Above: Not personalized search results for the query [content strategy mistakes]. I rank at #7. Look who ranks at #2 and #4.

While trying to assess the impact of stolen and otherwise copied content on my rankings here on the SEO 2.0 blog I’ve found an anomaly in the Google results I want to share with you.

A post from a popular web design blog, indeed a blog I like very much, Six Revisions outranks other far more relevant search results.

How does it do it? It succeeds by a single keyword mention below the posting:

and most importantly a category named after part of the keyphrase in question: “content strategy”:

http://sixrevisions.com/content-strategy/5-common-seo-mistakes-with-web-page-titles/

So the most significant onpage ranking factor seems to be the category keywords in the URL.

The site has lots of backlinks, the post itself as well. There are no incoming links with the keyword combination in the anchor text according to Blekko though:

Above: Blekko showing the inbound link anchor texts. None of them contain the term “content strategy”

Still it outranks other pages that really deal with content strategy mistakes while itself the post does only cover SEO mistakes.

What do you think? Is this an exception from the rule? Are category keywords in the URL a significant ranking signal now or does Google favor authority sites so much these days hat they need only slightly relevant content to outrank the competition that covers the topic at stake directly?

You may wonder why I rank so bad in this example. My blog has been “pandalized” recently during a minor Panda update with the number 2.5.2. I have been removed from the top 10 for all two word keyphrases I have been ranking in the top 10 for years. You won’t find my blog  anymore for phrases like

• [seo blog]
• [image seo]
• [advanced seo]
• [url seo]

anymore. That’s one of the reasons why I don’t rank higher for [content strategy mistakes]. I only rank for some very long long tail queries now.

Also take note that an aggregator called Scoop.it curated by a friend mine, Gabriella of Level 343 who cites my posts ranks higher than the post on SEO 2.0 itself. I have asked on Twitter whether other SEO people can confirm that keyword mentions in categories are an important ranking factor these days.

I know that the impact of keywords in URLs beyond the domains has been negligible over the recent years. Has Google changed this? Two SEO experts, Shark SEO and Mark of Guava have weighed in that there might be different reasons but were as well surprised by this example. What do you think?

P.S.: I didn’t link out to any of the sites or pages involved here in order not to skew the results.

Related posts:

1. StumbleUpon Adds SEO Category
2. Google Filters: Exact Match Anchor Text Links Are the New Meta Keywords
3. Matt Cutts Acknowledges SEO 2.0 Tactic of Linking Out as Ranking Factor (Nofollow is Dead)

1. StumbleUpon Adds SEO Category
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robots.txt, a protocol that helps search engines to find out which part of a website should not be included in its index. According to Wikipedia

The Robot Exclusion Standard, also known as the Robots Exclusion Protocol or robots.txt protocol, is a convention to prevent cooperating web crawlers and other web robots from accessing all or part of a website which is otherwise publicly viewable.

As an SEO, you must have tried this search operator in Google: [site:example.com]. This simply returns the pages from example.com that have been crawled and included in the Google index. The Google bot does not crawl any pages that are ‘disallowed’ by the robots.txt file. Everything makes sense till now but what if your robots.txt file started to appear in Google search results?

To be honest I thought somebody is poking fun at me. It doesn’t sound logical at all. After reading a tweet by Peter Handley aka @ismepete I took it seriously though. He is one of the brightest minds in the search industry!

Shocked, amazed and I guess somewhat a mix of both, I quickly jumped over to Google to see it for myself and guess what I found?

You see, Peter is not the only one dealing with this but websites like

• Dailymail
• Webmasterworld
• Last.fm

and many others… all have their robots.txt file indexed in Google.

You see, it’s simply illogical to block ‘robots.txt’ in a robots.txt file. This didn’t make any sense to me:

Why Google actually indexes this file and how to de-index from the search engine?

Why does Google index the robots.txt?

There can be multiple reasons why Google indexes the robots.txt file but I have figured out two as the most common reasons why search engines index particular pages and later show them as results for a query.

1. Links:

Google follows links, you know it, right? From one link to another and the chain continues. When links are pointing to the robots.txt file from external sources (different websites pointing to your robots.txt file) or internally (some page of your website that points to robots.txt file), Google will probably index it.

1. Social signals:

The faster way to get Google’s attention to a page I know is to share it on social platforms like Twitter, Google+ and Facebook (Google currently can’t see private Facebook sharing activity). When for some reason you or someone share your robots.txt on social sites this can be another common reason that makes Google index the page file.

Consider Rishi Lakhani who wrote a letter to Google in his website’s robot.txt file: Check this out, it’s still there on his website. Rishi Lakhani shared his creative robots.txt on Twitter and it went viral. According to Shared Count, Rishi Lakhani’s robots.txt file got:

• Facebook Likes: 21
• Facebook Comments: 8
• Facebook Shares: 33
• Twitter: 1232

Now, you know why Google will probably going to index your robots.txt file so let’s talk about action now!

How to de-index the robots.txt?

Don’t link, don’t share:

This is not always in your control, especially not to make people link a specific page on websites like the “Webmasterworld” forum or Last.fm. Theoretically though if you don’t link it and don’t share on social platforms, Google will not show it.

URL removal request:

That’s the only idea I have found, simple yet powerful and safe way to get your robots.txt file out of the Google index. It’s great because the user’s site ownership is verified and shows even the progress for each request.

These are two of the ways I know how to deal with the above mentioned issue. In case you think you have a better solution for the robots.txt indexing problem, please share it with the community in the comment section.

Related posts:

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2. Google Indexes Twitter Links
3. Review: Better Blogging with Michael Martine

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Usually when people refer to their competitors they name a few businesses from the same industry who sell the same products or services as them. This might be true for the offline world but

on the Web there are much bigger competitors. Who are they?

This is for many search engine results the most common list:

1. Google
2. Wikipedia
3. Mainstream media
4. Amazon
5. Ebay
6. Content farms
7. Shopping search engines
8. A-list bloggers
9. Spammers
10. Your actual competitors

Your actual competitors who sell the same stuff you offer do not have to be at the end of this list, it depends on the niche, keywords and how competitive they are. Nonetheless they are by far not your most important competition. Besides, your industry peers are not necessarily just rivals. You can work together for the benefit of all parties involved. I’ll explain below.

That’s one of the main differences between SEO and SEO 2.0: In old school SEO people believed that they have to hoard PageRank and never link out at all, not to mention to competing sites. When blogs and social media finally arrived in business circles most sane people have abandoned this approach.

These days the SEO industry has a whole blogosphere of its own which is highly interlinked both by hyperlinks and real life links between humans.

Also most SEO specialists are heavy users of social media and sharing links by their peers all of the time. Twitter, LinkedIn , Facebook, Quora and all kinds of other social media outlets have been embraced by the SEO practitioner early on.

Your most dangerous competition are the big guys, as you see in the list above at least nine of these mentioned above are big guys.

Google is the elephant in the room you directly compete with. It’s not just search, it’s the attention economy. As Aaron Wall correctly points out Google is grabbing more and more real estate in the SERPs.

Many users won’t even notice your organic search results before they click a Google ad or one of the myriad of their other properties and services. You can’t compete with Google, you can try to buy your way into Google ads but when Google chooses to display their other services on top of yours you lost. You have to focus on a keyword Google hasn’t usurped completely then.

A huge competitor is also Wikipedia, the greatest content farm of all that successfully poses as a non-profit while earning money ”by donations” and not paying their contributors. Wikipedia will outrank your site in most cases even when it’s ridiculous. Search for [film] or even [films] and Google will serve you a Wikipedia entry which explains what a film is on top.

Another even more disturbing competitor is mainstream media. They do not only cover news anymore these days, they are frantically searching for SEO opportunities as well so that they will rank on top for queries like [iPad].

Amazon and Ebay are also almost everywhere and either you join them or you risk obscurity for many keywords and phrases.

Many people have written about content farms and the Google quality update aimed at curbing their prominence in Google results. Even though Demand Media’s eHow and About.com by the NYT have lost a bit after the second part of the update called ”Panda” hit them they still thrive. Demand Media, owner of eHow, has stunned experts with its recent numbers.

Shopping search engines have been hit hard by the latest update but they are still competition you have to watch closely. Price comparison sites are often at the forefront of modern SEO. You need to know what they are doing to be able to cope with changes.

A-list bloggers and industrial strength spammers seem like an unlikely couple to mention together but they are both more important than you. Try to rank in the technology sector and a-list bloggers will make you humble. You can’t compete with giants Engadget, Gizmodo out of nowhere. They have whole teams of writers frantically covering the latest gadgets.

Try the same thing in the pharmacy business online and you’ll face a huge onslaught of spam infested sites and hacked pages redirecting you do the spammer’s shops. Spammers are faster than the search engines and they’ll always find a loophole. So while they might disappear on one day they will reappear on the next with another site or hijacked blog.

Now, how can you compete with all of them? There are two ways to do so. The most common one is:

If you can’t beat them, join them: Pay for Google ads, contribute to Wikipedia, send out press releases to journalists, set up an Ebay and Amazon shop, add articles to article directories or other content farms, guest blog on a-list blogs and buy links.

There is also a new way, the SEO 2.0 way: Joining forces with other bloggers or peers, sometimes your actual competitors. You can outrank the big guys by working together with other bloggers. I have done that in the past by joining a group of bloggers determined to help each other but I always preferred the intuitive SEO 2.0 way of cooperation. It’s been called mutual aid prior to the Internet.

I link out to my peers or “competitors” and they link back to me.

Not all of them do, but some of them do and some even give back more than they get because once you give and get a few times you stop counting. You just share resources as in real life with friends and family.

Cooperation not competition is the only way bloggers and small businesses can compete with their real competitors from big business and big media, big Google included.

Related posts:

1. 7 Social Sites Every Business and Professional Should Use
2. How to Fight Big Business in Google and Beyond with Smart Mob SEO
3. Words that Damage Trust in Your Blog

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2.5 Years ago I hailed the new search results customization feature by Google called SearchWiki.

I loved it in spite of it being broken from the start. Nonetheless the sheer possibilities once it worked were exactly what I needed to make SEO 2.0 truly become mainstream. I was one of the few people who liked SearchWiki and over the years they phased it out. Just a few weeks ago Google removed the star option to vote up or favorite search results.

Apparently SearchWiki never took off or worked on a large enough scale.

Sad but true. Last week Google reintroduced a SearchWiki-like feature though. Now it’s called Google +1 and instead of buttons to vote results up or down that later became a star you can see a +1 button on your search results once you manage to set up Google +1.

I struggled to do so and finally made it. Now Google +1 appears in my Google.com results (but not on local Google sites like co.uk or .de).

At first I was like “great my SearchWiki is back” but then I found out that it is not, at least not in the way I’d wish. Google +1 is like SearchWiki but with less features. You can vote up sites appearing in search results but you can’t vote those down you don’t want to see.

Google still treats me like a SEO newbie and shows me Wikipedia results along with the Google SEO introduction for noobs. Moreover I get seo-usa.org which is a false friend not dealing with search engine optimization at all. Additionally I get low quality sites like SEO Chat served.

There are strange things happening in these results too, I don’t see the homepage of SEOmoz inspite of voting it up, starring it and bookmarking it on Google bookmarks, I get an old resource from 2008 I’m not particularly interested in.

What’s most striking though is that I can’t see the +1′s by other people

with one exception, I see that Ruud Hein has voted up his site, Search Engine People.

Also social search results and +1 votes seemingly collide with each other. I have voted up SEO Book as well but I can’t see it. Instead I only see that Aaron Wall has shared it.

Just go back to 2008 and compare my custom made SEO results from back then. They were far better and more relevant. There really was an incentive to customize or vote for them. Also look at the sheer number of votes by other people I could see back then. Social proof at its best. Don’t get me wrong, I trust Ruud and he’s my one my best online friends in the SEO industry but where the heck are all the others? I don’ think they haven’t tried Google +1 one week after it’s launch.

Maybe when Google +1 buttons are available for websites as well, similar to the Facebook like button it will turn out useful.

Right now Google +1 has no value even if you really want it to.

I guess it will take Google another 10 years to remove Wikipedia from my results for SEO. Or they just want me to remember the official SEO definition as I don’t care for it and keep on practicing SEO 2.0 whether they like it or not. Or should I say whether they plus one it or not?

Related posts:

1. Why Click the Google +1 Button on Websites Instead of Liking or Tweeting Them?
2. SearchWiki: Power to the People! Great News for SEO 2.0
3. CNN Adds Mixx Buttons, 5 of Them!

1. Why Click the Google +1 Button on Websites Instead of Liking or Tweeting Them?
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A few weeks ago I had a lively discussion on Twitter with two quite opinionated individuals who are quite known in the SEO industry. I won’t name them here to prevent this discussion from getting personal but I want to come back to the actual topic we discussed about because it happens all the time that I have to discuss such matters​: the discussion almost always boils down to science vs reality.

Science will tell one thing and the reality won’t obey what scientists declare though in many cases.

The simplest example for this is the weather forecast: while the smartest and most gifted scientists using satellites and supercomputers want to tell you whether the sun is shining or not you are strongly advised to look out of the window to find out.

In many case you will notice that the weather forecast was wrong.

The so called chaos theory explains why you can’t forecast weather without erring from time to time and indeed I’m glad that there is some element of chance and not everything can be predicted.

Now is science bad to put it bluntly? Do we have to believe the church and explain everything with God? Well, you ask the wrong person, I’m not particularly religious but I respect religious beliefs. Also I don’t engage in futile discussions whether God exists or how man has evolved whether by way of evolution or “intelligent design”​. Personally I think that the Bible is partly a literary work so that it speaks in metaphors. Thus when the world was created in seven days it doesn’t mean you have to take it literally.

Why do I explain this? Well, you can reconcile science and religion. Also

you don’t have to denounce everything science hasn’t yet proven or even discovered.

Moreover science tends to err and most of scientific dogmas break down after a while because scientists themselves discover new phenomena they have not even taken into account before.

Quantum physics is the best example: it has rendered most of prior science obsolete.

So scientific laws hold true just for a few decades usually. Nonetheless there is a tendency today to treat scientists like priests in earlier epochs: whatever scientists say you have to obey. They don’t just discover and explain anymore they forbid you to do things and force their dangerous experiments on you.

Nuclear energy has been probably the worst crime against humanity committed by science, not just due the horrific effects of the atomic bomb but due to taking the wrong path when it comes to energy, one that we’ll have to deal with for ten thousands of years as the toxic waste will haunt us almost forever.

So you see, scientists can seriously mess up this planet, your health and your life. That’s not the end of the story,  the “is SEO science or art” (or something else) debate is not far from these issues.

Let me use the example we used in the discussion with the SEO professionals on Twitter. The discussion started with the issue of potentially harmful vaccines. This is a taboo topic in some circles. People who blindly believe in science and what their doctors tell them tend to think you’re insane even when you suggest that not all vaccines are needed. They are accepted out of tradition and because doctors and scientists say so or rather the pharmaceutical companies behind them.

Now I won’t explain here why some vaccines are harmful, this would be offtopic. I want to dwell on the comparison of dogmatic treatment of vaccines and the one exhibited by alternative medicine, be it Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) or homeopathy. Practitioners of the latter two will tell you that vaccines can indeed be harmful and ask you to be cautious when getting vaccinated. Especially children can get harmed by vaccines.

Now the tow SEO guys were infuriated that I could even bring this issue up. Also they declared acupuncture and homeopathy to be a placebo etc.

So you see, while I am not anti-science but ask you to see its limitations and never blindly believe in science people like the two believe in science to such an extent that you are not allowed to do things that are not approved by scientists.

Either you obey science or you are a nut

is what they think. They don’t even bother with conflicting scientific results or new discoveries, they protect tradition and a belief system. More than that, it’s part of their identity. It’s an attack on themselves when you dare to doubt scientific results from hundred years ago.​ Most vaccines have been created back then and people don’t care that the situation is completely different now. It’s like still using steam engines.

In SEO we have a similar situation: the science of SEO is nascent if it exists at all so you can’t really prove everything.

You can have theories and show statistics. You will never exactly know why something worked exactly and what exact factors made it work. Especially as Google makes around 400 tweaks to its algo a year. Your SEO science is outdated​ the moment you have proven it or quicker, I’m with the author of SEO Theory here.

So SEO, like many things life, and even the weather is changing all the time. Even the climate is not static, it changes as well, being influenced by us. Thank you science for noticing and proving it!

Also SEO changes as we have an impact on Google and other search engines.

We create content farms, Google and Blekko react. So at the end of the day you have to take a look outside the window yourself to find out what the weather is like. It’s like with climate change: ​while we can see and prove it we don’t really know whether the ocean tides will bring us a colder period or whether the global warming will have a more direct impact by rising temperatures. We have to observe reality to find out.

So you see I’m not anti-science. I appreciate science, especially when it discovers and proves the obvious. Acupuncture works for thousands of years and I know it because it works on me as well, like homeopathy does.​ Still science and its methods are often not enough to prove it because ​science is too limited as of now. It can’t quantify the data of acupuncture or find any substance in homeopathic​ remedies (which are based on information not substances like conventional medicine).

So I appreciate science where it makes sense but I don’t let science make me ignorant enough not to try things that have worked long before science even existed. Likewise

I practice what works in SEO

and do not blindly obey scientists who tell me one day that I need PageRank sculpting just to backtrack next day after Matt Cutts’ announces that it has been discontinued several months ago.

When it’s science vs reality I tend to believe what I see and I expect science to explain it. Science is not an entity to force you to do something or ignore something else. Science is not the church, so stop blindly believing in it. Always take a look at reality itself and when the glaciers melt you know science is right.

BTW.: there are many new scientific studies that indeed prove that acupuncture works and also which explain other worldly phenomena many people deemed obvious long ago.​

* Image by by Okko Pyykkö

Related posts:

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3. Web Success Without SEO Works: How I Entered the Top 10 for SEO Blog

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Basically anybody can add anything as an parameter to your URL and make it appear as if it’s part of your blog or site.

Just try adding

• “?gay-porn”
• “?obama=muslim”
• “?you-suck”

to any of your URLs or other sites’ URLs. Most sites accept that without even showing an error “not found”.

In case you link such an URL Google would even index it. So you can make Google show up fake URLs on other people’s websites this way.

Also unwanted parameters break a lot of things SEO-wise. You get unlimited duplicate content this way. People bookmark the wrong (polluted) URLs on Delicious and elsewhere and thus you lose juice on social media.

Who adds utm_source to your URLs and why?

utm_source is added by multiple services in order to get tracked in Google Analytics. You get inflated numbers on Google Analytics though. That’s why I do not recommend adding such parameters to your URLs in the first place. For instance when I click an URL on Delicious which is tagged utm_source=feedburner it gets wrongly counted as stemming from Feedburner and not Delicious as the Delicious bookmark is still tagged as Feedburner and not Delicious.

Also as I said before the bookmarks on Delicious do not add up. It means that maybe 30 people bookmark the Feedburner tagged URL. 30 others bookmark a Twitter tagged URL for the same post and a few dozens others bookmark the original URL. Thus your post doesn’t show up in popular lists.

You can prevent Feedburner from adding the utm_source crap but that’s not enough to remove all other unwanted parameters from your URL. Thus I wrote this tiny script in JavaScript you can add to your WordPress blog anywhere in the header:


<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">
<!--
var url = self.location.href;
var p = url.indexOf("?");
var str = url;
var parameter = str.slice(p);
if (p >= 1 && parameter.indexOf("p") != 1 && parameter.indexOf("s") != 1)
{
url = str.slice(0,p);
self.location.replace(url);
}
//-->
</script>


I know it’s quite redundant and not very elegant but my JavaScript skills haven’t been used much in the last decade so you are welcome to customize it.

The script basically checks where the parameter starts and removes everything from the URL including the question mark “?”

which signifies the start of the parameters. It then redirects visitors on the client-side to the accurate URL without parameter crap in the address.

So in the end your visitor ends up on the actual URL s/he should end up from the beginning but someone else prevented them due polluting the URL with parameter spam.

The only acceptable parameters are the “p” so that you can still use the post preview function in your WordPress and “s” for the search function.

I’ve added the script to SEO 2.0 already so a link like this one should get redirected: http://seo2.0.onreact.com/?you-suck

Related posts:

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Image: Open 19 by Rupert Ganzer.

As a modern day SEO I deal half of the day with decreasing bounce rates. It means:

I try to make people visiting websites stay longer on them or stay at all and click.

The bounce rate is a weird metric though. It doesn’t even have the same definition everywhere.

1. Some people define a bounce rate as the percentage of visitors who leave a landing page immediately (that is often stay below 5 seconds on it) without performing any other action onsite.
2. Others define the bounce rate metric as the percentage of visitors who have just visited one page on a given site and haven’t done anything else there.

I prefer the first definition, where the person comes, pukes and leaves immediately. The other definition would mean that even in some cases perfectly content users would be considered worthless bounces. This way a one page microsite where all the information is condensed right there would have a bounce rate of 100%.

Asides of that it depends on the site and other circumstances what a bounce rate means and what a actually a high bounce rate is. For instance

the ecommerce sites (aka online shops) I have optimized for had bounce rates around 20% – 25%.

Why? The search traffic they mainly received was very highly targeted. In short the people got exactly what they wanted and expected, why bounce then? On the other hand

the blogs I write for have seemingly abysmal bounce rates of 60 to 80%. Why?

Are the blogs so bad? No, people reading blogs are casual readers, especially when visiting from social media. They check a post out quickly and decide whether they want to read it or not.

So depending on the context your bounce rate of 50% can be awful, OK or great.

Image: Market Place by Valerie Everett.

On the other hand the bounce rate is far from random and can give you crucial insights into your visitors expectations. A lower bounce rate can improve both the conversion rate and the return on investment. So you really have to deal with bounce rates half of your day. What sense does it make to get thousands of visitors when 90% of them just create load on the server without even viewing your site?

So there we are in the process of interpreting bounce rates. The right question is “what does my bounce rate really mean?

You can pose this question for each site and even on page level. A bounce on the homepgae is not the same as on a deep link etc.

Understanding the meaning of your bounce rate is the key to improve it. It shows you how you can improve it. To start even earlier it helps to find out whether you really need to improve it in the particular case. Instead you could even block some traffic sources or remove a page that just creates unnecessary load.

Image: Green Elevator by Олександр Виaл.

1) First determine your page or site type and its purpose:

• Is your site a one-page-wonder like the microsite above or like Seth Godin’s blog where you end up happy after reading one of his posts?
• Is you site an ecommerce site aka online shop where you actually sell stuff on the same domain (not redirecting to a third party shopping cart)?
• Is your site a news site or blog or other type of site where people seek information from it instead of regarding it as the end of their current quest?

2) Then find out what kind of queries lead to your site? Search engines are used mostly for thre kinds of queries:

• navigational ones (people type ebay, facebook etc. in the browser address bar or search input)
• informational ones (people seek general or specific information on a given subject
• commercial ones (people wanting to buy a product or us a service and who are informed already about it)
  

Depending on the query type most of the search users who find you use your bounce rate will differ significantly.

Navigational queries have often the lowest bounce rates as long as the people find what they seek.

In case you search for Facebook you want to end up on it when you type it. So Facebook has probably a very low bounce rate from these queries. One of my blogs ranks very high for Facebook and I get lots of people who search for Facebook on it. Most of them bonce of course.

Commercial queries have a low bounce rate in case the people really find the product or service they are after. In case it’s not 20% you may want to check whether the products you are selling are the ones people want to pay for in the first place.

Informational queries lead the most fickle users to your site. They often do not even know exactly if they really search for what you write about. There are often misunderstandings when queries do not reflect the users intent at all. For instance people searching for SEM do not necessarily seek search engine marketing advice but instead they may be interested in scanning electron microscopy.

3) After that think about the ways you want your people act on your site, do you really want them to stay long and read lots of pages or do you prefer a quick conversion?

Michael Gray of Graywolf SEO recently noted how for affiliate sites a click on the affiliate link is of a bounce. That’s true, a visitor who finds the product you recommend as an affiliate and clicks on the affiliate link has been converted.

In contrast a news site that earns money by ad impressions wants you to stay onsite as possible and to reload or click as often as you can. That’s why image galleries on such sites tend to show only one image per page. They want you to see 10 ads instead of one.

Image: Open for passengers by Luis Argerich.

Now that you know all these things you can start improving your bounce rate or you can focus on other parts of advanced onsite SEO.

• You can try to rank for more specific terms instead of the broad industry terms. Ranking for “seo” may bring loads of traffic but “local seo for travel” might be more effective at retaining visitors.
  
• You can add commercial keyword modifiers to make the purpose of your site clear so that people who just seek information don’t visit at all. [seo] might bring lots of people who want to find out for the first time about it but [seo services new york] might bring you both clients and people from your area who are more willing to deal with a local service provider.
• Branding efforts beyond old school SEO might make people more aware of your brand thus making them search for it next time (aka using a navigational query) and not bounce again in contrast to generic terms like [seo services new york].

So don’t forget to ask yourself: What does my bounce rate really mean before trying to improve it.

Related posts:

1. The 7 Simplest Ways To Lower Your Bounce Rate and Get More Conversions
2. 10 Usability Sins that Make me Bounce and Never Come Back
3. Are You After Traffic or Visitors?

1. The 7 Simplest Ways To Lower Your Bounce Rate and Get More Conversions
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The Search Marketing Standard is not only the oldest search marketing print publication I know of, it’s also the most focused and probably most popular one. Over the years I’ve enjoyed reading numerous issues of the magazine.

Recently I had the opportunity to conduct an email interview with Frances Mary Krug, associate editor of Search Marketing Standard magazine about

the past, present and future of SMS, print publications, SEO and search marketing.

I have added emphasis on some passages in the replies I personally think are important.

Tad of SEO 2.0: Hello Frances, it’s almost two years since Search Marketing Standard (SMS from now on) has been acquired in summer 2008. You are still here so it seems to have worked out. Tell us a bit more about how your magazine has developed since then.

Frances Mary Krug: It’s certainly been an interesting last two years. Moving from a small office in New York to being part of a much larger business was a big step. We had some turnover in staff, including our editor-in-chief, who completed his college degree and left to pursue other goals. But we’ve managed to make the transition successfully, even in the midst of a huge, continuing economic crisis.

SEO 2.0: It seems everybody out there is bemoaning year after year the agony of print journalism. SMS started out as a print magazine in the middle of the ongoing print crisis and it seems to fare quite well, what’s your secret? Are the subscriber numbers stable, rising or rather stagnating?

Frances: It’s kind of funny, actually. Right after the acquisition, we decided to transition from an advertising-based model to a paid subscription base, which certainly turned out to be the right move given the general collapse of print advertising through 2009. It has enabled us to get by even though advertisers choose to increasingly put their ad dollars into online.

As far as our subscriber numbers, we are moving away from the “free subscription” model to the “paid model”, which entails some flux in the subscriber count. Our paid subscriptions are growing steadily, which is an encouraging sign when you see print magazines failing daily. Giving away magazines is a lot easier that charging for them, but paid subscribers provide a better picture of what’s really important to readers, since they are willing to pay for the content. That’s helped SMS focus on what’s really important to readers in the industry.

SEO 2.0: I’ve noticed a significant change in the last issue of SMS. For the first time I remember you have a “cover girl” or rather boy. It’s analytics guru Avinash Kaushik. How come? Do you plan to focus more on people than tools and techniques?

Frances: The change in design for the cover page isn’t meant to indicate a shift in focus of the magazine content, though we do want to recognize key industry contributors by providing attribution on the cover of our magazine. We’ve even had non-subscribers who are fans of Avinash purchase individual copies of the Summer issue of the magazine to add to their collection of Avinash material.

SEO 2.0: You told me beforehand that there are some changes to come up in the near future at SMS. What are they? Have you already introduced them in the current issue? My impression is that you don’t focus on one topic anymore as much as you did in the past.

Frances: One of the biggest changes will be the debut of a digital edition of the magazine with our upcoming Fall issue. Even though our primary purpose and selling point is the fact that we are a print magazine,

there is no doubt that digitization of the magazine format is inevitable.

We still believe, however, that a print version will remain as a preferred format for a significant group of people, and we intend to continue offering a print edition. A digital edition will also help mitigate the increasing problems we’ve seen with mail delivery to some international destinations, which are a large part of our subscription base. We can’t speed up delivery of the mail, but we can offer an alternate way to access the magazine if an issue goes astray or is continually chewed up by the machinery.

Another big change is a redesign of our website. The main goal of the redesign is to organize and present our content in a more logical fashion that better reflects the topics and subject areas that our readers are interested in. For example, if you are interested in seeing all the posts written by a specific author, you will quickly and easily be able to get to a listing.

The past few issues have had a more generalized approach in content. What we want to avoid is having readers glance at the cover of their issue, see that everything seems to be focused on one general topic (be it International Search, Mobile Search, Social Media, etc.) and feel that there is nothing in the issue to interest them if they have no wish to read about that topic. In reality, even in issues where we have focused on one topic, we still have articles and columns about other topics, and we don’t want to give the impression that it is otherwise. Since we are only a quarterly publication, a subscriber certainly wants to feel that in each and every issue there will be something of interest to them.

SEO 2.0: You have covered the search marketing landscape for a few years now. What are the most significant changes lately?

Frances: Wow, that’s a very tough question because there is so much that could fit into that category. I think, however, that the changes to the Google SERPs are both a symptom of the ongoing change in the industry, as well as a factor in that change.

The days of being on the first page of Google results and ranking first for a keyword on Google are gone.

Universal search and so many different kinds of results (not just web pages) competing for the attention of searchers has led to an overcrowded, visually unappealing results page. Real-time results, while providing relevancy, have the power to change the entire approach toward SEO.

Another enormous factor, I think, is the local/mobile search powerhouse. Technology has finally hit the nail on the head and although there will be winners and losers among app builders and developers, the real winners will be searchers. The battlefield is going to be bloody, however, and even Google is realizing that if they provide a less-than-perfect solution for too long, a competitor may find something to exploit.

SEO 2.0: Do we still have standalone SEO these days or is it always part of the bigger picture as in “search marketing”?

Frances: I think it has to be part of a larger picture. It’s no longer enough to make sure the mechanics of a site are working and the necessary tags have been optimized. Ranking on the first page of Google is no longer the gold standard in the same way as it used to be.

It used to be that we didn’t really consider it “search marketing” unless you were actively advertising online via AdWords or more traditional display advertising.

Now, however, in order to compete, you need to be involved in social media marketing, email marketing, etc. We’re not just in the business of optimizing websites so that search engines can read them and judge relevancy to specific search queries – although that is certainly still a vital part of the business. Now, we need to ensure that all parts of the equation are covered and tracked. What will be interesting is to see how some SEOs adapt (or fail to adapt) to some of the skills needed to succeed in areas like social media.

SEO 2.0: How do you combine online and print efforts? Your business model is still selling the magazine isn’t it? Does the website actually sell subscriptions? Or do you get new subscribers via the print issue itself?

Frances: Juggling online and print efforts is a huge challenge, especially with the general downturn in the economy through 2009 and the resultant advertising crisis. Because of the subject matter of our magazine – the search marketing industry – we feel that our website cannot just be a place for people to manage their subscriptions. We need to have a site that offers more than that – that’s why we have a number of contributors who write informative blog posts, a twice-monthly newsletter, an extensive online events calendar, we have put together webinars, white papers, etc.

New subscribers come from all different sources.

We exhibit at some conferences and distribute free sample copies at others, which helps get the word out. Others see the magazine on a coffee table at their web designer’s office or read commentary about an article in a current issue on a blog.

SEO 2.0: When will I be able to buy SMS at my newsstand along Newsweek and Wired here in Germany?

Frances: Tad, I’m sorry, but there are no plans to take SMS to the newsstands in Germany or any other country for that matter. I think that would be a tough business model to sell in the current challenging market for print.

SEO 2.0: How would you define SEO 2.0? Does it mean something to you more than this blog’s name?

Frances: Well, it certainly IS a clever name for a blog, but SEO 2.0 is much more than that. It’s really the next logical step in the development of the industry. SEO is no longer just a set of “rules” that you can follow and put in place and expect to see concrete results from.

SEO 2.0 is about optimizing Web 2.0 content, and as such, includes an emphasis on creativity and social behavior

and how to use the new tools available (such as Twitter) to optimize and boost visibility within search engines and other online destinations.

SEO 2.0: Thank you very much Frances for taking the time to inform the SEO 2.0
readers.

Frances: Tad, thanks for inviting me to speak and letting me share some of my thoughts about why the online marketing world needs a print publication!

SEO 2.0: As you see there is still a way to earn money with print publications in a quite small niche like ours. I’m very impressed. Take note for full disclosure: I was both a contributor (once) and an affiliate of Search Marketing Standard some time ago.

What are your thought on the future of our industry and print media?

Related posts:

1. 3 Search Marketing Magazines in Print
2. New Search Marketing Standard Issue Out: International Search Markets
3. Google Suggest Effects on SEO, Search Usage and Business Predictions

1. 3 Search Marketing Magazines in Print
2. New Search Marketing Standard Issue Out: International Search Markets
3. Google Suggest Effects on SEO, Search Usage and Business Predictions

Love by jimscottIMD.

I hate ads. I’m not the only one. Most people hate annoying ads. People hate ads on the Web and block them using a plethora of tools. They also hate outdoor ads and TV ads. They hate them

• for the interruption
• for the blatant lies
  
• for the selling of fake lifestyles
  

we are meant to aspire to and we can never reach in most cases.

They hate ads for shouting at them.

People hate ads for selling them something they don’t want when they don’t want to be sold to.

That’s also the reason why people love SEO.

People love SEO? This guy must be joking you think. Isn’t SEO the most detested pariah on the Internet? No.

People don’t hate web hosting or web design. Likewise people don’t hate SEO. People hate bad web hosting, bad web design and they hate bad SEO.

People hate servers that go down and sites they can’t access. People hate awful user experience on cluttered portal like sites. That’s why Google succeeded with a clean interface. Also people hate spammy low-quality SEO implemented by webmasters who have barely an understanding of search and user experience.

I’ve said it before:

Good SEO is invisible.

People only hate SEO they can see and recognize as such. People hate SEO that looks like advertising. People hate ads. When people see SEO that appears to be advertising they hate it.

When people read the NYT or the Chicago Tribune they don’t hate these publications inspite of them having dedicated inhouse SEO teams.

People love SEO because we, the SEO practicioners provide them what they want when they want it.

Nobody ever complains about finding the exact product, service or resource he has been searching for on top of Google. You want to buy an iPad? I will sell you an iPad. I don’t tell you to search for it.

That’s exactly what SEO specialists do: They make the most relevant pages show up on top. Now you’d say: No, it’s the holy Google that does it! Evil SEOs only meddle with it! Well, no. Google has so many requirements a site has to fulfill to rank above others that it’s not Google that makes relevant websites appear on top.

It’s the SEO experts who make the pages as relevant and Google friendly as the search giant needs them to appear on top.

No site matches Google’s expectations by itself. It takes people who work hard to make it relevant.

That’s why people love SEO. SEO ensures quality of search results in order to fulfill people’s wishes. The people get what they want when they want it because of SEO. Google only responds to what webmasters and SEOs do.

Some people argue that SEO is bad because any website can get optimized to rank on top. What about the other webmasters? Isn’t that unfair? Well, who forbids them to practice SEO or hire an SEO company themselves? Why would you want a website owner who spends lots of time and/or money to provide a valuable resource via SEO not to rank on top?

Most people won’t admit it but they love SEO. They hate ads. So don’t make your SEO look like ads. Btw. that’s one of the main reasons why I don’t do PPC.

Related posts:

1. DoFollow: Spread Link Love
2. Bing FAIL
3. The Best SEO Strategy: Don’t Do SEO!

1. DoFollow: Spread Link Love
2. Bing FAIL
3. The Best SEO Strategy: Don’t Do SEO!

LinkedIn Tattoo by smi23le

LinkedIn has been around for ages but finally the service matures. LinkedIn has gained critical mass and positions itself as an alternative or addition for both Facebook and Twitter. I’ve been on LinkedIn for several years but until recently I wasn’t serious about my LinkedIn presence. While I’m wary of social media and networking by now I will nevertheless use LinkedIn in a strategic way from now on.

At first I present you this LinkedIn marketing and SEO resources list. As a follow up I will write a post on how I do optimize my LinkedIn profile. Also take note that this list doesn’t not contain the typical LinkedIn SEO advice pieces where SEO is solely meant as Google SEO. In SEO 2.0 we deal with search holistically. Thus LinkedIn is treated as just another search “engine”.

How to Use LinkedIn & LinkedIn Profile Optimization

• How to Use LinkedIn
  
• Use LinkedIn Effectively
• How to Improve Your Linked ROI By Tweaking Your Profile
• How to Ensure Your LinkedIn Profile Is Effective
• 10 LinkedIn Tips to Optimise your Profile
• LinkedIn SEO tips
• Effective LinkedIn Positioning
• How To Rank Higher on LinkedIn in Your Niche
• How To Get More From LinkedIn
• How to be a LinkedIn superstar – Creating a profile for success

LinkedIn Marketing & Use Cases

• Ten Ways for Small Businesses to Use LinkedIn
• Using Linkedin for online PR
• Effective Marketing on LinkedIn
• 100+ Smart Ways to Use LinkedIn
• 33 Ways to Use LinkedIn for Business
• LinkedIn Marketing Tips
• 7 Ways to Get More Out of LinkedIn

Using Specific LinkedIn Features

• How to Successfully Manage a LinkedIn Group
• 5 Ways Small Businesses Can Leverage LinkedIn’s New Features
• How to Promote and Manage LinkedIn Group
  

Take note that I didn’t add all LinkedIn resources I know but selected them very carefully of the course of several months. There are not that many serious LinkedIn marketing resources out there. Most LinkedIn SEO posts are just short and often outdated tidbits. So it took me considerable research to pick these resources.

Do you want to know more about me? Well, you can view my LinkedIn profile. In case you want to connect with me make sure to tell me why. I don’t just collect “friends” for the sake of numbers.

Last but not least consider reading my social media hopping post on how you shouldn’t waste your time with social media and networking but use is to propel your business to new heights instead. I will explain how a balanced social media strategy should be implemented in a future post. You can’t abandon social media as a business person but you can’t work for social sites as a user generated content slave for free either.

Related posts:

1. 12 Awesome SEO & Internet Marketing Resources from my Blog Readers
2. The Best StumbleUpon Resources Outside of SU
3. Kevin Rose Explains How to Spam Twitter and Everybody Loves it

1. 12 Awesome SEO & Internet Marketing Resources from my Blog Readers
2. The Best StumbleUpon Resources Outside of SU
3. Kevin Rose Explains How to Spam Twitter and Everybody Loves it