Monthly Archives: January 2006

Google Broke the Heart of its Users

After Google’s decision to agree to China censorship, many people could just loose their faith in the search engine, whose motto is still “Don’t be Evil”.

An interesting article on Coolz0r titled “Dear Google” explains why the author, and also other users, just lost the trust they had towards Google.

Here are some interesting parts of this long but interesting article:

I’m disappointed in what you did. […] I never thought you would give in to the claims of governments to hide information. What is there left now to be trusted if even search is being manipulated? How can I be ever sure that what you display to me as a result for the queries I’ve entered is real, complete and fully objective? Whenever I have to do research on delicate matters, how can I ever be sure I get to read the real pros and cons?

The author also mentions the fact that Google suddenly changed their statement in their guidelines about censorship in search results.

The ‘old’ Google said this: “Google does not censor results for any search term. The order and content of our results are completely automated; we do not manipulate our search results by hand. We believe strongly in allowing the democracy of the web to determine the inclusion and ranking of sites in our search results. To learn more about Google’s search technology, please visit …”

While the ‘new’ Google now says this: “It is Google’s policy not to censor search results. However, in response to local laws, regulations, or policies, we may do so. When we remove search results for these reasons, we display a notice on our search results pages. Please note: For some older removals (before March 2005), we may not show a notice at this time.”

Then, he just asks Google if they still believe in democracy:

The fact you removed your statement about your belief in the democracy of the web hurts me a lot. You could’ve just added ‘except in China’ or something, but no. You took down the entire statement. We know now you do censor results, but does it also means the content of your results will no longer be completely automated? Does it mean you will manipulate search results by hand? Does it mean you no longer believe strongly in the democracy of the web? Will ranking be affected by your decision? […]

Maybe you’ve entered a market that is going to boom. Truly, I agree that is an interesting place to be in. But at what cost? Freedom of speech is the most important thing in life. And that is something you now have forsaken. Do you actually believe that the Chinese government will change in the near future and that maybe one day you will be able to provide the Chinese people with the ‘real’ results? That would be great, but I think ‘real’ results are no longer an option.

It’s true that a Google.cn is better than no Google at all in China. Fact is, there was a Google. I just think it should’ve been different than what it is today. I don’t think it’ll be ‘for greater good’. I don’t think it’ll actually help the Chinese in their quest for information about world facts, because if they aren’t conform the Chinese government’s point of view they’ll be censored.

Touching article, really.

Optimizing for non-ecommerce related keywords

Keyword research is, for me, the most important part of any SEO campaign. They are the base of your strategy. They help you adopt the right on-page optimization, they allow you to know the links you need to get and the anchor texts you will have to use etc. Then, after all your efforts, you see improvements in your traffic and on your sales.

Basically, SEO is about optimizing your pages for the keywords that people are looking for based on tools like Wordtracker, Overture, or Google adWords Keyword tool etc.
You build your content around those keywords mainly. But most of the time, people focus too much on keywords data, that they forget one thing. Keywords tools do not predict what search terms people are going to use in the future!They also don’t give you the less popular keywords which can be very important.

That’s why you need to be creative and anticipate what your audience is going to look for in the search engines. You need to create pages that are going to be the anwsers to the questions that people are going to ask before purchasing the products or services that you sell.

Just like in the real life, if you’re a sales rep and have a meeting with a prospect, you have to make sure you are going to be ready for all the questions he might ask you.
For example, let’s say someone is interested in buying some extra memory for his laptop. Good thing for you, you sell laptop memory and your site is well optimized for general keywords such as “laptop memory” , “cheap laptop memory”, “notebook memory” “toshiba laptop memory” etc…

So let’s say that this potential client is willing to know how to install laptop memory before buying, he just wants to make sure it’s easy to do. So he goes to google and types in “laptop memory installation“. Let’s see: 2,760,000 results but I only see 3 results that look very relevant to me, the first 3 ones. That person is very likely to click on one of these, look at the title tags used: they are very attractive, aren’t they? So he clicks on one of those, let’s say the second link: http://www.directron.com/howtoupmem.html

The article is very educative and perfectly explains how to install memory on a laptop. Fine, the visitor is reassured, he feels good now and he decides to buy from this web site.

Also, look at the competition on Google for that term: it doesn’t seem too hard for me to rank well for that keyword. A good link title with the words “laptop memory installation” and a good content should help you a lot.

You should always try to build content according to the keyword data you obtained from different tools, but also according to what people are likely to type in when doing a search, that is less competitive keywords, or ‘non-ecommerce related keywords’. By doing so, you are just going to have more advantages compared to your competitors who just optimize for the exact same keywords as everyone in your industry.

Write tutorials to get links and traffic

If you excel in web design, graphic design, Javascript programming, drawing or even gardening, and if you never wrote a tutorial and published it online, you just missed opportunity to get more traffic and links.

There are literally thousands of web sites that accept tutorials submission. Tutorials present many advantages:

  • Free advertising, tutorials websites usually accept free submissions
  • Traffic: if your tutorials are unique, you’ll increase your chances of getting traffic
  • Links: You will get a link from both the site you submitted your article to, but also from visitors who would have mentioned your link elsewhere
  • Sales opportunities: if you drive people to your site to have them read your tutorials, and if you provide services , you might convert these happy readers into customers.

A good example of tutorials web site is Good-Tutorials.com, the famous Photoshop tutorials site. They accept free submissions for all kind of articles related to the use of Photoshop. If you just found a new trick with Photoshop, you can try to submit it over there.

To find websites that accept tutorial submissions, you could go to Google and type this query:

“submit tutorial” “business”

Replace “business” by the field your tutorial fits in, for example “web design”, “php”, or even “gardening”.

Google offers fee-based support for Analytics

According to an article from ZDNet, Google is about to launch a fee-based support for those who are using their Web Analytics solutions: Google Analytics.

They are partnering with a Seattle based company called: Zaaz, a web analytics agency, to provide support to the “lucky” (?) ones who are using Analytics.

From Zaaz Web Site:


Google Analytics is a powerful standalone tool, but today marketers are seeking more – they need help in understanding how to decipher and more effectively use web analytics to identify opportunities for improvement and act on the findings. We are pleased to partner with Google to provide our comprehensive range of services to their enterprise Google Analytics clients.

Their services include:

  • Accuracy audits and data collection best practices
  • Goals definition, key metrics and scorecard creation
  • ROI monetization and forecasting models
  • Attitudinal, behavioral and competitive analysis
  • Site optimization, A/B and multivariate testing
  • Business user training and consulting

It looks good to me, but I think that kind of partnership can represent a threat for other Web Development companies who would not have been referred by Google. Companies for who Web Analytics is new, would not hesitate a second in choosing a company to help them analyze their figures, they will trust Google.

For those who are still willing to try Google Analytics, they promised to send out more invitations, the last ones were sent on January 19th:

Today, we sent out another batch of invitations to many of you who expressed interest in a Google Analytics account. If you have not received an invitation, please continue to be patient. Although we are adding system capacity every day, the demand for Google Analytics accounts still outpaces our ability to add resources. We are working hard and will continue to send out invitations as frequently as we can.

What do you think about Google Analytics by the way? Our company received an invitation but I didn’t give it a try yet.

Call-to-Action Titles

When you write your title tags, do you have the users in mind or just the robots?

While it’s important to write relevant title tags for SEO reasons, we should make sure our title tags are going to catch the users’ eyes and incite them to click on your site. Just like using call-to-actions text ads in Pay-Per-Click advertising, we can use this technique in the organic results. Because users are not robots, they should be treated differently, a robot won’t buy your products, a user can and you should make sure you write titles that can motivate their behavior.

Link titles on search engine listings are your most important element: because they are underlined and use a different color than the rest of the result, they are the main draw to get people to click on your link.

For example, if you are an electronics store and your advantage comparing to your competitors is your low prices, instead of writing something like:

Electronics: MP3 players, computers, cameras, home theaters and more!

You could write something like:

Consumer Electronics: Lowest Prices on All Electronics Since 1998

If you want to be more “aggressive”, you can even write words such as “click here” like WeBuildPages does:

If you want to rank higher, click here. Internet marketing …
We Build Pages is an Internet Marketing Company providing SEO Services. About Us – Home Page – Site Map – Contact We Build Pages …
www.webuildpages.com/ – 30k

In the mean time, you could also optimize your description and include call-to-action words and maybe promotional words.

Aaron tells you that SEO goes back to Traditional Marketing

One of the most respected SEOs, Aaron Wall, the famous author of SEO Book, has been interviewed recently by Lee Odden, President of TopRank Online Marketing.

He comments about the recent purchase of Threadwatch , the famous Internet Marketing discussion site/blog. The guy really impresses me, he really seems to be both a good SEO and a very skilled business man.

The most interesting question in the interview is :

“What do you think has been the biggest change this year affecting SEO or SEM?
”

when Aaron replies:

“Duplicate content filters and the reemergence of natural links. Seems to me all the blogs and whatnot make it to where a good viral marketer will typically be able to outperform most strictly search marketers. Search marketing is becoming more about traditional marketing. “

We can’t argue on this point. After the big chaos that Google created with Jagger, it’s obvious that most of the SEOs have to calm down a little bit on PageRank, reciprocal links and all kind of obsolete techniques and focus more on “traditional marketing”.

To set you apart from the crowd, you now need to create interesting content for your visitors, which will make it linkable. It’s quite easy to retain the attention of your visitors by writing articles that really touch to them.

For example, if you are in the debt market, you can write dozens of articles to help people make better choice regarding their debt problems, and also explain them how the solutions that you offer can relieve them. If you really create that kind of trust with your visitors, you can be sure that you will convert more of them and also have more people who will link to your site.

Aaron also speaks about “the trouble spots” he sees for search marketers:

“MarketingSherpa recently reported that affiliate marketing commissions this year will be greater than the amount spent on search marketing, and about 89% of what is spent on search marketing goes to the paid (non organic) side. To me that means that if you have an SEO service business model you really need to focus on keeping costs uber low or build a hell of a brand so you can charge out the nose. Otherwise your better off creating content for contextual ads and affiliate programs. “

That’s what most of the people have been talking about recently, it seems that you can make a living with affiliate programs with the increasing number of companies spending money on that kind of marketing.

Get your v7ndotcom elursrebmem T-shirt!

This whole contest is just crazy, I’ve already seen more than 20 websites participating! You can already get your goodies at Cafe Press.

I also decided to participate and created a blog for v7ndotcom elursrebmem , lol, we’ll see how it goes. I plan to write a story per day and get a couple of links….

One hour after I published my blog, I already received a comment from someone who visited my blog while I was the only person to know about it! Weird?

V7N Contest: already a number 1

V7N officially launched their SEO contest today, where the goal is to rank number 1 on Google for the term “v7ndotcom elursrebmem”

Pretty unique term, right? The winner will receive $4,000 and an iPod. The second prize is $500, and third through fifth places will receive $100 each.

I think it’s a pretty exciting contest, not only to know who is going to win, but more to see and analyze the techniques used, for example H1 tags, anchor texts, location of the keywords in the url or not, and also links. I’ll keep an eye on it and give some feedback on the things that I think make them rank well.
There is already 10 results for the keywords. The number 1 is a girl who chose to register the domain http://www.v7ndotcomelursrebmem2.com , good luck to all!