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October 31, 2006

Optimizing Sitemaps Feeds for Yahoo

If you're submitting sitemap feeds to Yahoo, consider using the exact same file you use for your Google feeds (often sitemap.xml or sitemap.xml.gz by default).

Until recently, I'd been using another of Yahoo's recommended formats, urllist.txt (due to its minimal file size), but I hadn't been watching the output code as closely as I should have. I'd been exporting the sitemap.xml file directly to urllist.txt.

As it turns out, this can create bloat even in a text file, because (depending on the program you use to create it), your Google sitemap.xml file contains many URLs you might not actually want to be crawled.

To clarify, I create many Google sitemap.xml files and tell Google to "check" but not "crawl" the incidental graphics files (used in design, nav, and so on). But upon export to urllist.txt, my program was simply listing these graphics files in the list to be crawled, just like all html files. That more or less tripled the size of the file, with two-thirds of the content being URLs I didn't even care about.

As a result, I deleted the reference to urllist.txt in Yahoo Site Explorer, and instead told it to fetch sitemap.xml, and within a week, the index count at Yahoo tripled. (Note that we've been working on a few other things for this site too, so I'm not necessarily claiming a 1:1 relationship here. But I know my change didn't hurt.)

Also follow this thread at YSE forums, where later, "Mr. Slurp" offers a user some keen insight into how Yahoo interprets typical "home" pages such as default.htm, etc. I guess the moral of the story is, canonicalization is in the eye of the beholder - never exclude when you can redirect.

Posted by erik at 11:59 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

October 30, 2006

The Pied (Jaffray) Piper of LOCAL Search?

Almost a year to the date later, as the small business flies its marketing flag, we finally see something it might be able to mast itself to for support. Long-term riders of The Wagon will recall my carping back then concerning the crux of the LOCAL small business conundrum:

Many of these companies have as their only budgeted marketing item an annual ad in the (local) yellow pages. They've not only been doing it that way since the birth of their business but also cannot afford any external marketing on top of that.

I've always contended LOCAL was thusly an ultimate issue of replacement rather than augmentation of budget, and so the switch from trusted to unkown would require a really, really good, and easily understandable, REASON. Piper Jaffray may have delivered this first gift of the business holiday season, as reported by Marketing VOX:

The cost per acquisition for search is on average $8.50, according to the report, "The New eCommerce Decade: The Age of Micro Targeting," released earlier this month, reports Internet Retailer. Yellow Pages was the second-most efficient channel at $20 per customer acquisition, followed by online display ads at $50, email at $60, and direct mail at $70.

One doesn't need to be able to deconstruct a Mike Grehan article to understand 'tis a far, far better spend one makes than one had been making before if one switches to paying $8.50 per customer rather than $20. That's a business expanding difference.

Now it's up to the heralds to successfully sound the message of the Piper (Jaffray) LOCALLY.

Posted by john at 09:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Searching for Horror Movies on TiVo

Okay, it's not technically SEO, but it's still "search."

It's time to utilize TiVo to find some good horror classics from your local cable/satellite provider. If you're in the mood for something scary but don't know exactly what you want to watch, here's how to find all the horror movies shown in your area over the next two weeks:

1. Start at TiVo Central.
2. Select Find Programs.
3. Select Search by Title.
4. Select Movies.
5. Select Horror.
6. Scroll down through the alphabet listing and select the 0 (zero).

The list of all horror movies will appear in the right column. Scroll through the entire list to see what sounds good during this spooky season.

Posted by erik at 07:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

ISBN-13 and SEO for Publishers

Just a note to those who still publish on paper (and that's a lot of you): Even though ISBN-13 doesn't officially go into effect until January 1, it's not too early to start integrating your second set of book numbers into your site's copy, page titles, and internal & external linking strategy.

ISBN searches typically don't make up your bread and butter, but put together, it's a nice long set of crumbs - especially if you're one of the first ones to get indexed with the new data.

Posted by erik at 07:37 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 27, 2006

Google's Arrogance

No friggin' way! I just got a heads up from our very own Erik Dafforn about an incredibly pathetic post (IMO) by Google on their blog.

Google's incredibly arrogant blog post

Posted by sean at 02:44 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Thanks for the Solid, Danny Sullivan

Some time ago, we asked Danny Sullivan to step up with a solid. We fell kneeward with closed eyes, beseeching Danny to lead us to the pearly gates of Results Page Liberation. Well, we opened our eyes and stretched our legs, and found to our surprise, it is happening!

Yahoo Serp Persecution will soon pass. We must now consider one of the following statements to be an absolute truth:

Either Danny Sullivan heard our prayers and responded accordingly . . .

OR

There is no connection between our call to action copiously supplied with film allusion and the addition of the No Yahoo Directory Tag.

I have to tell you, we're leaning slightly to the former.

Posted by tom at 10:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 25, 2006

A Cure For The Summer Time Traffic Blues

“Well I'm gonna raise a fuss
And I'm gonna raise a holler
About workin' all summer
Just tryin' to earn a dollar�
Eddie Cochran, “Summertime Blues�

There ain’t no cure for the Summertime blues?

One of the clients I work with has some seasonality to their business and traffic to their web site either levels out or dips during the summer months. This summer was not any different, traffic-wise. Their search traffic numbers in the Spring months averaged 482,000 visits per month while their Summer average was 410,000 monthly visitors.

That doesn’t sound like it’s on the road to cure anything right?

A deeper trek into their analytics, though, raises the eyebrows. Their conversion rate during the higher traffic Spring months from visitors coming to their site from search engines was .825% which calculates out to approximately $13,918 in online sales per month. Their conversion rate during the “Summertime blues� months was 1.23% which is 45% higher than the Spring and calculates out to $17,538 in monthly online revenue.

Nothing like an increase in revenue to melt those blues away. But still, the higher revenue isn’t the real cure nor is the higher conversion rate.

The cure is in the answer to the question: Why is their conversion rate 45% higher?

The Cure

I have a fever, and the only prescription is a higher quality web site visitor.

I love best practices SEO.

Higher quality visitors are a direct byproduct of improved search positions for SEO-targeted keywords and phrases.

It’s no surprise to also see that this client had a Summertime increase of over 200 positions at Google for their optimized phrases.

Posted by doug at 06:45 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

SES Registration - Now Five Times as Open!

Say, does anyone know whether registration is now open for Search Engine Strategies Chicago 2006?

Oh, wait. Forget I asked.

Posted by erik at 12:54 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

October 24, 2006

Help Google Tackle Vertical with a Custom Search Engine

The big buzz this morning (Threadwatch, SEW Blog, WebmasterWorld) appears to be Google's announcement that it's allowing users to create custom engines based on the main Google index.

On the technical side, this is little more than using a subset of Google's index to narrow the number of specific sources that appear on a Google results page. In other words, if you're a dentist hoping to create the Next Great Dental Search Engine, you could tell Google to include only the sites you want, perhaps such as the American Dental Association, your own site, a few hand-picked dental blogs (I'm sure they exist ... right?), and so on.

This way, when someone searches for [plaque] on your custom dental engine, you won't get any trophy shops popping up in the results.

This is nothing new. Sites like Rollyo have been doing it for a while (although they're somewhat parasitic, using Google's index as a back end). But Google offers more horsepower than the others, letting your trusted users help you build the list of resources your engine uses, as well as letting you add thousands of sites into your custom index.

So let's call this what it really is. I've talked before about the potential power of small, vertical engines vs. large, catch-all indexes like Google's. It's pretty much understood that Google owns the latter segment. With this announcement, Google is offering its users the distinct privilege of enabling Google to own the first.

Matt Cutts pretty much sums up the potential here (emphasis added):

I do think that this launch will kick off a lot of opportunity that not everyone will see or understand at first. For example, the first person to make a truly kick-butt search engine about biking will likely start to attract volunteers and traction and first-mover attention, and could very well become the authority search for that niche. I think that this launch could kick off a wave of search over a long tail of niches; rather than a big vertical like “health,� someone could make a search for the much much smaller “health at every size� movement.

So Google is leveraging the power of communities to let communities themselves build their own vertical search sites. And Google runs its ads alongside these highly-targeted, loyal-user sites.

Smart and efficient. Sounds like in addition to C++ Programming Fundamentals, a few Googlers have been reading Tom Sawyer too.

Posted by erik at 08:20 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 21, 2006

Search Query Oddity of the Week: October 16-20, 2006

This week's winner was sent in by Kevin Flynn:

Search Query: "princess caroline of monaco and hair loss"
Searches Per Day: 5

Comments: Caroline may need a consult from Rapunzel.

---
What is the Search Query Oddity of the Week? Submit your entries to doug@intrapromote.com.

Posted by doug at 12:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 20, 2006

Have You Met Ted? - Part II

A classic pickup line revived in the TV show “How I Met Your Mother� gave rise to an idea to allow you, our readers, to ‘meet’ our key staff and contributors on a more down-to-earth level. This week I want to assume the role of wingman and without further ado ask, Have you met Tom?

What do you do for IP?
I manage link building campaigns. It is my job to get a site indexed as cleanly as possible, and to add links to it from places that make sense with relevant keywords.

What did you do before SEO?
That's so long ago, I don't remember.

So Tom, where did you go to school?
Adams College

What are your favorite bands/groups?
Tony Clifton
Diamonds in the Rough
The Bowling Green Philharmonic
Sexual Chocolate
Stillwater

What are your favorite cd’s?
They're All Gonna Laugh At You
Chicago 17
The Best of the Band
Painted Desert Serenade

What is your best playlist?
The Weight
Jessie
Mr. Roboto

What are your hobbies?
Spending time with my family, sports, movies, mopery.

What are your Favorite movies?
Godfather II
Casablanca
Goodfellas
True Romance
Kill Bill Vol. 2

Things you miss the most from the '80s?
'83 Sox
Arrival of Jordan
'85 Bears
'87 Hoosiers
Shermer, IL

Things you miss the least from the '80s?
Belushi OD
Bias OD
Buckner E
Baby Jessica TV
Bakker PTL

What do you do for recreation?
Watch movies, Bears, and White Sox, change diapers, begin and never finish screenplays.

What makes Tom tick?
Laughter, family, friends .

What do you enjoy doing at work?
Making a site better translate to search engines.

And for the poll question.......

What do you enjoy doing while not at work?
The opposite of work - lying in bed just like Brian Wilson did.

What is your biggest work related accomplishment (not necessarily IP)?
Development of our Link Building Department.

What is your biggest accomplishment, not work related?
Marriage to Colleen, birth of Reilly.

Where would we find you hanging out on a Friday night with nothing planned?
Taming Tivo and Netflix. they're both relentless.

What are your favorite books?
Rebel Without A Crew
The Theatre of Tennessee Williams, any volume
To Serve Man
any of my father's yet-to-be published novels

What's the most exotic place you’ve ever been?
Jamaica Mon

Favorite morning drink?
H2O

Most essential life tip...
"don't walk where you're not supposed to walk because there may not be someone with superhuman strength to save your little [butt]. And don't do drugs."

Most essential SEO tip...
External linking is very important, but do not underestimate the value of internal linking.

Well, that should serve as a nice introduction to Tom Lustina. In case your interested in the more 'official' bio, check out this official bio page.

Posted by brent at 03:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 19, 2006

Using Google Analytics Bounce Rates to Gauge Site Stickiness

Buried deep in the guts of Google Analytics is a report called "Entrance Bounce Rates." It's off the beaten path of "Referring Source" and "Total Visits," so it doesn't always get a lot of attention. But it offers valuable information about visitors' habits on your site. Here's how to access the report:

The Entrance Bounce Rates report shows you a list of "entrance" URLs for your site (those URLs that people used to enter the site, whether via a search engine, third-party link, etc.) and the percentage of visitors who left your site after viewing only that page. Thus, if your bounce rate for a page is 100%, that means each person who entered the site on that page viewed that page only, then left the site. Like golf, the lower the number, the better.

If you don't know what to look for, the numbers can be confusing, or worse, useless. But when you filter the data by content area, things begin to make sense. For instance, if we wanted to measure bounce rates on this site for articles written in 2005, we need only enter that folder in the filter box, hit the plus sign, and we have our data.

The filter button is a toggle. When you press the green plus sign once, it becomes a red minus sign. If you press this, it enables you to see the bounce rates for every page except those in the filtered directory:

So comparing the stickiness of the articles written in 2005 vs. those written in 2006 happens in only a few seconds. Use this method across multiple categories of your site to see the rates in your case studies, executive bios, pages within a certain product or service area, and so on. If people leave one area of the site more frequently than they do in others, why is that? Did you offer a call to action there? Did you give them further opportunity to find out more?

Answering these questions requires some time and perhaps some tough content decisions, but it's an effective way to gauge the effectiveness of certain segments of your content - and in turn, create a more compelling, sticky, and (ideally) profitable site.

Posted by erik at 10:34 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

October 18, 2006

Yahoo Sidles up to Firefox

In a boldly unobtrusive move from its Passive Chap-Hiding Division, Yahoo! has sidled up to Firefox with the following banner:

Using Yahoo! from within the Firefox browser is possible! . . . Who knew?
This has Google wondering what not to do next, as they provide the start page for Firefox users.

Yahoo! plans next to unveil a banner proclaiming that spelling Yahoo on an Etch-a-Sketch is also possible! . . . Who knew?

Posted by tom at 11:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 17, 2006

Google Earth Gets Duped - by Google Earth

Conventional SEO wisdom has generally arrived at the point that claims duplicated content won't necessarily hurt you, but it won't really help you either. If you present Page X on two unique URLs, so goes the lore, engines don't know which version to pick, so they'll probably just pick one, although you don't necessarily have control over which one they'll decide to include.

That is, unless the engine owns Page X.

I was doing a little research on Google Earth, so I typed what I figured would be the correct URL: www.google.com/earth. Google is usually really good about guessing what people will type, and if that person is wrong, redirecting him to the proper page. But I wasn't wrong, because Google Earth did resolve at that address.

But I clicked around for a while, and wouldn't you know it, before long I was on the earth.google.com subdomain, and I was pretty sure I hadn't been redirected.

So www.google.com/earth/ and earth.google.com are identical. But, no big deal, right? After all, won't Google simply decide which of its pages to show in a query for [google earth]?

Not necessarily. Following is results page for that query (notice the listings in red boxes):

The bottom line is, despite the fact that Google says "Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content," Google gives itself double the exposure on the results page because it has the same content sitting on two different URLs. Kids, if you try this at home, don't expect the same results. (And wear a helmet.)

And as a neat parlor trick, the two different entries for the page (again, boxed in red) even have faux differences. The top listing shows the DMOZ description for Google Earth. The lower listing shows copy pulled from the page body.

Oh, and notice that boxed in yellow, the exact same thing happens with Wikipedia. The only difference is an internal redirect on the Wikipedia site between /Google_Earth and /Google_earth. Get it? When you're Wikipedia, a character in lowercase is enough to get you a dual listing - to the exact same content.

Posted by erik at 11:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 13, 2006

Redirecting Foley

You know, I don't doubt that Mark Foley is in need of some serious redirection, but I'm just not sure he is being redirected properly.

www.house.gov/foley/ redirects to clerk.house.gov/members/electionInfo/Florida_16th/index.html . Now I guess that makes sense, but why just temporarily redirect with the 302? Are they expecting a triumpant return of 'Ole Maf54? I think it would be a pretty safe bet to go ahead with the permanent 301 redirect and declare that the honorable Mr. Foley will not be returning.

And www.markfoley.com/ is 302 redirecting to . . . well . . . almost nothing. Again, that makes sense, but why go temporary?

Google takes these redirects very seriously. If you temporarily redirect a page (not that type of Page), you are telling Google that the page will return. Most often, that will lead Google to keep that page in the index, continue to rank it based on former information, and continue to display the old information when ranking it.

Here's why it matters.


The first and fourth results, on both sides of wiki, are the Foley urls with their former titles and descriptions. Do you think they really meant to hang on to those results?

Posted by tom at 03:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A Little About Me

Working off of Brent’s post about meeting Erik, I thought I’d segue into doing the same about myself.

What do you do for IP?
Manage Sales and Marketing initiatives as well as proactively research, source and deploy offerings to clients.

What did you do before SEO?

I worked in SEO for an Agency in Los Angeles starting back in 1998.

Where did you go to school?
Taft Elementary

What are your favorite cd’s?
Killswitch Engage
Pantera
Crossbreed
KMFDM
Underminded
Black Eyed Peas
Enya
INXS
Duran Duran
Thievery Corporation
Paul Oakenfold
The list goes on and on…iPod, baby!!!

What is your best playlist?
Waaay too many to list here. My iPod knows my favs!!

What are your hobbies?
Lovin’ on my family
Goin' fast on Quads (4 wheelers), Snowmobiles & Dirtbikes and of course repairing them
Landscaping
Making money for Intrapromote
Making money for Intrapromote clients
Finding new ways to make money – I’m in sales. Did you expect anything else?

What are your Favorite movies?
Braveheart
Gladiator
Used Cars
Adam Sandler flicks (Happy Madison Productions)
Schwarzenegger flicks (have all of them except Kindergarten Cop-no intentions of getting it either)
Sylvester Stallone flicks (just about complete collection)
and many, many more!

Things you miss the most from the '80s?
The favorable ratio of enjoyment to accountability – I have this in common with Erik
Garage hopping
Having two older brothers to take the blame for everything
Selling fireworks for HUGE profit to the local well-to-do kids
My Garbage Pail Kids collection (only have about 2k left out of around 10k cards)
My best friend Amy Shelmon (sp?) from Lakewood – she was the coolest!
My Casio calculator watch

Things you miss the least from the '80s?
Cuban Missile Crisis
Cold with Russia and the Chernobyl disaster
Quiet time for being naughty
My brothers taking stuff from me

What do you do for recreation?
Quading, Snowmobiling, Dirtbiking and working out

What makes me tick?
My heart

What do you enjoy doing at work?
Sell, sell, sell!

What do you enjoy doing while not at work?
Spending time with the family and being outdoors landscaping, riding my toys, and doing other things to stay productive. Watching movies is a pastime as well when I’m not cracked out on caffeine.

What is your biggest work related accomplishment (not necessarily IP)?
I’m working on that right now.

What is your biggest accomplishment, not work related?
Getting married to my best friend.

Where would we find you hanging out on a Friday night with nothing planned?
Hangin’ out with my lovely bride watching a DVD or catching up on LOST, Desperate Housewives or Grey’s Anatomy

What are your favorite books?
Steven King novels all the way!
Tom Clancy novels

What's the most exotic place you’ve ever been?
Catalina Island, CA. That place rocks!

Favorite morning drink?
Coffee!!!!

Most essential life tip...
Family is the core of ones life and support

Most essential SEO tip...
Use Best Practices SEO and always follow SE guidelines or otherwise be subjected to the Matt Cutts nuke button!!

There you have it.

Posted by sean at 10:26 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 12, 2006

What Google Sitemaps Can and Can't Do

On the heels of my complaint that Google is sending mixed messages about how it interprets the "nofollow" link attribute, I need to give credit where it's due. Earlier in the week, Matt Cutts asked his readers to report genuine SERP bugs. Not the type of "bug" characterized by your competitor's site ranking higher than yours, but results that return truly crazy results.

The post itself was fairly unremarkable because its purpose was merely to narrow his definition of "buggy." But in the comments section, when asked by a reader why the reader's site showed only two pages indexed at Google "when the site has several more pages that are search engine friendly and a Google Sitemap," Cutts dropped a nugget of gold:

The fact is that if you want Google to crawl you deeply (more than the 1-2 urls), you do need to have some links. Submitting a sitemap to Google lets us know those urls exist, but sitemaps are also not a back door; if no one at all in the whole web links to your domain at all, Google won’t crawl you as deeply.

Sounds like a great excuse to plug a link building service, but that would be crass. Instead, I'll just mention that a Google Sitemap is great for truncating the crawling time required for a site, but it's not a shortcut to ranking well, and as this quote states, it's not even a shortcut to getting indexed.

Per his request, I did leave a comment about the [therapy products] query that Sean caught in June. He said he'd pass it along.

Posted by erik at 11:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Search Query Oddity of the Week: October 9-13, 2006

This week's winner was sent in by Brent Sharp:

Search Query: "outplacement outsourcing"
Searches Per Day: 68

Comments: That kind of makes my brain hurt just thinking about it. Is this when a manager decides she wants to change an employee's job, so she hires an outside firm to break the bad news? Could there really be 68 spineless people a day interested in doing such a thing?

---

What is the Search Query Oddity of the Week? Submit your entries to doug@intrapromote.com.

Posted by doug at 09:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 10, 2006

Romance The Bloggers, But Don’t Forget To Love Yourself

I read an article today in Smart Money called “Romancing The Bloggers� which details how corporate America is beginning to notice how some bloggers are creating significant positive online buzz for their products. These particular bloggers are not employees of Company A, but enthusiastic disciples of Company A’s products.

PR departments are starting to pay attention to “blogger relations� and some companies are even wooing popular blogs with free products or even cold hard cash. I think it’s great that some bloggers have created a blog successful enough to garner attention from the company or products they adore. But, what seemed to be missing from the article was why some of these companies haven’t even taken advantage of creating their own blog. Of the companies mentioned, I had a hard time finding a blog that was authored by the actual company.

Let’s face it. Many company blogs are simply “horn tooters�. But, there’s nothing really wrong with that, especially considering how a good company or business blog can help your performance at the major search engines.

When you frequently write about your company, your business or your industry, search engines like Google and Yahoo give their blessing to fresh and frequently updated content and a double blessing if it’s linked to from other favored sites. Some companies very close to us have seen traffic to their blogs outpace traffic to their web site in less than a year. Some are seeing web site visitors clicking through from their blog approaching 15-20% of their total web site traffic. That’s not to mention how their blogs have improved how their web site ranks for search phrases their target audience frequently uses when searching for their offerings.

I constantly hear about the incredible number of new blogs being born every day, but I’m still surprised at how many companies simply haven’t yet taken the plunge.

If you need to woo third party bloggers to say nice things about your company or products, that’s fine, but don’t miss the blog boat by not doing some of it yourself.

Posted by doug at 10:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Is Google Gagging?

I was very surprised when I just came across this story in Webpronews.com. Apparently in an interview with LA Times reporter Chris Gaither, Sergey actually admitted what a lot of us probably feel. "It's worse than that," said Brin, Google's president of technology. "It's that I was getting lost in the sheer volume of the products that we were releasing."

I for one am pleased that they are going to focus more on integration, but perhaps mostly so because they admitted a problem and are fixing it. I'd say this adds to their credibility in the "Do No Evil" department and is a breath of some fresh, honest, air.

Posted by brent at 03:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

High Rankings Seminar in Dallas/Ft. Worth - Oct. 19-20

Colleague and fellow chocolate lover Jill Whalen asked us to post the details of her upcoming SEO seminar.

For the uninformed - if there are any left - Jill has been doing SEO since long before it was called "SEO." She's a regular speaker at SES and has been since Larry and Sergei were studying for their SATs. (That's probably an exaggeration, but it makes a good line.)

Here are the specs:

What: High Rankings® Search Engine Marketing Seminar

When: October 19 & 20, 2006

Where: American Airlines Training and Conference Center in Dallas/Ft. Worth

Why? To deliver the proven strategies and techniques of search engine optimization that will make your site work harder than it ever has before.

Get full details at Jill's site.

Discount: If you use INTRAPROMOTE as your discount code when registering, you'll save 25% off the seminar's sticker price.

Note that we do not receive any sort of referral fee, nor would we ask for one. Our recommendation is not for sale. We mention this only because Jill's that good, and sites of any size will benefit from her program.

Posted by erik at 03:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 09, 2006

Have You Met Ted?

A classic pickup line revived in the TV show “How I Met Your Mother� gave rise to an idea to allow you, our readers, to ‘meet’ our key staff and contributors on a more down-to-earth level. So I want to assume the role of wingman and without further ado ask, Have you met Erik?

What do you do for IP?
Manage campaigns, manage the blog, assist in developing long-term programs and strategies

What did you do before SEO?
Writer & editor, both freelance and in-house

So Erik, where did you go to school?
Wabash College

What are your favorite cd’s?
REM, "Life's Rich Pageant"
U2, "The Unforgettable Fire"
George Michael, "Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. I"
Dire Straights, "Brothers in Arms"
Bee Gees, "Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack"

What is your best playlist?
�This is too complex to sum up quickly, but here's a list from a specific vertical that's pretty good:�

Led Zeppelin, "Kashmir"
Boston, "Don't Look Back"
Kansas, "Carry On, Wayward Son"
Van Halen, "Take Your Whiskey Home"
Night Ranger, "Don't Tell Me You Love Me"

Now, based on the music questions above who would you guess is Erik's favorite band?

What are your hobbies?
Home theater
Gradually assembling (and actually using) a home gym

What are your Favorite movies?
"Godfather"
"Godfather Part II"
"This is Spinal Tap"
"Star Wars (IV)"
"Pulp Fiction"

Things you miss the most from the '80s?
The favorable ratio of enjoyment to accountability
Jell-O Pudding Pops
The simplicity of the Atari 2600
Waiting for the latest Star Wars episode
Thinking that I knew everything

Things you miss the least from the '80s?
Nancy Reagan - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Reagan
Constantly being told that the Soviets were about to bomb us
Acne
Cleaning horse stalls

What do you do for recreation?
Run
Lift weights
Read

What makes Erik tick?
Trying to figure things out. I spend way too much time in my own head.

What do you enjoy doing at work?
Digging deep and finding those key factors that are keeping a site from performing well.

What do you enjoy doing while not at work?
Spending time with my family. My wife and I have three kids who simultaneously thrill, awe, exhaust, and attempt to destroy us.

What is your biggest work related accomplishment (not necessarily IP)?
Probably launching the SEO Speedwagon blog while maintaining a full workload

What is your biggest accomplishment, not work related?
Living through the first two years of having twin boys.

Where would we find you hanging out on a Friday night with nothing planned?
Because we probably couldn't get a sitter, we'd be in the basement, watching a DVD, having just ordered a mushroom and tomato deep dish pie from Nancy's.

What are your favorite books?
Truman Capote, "In Cold Blood"
F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Great Gatsby"
Lao Tzu, "Tao te Ching"
Jerzy Kosinski, "Being There"

What's the most exotic place you’ve ever been?
I've been to paradise, but I've never been to me.

Favorite morning drink?
Cup of coffee with loaded with french vanilla Coffee-Mate

Most essential life tip...
My high school offensive line coach was unwittingly prophetic when he said, "Fire out and stay low."

Most essential SEO tip...
Nine domains with identical content does not make you nine time more likely to receive traffic.

Well, that should serve as a nice introduction to Erik Dafforn. In case your interested in the more 'official' bio, check out this official bio page.

Posted by brent at 11:26 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

October 06, 2006

Paid Directories for the Quick 6

I had a conversation today with a newer link building client. He questioned everything, which is an excellent way to make sure you are getting the most from a campaign. It was a long call, indeed, but a worthwhile reminder that even the steps that are most often taken for granted occur for a specific purpose.

One of the questions had to do with the order of events in the external linking phase.

Why does paid directory submission come before competitor linking? If these competitors are performing so well, why not go straight at their links?

Great question. Let's look at this in terms of a football game. You can go deep on the first play of the game to get on the scoreboard, but that strategy alone will not win a game. Especially for a site that does not have many external links, paid directories represent the only trustworthy quick 6. Trustworthy because they are human edited, and quick in terms of being added and crawled. Most other external links should involve correspondence prior to addition. Most likely, these will be from sites not crawled as often as the major directories, and not built to be as quickly and deeply indexed as those directories.

In the course of the game, these links will prove just as valuable, but it will take a much longer time to get that value. Get that quick 6, and then settle into the running game.

Posted by tom at 02:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 05, 2006

Keyword Research with Keyword Discovery: A Few Tips

If you're smart, your SEO project begins with solid keyword research. We've subscribed to Wordtracker since (it seems like) the late '60s, but we've also subscribed to Keyword Discovery for about a year.

This post shares a few simple tips into how to interpret and maximize the data you get from Keyword Discovery.

Dealing with Strange Numbers in Results: Sometimes a term search results in some strange numbers. For example, in the following graphic, you'll note that a lot of people seem to search for odd terms, such as 10025 cotton shirts and discount women27s hanes t shirts.

You'll see odd results like this when hexadecimal codes aren't properly translated into their HTML symbol counterparts. On a hex-to-HTML chart, 25 correspondes to the % sign, and 27 is a single prime (more commonly used as an apostrophe). So the actual terms here are 100% cotton shirts and discount women's hanes t shirts.

If you run into some confusing instances, look at the table on a page like this one to convert hexadecimal codes to their actual HTML characters.

Finding the Demand Trend: Early on, in the Analyze pane, you could get a nifty graph of the last 12 months' demand for a specific word or phrase. I was blown away when I noticed that the feature seemed to disappear. Thankfully, it didn't; it was merely relocated. Now, to find the demand graph, you need to click the specific number of results in the Searches column in the Research pane immediately after you hit the Search button. For example, in the graphic above, you'd click the number that I've highlighted in pink. Following is a sample demand graph for a specific phrase:

This data isn't always perfect. For example, the spike in April looks a little suspect, or it might correspond to a large TV ad campaign or other offline project. But if you trust your data, we feel the best time to make changes to your pages or test some optimization is during the beginning of a lull - so that you can have time to refine your changes before the next seasonal growth spurt hits.

Negative Filters: You can filter out terms from the search box to save time. For example, if you're looking for terms related to social or business networking in Los Angeles, you might enter the following string at the search box:
los angeles networking -computer -computers -it
Currently, you can filter out up to five terms. After that, if you need to delete additional veins, I recommend exporting to Excel and doing additional custom sorts to find the irrelevant terms.

Plurals: KD doesn't yet handle plural forms well. For example, if you search for terms with computer, you'll need to do a similar search for the same terms with computers as well. According to the KD support forum, they're working on it.

Flushing a Project: Depending on how you allocate your projects, you might (as I did) find yourself taking forever to delete the contents of a permanent project, 100 keywords at a time (the program's max). I don't know why it took me so long to figure out, but a much smarter way of working is to simply delete the project and immediately create a new project with the same name.

The growth of Keyword Discovery has (in my opinion) forced WordTracker to make some improvements of its own. In a followup post, I'll discuss some of Wordtracker's latest enhancements.

Posted by erik at 06:57 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 03, 2006

This is Why Users Mistrust PPC Ads

I'm often a little wordy in my posts, so as an experiment, I'm going to try to get my point across almost entirely with screen shots (and Alt tags, of course). Here's the scene: I wanted to buy a Spirograph for my daughter. Let's see how that goes.

Step 1. The search:

Step 2. The click:

Step 3. The PPC landing page:

Step 4. The internal search:

Step 5. The internal search result:

Step 6. Checking Adwords policies:

Step 7. Whatever.

Posted by erik at 11:16 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

October 02, 2006

Google Sitemap Feeds, Regular and Images, And Overlap, Or Lack Of

We hear from a Googler an important clarification that to date had been a bit murky, especially if you are creating both regular Google Sitemaps and Google Images Sitemaps (or feeds) for clients. At issue:

Can a site use both a Google Image Sitemap Feed and Google Sitemap, or does one supersede the other? And if there's no overlap between the two feeds, if there are pages in the images feed you'd also want to be in the main index, should you have those pages in both feeds? Is that ok?

The answer, Wagon Friends, is no longer blowing in the wind:

There's no overlap between the feeds and indexes here. The stuff in the image sitemaps goes only into Images, stuff in the other sitemaps goes into the main index. So no superceding, no overlap... and therefore it makes sense to use both sitemaps. No need to put pages in both feeds. As I understand it, the main sitemaps file won't really take image files into account anyway.

So, images only in Google Image Sitemaps, and not images but just pages in regular Google Sitemaps, which makes perfect logical sense, thankfully.

And to boot, the Googler it comes to us from has proven to be a Trusted Feed.

Posted by john at 05:41 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack