Universal SEO Articles by SEO Speedwagon

April 04, 2008

Social Media News: Sprout Review

Here's a site for those of you looking to create widgets that combine many forms of multi-media content: Sprout. They describe their site as "a quick and easy way for beginner and pro users to create living content including websites, banners, videos, music, photos, RSS feeds, calendars and more."

Here are a few examples of recently created Sprouts:

Sprouts can be promotional, personal, or informational and allow creators to integrate RSS, videos, images, podcasts, etc. into their widgets to make them come alive. Sprouts have also been described as "interactive and portable chunks of web content, widgets, mashups or mini-sites."

Sprouts are a great way to get your interactive content into the hands consumers looking for multimedia to consume. Sprouts have many cool features including:

Pre-built Templates-

Easy Asset Management-

Flexible Components-

Functional Publishing Platform-

Advanced Tracking Options-

I have a feeling this site will make major headway in the coming months as corporations and consumers get word of their highly functional widget offering.

Social Media News: Sprout Review
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March 07, 2008

Social Media: Why Some AD/PR Agencies Don't Get It

I have seen a tremendous amount of hoopla online over the last couple of months related to social media marketing strategies being implemented by AD and PR agencies. Unfortunately, many of these types of agencies seem to be trying to make a square peg fit into a round hole. Rather than spending time researching for portals to have their clients generate buzz related to their products and/or services, they are taking a shotgun approach to social media marketing.

At the beginning of each social media campaign there should be a great deal of research conducted to find a needle in a hay stack; being a niche marketing opportunity. After a good deal of social media portal candidates are selected then the next step in the process is finding out what type of content the active users will find interesting. This way you can be sure that the most active members within these portals will positively interact with your clients brands, products, services, etc. Building a presence within each social media portal will take time and should be looked at as one of the most important activities one can conduct on behalf of a client.

If you are actively engaged in social media portals and constantly creating content that users can find meaningful, then you will ensure your clients have the greatest impact when they introduce new material to active bloggers, and social media participants. Then your biggest challenge will be monitoring how much buzz you are generating for your clients and not whether or not you are reaching the right target market.

Social Media: Why Some AD/PR Agencies Don't Get It
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February 27, 2008

A Global Perspective of Social Networking Usage

A newspaper in France called "Le Monde" recently published a pretty sweet map that describes the usage of social networking portals across the globe, which was originally created by the research firm Datamonitor. The social networking usage graph depicts the number of hours (in millions) users spend at major portals across 5 world wide regions and sheds some light on the diversity of social networking participants around the globe.

In North America it shows that MySpace has a slight lead on FaceBook regarding social networking usage within the states. The users in Brazil and India seem to migrate towards Orkut, whereas in Asia-Pacific Cyworld and Mixi are the top dogs chosen by users. Africa social networking users gravitate towards sites like Netlog, Yonja, and Skyblog, while users in Latin America and Mongolia prefer to use hi5 to get their social networking fulfillment each day.

Considering Myspace and FaceBook has spent a considerable amount of time in the last few months working on expanding into other markets, its only a matter of time until these US focused giants gain proportional existence in other foreign regions. It will be interesting to to see who dominates the foreign social networking landscape in the near future. Time to place your bets folks....

A Global Perspective of Social Networking Usage
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February 18, 2008

comScore and Media Contacts Study Depicts Variances Among Online Video Viewer Segments

A study by comScore and Media Contacts was conducted to understand the consumption habits and mindsets of Internet video users as they relate to online video, TV, and advertising plus content across both media. The findings were very interesting in that the top 20% of viewers averaged 841 minutes of online viewing per month, moderate viewers (next 30%) spent 77 minutes, and the bottom 50% spent just 6 minutes a month conducting the same activities online.

The heaviest users spent most of their time online visiting niche video sites that catered to individual topics with less general videos being displayed.

Moderate viewers sent most of their time visiting specific video content on broadcast TV sites, including WorldNow (ABC), CBS TV Local, ABC Daytime, Scripps TV, and CMT, rather than frequenting more general video-sharing sites.

The study found that light online video viewers are actually heavier TV consumers, with 46 percent of this group indicating they watch more than 13 hours of TV per week. In comparison, 39 percent of moderate video viewers and 30 percent of heavy video viewers watched the same amount of TV.

Although there is a great deal of variance between the types of videos, content, and media sources being accessed online it is imperative to gain a better understanding of what consumers are actively watching to better meet their needs from a marketing perspective. This type of research will lay the foundation for how search marketing companies target online video consumers from a strategy standpoint.

comScore and Media Contacts Study Depicts Variances Among Online Video Viewer Segments
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January 16, 2008

Less Sponsored Ads = More PPC Revenue? Que Pasa, Google?

One of my favorite clients of all time, with us now going on 8 years and powered mightily by the rare, dual client-side SEO strengths of search understanding and inter-departmental implementation influence, recently noticed the same thing Mark Jackson saw in Google's most recent round of Universal Search peekaboo:

Notice the incredibly disappearing PPC Ads? My immediate explication was that surely this must be to prove, in a small test sample, that someone's bad idea from above would be a disaster, indeed.

Mark, though, has made me think again:

Google may succeed in encouraging companies to bid more ferociously for the top two positions. If universal search leads to more searches because it's fun, this could be a win for Google (higher revenues) and users (better experience).

Sometimes it's hard for us to imagine that there is a finite set of clicks on any given day. The business model in a closed set like this, then, must discover what to do to increase the value of the average click within the set on a given day. Mark's point about less ads likelier driving up value per is on target, I believe, but thanks to him getting me to think again I think the test layout in question has less to do about increasing searches "because it's fun" and much ado about that map, an image mind you, kissing the PPC ads at the right corner of the screen and making your eye immediately jump there to focus.

Take a look yourself and see where your eye is drawn, and then check out what eye tracking heat maps are telling us about how pictures affect focus on a search page.

Less Sponsored Ads = More PPC Revenue? Que Pasa, Google?
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December 06, 2007

Old Media Quote of the Day

I just love it when Old Media can't adapt to Web 2.0 and tries to pass the buck while hubris prevents them from admitting they are passing the buck:

...the Motion Picture Association of America has asked ISPs to act as monitors of movie piracy. MPAA head Dan Glickman says ISPs need to take on that role if they are hoping for any sort of future support from Hollywood.

Actual buck-passing-disguised-as-responsible-parenting quote from Dan Glickman, head of the MPAA:

The ISP community is going to be at the forefront of this in the future because they have everything to lose and nothing to gain by not seeing that the content is being properly protected.

Old Media Quote of the Day
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November 16, 2007

MSN/Live Universal Search

Perhaps I'm late in noticing, but it appears that MSN has finally made an attempt at emulating Google's Universal Search in search results pages, specifically for queries that are off the usual Universal path. Truth be told, I'm not a huge fan of MSN and thus don't check out their search results with any great frequency, but it's better late than never to notice their new results, no?

Anyway, take a look at a quick snapshot I took this AM of their search results for [atv trailers]:

You'll notice at the very top of their search results; links for Images, Video, News, Maps, Etc. "Related" searches are in the top-right corner. And the neat thing about the videos is that they begin playing when you hover over them.

But I think I prefer Google's Universal Search results (video, images, news, etc.) immersed within the search results themselves. However, it may end up being more user-friendly to allow people to use the "Try Also" links at the top of the search results to narrow their search focus to be for just Images, Videos, etc. as opposed to drilling down the search results and clicking on links of interest as is the case with Google.

Should be interesting to see what people think of the new MSN Universal Search functionality.

Is it a copyright infringement to call this MSN Universal Search? I guess we'll know soon enough.

MSN/Live Universal Search
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November 06, 2007

Google Sitelinks Expansion: Early Results in Traffic Funneling

As you probably recall, Google rolled out an enhanced version of Sitelinks in mid-October. I thought it would be interesting to monitor the early results and see how effective the new links are.

Following is a typical example of Sitelinks. Google now shows up to eight links instead of the maximum of four that it showed only a month ago. When I refer to traffic later in the post, these Sitelink numbers are the links/URLs I'll be talking about:

The point of this post is to show you what happened (if anything) to the traffic that had traditionally funneled to either the main link or to the four Sitelinks. I plotted traffic to each of the nine links through October to see what would happen. the following charts reflect these filtered criteria:

• The query term was a single word
• The referrer was Google (organic)
• The entry page was the exact URL of the link being discussed

In addition, here are some important caveats:

• These charts are NOT all the same scale; I can't give actual visit numbers, but I will give the percent of all clicks received. The "main" link, as well as Sitelinks 1-3, pull in some serious numbers. While the traffic spikes in Sitelinks 5-8 will look pretty large, they shouldn't be construed as having the same traffic numbers. More on that as I discuss each link.
• Don't necessarily infer any proposed correlation between drop in traffic to one link and rise in traffic to another. These things are controlled by many, many more factors than the mere existence of new Sitelinks.
• The Sitelinks change was announced around 10/18, but it took a while to roll it out to all DCs. I didn't see it for any searches until at least the 25th. Keep a gradual rollout in mind when you look at the charts for links 5-8.

Okay, here we go. Following are descriptions of each link followed by a graph of the traffic to that link for October.

URL/Sitelink 0: The "main" link -- represented by "Company Name and Stuff" in the shot above. A slight drop overall, but it appeared to happen across the month, not necessarily at the same time as the Sitelinks rollout. Total traffic: 67.6% :

URL/Sitelink 1: The first true "Sitelink" link. A slight decline throughout the month, but again, not necessarily correlating to the Sitelinks rollout. Total traffic: 25.2% :

URL/Sitelink 2: Like the previous two links, it declined slightly. It looks a little more aligned with the rollout, but not completely. Total traffic: 5.1% :

URL/Sitelink 3:This link actually showed modest gains, starting about the time of the rollout. Total traffic: 1.6% :

URL/Sitelink 4:In early October, this link was already coming down from an offline push that peaked in late September. But the Sitelinks rollout didn't seem to help it, as it shows additional decline after the rollout period. One additional thing about this link: It's not what you'd traditionally think of when you type "keyword," so I attribute a lot of its clicks to curious onlookers who didn't expect to see it there. The other side of that sword is that now, the query shows four new, shiny links in the other column that will continue to drain clicks away from this guy. Total traffic: .22% :

URL/Sitelink 5:Okay, the first of the new links. From out of nowhere, it starts getting traffic on 10/17. But not that much. Total traffic: .12% :

URL/Sitelink 6:Like Sitelink 5, this one really jumped when the rollout started. It had just a few clicks before the rollout for this query, because this URL also ranks for "keyword" on its own somewhere beyond Page 2. Total traffic: .07% :

URL/Sitelink 7:In addition to its new location as Sitelink 7, this URL also lives above the fold on Page 2 for the same query. Since the Sitelinks rollout, it's on a pace to roughly triple its former traffic (for this keyword only, of course). Total traffic: .06% :

URL/Sitelink 8:This link came from nowhere, but it didn't do much. Part of it might have to do with being in the eighth spot, but more likely it's because I believe this particular link doesn't interest people who are searching for "keyword." Total traffic: .02% :

Required disclaimers. This click distribution across the nine links (main link plus eight Sitelinks) is highly variable and will change depending on what Google picks for your Sitelinks, how well the links match the query itself (and the intent of the searcher), etc.

The interesting thing for me here is not that Sitelinks 5-8 are getting clicks. That's not newsworthy. But from a behavioral perspective, it's interesting to watch how users react to links they might not have expected to see associated with their query.

One final note: These eight links are the ones that Google auto-generated. We'll be doing more posts about the ability to subtly affect the Sitelinks choices in the future.

Google Sitelinks Expansion: Early Results in Traffic Funneling
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October 13, 2007

Web 2.0 and Social Media Optimization Trends: Memetrackers

I have been scoring the Internet the last few days trying to find resources related to Web 2.0 and/or Social Media Optimization and I came across the idea of “Memetracker Web Sites.” From a Web 2.0 perspective these sites are geared towards collecting information about “hot topics” or things that create a “buzz” in the news or Blogging communities and make this information readily available to the masses. Wikipedia defines the word “Memetracker” as “a tool for studying the migration of memes across a group of people. The term is typically used to describe Web sites that either: A) Analyze blog posts to determine what Web pages are being discussed or cited most often on the World Wide Web, or B) Allow users to vote for links to Web pages that they find of interest.”

The first Memetracker site was most likely Gabe Rivera’s news and politics site called “Memeorandum.com,” which used an algorithm to collect top stories from a plethora of news Web sites and Blogs.

Here’s a list of the top old school Memetracker sites online:

1) Blogniscient
2) BlogRovr
3) Blogrunner
4) Blogsnow
5) Buzzfeed
6) Chuquet
7) Daily Rotation
8) Feedable
9) Megite
10) Newroo
11) Slashdot
12) StrategicBoard
13) Tailrank
14) Techmeme
15) Technorati Kitchen
16) Tinfinger
17) Topix.net
18) TruthLaidBear

How do I benefit from visiting these sites?

Although these sites are viewed as old school Blog news aggregators, they can still be utilized from a “Reputation Management” standpoint. These Blog sites will enable you to see exactly what is being said about your company products, services, complaints, etc. Use these sites as monitoring resources and be proactive in terms of reputation management – don’t get caught being reactive!

Web 2.0 and Social Media Optimization Trends: Memetrackers
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October 09, 2007

Online Video Social Bookmarking Anyone?

Online video submission sites have been popping up everywhere online for the last year or so. Due to this increase, online marketers are utilizing this form of marketing to get their clients’ Web sites greater exposure in the search engines. Video marketing is becoming a power force for companies seeking to distribute branding content online in a viral fashion. Syndicating video content through social bookmarking sites is a great opportunity to aid a company’s Universal Search Engine Optimization efforts. As we know, Google has changed the way it is displaying its search results (Universal Search) to give users more content options in one interface.

There are many types of video submission Web sites that exist online, the primary difference being the quality of the videos being displayed on these sites. If you have clients who are creating videos to describe their products, services, etc., then I would recommend creating a video submission strategy to get this type of media found in various places online. By utilizing social bookmarking sites you can ensure that your clients’ videos will be displayed in Google’s search results as well as other media hubs online.

Here are 55 video sharing Web sites I would recommend as a starting point for creating a viral video submission strategy:

AOL Uncut, Blip, Blinkz, Break, Brightcove, Clesh, Cuts, Dabble, Daily Motion, Dave.tv, DivX Stage 6, eefoof, Eyeka, Eyespot, Fliqz, FlixYa, Forscene, Google Video, Gotuit, Grouper, iFilm, JayCut, Jumpcut, Kewego, LiveVideo, Lycos Mix, Metacafe, Mojiti, MotionBox, MyHeavy, MyNumo, MySpaceTV, Ning, OneTrueMedia, Photobucket, Revver, SevenLoad, Soapbox, StashSpace, Sumo, Twango, Veoh, Viddler, Vidilife, Vimeo, Vmix, VodPod, Vsocial, Webshots, Yahoo Video, YouAreTV, YouTube, Yurth, Zeec and Ziddio.

Video submission and/or social bookmarking Web sites have a variety of guidelines for making submissions, so play by the rules and you will see your videos show up all over the place online. You don’t have to go overboard when making submissions, as long as you can get your video to show up on the top video submissions sites like Google and Yahoo video, Metacafe, Blinkz, etc., you will be fine from a distribution standpoint.

Online Video Social Bookmarking Anyone?
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October 01, 2007

Google Search Results Already Finding Columnist Articles

Frank and Maureen and Thomas, oh my!

The chipped cement still has yet to be cleaned up fully from the wall being torn down at that historical error known as TimesSelect, and already we are seeing NY Times columnists able to commune with readers freely at point of search, at least at the Frank and Maureen level:


As internet titan Alan Meckler noted in his posting of the Times e-mail to subscribers, search results like these were the driving force:

Since we launched TimesSelect, the Web has evolved into an increasingly open environment. Readers find more news in a greater number of places and interact with it in more meaningful ways. This decision enhances the free flow of New York Times reporting and analysis around the world. It will enable everyone, everywhere to read our news and opinion - as well as to share it, link to it and comment on it.

Sharing it, linking to it, and commenting on it are the currency of being able to find it in search, and that might be important to a newspaper if, as the latest surveys indicate, 91% of adults use a search engine to find information and 72% get news therefrom.

Ya think?

LATE UPDATE: We just noticed that similar to 1989, another Eastern Block Web Site is about to topple...

Google Search Results Already Finding Columnist Articles
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Descriptive Snippets for News Sites

On the heels of Google noting the importance of a strong meta description, I felt compelled to remind you that while I agree with that in theory for most sites, not all Google properties are using it the way publishers would like. Old media is a big enough ship to turn around, and it has finally swung around to see that search is important (see John's post about Times Select), so while they're feeling nimble, I want to offer them some additional advice on click-throughs from news sites such as Google News.

Descriptive snippets on news sites have a tough job. Newspapers need their descriptions to be the "hook" that entices readers like me to click through. They need to be written to fully reside in the confined character quarters that news SERPs allow them. They need to short enough to tease and convince me that I won't get the full story by skimming headlines, but they need to be long enough that I believe THIS SPECIFIC SITE has the full story.

But the problem is that Google News doesn't consistently pull descriptive data from the meta description. Instead, it tends to pull characters from the byline, wire data (if applicable), graphics captions (if applicable), and the first paragraph of the story.

Take the Houston Chronicle as a site that just doesn't get it. In looking through my customized home page of Google News, the algo determined I might be interested in the articles shown here:

The Chronicle messes up because the first text the engine sees after the author's byline is the error text belched out by the Flash sniffer. Not exactly your article's best foot forward.

In a situation like this (an algo-generated list of stories I might like), the Chronicle has the only article about Franchione (the Texas A&M football coach). So the headline itself might be enough to convince me to click through. But if I'd searched Google News for [Franchione], the Chronicle's article would be one of many, and due to the lack of description, my click would almost certainly go elsewhere.

So what's a poor paper to do, beyond making sure its no-Flash error text gets buried out of the way? Is the rest of the article set up to give your description maximum exposure? Take a look at the following headlines and descriptions and see who really gets it:

In the shot above, the green text is descriptive text about the story itself, while the yellow text is author/byline/wire information. The LA Times gets it because they bury the byline AFTER the story's lede, as shown in the shot at the left. Only the Times gets its WHOLE abstract on the SERP. The other papers' abstracts get cut off because they lead with author bylines. On the actual article page (shown at left), notice how the Times' placement of the intro paragraph followed by the byline is mirrored on the actual Google News SERP above.

Unless your story's author IS PART OF the story itself or is part of the brand (think Dowd, Ebert, Buckley, etc.), you'll need to experiment to ensure that your byline doesn't distract readers and keep them from getting the full benefit of the description you've written. Test, test, test, and make sure your readers get the most tempting view of the story you can manage.

Descriptive Snippets for News Sites
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September 28, 2007

The Emergence of Universal Search Engine Optimization

In May of this year, Google announced its new Universal Search System which blended traditional search results with news, video, music, images, local and book search engine portals, as well as Blogs on a single page to help users find information with greater ease. Universal Search, a new platform which represents a major shift in information display and retrieval, is causing search engine optimization companies to rethink how they conduct service offerings. So what does this mean for SEO professionals?

For those who conduct Search Engine Optimization services for clients, “Universal Search” is yet another marketing opportunity worth considering. Our industry is already known for dealing with extreme change on a monthly basis, and as a result of being able to adapt to this ever-changing market, this has enabled us to thrive in the industry. With these changes, we must re-invent or enhance our offering to meet the growing changes presented by Google in order to stay ahead of the curve. The emergence of Google’s Universal Search now forces SEO professionals to look outside the box for providing their customers with bleeding edge Internet marketing solutions.

To be able to help our clients rank in the top Google search results, we now have to look towards creating effective SEO strategies that involve RSS, news, videos, audio files, images, local and book search engine portals, and Blogs. With so many new things being displayed in Google’s search results it will be much harder to attain a top ten search engine listings for clients. However, this doesn’t mean that the world is coming to an end for SEO’ers. Nevertheless, it means that we must look towards existing Google search platforms and integrate them into a new strategy called “Universal Search Engine Optimization.”

Universal Search Engine Optimization encompasses traditional SEO (on-site & off-site) methodologies as well as combines Web 2.0 marketing tactics, i.e., RSS, Online Optimized Press Releases, Podcasts, Vodcasts, Blogs, Social Bookmarking, Social News sites, Image and Book listing optimization, as well as Local Search, that aids clients in gaining a greater market share within Google’s Universal Search results.

The following Internet marketing activities make up a large part of Universal SEO:

"Definitions in parenthesis taken from Wikipedia"

RSS -- “RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts.”

Online Optimized Press Releases -- Tailoring a company’s news in such a manner to gain greater visibility online through optimizing elements within the press release.

Podcasts -- “A podcast is a digital media file, or a series of such files, that is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and personal computers.”

Vodcasts -- "Video podcast (sometimes shortened to vidcast or vodcast) is a term used for the online delivery of video on demand or video clip content via Atom or RSS enclosures.”

Blogs -- “Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject such as food, politics, or local news; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic.”

Social Bookmarking -- “A way for Internet users to store, organize, share, and search bookmarks of web pages. In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share.”

Social News Sites -- News aggregation (social network) sites that gain stories from community members online.

Image Optimization -- Effectively optimizing image file names, alternate text, and the utilization of photo sharing sites such as Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket, etc.

Book Listing Optimization -- Optimize Book company Web site pages to enhance placement in search engines for the titles of books for sale.

Local Search Listings -- Create local business listings and optimize Web sites to better perform amongst local search engine (Google Local, Yahoo Local, etc) listings.

To stay competitive in the ever-changing SEO industry, we need to create strategies for our clients that focus on all aspects of Universal Search. I believe this new form of search results presented by Google will open many doors for companies seeking to embrace the evolution of search.

The Emergence of Universal Search Engine Optimization
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