If the recent adoption of metadata by the big three (via schema.org) isn’t enough to give you the Regans, there’s been a flurry of activity in the SEO industry lately as several of the leading SEO professionals have come together to share their thoughts on what they think are the current, and future factors involved in search engine rankings.
There’s some interesting information in the biennial surveys and predictions from SEOmoz. I’m thankful to see some factors rising, like keyword agnostics, page speed and social graphs while other factors such as keywords in the domain seem to be on the way out. Local search is more complex than ever, with different criteria for standard local and blended search creating complications for small business.
Not everything has changed though, unique content and inbound links from quality sources are still key factors and should remain at the core of your SEO strategy. Search Engine Land’s Periodic Table of SEO Factors is something I think all webmasters should print off and keep next to their desks as it sums up the more basic elements as nicely as anything out there.
It seems like more than ever, it helps to have someone familiar with the state of search at the helm of your online marketing. Maybe that’s you, or maybe it’s me. One things for certain, it’s not getting any easier.
Want to know more? Check the links above, or buy me lunch. Honestly, I think the latter of those two would be better for both of us.
If you don’t try, you won’t fail. If you don’t fail, you won’t learn anything.
And so goes marketing.
We try. We fail. We learn. We try again.
Eventually we succeed. If you keep trying, you will too.
This entry was written by Sean Enns, posted on June 6, 2011 at 8:14 pm, filed under Marketing. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Today, the major search engines announced that were unilaterally supporting a new schema for organizing information.
Technical goop aside (and it is perilously technical), it’s a pretty interesting leap for the SEO community. Here’s why.
SEO is about relevance. If your site, for example, is more relevant than a competitors, then you should have a higher result in search engines.
Easy enough. Except:
Search engines have a difficult time extracting meaning from content
All search engines are different
So what does the new microdata element change? The short answer is that you can increase the perceived relevance of your document by defining the elements of a web page with specific microdata (or “types” and “scope” as schema indicates).
The hard truth is that implementing the schema is a lot of work. There are 100 current ‘types’, so updating markup won’t be an easy task. But search engines promise that the richer SERPs are worth the effort – so if you’re serious about search, it’s likely worth the effort.
I recently read an article where the author attempted to use anecdotal evidence to prove that social media experts existed in the world.
Social media is media that is created to be shared freely through social interactions. More colloquially, it refers to a varied and ever-expanding list of internet platforms including (but not limited to) Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, etc.
More so, social media is not a form of communication so much as it’s a method of disseminating information. To claim that one is an expert in social media is analogous to claiming expertise in pencils, pens, paintbrushes, typewriters and as many forms of transcribing information ans one can conceive.
Marshall MacLuhan coined the phrase, “The medium is the message” meaning that the form of a medium embeds itself in the message, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived. I suppose then that a social media expert, if such a thing exists, is actually a writer/photographer/videographer/designer who can transverse all mediums to provide a consistent representation of a company’s message using any of the methods mentioned above.
In two words. Yeah right. Any writer will tell you how difficult it is to manage a single style of consistent communication. I don’t know any great photographers who are also great writers. Even the “experts” find what they’re good at and stick to it. Gary Vaynerchuk makes videos. Seth Godin blogs. I could go on. The point is that they’re both experts in their fields, and both are using social media successfully – but I doubt either would proclaim themselves to be experts.
In my (oh-so humble) opinion, we need more writers, more communicators, more content producers and fewer social media experts. A great writer will do far more for an organization than a social media expert ever could.
After all, would you rather have Nicholas-Jacque Conte or Ernest Hemingway writing your corporate communications? (Incidentally, Henry David Thoreau both made his own pencils and wrote Walden, though I’ve never heard him celebrated for the former)
This entry was written by Sean Enns, posted on May 31, 2011 at 10:42 pm, filed under Social Media. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
On Thursday, my PC was irreparably damaged by an aggressive virus. Blue screen of death, do not pass boot, do not collect $200.
On Friday, I bought a new computer. I spent most of that day setting it up and recovering files from the old computer. Saturday was similar. Today was the first day I’ve been able to get in a full day of work.
If the last four days have reminded me of anything, it’s that I need to be acutely aware of opportunity cost.
Opportunity cost is the inherent cost of missed opportunity. It is determined by weighing lost revenue, money and cost of time spent against time or money saved. I missed a lot of opportunity over the last four days. Missed hours of recreation time, 2 work days written off, unplanned cash expenditures. Needless to say, I’ve learned my lesson.
Is anything costing you? Do you build your own website, manage tasks outside of your scope? Whatever it is you specialize in, doing anything else is costing you. Time, money, happiness. Not easily measurable on a balance sheet or ledger, but just as important to track.
This entry was written by Sean Enns, posted on May 30, 2011 at 10:33 pm, filed under Marketing. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Inline linking (also known as hotlinking, leeching, piggy-backing, direct linking, offsite image grabs) is the use of a linked object, often an image, from one site into a web page belonging to a second site. The second site is said to have an inline link to the site where the object is located. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotlinking
You shouldn’t do it for myriad reasons. First, it’s unethical, you’re essentially stealing someone else’s bandwidth. Second, and possibly most importantly, you never know when someone like me will find out.
During a sweep of my backlinks yesterday, I discovered that a company called Palmetto Distributing was “linking” to me. I’d never heard of them, but I thought, perhaps, they were linking to one of my blog posts.
I searched the site and couldn’t find a link anywhere. That as until I searched their source, where I found this tasty little nugget.
My initial reaction was a mixed bag of shock and curiosity. How did they find these images? Palmetto Distributing is waaay down in South Carolina. I got the icons from Six Revisions where they’re available as a free download, why wouldn’t they do the same?
My next thoughts turned to vengeance. See, the real reason you don’t hotlink to someone else’s images is that you have no control over the content. For example, if – for some reason – the linkee felt like getting up to some mischief, they might decide to mess with you.
Step one. Move my own icons
I don’t want to mess with my own website, so I relocate my own social icons to another directory.
Step two. Fire a warning shot across the bow.
I replace the twitter icon on my server with this notice. I’m not doing anything illegal here, this is my server space and I can, theoretically, upload anything I want.
Step three. Mention it on Twitter. Use bit.ly to stall Palmetto’s discovery of my chicanery.
Step four. Replace icons with various, hilarious substitutes.
OK, I went a little crazy with this, but it’s 3:00 in the afternoon and they still haven’t responded. Check out the gallery of vengeance.
If this doesn’t catch their eye in the next day or so, I have one more ace up my sleeve. Let’s hope (for their sake) it doesn’t come to that.
This entry was written by Sean Enns, posted on May 25, 2011 at 3:10 pm, filed under Marketing, Social Media. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
I have a confession to make. I barely exist in Bing and Yahoo search results for any of my top keyphrases. I’m up there for my primary, but my secondaries are lagging.
To be fair, I don’t optimize for Bing. I haven’t, anyway, though today I checked out this Bing Rankings Cheat Sheet and it turns out I’m following Bing’s suggestions for optimization, so I’m a little bit confused by their results.
When I search for “Nanaimo SEO”, the top two results make sense, sort of – they’ve been doing SEO longer than me and Bing favours historic results. The third result is for a travel blog owned by an SEO guy. Two of the results are companies based out of Vancouver, one is out of Calgary, one is a business directory and one is an accountant.
Check out the screen shot.
According to the previously mentioned article on Search Engine Journal Bing has 30% of the search market share (including Yahoo), so it would seem that I’m losing a significant amount of traffic to my competitors. It might seem, to the casual observer, that I’ve ignored an opportunity.
Except I don’t believe their data.
I looked at my stats and the stats of several of my clients. If I’m being conservative, I would say that Bing and Yahoo collectively represent 5% of the overall search traffic.
To be especially fair, we’re talking about 5 different sites in 5 vastly different industries with very different marketing strategies. The numbers I’m using are based on about 35,000 visits over a 6 month period.
I’ll still try and boost my rankings in Bing, just not at the expense of my Google ranks. I’m interested in other numbers though, if anyone (locally) can show me numbers that support Bing’s supposed 30% (or anything above 15%), I’d love to hear about it.
5 years into my career as an SEO professional, 14 years into my marketing career, I’ve finally unlocked the secret to getting lots of free traffic.
Even better, it’s cheap. Anyone with a free afternoon and a smart phone can do it.
Even better, I’m going to share it with you. Right now. Unlike other systems, I’m not going to ask you to pay any money, or sign up for a free webinar. All you have to do is keep reading.
Are you ready?
Here it is.
The answer, the sure-fire way to bring in a ton of traffic to your website, is this. One word.
Kittens.
That’s right. You heard me. I said kittens. I would also accept cats.
The world wants kittens, so if what you want is traffic to your website, give them kittens. Give them enough kittens, and your traffic will shoot through the roof.
Sales, on the other hand… sales are a bit different. If you want sales you need to provide value and think beyond the hit counter. Traffic is misleading. It leads us to think that we’re doing well when it’s possible that we’re not doing much of anything.
Focus on the things that increase sales. Conversion, value propositions, customer loyalty. Give me a great customer experience and I’ll come back again and again. Give me kittens and I’ll welcome the distraction, but that’s about it.
Oh. Here’s a video of kittens playing in a box. Couldn’t resist. They are soooo cute.
This entry was written by Sean Enns, posted on May 23, 2011 at 11:56 am, filed under Marketing and tagged kittens. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
With the #rapture and #zombie apocalypse trends sweeping the twitterverse and beyond, I thought I’d hop (or shuffle, or shamble) onto the bandwagon with my own Zombie survival tips. The headings are FF Folk Rough Web, the body copy is good ol’ Georgia.
Zombie Apocalypse survival:
5 tips for Vancouver Islanders.
1. Go North or West
If you live on the Island as I do, your tendency may be to head south, or east – towards ferries, airports and the mainland. Don’t! Most of the population will be trying to escape, but the smart move is to head to lower population zones where there are fewer undead to snack on your brain candy.
2. Stay off the main highway
It may seem faster, but there are fewer resources off the main highway. Stick to the old island highway where, if needed, you can hop out of your car and easily resupply along the way.
3. Teach yourself to fish and you’ll eat for life
The island is a bountiful buffet of almost ready to eat treats like seafood, venison, ready to eat plants and flora and an abundance of fresh water. If you have limited space, you’re better off bringing tools to catch and cook your own edibles instead of packing your backpack full of granola bars and dried fruit.
4. Head for the open ocean
There’s no shortage of small islands just off the coast and during a zombie apocalypse, it’s any port in a storm. If you can “borrow” a boat and get to one of these islands, do so. While zombies can walk under water, they’re likely to remain in heavily populated zones as they’re not migratory creatures.
5. Zombie survival is chess, not checkers
If you’re to survive a zombie apocalypse you need to stay several steps ahead of the living dead. Bring board games, acoustic instruments, books and other items to keep you entertained – boredom will kill you as quickly as a zombie nomming on your noggin. Keep your group small and stay away from populated areas. It might be months or years before the world is safe from zombies again, so be ready to wait it out.
I like foursquare. I like the opportunity it gives business’ to form direct connections with consumers. I like that it’s free and I like that any business, big or small, can take advantage of the feature set.
Which brings me to the mayor feature, and some advice I have (as an active foursquare user) to entrepreneurs who would give their mayor something just for achieving mayorship, or mayorhood (mayoral status? You get the idea).
To become the mayor of any location on foursquare, you need to have the most check-ins in a 60 day period. To the casual observer, that would suggest that you need to actually go to a place more times than anyone else, right?
Actually, I’ve discovered that checking in requires only (limited) proximity. Basically, if I go one place downtown, I can check into no less than 10 different places. Even in my home, I live close enough to the old quarter of my city to check into 5 or 6 places without putting my shoes on.
I discovered this recently, after I noticed that one person was popping up as the mayor of, well, every place I went to. Either this person was spending their entire day visiting the restaurants and shops downtown, or they were *gasp* cheating!
Yep. The mayor of everywhere had figured out a loophole. Sit in one location, check-in anywhere and everywhere you can. If businesses offer mayoral specials, cash in.
The lesson to business is that a check-in doesn’t equal a sale, so make sure that any offers you offer up along with frequent check-ins are tied into an actual visit to your location.
