SoloSEO

The Increasing Importance of Content

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on July 24th, 2007

To really get an understanding of what good content is about and why it is so important, Copyblogger is a great site to visit. I subscribe to their blog and really find the advice and examples offered extremely helpful when it comes time for me to sit down and write. And because content will always be one of the most difficult and important aspects of site optimization, getting all the help we can concerning content is quite important.

Good content is simply a well written paragraph or page which communicates to the potential client, exactly what we hope to communicate, with no ambiguity, while it also offers info to the search engines so our site is categorized properly within their database. But the ability to write well isn’t something anyone can do without some training and practice. Writing is more than just using ones imagination, or creatively putting down ideas with nice verbiage, it also has to do with technical guidelines, such as proper punctuation, verb tense and sentence structure, etc. Online content is a very interesting animal, there is quite a bit of it, with more being thrown up everyday for a variety of reasons. All this new content is quite a bit of data for the search engines to process quickly and accurately, and then rank efficiently. However, site owners shouldn’t panic about all this new content, as much of the new and existing content if of questionable quality. In fact, I believe all this new content actually offers good writers an increased opportunity to shine long-term in the search engines ranking, if they continue to create high-quality content.

Let me explain, I personally subscribe to just over 50 blogs. And of these blogs, I would say there are only about 5 that could be considered well written. Most of these blogs are extremely informative, and good advice often abounds, but the sentences one needs to muck through to pull all the info out can be painful to read. I actually shudder at some sentences posted. In some cases reading poorly written blogs kind of feels like taking Nyquil to me. I really hate taking Nyquil, it causes me to gag, and the taste, as well as the aftertaste is putrid. It is a horrible experience. However, I will take it when I am really sick, even though I despise it, because I know I will feel better once I get it down. Reading some blogs is also uncomfortable, but I know by reading them I will learn something, but it sure isn’t enjoyable. (Which doesn’t bode well for their long-term readership numbers and growth rate)

Interestingly enough, some of the most knowledgeable SEO consultants seem to really struggle to write quality content. I originally found this odd, but it now kind of makes sense as I have had time to learn the history of SEO. Early on, when search engine marketing was in its infancy, some very bright individuals learned they could employ various questionable optimization tactics to get a site to quickly perform well on the search engines. One of these techniques was to simply fill site pages with random non-sensical text, then sprinkle in some carefully chosen keywords to fool the search engines into believing the site had some relevance on these keyword topics. Some of these individuals even had this phony content page creation technique automated, so they really had to do very little to have thousands of pages online in no time. So, in a very real sense, they simply used technology to employ their SEO tactics quickly, and frankly got good results with them. But now those days are gone, and they never thought they were going to need to really write something readable someday. Presently the search engines have become quite good at detecting and properly ranking these poorly written and non-sensical sites, while conversely awarding higher ratings to sites with quality content. And as the search engines continue to improve sniffing out poorly written sites, the importance and rankings of good quality content will increase. Think about it, with all the new content flying up online daily, how are site engines going to most efficiently deliver the search results most relevant as quickly as they need to? They are going to have to do better at determining the quality of content provided on sites, and award the well-written sites.

Above just the search engine results, there is also a more basic reason to focus on quality content, which is to give potential clients a good impression of the company. As a point, when searching for an expert on any given topic, it is much easier for us to feel comfortable with them, if we feel we understand them, and what they are about. If we can tell they have taken considerable care in presenting themselves in a professional manner, them we are more likely to believe they will take this care with us as well. Also, let’s face it, when search engines serve up quality sites, and reputable companies on their search results pages, it reflects well on the search engine’s algorithm and the firm’s image. However, when search engines frequently serve up garbage, irrelevant sites, no one will search with them anymore. So since search engines are going to do a better job of analyzing content, we need to make sure we are consistently adding quality content, or perhaps paying some professionals to do it for us. Many of you already know Michael and I started a content creation company, simply based on our understanding of the importance of quality content, and the difficulty to produce it consistently over time.

So how can we become better writers? The easy answer is to read well written content and attempt to learn by analyzing their techniques, but I am of the mind that this method isn’t always practical, possible or long-lasting. Case in point, I am historically not a good writer, I have been told as much by many a professor and teacher through the years. It is so bad, I was required to take various writing classes at almost every level of schooling, from high school, to college, to Master to PhD, each educational level was more challenging to write within, and I have struggled terribly to get my writing skill to a point where it was finally considered acceptable, even if it was only barely so, to some of my educators. But for me these courses were the only way for me to learn it. So, while I didn’t enjoy the writing courses when I took them, I am grateful for the stuff I learned now, and I strongly recommend writing courses to others who struggle as I do. There are many way to take writing courses out there; such as accredited online universities, local community colleges and universities, and even some good home study opportunities where you can move at your own pace. I am confident that any time spent learning to be a better writer will pay dividends in the future. And these benefits will far exceed any short term cost of time, or money required to make it happen. Even if writing content for a site isn’t what you plan do be doing in the future, becoming a better writer is still worth the time and can enhance your ability to communicate in the digital world.

Ultimately, I believe the future of quality content is incredibly bright, and it will continue becoming a more important measuring stick of a site’s quality. And as the search engines get better at properly analyzing the quality of a site’s content, and organizing accordingly, they will be able to more confidently recommend these quality sites to their search customers. It is kind of a cool turn of events, its like search has gone retro like everything else these days. For many years slick technology and automated tactics dominated the search engine rankings, and now we find out we need to draw upon the techniques and skills we were taught, and hopefully learned, in our 9th grade English classes. I guess all these English teachers were actually right, good writing never does goes out of style. Who would have thought that old codger, Mr. Burton, was actually correct all these years?

7 comments Visited 3213 times July 24th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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The Googlerithm

Posted by Michael D Jensen on July 17th, 2007

The Googlerithm is the “Google algorithm”, rolled into a single, catchy term. Ask a programmer what algorithm means, and he’ll probably tell you something like: “An algorithm is a set of instructions to accomplish a task.” In the case of Google’s algorithm, the task is to take a search term and end up with a relevant set of content, sorted by relevance. To accomplish this task, Google has a set of instructions that their machines follow for identifying and sorting relevant content based on the keyword search. This is the Googlerithm. But what exactly are those instructions?

The exact instructions, weights, and specifics about the Googlerithm are probably only privy to a few people on earth that work in Mountain View, California. However, years of SEO experience from SEOs across the globe have contributed to understanding much about the Googlerithm from the outside, based on experimentation and testing.

This is an attempt to condense the Googlerithm into its most basic components. It can serve as a good checklist for your sites, to make sure you aren’t missing important elements in your search engine optimization. Keep in mind there are many more factors, but this is a simple list of the most important items.

Backlinks

• Anchor text of links
• Context of link (subject matter of site and surrounding text)
• Strength of page and site (The Page Strength tool is helpful)

Content

• Keywords in title, header tags (h1, h2), main text, and URL
• Content quality (readability, spam-like?, and possibly manual ratings)
• Internal links (and here, and here, and here)
• Outbound links (topic, quantity, and reciprocal; case study here)

Other Factors

• Age of domain
• Visitor metrics (time on page, click-through rates from SERPs)
• Freshness (see indexed in an hour article)

Take a long, hard look at each of these 3 areas and identify how you are doing in each factor. If you need some more information, I’ve included links to some authoritative articles on most of the factors above. A new version of SEOmoz’ Search Ranking Factors that gathers opinions of experts on a long list of factors. Make a list for yourself on what needs done for each area so that you can make the most out of the Googlerithm.

8 comments Visited 6832 times July 17th, 2007 Michael D Jensen

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Google + SEO = The New “AOL Keyword”?

Posted by Michael D Jensen on June 18th, 2007

We all remember TV, radio, and even print ads back in the AOL era that left us with an AOL Keyword for finding their site. Over time, and as AOL became less important, TV/radio/print ads gave you a domain name instead. Today on the radio I heard a commercial from Honda Certified Used Cars that sounded eerily similar to “type in the AOL Keyword”. The radio ad said to visit Google or Yahoo! and type in the keyword “Honda Certified Used Cars”. Searching for this in Google brings up Honda’s Certified Used Cars site (http://automobiles.honda.com/certified/) as the first listing in the results. Obviously telling us to search for the keyword in Google/Yahoo! is much easier than telling us to go to “automobiles dot honda dot com forward slash certified”.

Plus, they can always control the PPC page. Their PPC page appears to go to the same place, but it actually goes to a page hosted on googlepages.com, so they must be doing some landing page testing.

As I was pondering this, my mind brought me back to last year’s PubCon when John Battelle talked about Google (et al.) as “the new interface to technology”. It literally is our yellow pages, our 411 service, our encyclopedia, our calculator, etc.

Some cautions are in order

1) Obviously if you’re buying radio and TV spots, you need to give out a keyword that you can realistically be in the top for a long time. It should probably include your company name. But if your company name is weird, hard to spell, hard to remember, or just plain dumb, you’re probably a good fit.

2) You’ll need to make sure your SEO is in tip top shape. Honda isn’t going anywhere ranking for that term, but you’re not Honda. Content alone is not going to do it, you’re going to need to build and/or buy some links.

3) You must also realize that you are setting yourself to lose some advertising dollars from your consumers finding alternatives on just their first look into that search space. Hopefully you control more than just 1 listing in the organic results, because otherwise the search results page has 9 other results just on that front page alone, and probably 9 more advertisers running ads on that page.

Is it a Good Idea?

I think we may see it be more common, especially for advertisements about specific products from a company. Honda sells new cars too, but this commercial is to boost their used cars product, and because it takes two clicks (on small text even) from their home page to get to the same place, it makes a lot of sense just to direct them to Google.

Another advantage is that in Honda’s case, they have local dealers selling Honda Certified Used Cars and the ads are geo-targeted. So I can not only find Honda’s site, but I can also find my local Honda dealer and search their inventory from their site (hopefully).

5 comments Visited 9643 times June 18th, 2007 Michael D Jensen

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Links vs Content and Long Tail vs Short Tail Keywords

Posted by Michael D Jensen on June 14th, 2007

Opposition in All Things, Links vs Content

Everything in life has its opposites. There is light and dark, hot and cold, black and white, and of course links and content. Even years after the debate began, the debate still continues. Before I uncover some insight into the answer to links versus content, let me give some background.

When search engines came into being, it was all about content. We still see a lot of companies going off of 1990s philosophies of search engine optimization, focusing solely on meta tags (keywords and description), page titles, header tags, and even using hidden text and links. Google came into being (and was actually named BackRub first) and changed the face of search forever by giving weight to “citations” or links. So now instead of a top 10 results page full of pages that had lots of the keyword you used listed, the top 10 would be full of pages that others linked to using the keyword you just used.

Over time Google has evolved and has hundreds of factors that contribute to its algorithm. The top 2 factors, according to search marketing experts, are (1) Keyword use in Title Tag and (2) Anchor Text of Inbound Link. Obviously there are other important factors, such as who is doing the linking, and the context of the link, and so on. But obviously the title of the page still has importance too.

The Keywords Hold the Answer

So, is it content or is it links? The answer lies in the keyword. Is your keyword in the short tail or the long tail? Now before I explain, let me cover short and long tail keywords, to make sure everyone is up to speed.

Long tail keyword is by far a more common term versus short tail keywords, mainly because “short tail keywords” really just means “keywords”. Look at the graph below, you’ll see the left hand side is where the more common keywords are. They are more popular, more used, and also more competitive in most niches. As an example, short tail keywords would be like “home mortgage”, “home loan”, or “loan rates”. Short tail keywords are typically one, two, or three word keyphrases. The right hand side, the “tail”, contains lots of keywords with less popularity, less traffic, and the landscape is typically less competitive. As an example, long tail keywords would be like “home mortgage provo utah”, “30 year fixed home loan”, or “credit union loan rates”. Long tail keywords are usually three, four, five, even six keywords long.

Finding out if your keyword is long or short-tail is pretty simple. Most you can just look at, count the words, or ask a friend. For others, if you really want to be more certain, you can consult a keyword research tool (SoloSEO happens to have a pretty good keyword research tool!)

Putting It All Together, and Doing Something About It

Back to links vs content, as promised. Hopefully I’m not oversimplifying here, but long-tail keywords can get top rankings (yes, even top 10) based on content alone. Contributions from internal linking structure, title tags, header tags, and so forth are all bundled into “content”. On the links side, links help you rank for short-tail keywords, the more popular and competitive keywords. The better your linking strategy, the better your ranking. I recently posted about anchor text of inbound links, and this gives several examples of sites that have very few if any instances of a keyword that they rank in the top 3 for.

Practically speaking, a good place to start is to organize your keyword list into short and long-tail keywords. For your long-tail keywords, order unique content or write articles for your site/blog. For your short-tail keywords, identify the top 5 keywords you want to rank for and analyze your competitors in that search field. Then pursue a link building/buying strategy that will get you there.

This article appeared originally in our June Newsletter, SEO For the Rest of Us. Subscribe to the SoloSEO Newsletter!

12 comments Visited 10056 times June 14th, 2007 Michael D Jensen

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Does Punctuation Matter to Google or SEO?

Posted by Michael D Jensen on June 11th, 2007

Nope. Except for @, -, and ‘. @ is nice to find someone’s email address. – and ‘ are less helpful because Google goes ahead and searches for the word with the – or ‘ but also without them (substituting a space, or for – it combines the word).

I wouldn’t start writing everything without punctuation though, but that’s just me.

Also see my recent post on Does Keyword Capitalization Matter to Google or SEO? That one is better (and longer) than this post.

If you haven’t subscribed to our monthly newsletter, sign-up today before we send it out! You get a newsletter-only article along with some other cool stuff.

1 comment Visited 5548 times June 11th, 2007 Michael D Jensen

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Does Keyword Capitalization Matter to Google or SEO?

Posted by Michael D Jensen on June 5th, 2007

There are two types of people out there, those who capitalize and those who don’t. When you search for something, do you bother capitalizing your query? Whether you do or don’t, capitalization would seem to be an important characteristic of a search engine query.

Keyword capitalization gives insight into the user’s intention. For example, if I search for “Apple” instead of “apple”, I am probably interested in the company Apple. Before you compare for yourself, what’s your guess on how Google handles results from capitalized or uncapitalized terms?

Apple (company) vs apple (fruit)

Fox (TV network) vs fox (animal)

Bears (sports team) vs bears (animal)

If you guessed what I assumed, you are wrong. Google doesn’t care if you capitalize your search or not. There are really only two noticeable differences:

1) In very few cases the estimated number of results found were different by a few thousand.
2) In all cases I tried the order of the “related searches” were switched around (see bottom of the listings).

These differences have no real significance and may vary from data center to data center even. From a quick check with Yahoo, there are also no differences in results.

The Big Question

So if capitalization doesn’t matter to Google, should it matter in SEO?

Certainly there is the potential for capitalization to have an impact on search engine algorithms and results, especially because Google is always tweaking their algorithm. They aren’t right now, but that doesn’t mean someday they might. Here are some ideas of how capitalization could have an impact in SEO:

Links – I wrote about the importance of anchor text last week, now think if not only the text, but the capitalization mattered? A link to your site could pass more or less link juice depending on if they meant some type of brand, sports team, trademark, slogan, product, or service.

Content – Content is obviously an important part of Google’s algorithm, especially when it comes to 3, 4, and 5+ keyword phrases. What if our content was weighted differently because you were referring to some type of brand, sports team, trademark, slogan, product, or service?

Can SEO’s Capitalize on Keyword Capitalization?

Probably not, not at this point at least. I don’t think Google is going to be integrating capitalization friendly results anytime soon (oh and if they do, I’ll need some type of commission for the idea). They’ve obviously done what they have done for a reason, and breaking that would be huge. One place they could start is modifying the search snippets. Only time will tell.

8 comments Visited 13663 times June 5th, 2007 Michael D Jensen

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Learn SEO Basics: Anchor Text of Inbound Links

Posted by Michael D Jensen on May 29th, 2007

Anchor text for inbound links is one of the most important factors in search engine optimization. According to SEOmoz’ search engine ranking factors (v2), anchor text is the 2nd most important positive factor.

“The text people use to link to you is one of the most important factors — often the most important factor — for how you will rank in Google.” (Danny Sullivan, Mar 15, 2007)

Now that I have your attention, let’s learn about anchor text, and how to benefit from this very important factor.

What is Anchor Text?

Anchor text is the visible text of a link. For example, if I was going to link to a friend’s blog, I might use his name for the anchor text.

Check out Todd Malicoat’s blog.

If I wanted to make the most out of my link for Todd, I would use a nice keyword for my anchor text, for example:

Check out Todd Malicoat’s blog on SEO Consulting.

Todd ranks pretty well already for SEO consulting. If you check the anchor text for his backlinks, he has tons of links for “SEO Consultant” and “SEO Consulting”. If you do a search in Google for “SEO Consultant”, notice how the words “SEO Consulting” get highlighted as well. The words are very related and mean about the same thing, and so Todd is going to rank well for both of those terms. Obviously the anchor text of the link is not the SOLE reason Todd ranks well, but it is a major reason.

The Power of Anchor Text

Many examples show the power of anchor text, but here is one simple one:

Computers

Skip the wikipedia result and look at the Dell result. If you view Dell’s homepage you don’t see the word “computer” anywhere. When you view the source you can find the word “computer” just one time, in the meta tag for keywords. Obviously that doesn’t have the power to get it to that kind of ranking. If you check the anchor text of its backlinks you’ll notice a lot of their backlinks use the text “Dell Computers” or something with the word “computer” in it.

How do I use Anchor Text to benefit my SEO?

Any link building efforts should start with keyword analysis, identifying the keywords you want to rank better for. There are several tools for keyword research, including our Keyword Finder tool in SoloSEO that lets you find keywords from Overture, WordTracker, and Google Adwords all at once and to compare the results side by side.

Link building comes in many forms. Whether you’re requesting links from other sites, submitting to directories, or buying links, it is important to make the most out of your link by choosing the right anchor text. If you are requesting links from others, have the code for your link all ready to go, easy for them to insert into their webpage.

Keep in mind that having all of your anchor text the exact same from all your links may not be the best approach. Try mixing it up by adding a word, changing from singular to plural, or stemming a word differently. Just like above, Google considers “Consulting” and “Consultant” to be very related, enough that they would highlight the other word even though it doesn’t match your search term.

Some other articles on the topic

How to Link to Your Friends, by Todd Malicoat

The Power of Anchor Text, by John Chow (more like Google Bombing, but the Googlebombing algorithm hasn’t hurt him yet)

Aaron Wall’s post about the depreciation of anchor text

V7N discusses link vs content and the ending is a great quote (spoiler alert? hehe):

PageRank does matter. In fact, anchor text and inbound links is 95% of effective search engine optimization. Anyone who tells you otherwise does not practice real search engine optimization.

Subscribe to our RSS feed for my upcoming follow-up post about advanced tips for ways to control anchor text of inbound links, and ways to get more of them.

19 comments Visited 24687 times May 29th, 2007 Michael D Jensen

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Does SEO work in Hawaii?

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on May 15th, 2007

I was gone all last week, in Maui. Yeah baby. It was our first time to Maui, and I loved it. I didn’t even think about writing a post the whole week, I am sure you understand. We had a great time, we enjoyed the beauty of the island, stayed in an amazing place with good friends, played a bunch of golf, hung out with my wonderful wife (who, we discovered, is allergic to macadamia nuts, poor thing), and made some new friends. One of the new friends we actually met on the plane over, his name is John Kennedy, and he is a manager of a wonderful magic/comedy show in Lahaina on Maui called Warren and Annabelle’s. If you are visiting Maui, you MUST attend this show, it was amazing. John, and the entire W&A staff treated us like family (in a good way), and we will never forget the experience, it was fortunately unforgettable. We saw the show on Monday night and were on the island the rest of the week, so later on in the week we called John and he kindly joined us for a round of golf on the Makena North course (which has some of the best views on the island, better than the Kapalua Plantation course, and is frankly a better course, but once again I digress).

During our round the usual topics were up for discussion, and we eventually discussed what we do for a living. I had given John a sleeve of SoloSEO logo golf balls, so he asked about SoloSEO specifically. (In fact, I will be happy to send out a sleeve of these Callaway HX Tour balls, to the first person who leaves a nice comment, and sends their address to info@soloseo.com, these are so rare and new, not even Michael has a sleeve yet). John listened to my simple explanation of what SoloSEO was, and he asked a question many have asked previously… “Does it work?” Excellent question. Either due to beauty of the course, my miserable play, or our competitive banter I don’t remember ever answering John’s question, so I apologize, and now thought I would take some time to fully answer John’s question here. John, a resounding YES, SEO does work, and here is why.

SEO is a process of getting your site into a format in which the search engines can scan it, quasi understand it, categorize it, then refer it to others when the search engines feel your site can deliver what the search client is looking for based on the text they entered into the search engine. Any of the search engines want to handle searches as efficiently and effectively as possible. They are attempting to earn the public’s trust and gain search traffic, ultimately so they can demand advertising dollars from firms who want access to the traffic the search engine attracts daily. This is why we have sections on a search engine results page, consisting of both organic (free) and paid (ads paid for to the search engine for positioning) search results. To keep the public’s trust, search engines must not unfairly mess with the organic search results, which are algorithmically based on a number of factors, including many of the resulting work we control/create in SEO processes.

In the past there were an enterprising, yet deceitful group, who learned to “game” the search engines, using what has been termed “black hat” techniques. These techniques essentially fooled search engines into believing some poor quality site actually had quality content, and reputable products or services which matched what the search clients were search for. Instead, when these pages were visited, search clients would find a bunch of nonsensical text coupled with paid text ads, ironically usually placed by the search engine which originally referred the searcher to this garbage site. This did not make the search engines appear proficient, and the black-hat site owners didn’t care. They were greedily hoping search clients would click on the paid ads, rather than the browser’s back button, so they could make some commission paid to them from the search engines. Very creepy. It would be like finding what appeared to be the best ad in the Yellow Pages for a plumber, then driving to the advertised address only to find a smelly, dark, smoke filled shop, with a greesy guy convincing you to take some pamphlets they had on real plumbers. Then the slime ball expecting the Yellow Pages to pay them for each pamphlet taken by the originally deceived client. It wouldn’t fly in the real world, and it shouldn’t have flown in search.

Who were the big losers in this game of search deceit? First, the searchers, who were looking for something, but made to go through junk sites to find it. Second, the search engines, who were attempting to provide clients with a relevant site, but instead delivered garbage, making the engine look bad, and hurting their reputation. Third, the firms paying the search engines to place the company ads on quality pages, which were instead placed on pages of non-sensical text, which unfortunately associated the firm with the junk site. In all, it was a very bad period in search, and ultimately called into question the search engine’s ability to decipher the good pages from the bad ones, and the effectiveness of good SEO technique. Now the good news, the search engines are now doing an excellent job, really since November 2006, of figuring out these junk sites and removing them from the search results pages, and search has become much better for it.

Now the search engines have a better ability of determining the quality of the sites they index, good SEO technique is more important than ever. Now solid SEO can actually have a bigger and better influence on your site’s performance, than was possible when the search engines results could be tainted by the black hats. Now we can be assured if we do the SEO work, which is most definitely work, then our hard labor will be rewarded, and our sites will perform better, since site quality is more identifiable. The search engines have essentially created a situation where those who work hard are rewarded, and those that still attempt to cheat are more than likely caught, and their offending sites punished. Just how it should have always been.

There are many wonderful, and quality SEO tools out there, but SoloSEO offers the most comprehensive set of online SEO tools, all in one place. SoloSEO gives you a location where you can manage all your SEO processes, from link building to keyword research, from content creation to online competitive analysis, and keeps it all organized for you. In fact, just having a SoloSEO account can improve your online competitive knowledge. SoloSEO offers monthly SEO related reports that can be customized, and sent to you on a monthly basis, via email, without you lifting a finger. With SoloSEO, you will not only know more about the online competitive situation of your industry, but you will have the tools at your disposal to flex some serious SEO muscle, and improve your competitive online position.

So there you have it John, SEO works, everywhere, and even in Hawaii (even if I don’t). SEO is becoming a better use of marketing time and effort because the search engines finally have their act together. To you John on a personal note, thank you for the conversation on the plane, and advice on what to do on Maui, thank you for the evening at Warren and Annabelle’s is was most memorable, thank you for the golf, it was a blast, and thank you for the question, it was an excellent one. We look forward to meeting up with you again soon on Maui (or here)! Until then, to you a heartfelt Aloha and Mahalo!

5 comments Visited 3383 times May 15th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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Google… Here they go again.

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on May 1st, 2007

I read an interesting/alarming Associated Press article by Dibya Sarkar, AP business writer, in the local paper yesterday. Four states, including Arizona, California, Utah, and Virginia, have agreed to “free consulting services” provided by Google. Essentially Google is going to help these states make searching and finding online public documents much easier. While I am the first to admit the Utah state web site needs some serious help, I have been frustrated more than once looking for items which should be much easier to find then they are, I am not totally okay with the planned partnership. I will admit there have been occasions I have been navigating around utah.gov to no avail, not finding what I needed, and actually have attempted to use Google possibly find a page indexed in their SERPs, but with little success there either. Turns out states really haven’t done a good job making these documents truly public, there are those tax dollars at work again. But despite the mess, is Google the best way to go as “search consultants?”

There are those in the article who raised some concerns over Google’s occasional privacy gaffs, and the possibility that some private information might make its way to the search public. I think the hesitation is legitimate, none of us wants our Social Security number out there for the ID thieves to pilfer. So I too hope these states will be responsible and keep all private information private, even at the risk of holding some important documents back for now, before they go and throw the vaults wide open to the brutally efficient, ravenous spiders of Google.

From a business/SEO perspective this partnership also raises other concerns. Are we now going to be forced to compete for keywords against state governments and their Gigabytes of content to rank in the SERPs? Some industries will be hurt more than others, but off the top of my head I could see legal firms, business consulting firms, and accounting firms being big losers in search if all this content is indexed and added to Google’s already gorged servers. As more content pours online, competition for keywords is going intensify, and the situation may make search a more frustrating and difficult task if the SEs don’t change. This content boom adds a strong argument to the importance of categorized search ASAP. If the public is without a simple way to categorize search results, many businesses are going to find themselves buried in the SERPs underneath content created by their own tax dollars. How grossly ironic, how patently unfair.

Add comment Visited 2728 times May 1st, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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Google Categories – Changes to Competitive SEO

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on April 19th, 2007

Lee Odden blogged about Google Categories yesterday. I wasn’t able to duplicate the categories look, but it did get me thinking about the ramifications to online competition if categories in search become commonplace. As well as how categories might influence our SEO strategies as business owners.

Competing in the non-online marketplace has been a focus of research, and resulted in various competitive philosophies put forth by some of the most respected academic business minds in the world. Michael Porter of Harvard fame is one who has essentially dedicated his entire academic life to the concepts of competitiveness, and is seen my many (including myself) as the foremost expert in traditional competitive strategic analysis. But it is interesting to note, competing online is a different animal, and requires a different approach many traditional marketers aren’t quite comfortable with. Let’s take the shoe industry for example. Locally I can think of maybe a couple dozen places I could go and buy shoes, depending on what type of shoe I was looking for. So these local shoe resellers now compete against one another to attract my business. They buy newspaper and radio ads, do mailings, maybe rent a billboard, but they each attempt to get their message out to us, to keep us coming to them, and hopefully staying away from their competitors. But they now also need to keep our attention away from online shoe retailers, which is quite a different task, but important as more potential clients find online shopping appealing. Personally, I can’t remember the last time I bought shoes from a local brick and mortar store. I usually buy from Zappos.com… because I love the huge selection, the customer reviews, the free overnight shipping, and the free shipping on returns. It is a fabulous, no hassle system. Not to mention I don’t have to drive to the mall, deal with the crowds, or with my 2 year old daughter demanding to ride the “wee” (her term for slide) at the mall’s germ ridden treehouse (playground). It is a cesspool of all things icky (bless my wife for always having some Purell on hand to keep me sane).

So as more brick and mortar shops finally decide they also need to have an online presence, they will quickly determine the online competitive environment is very different, and can be intimidating. Not only are there far more competitors, as the geographical bounds are erased, but there are also non-retail sites competing for the same precious keywords. For example, if you type in “running shoes” in Google, you will see both online shoes stores, but also sites which review running shoes listed in the SERPs. So online retailers have to not only compete against more than just other retailers for keywords, but against information sites as well, as they attempt to squeeze onto the first SERP.

I have mentioned in previous posts that we use SEO techniques to improve our sites, so they perform better than our competitors sites. We pay little attention to other sites competing for the same keywords, who aren’t selling the same products, or are just informational sites. For example, we personally don’t care if Wikipedia ranks higher than our site for a particular keyword(s), since a potential customer can’t buy the products we sell from Wiki. We don’t consider Wikiesque sites an important aspect to our competitor focused SEO efforts. But how would Google’s Categories SERP influence competitive SEO efforts? In the Google screen shot in Lee’s post, we can see the categories listed as Comparison Shopping, Reviews, Stores, References and Others. I would be interested to know how these categories were decided upon, and if these will be the only categories for every search return, or will the search categories change based on the term searched? Is the order of the categories consistent, or will it change based on the keyword searched? We will need answers to these questions to properly prepare our SEO strategies. Obviously Google will need to be aware of those which will attempt to game the system and get their site listed in the top category, or in as many categories as possible, without regard to which category they should properly be placed within. I would imagine Google will only allow any given domain to be included in one category, period, or will have some protocol in place to best deal with these issues and how to police the system to hopefully be as efficient and relevant as possible.

Despite all the potential headaches Google might face, I like the idea of searches organized by category. And what I like most as a business person is through a search engine category system, the online competitive environment would more closely mirror the non-online competitive world. Now retailers could compete to be included in the Stores section of a SERP, and Wikipedia and others will be relegated to the References or Reviews sections where they belong. Also, as a searcher out to buy a product, hopefully it would be possible to set my preferences to drop the sites in the Reviews, References and Others sections, so I would just get a page full of retailers for me to peruse, perfect! Then, if we also throw the whole concept of Local search into the discussion, all of a sudden I could see the same couple dozen local shoes stores mentioned earlier listed on a locally-based, shoe oriented SERP. That would be pretty cool, I still won’t buy from them, but it would be pretty cool. As they now would compete against one another, as they have been doing in the “real world” for quite some time. Pretty interesting stuff.

3 comments Visited 4537 times April 19th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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