Archive for June 8th, 2010
Matt Cutts SMX Keynote starts in 10 minutes. Stay tuned here (and keep refreshing) for live blog coverage.
Firstly, I find it amazing that Matt Cutts has his own set – different than what everybody else uses.
Danny started out with some lifejackets for MayDay and then rejecting the Caffeine free diet coke in favor of some with Caffeine. Cute.
First UP – Caffeine Caffeine is now live! Here’s the official Google announcement. Way back when, Google hadn’t indexed the web in about 4 months. Cue the Google dance – where they’d pull data centers out of rotation and people got different results based on the data center they went to.
Elections, 9/11 reminded Google that QDF, or freshness matters. in 03 they came up with the Fritz update to switch to incremental updates. Now, we have caffeine. Instead of crawling billions of pages, indexing later, then pushing live – caffeine indexes a document immediately after it crawls it.
50% fresher documents. Easier to annotate. Unlocks a ton of flexibility on the Google side.
Mayday Time.
Matt’s team had nothing to do with Mayday. It was an algorithmic change. According to my lunch conversation with Maile Ohye, the goal of Mayday was to make long tail results more useful.
Matt is parroting what Maile said at lunch: How do you look at stuff that’s technically not webspam, but it’s not very high quality either. Maile called these things “weeds.”
If you’re affected by MayDay look at your content and see how you can add usefulness, or unique content.
Danny’s point was right on – hopefully this hurts mahalo or demand media. He didn’t acknowledge it, but it’s clear this could be aimed at that crap Calacanis unleashes on the web daily.
Matt refuses to call out a low quality site, but Danny does: it’s eHow. I agree, those things suck.
Matt says they’re going to look at video sitemaps more. That’s good since Bing doesn’t.
Webmaster tools is adding “crypto 404s” or “soft 404’s” That’s where you return a 200 code but the page itself says “not found.”
Google is looking at improving the cache. Wouldn’t it be great if you could figure out where/how Google pulls your snippet. Danny wants Matt to stop using ODP – however we can all opt of using ODP with a meta tag.
Danny: Google should buy ODP and fix it, then they can be #2 for all results right under wikipedia.
Question Time: (I’m only posting questions that don’t bore me)
Mayday is NOT related to google news at all.
HTML5 is also unrelated to caffeine. Having validated code does Not make you rank higher.
Matt just called out a webmasters tools engineer. He has no idea what type of night he’s in store for from the mobs here.
Google’s approach to paid links is more so just to stop those links from counting.
I’m stealing this from toddmintz: Sculpt abs, not pagerank.
Google has improved it’s discovery of finding links within javascript – in many cases including the spam case – but that doesn’t mean you should use JS links over static HTML links.
Apparently Chrome is very popular in Belgium – either that or they’re sucking up to Google.
Danny Sullivan created Matt Cutts twitter account as a joke then gave it to him. That’s how Matt got on twitter. Matt says buzz is similar to twitter in how we all signed up, didn’t know what it was for, then started using it. I thought that was wave…..
The crowd got a nice laugh out of the term “Many search engines.”
Google is looking at changing rich snippets so that it can happen automagically without webmasters having to apply. This is something I’d really like to see. Timeframe is short, hopefully not months.
Can Google tell if a page is positive or negative? Yes. Do they use sentiment analysis as a signal? Matt doesn’t think so.
Google analytics and bounce rate are not used in general search rankings. Let me repeat: Google doesn’t use bounce rate.
Danny suggests putting Wikipedia in it’s own section separate of rankings and let everybody else rank.
June 8th, 2010
Link Building can be boring. Let’s hope this isn’t about top 10 lists and the same old shit we’ve already heard.
Roger Montti – b2b links are a challenge. Use allintitle: “keyword” to find sites that link to relevant resources.
Backlink Trolling – see who’s linking to your competitors and cherry pick the best ones. You can’t just rely on this technique though. It’ll only make you “as good” as your competitor, not better. Ideally you want to find sites that don’t link to your competition. Work with a reputable link building agency for link acquisition.
linkdomain:relatedsite.com – site:relatedsite.com “sponsors” will find sponsorship opportunities that youre competitors are using.
Did you know that .us sites can’t hide site ownership? Just a thought.
Industry associations are a great way to get links. Spam thought: Creating a fake industry association is a great way to get people to pay you for links!
Paid Links. we all do it, we’re all discrete about it. If you’re not discrete you’re welcoming a reputation management issue.
So far, much of this presentation is the same old crap we’ve been talking about for years. Now I see why Danny Sullivan hates putting together link building panels.
Danny’s Tip: Don’t ask him or Matt Cutts for a paid link.
Ok Arnie Kuenn’s turn now.
Have fun and be creative. Do a little research before you contact somebody asking for a link.
Build a relationship with the site you’re asking for a link on.
Find broken links, email the webmaster and let them know about the broken links while suggesting your own site as a resource to be added.
Hmm. Offer to write a guest post for a blog and offer to promote that post on your twitter account. This works great if you have a good twitter following.
This is the guy behind the “google to start SEO agency” story that made rounds in late April after newsvine didn’t get the april fools joke.
Chris Bennett is up now.
Infographics are cheesy but they seem to work very well for making something boring interesting. This makes sense because I’ve retweeted a few of his graphics in the past without even knowing it.
Offer to “guest viral” content out to other sites.
Gil Reich: Being an authority starts with claiming that you are.
No offense to Gil, he’s really entertaining, but I think I’ve become generally bored with link building in general. This time slot needed something better. Owell.
Stop trying to figure out what people/engines perceive as trusted and authoritative and work on becoming trusted and authoritative.
Debra Mastaler – i don’t know who she is but she likes the queen of england. #random
How can you get even more links out of your content? Recommends Dapper.net also rss mix. Also check out Yoast’s wordpress rss footer plugin. http://yoast.com/wordpress/rss-footer
Don’t chase links, chase the community! That’s solid advice.
You can’t fight wikipedia? Sure you can: I did.
Interesting idea: use chat roulette with a sign saying “link to me.” Not sure I like it, but it’s creative.
Buy old websites that have links. I’ve tried this myself but I’m not a big fan. Purchasing a live site that still exists though does have some legs to it – especially for microsites.
My (ever evolving) Summary: Link building is hard, and most SEOs don’t want to do hard work. That’s why we keep wanting link building sessions, but when it comes down to it the only good methods are the tried and true ones: build quality content. Good content will go viral with very little effort and it helps users.
Thought of the day: We’d get a lot more links by just all linking to each other than by sitting in a room for an hour talking about link building.
June 8th, 2010
Session 1 out of the way. Met Matt Cutts, found some water, and stole a press seat in the front row with a power strip! Seeing how this session is about Real time SEO, I should probably live blog it. What’s more real time than that?
Danny started out by telling us what search is. Thanks Danny. He’s not telling us what search marketing is about. We all know this, and yet strangely most of us gave the same presentation to a cabbie on the way here this morning.
Normal Search, blah blah blah we all know this. No need to summarize here. But what is real time search?
A key difference between normal search and real time search, is that with real time search you know exactly who’s asking. That’s what happens on Twitter. Unlike how Google is many to many, real time search is one to one. You see the tweet, and reply to the tweet.
Danny’s talking about “anyone know” searches. I’ve done a bunch of these in the past – with very little replies. He’s talking about an experiment where he answered questions with links, and actually got thanked!
Yes, Twitter nofollows links, but that nofollow falls off on all the places using the API or scraping twitter. I’ve tested this personally and it’s worked greatly.
Even though it’s called real time search, relevancy is still king. Relevant > Recent. Relevant results can even get more “hang time” in search results.
YourOpenBook.com – plenty of marketing or nepharious potential.
Stew Langille from Mint is taking the podium now. I’ve always been a big fan of Mint – having used it during beta.
Stew is talking about developing strong content for real time SEO. Trending topics, news, financial trends, etc all make strong topics for Mint. Talks about seeing search for “trillion dollars” back during auto bailouts and creating a video – that ranked well in real time results. To me, this is somewhere small agencies can shine, as a large company could never pull off a same time video.
Mint also tailors content specifically to communities like Digg (example: the renter’s manifesto.)
RT @AdrianEden: No matter how well you do something, if you do it in a boring fashion no one cares.
Q&A is a big part of real time search. Mint has developed their own yahoo answers style section. Noticing many sites developing more real estate to Q&A.
Mint uses APIs from google trends, and twitter as well as free tools like Klout.com and Hootsuite (I hate hootsuite) Theory: Build what you can’t buy, the data and APIs are out there.
Danny’s back on the podium. Believe it or not, Google IS a real time search engine. However it’s hard to guage traffic from those links that show up in real time search. Cute: advance internet and John Shehata. They run Mlive.com, a favorite site of mine as well as 25 newspapers that you’ve probably heard of.
Real time ranking factors:
Author Quality + Site Authority / Trust + Relevancy
For many things like Twitter, facebook, myspace, etc traditional ranking signals just don’t exist.
Thinks to consider: User authority, blogging freshness, number of followers, quality of followers, ratio of followers, URL real time resolution. Retweets in the last day, minute, hour.
SEO Things that don’t really apply to real time search: Number of links, domain authority, quality of links, inbound vs outbound links, link neighborhoods.
It’s not about how many followers you have, but how reputable those followers are. @pageoneresults has been screaming this for years.
Try running your account through Twitalyzer to see your influence.
Engagement is NOT a huge factor when it comes to ranking. my note: but don’t discount engagement when it comes to measuring ROI.
OK so how do I get into real time search?
Google has a firehose from twitter. A quick way to check to see if you are included is to go to twitter and search for from:username
Make it easy for users to share your links, tweets, statuses, etc – but don’t overdo it by adding 50 little icons. John recommends limiting it to 5. The easier the better, twitter API, twitter box, etc.
It’s all about encouraging retweets. saying “please retweet” actually works. Also keep content short to leave room for the RT @username stuff.
Connect your social profiles from site to site. I do that here: ryanmjones.com
Monitor hot trends. Spammers do this well – so should you. Do you have a calendar of seasonal search trends that relate to your business? Queries like IRS address happen yearly. People search for movie times on saturdays. Are you prepared?
If you’re not using Google trends, you need to be. Let’s you know all kinds of useful information like who broke the story, the top links, how many mentions, etc.
Things Not To Do:
Don’t spam has tags by putting them all into the same tweet. #smx #mileycyrus #bp #oil
Don’t abuse URL shortening services
Don’t have several twitter accounts on the same IP
Don’t post spammy looking tweets (there goes my whole account)
You can track real time search results in analytics packages by looking for google.com/url?q= in the referer. Nice find!
Hugo Chavez went from associating Twitter with Terror, to hiring 200 people to manage his twitter account calling it a “weapon that needs to be used by the revolution.” Hugo Chavez cracks me up.
Don’t spam the world to create ambient buzz. You need a human behind your twitter stream. It’s all about smart automation. You need to be engaged.
The thing I can’t fathom is that people still tweet asking for cheap hotels and airfare. I always assumed most people already know where to look. Spam idea: tweet keyword relevant questions so that you can answer them with your corporate account?
Instead of creating several twitter accounts, try creating granular twitter lists and promoting those.
Let’s talk about our tools (giggity)
Twitterfeed was mentioned. dlvr.it seems to have a nice feature set. closely.com could be good for small businesses offering specials.
Chris says he knows blackhatters watching google trends and google news to pick hot topics to mention. He’s right, I know several people in this room who do exactly that.
MattMcgee doesn’t like using automated tweet tools. I agree – we can only take so much Guy Kawasaki in our lives. (update: danny made this comment a few minutes after I just did. I’m glad we agree)
Danny Sullivan referred to new style retweet as “blech” The panel seems to be split on their preferred method. I prefer the old style where everybody sees it.
One thing I’d like to see in twitter is topicality over time. How can we know how often Danny Sullivan tweets about pizza? Has he mentioned it the past? We currently don’t know.
My thoughts & summary: There seems to be a fine line between properly using real time search and spamming – and most of it has to do with whether or not your users find you helpful. When it comes down to it, real time search is similar to normal search in that it’s all about finding relevant and useful results that are helpful to users.
June 8th, 2010
SEO for Google vs Bing is about to start here at SMX. Matt Cutts, Rand Fishkin, Sasi and Janet are in the house. Danny just opened with a terrible Sex and the city 2 joke, and now we’re being pitched to. Really, starting with a pitch? #smx #a1a (more spam shit).
Ok here goes. I’ll edit this down to only the crap that seems to matter. I’m leaving out all the basic stuff that would bore most people.
Sadly, Al Gore is not in the room.
Janet Driscoll Miller: Why should we worry about Bing? It’s going to be a 2 engine world soon. Heat maps show that people look at Google and Bing the same. Bing seems to out perform Google on Pages/Visit and Time on Site according to her metrics.
Big supports .xml sitemaps via the sitemaps.org protocol – however unlike Google Bing doesn’t accept video or news sitemaps. It does support sitemap indexes though.
Google has places for local listing, bing has something similar.It’s called bing local listing center but it doesn’t support this chrome browser I’m using.
She’s claiming that site links in Google and Bing only show on the first result, and Matt Cutts perked up. I think he noticed she’s wrong. Here’s an example query: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=fail+pictures&aq=f&aqi=g4g-s1g5&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=
In Bing, you can’t edit your site links like you can in Google.
Bing News: has no way to submit your site to their news search. You’ll have to email [email protected] with an RSS feed.
Oh Noes! Cash back is going away in July.
Bing has added a “share this” button right into search results for images (example: polar bears. I’m not sure how crazy I am about this. Who shares something before visiting it? Also, no link love provided – the “share this” feature gives you a Bing URL, not the URL of what you’re sharing.
Cutts got a good chuckle out of the fact that Bing video preview only works on Youtube and not on MSN video. Looks like Bing needs a helping of their own dog food. I hear it’s tasty. Here’s Matt’s Take on the session.
To disable document preview in Bing search results add < meta name =”msnbot”, content=”nopreview” >
Or you can add x-robots-tag:nopreview to your robots.txt file.
Danny is talking about making pages for different search engines. Some people admitted to doing this. It’s not something I’d like to admit in a room of SEO’s.
Rand has a slide up about bringing more science to SEO. I’m all for that,but how successful will that be in an era where roughly 50% of SEO’s don’t think that they need to know HTML. You can check out Rand’s slides here.
So far if I could sum up the Bing/Google strategy in one sentence it would be: Just make an awesome, findable site and don’t worry about the differences.
So glad Rand brought up correlation and causation, as this is where many misguided SEO beliefs come from. It’s also the focus of all those video questions I had answered last month.
Keyword Exact match domains have a very high correlation to top ranking in both Bing and Google. Is the domain that much of a factor? Or is it that an exact match domain can really only be about that topic. Also, achor text to a site like “failpictures.com” would probably just say “fail pictures” giving a substantial boost. (my example, not his… I typed this before he spit his out)
All in all, keywords in domains DO matter – as those of us in spammy activities have known for a while!
Interesting: Keywords in sub-domain have very low correlation to ranking in Bing, but much higher in Google. Factor, or related to the high volume of sub-domain spam out there?
Rand is talking about ALT attributes. Where’s Jill Whalen at? 🙂
Rand’s data shows .org has the highest correlation to rankings, and negative correlation to .edu. WTF? Here’s where correlation <> causation comes in – but I’m willing to bet several SEOs sitting in this room are currently registering .org domains. update: looks like this data is completely skewed by wikipedia since it’s a .org.
Rand said some more stuff about links and anchor text, but I missed it while I was hijacking Matt Cutts google buzz page and discussing shitty seos with Janet Miller on Twitter.
Cutts is speaking now.
Matt says Don’t chase search engines, chase the user experience – because that’s the goal of search engines; to chase search experiences. They just have different methodologies of doing so, but the goal is the same.
Matt says Bing shows Wikipedia more than Google – I didn’t know more than 100% was possible.
Sasi says don’t worry about “bing-like” or “google-like”, worry about “what does the user like?” Don’t do anything specific for search engines (I’m sensing a theme here) do it for the user.
Good question for Sasi: What will happen to yahoo site explorer? Sasi says at the end the SEO experience will be good – but no official details here.
What we DO know is that Bing & Yahoo rankings will be exactly the same – just like the old Google AOL deal.
Idea for next time: Bring a loud buzzer for when people speak.
Time’s up, I hope you found this review helpful. Leave me some comment love and check back later for other live blogs from the session – if I can find a power outlet.
June 8th, 2010
