!

Honestly, I could do all of those things over and over again all day long! But, my favorite way to pump up my ego, is to do something to make the world a better place. You see, when you volunteer your time and energy to helping others out, you feel great inside because you have helped out some poor schmuck that is nowhere near as cool as you, but maybe they might be one day, because you stepped-in to help! Now, I know what your thinking: Hey, Joe, you should volunteer your time because it’s the right thing to do, not because you want a shallow ego boost! Geez, you sound like my mother! Calm down! Honestly, does it really matter why I want to volunteer? People need help no matter what, right?

</snarky>

As internet marketers we are in a unique position to help make the world a better place this holiday season. The internet and social media are literally the new gateways of information in our quickly evolving world. As internet marketing vanguards we have incredible power to shape the dialogue. And we can use this power to help make the world a better place. Here are some ideas on how you can get started right now to help make the world a better place.

Organize an Online Fund Raising Campaign

As marketers it is our job to create wealth! Why not volunteer some of your marketing skills to help a nonprofit raise funds on the internet. How do you do that? Well, first start by picking a non-profit that you have a genuine desire to help. This is because many non-profits are approached by strangers all the time and sometimes their staff becomes guarded. However if you can show them that you have a genuine desire to help, they will be more open to letting you speak on their behalf. Develop a simple landing page that can collect donations. This landing page should briefly articulate the non-profit’s mission and ideals. Then write a small donations plea. Use your skills in social media and word of mouth to drive traffic to the page. Record the progress of the campaign with tools like ChipIn. There are other ways to run your campaign so get creative and have fun. But, make sure to clear all plans with the non-profit first!

Offer Your Services “Pro Bono”

Many non profits will already have someone in place to handle fund raising so it may be hard running a campaign along side another volunteer that has worked with them longer. If this is the case, you can always offer other services that they may need more. For example you might be able to get them started on twitter or facebook, or maybe they need some help editing their web site. These are all things that you might do for your clients that you could do pro bono for a non profit.

Teach Someone a New Skill

If you are having a hard time finding an organization to work with, you can always teach a new skill to an individual. As “web workers” most of us have some pretty unique skill sets. You might be able to teach HTML to someone that wants to get into web development. Or you might teach how to use software like Adobe Photoshop to someone interested in design. Or you could use your skills as a copywriter to help teach better writing.

These are just a few ideas of how you can start using your marketing skills to help make the world a better place. And don’t forget, the holiday season isn’t the only time for a shallow ego boost, you can volunteer any time through out the year!

Fix Cross-Domain Duplicate Content

Back in February, Google, Yahoo and then-Live premiered a solution to on-site duplicate content: a canonical URL element that let you designate which version official word was, of course, that the element is still just one signal.) Unfortunately, that element only worked within a single domain—if you had your content copied on another domain, no joy.

Until now. Yesterday on the Webmaster blog, Google announced a new cross-domain canonical URL element. Now, if you have the same content on two domains, you can indicate to search engines which one is the preferred URL.

The element uses the same syntax as the prior version, but now you can indicate the canonical URL is on a different domain:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.NEWexample.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish" />

As part of the announcement, of course, they review other ways to handle cross-domain duplicate content, including 301 redirects. However, if you can’t use server-side redirects, the cross-domain canonical URL element can help search engines find the new content and possibly use that new URL in search results.

In the questions sections of the post, they note that you can’t use the cross-domain canonical URL element to just redirect search engines to a new root site (it’s for 1:1 mapping of substantially similar pages), and that pages with redirected cross-domain elements should not use meta noindex.

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