SEO Secrets ebook Review

SEO Secrets Overview

SEO Secrets is a book about search engine optimisation by Glenn Murray, a SEO Copywriter based just North of Sydney, Australia. The ebook takes the reader through the various aspects of search marketing, including such broad topics as site structure, keyword usage, copywriting for SEO, and preferred marketing strategies by many SEO experts, and even hiring a SEO company.

About the Author, Glenn Murray

Glenn Murray is the Director of Divine Write, a copywriting company based in Sydney, Australia.  Glenn’s reputation for copywriting has led him into writing for global blue-chip companies, and in more recent years, online copywriting and SEO.  Here’s the review…

eBook Structure

SEO Secrets is 213 pages of which are very well structured and written.  For me, this is something that adds a great deal of value to the learning process and something that is too frequently underestimated. There is a logical flow of content helping you build your understanding of search marketing matters from an early stage in the book.

Who is this ebook for?

Many of the typical do’s and do not’s are covered in the book, but there is also explanations of the value of such social media / search marketing decisions…this is what directly has an impact your online marketing and website presence. A book to put me out of business! But really, it does offer a comprehensive online marketing model that is very versatile and could very well be adopted by marketers from a wide variety of industries.

You can pick this book up and, regardless of whether you are a newbie or an expert in the field, you will certainly come away with more ideas about where to focus your online marketing efforts.  Like with all books, it will not provide bespoke answers to your website issues/opportunities/problems, but it will provide a ton of guidance that you can apply in every which way you like.

SEO Secrets’ Negatives

I feel that there could have been a little more coverage on keyword competitiveness – this is, after all, what designates what resources need to be thrown into the SEO mix to rank for those terms.  For me, keyword research, analysis and competitiveness on a deep level is amongst the most important parts of search marketing.  But knowing the depths and complexities of the topic, for someone new to the field, keyword competitiveness could well scare them off!

SEO Secrets could have included a little more emphasis on the quality of the inbound links as opposed to the sheer volume. Low value links are something that was mentioned, but maybe something explaining in more detail why they are bad quality links, and conversely something on what makes the perfect links would be excellent too.

SEO Secrets’ Positives

Apart from lacking in the surface on keyword competitiveness, it focuses clearly on return on investment, prompting great decisions that add value to your operations online. These decisions are bite-size and not overly complicated, and it is this that essentially makes this book an excellent educational resource, tutoring you in concise areas of the field.

SEO Secrets is beyond search engine optimisation techniques though and well into the realms of the strategic delivery of search marketing. You could do a lot worse than spend a few dollars on this book. Quite a lot indeed!

To summarise SEO Secrets

SEO Secrets effortlessly covers the topics of search engine optimisation in an easy to grasp way, covering a wide range of technicalities, including a variety of SEO tips, tricks and ’secrets’!  It is heavily influenced by the premise that content is king, not a bad thing at all…and what better source to learn that from, than a top Australian copywriter.  This book therefore bridges the uneccessary gap of copywriting skills and SEO - something we could all take not of.

SEO Secrets is not a deep look into search engine algorithmic models or the scientific aspects of SEO, but it does provide a wealth of practical and implementable information on optimising websites for improved rankings, and I’m guessing that’s what you’re looking for, right?!

Disclaimer: I have not been asked to write this review, nor received any financial gain / incentive. Now go out and buy it! (p.s. it’s also my first ever book review so be kind in the comments!)

Introduction to IR, LSA (and SEO) by Marie-Claire Jenkins

Following on from my last blog post entitled: “Is Semantic SEO the Marketers SEO“, I received a fantastic response from Marie-Claire Jenkins, a part time PhD student from the University of East Anglia, UK, in the field of Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) and Information Retrieval (IR)…essentially what search engine algorithms use to both index and serve the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), an understanding of which is vital for SEO’s.

One of the best things about SEO for me is that it’s where technology, analysis and creative marketing  converges in such an obvious way.  I had been tackling semantic SEO and how it related very closely to marketing concepts in my previous post and I could not believe my luck when a finalist of 2006’s Loebner Artificial Intelligence (AI) award agreed to help explain concepts around search engines in more depth.  Here’s the interview, but first a few definitions…

Glossary

To help explain a few of the points below, here is an explanation of a few of the key terms used…

How search engines work

Latent Semantic Indexing and Analysis:

“Semantic” = meaning
“Latent” = present but hidden

LSI = The analysis of the hidden meaning of words and how often they occur in a document.

Probabilistic Latent Semantic Analysis

Probabilistic Latent Semantic Indexing is a novel approach to automated document indexing which is based on a statistical latent class model for factor analysis of count data.

What is your background and experience in information retrieval and SEO?

I’m called Marie-Claire Jenkins (nickname CJ). I have worked as an SEO for 6 years where I worked for a big fortune 500 company taking care of SEO and also research and development (reputation mining, sentiment analysis…), so it was a varied role.  I then worked for a hip digital agency as head of search and enjoyed it very much.

I did a Degree in translating interpreting, and then an MSc in computing, my thesis was in machine translation. I won a scholarship for a PhD, but I didn’t want to give up the SEO work I was doing. I ended up doing my PhD part-time. I’m in my final year now and my project is on natural language generation and understanding. It requires a good knowledge of information retrieval, information extraction, NLP [natural language processing], cognitive linguistics, linguistics, human computer interaction and AI.

I’m a yogi and practice Ashtanga every day, I love running and swimming. I’m an internet addict and a news junkie. I love record shopping.

How would you describe IR and it’s importance for search engine optimisation?

Information retrieval is the bread and butter of most systems. In order for example for my natural language system to have anything to actually provide to the user, it needs to find the relevant knowledge in the knowledge Base. Search engines obviously rely on it, but they also work with ranking algorithms, which are not strictly part of IR and HCI methods, AI, and a host of other things.

Information retrieval should definitely be understood at a basic level by SEO experts. The reason for this is that when you rely on search to make a living, you should have a thorough idea of how the system that you rely on works. If you don’t keep up with new developments and trends, you could be missing a trick. Most importantly, keeping up with different theories is very important because it helps you prepare for possible changes in the future. Social networks and Web 2.0 for example were being discussed in the computing community long before it became mainstream.

There are a good number of SEO people who do take the time to research and understand IR developments such as Bill Slawski, David Harry , Marios Alexandrou (a brilliant example of someone jumping in and not being afraid to) the guys at SeoMoz and others too. There are a lot though that don’t and rely on hearsay or basic blog information. This is good as a launchpad but the next step is to verify all of this for yourself and not be afraid to ask questions.

What are the most important aspects of algorithmic LSI and PLSI?

The initial theory of LSI and it’s methodology has been extended a great deal throughout the years, but if you are interested in the original post you can find the original LSA pdf here.  SEOs, either directly or indirectly, have taken some interest in these methodologies but a greater understanding is obviously quite necessary.

Here are also a few extracts from the Science for SEO blog [ed: which you really have to read - great writing on semantics and SE's] various blog posts on latent semantic, indexing and analysis that have been written on the subject to provide a little more detail:

Currently the focus on keywords, which is what LSI uses isn’t quite right anymore.  I’ve seen a lot of recent research (and so have many of you) talking about semantics.  There is lot of work on using semantic units which are not always keywords anyway.

The question should be “What multitudes of methods is Google using?” and “I wonder which LSI method is being used, although I know it is just one factor in a very very large system”.  Not “How should I optimise my site for LSI” - I’d ask you which type.  I believe that Matt Cutts said something very generic when he said Google used LSI

If you’re interested in going one step further and build, or use your own semantic search engine to run these queries, take a look at these latent semantic tools.

What is the importance of LSI / PLSI areas of study for people that take an interest in search engine optimisation?

I think people look for anything that might answer a question, and LSI gave everyone something to embrace. I think it was very valuable because it helped people understand how basic topic detection could work, and helped them gain insight into how to write and present their content. It was very useful for everyone. LSI has since evolved quite a lot and so the basic formula is still useful for Seo people, but you know, the actual LSI method looks very different.

PLSI is the upcoming form of semantics as developed by search engine engineers. How do you think SEOs should build this into their practices on a day-to-day basis?

I think that as far as any LSI technique is concerned, the SEO should simply worry about providing really useful content. I think that working beyond a keyword basis is very useful. There is a lot of talk about semantics, and I know that I use methods in my computing work that looks for structures rather than keywords, and also looks for the surrounding structures, how they correspond to each other and that kind of thing. If little me is doing that, i suspect that the big grown up scientists have built on these techniques and I know they have been expanded a great deal - I don’t need such accuracy in my work.

SEO experts should provide very relevant content to the page they are writing for. Using language that is proper to the topic, and that represents it well if the way to go IMHO. Keywords provide some benefit but there is more to look at.

And also, what about a strategic basis…thinking long-term is there something that you believe should SEOs should consider in their work?

I would simply say use common sense, and take the time to learn about IR. You don’t need to be an expert, and you don’t need to understand all the big complicated equations and the difficult mathematical concepts. At least read the abstract, introduction and conclusion. This should give you enough information.

It’s important to recognise the benefits of Latent Semantic Analysis too:

Its advantage over simple keyword analysis (Boolean search = True or False) is that it can infer meaning from words which is not evident, and match words which would not normally happen with other methods.  For example, “computer”, “PC”, “laptop” are all connected.  Documents are put together even if it is not obvious that they are connected, because a “latent semantic space” is created.

It uses vectors in a a high-dimensional vector space (lots of them).  It creates a term-document matrix from all the documents.  Then 3 matrices are created using SVD (singular value decomposition) (also the second matrix houses the singular values of the original matrix in a diagonal matrix).  This means that sets of terms or documents can be represented as d-dimensional vectors. Using the cosine of the angle between these vectors, there is  now an easy-to-calculate similarity measure between any two sets of terms and/or documents.  It can be used in any language because of the way that it’s constructed.

And the limitations of LSI:

1. The resulting dimensions can be very difficult to interpret so there are mistakes.  It’s unclear what the resulting similarities between terms really means.
2. The input is a bag-of-words so we don’t have any text structure information.
3. A compound term (bull-headed) is treated as 2 terms.
4. Ambiguous terms create noise in the vector space
5. There’s no way to define the optimal dimensionality of the vector space
6. There’s a time complexity for SVD in dynamic collections

So because of the limitations of LSI, there has been a move towards probabilistic latent semantic indexing / analysis:

1. It has a more robust statistical foundation and provides a proper generative data model
2. It uses the EM algorithm (Expectation maximization to avoid over-fitting (nodes too specific to noise) - this makes it far more flexible
3. It can deal with domain specific synonymy and polysemous words

…the implications for search engine marketing therefore become all the more apparent regarding site structure and meaning found in the flow of information.

Beyond how PLSI is used, how do you see IR moving forward? Is PLSI as far as we can go with regards to search engines?

I don’t think it really about PLSI or anything like that. An awful lot of very prominent scientists who pioneered these techniques are working on personalisation, not to mention Google obviously.

Social networks are very important and harnessing their strengths is super important right now. There are also issues within them such a deciding how important an individual vote is. If a layman votes on a technical post and an expert does, are the votes valued the same? Do topics with lots of expert votes rank higher rather than those with lots of votes? There is a lot of spam in these networks and these include people voting for their friends and so forth. I think taking on board what is happening right now in personalisation also is quite important.

There are also going to be a lot of developments in things like classification, topic detection and other research areas. I obviously am particularly looking forward to seeing more advances in question-answering systems.

If there was one final bit of advice that you could offer SEOs regarding semantics and IR, what would it be?

Write for your user, pay attention to larger structures rather than just keywords alone, inform yourself about IR and follow developments, read a lot

• Several downloadable research papers on IR, SVD, LSA, LSI, PLSI and more…
• Patterns in unstructured data presentation, including LSI and multi-dimensional scaling
• A piece with ideas on where search engines maybe heading…
• Search Engine Index Presentation by Marie-Claire Jenkins
• Search Engine Spiders by Marie-Claire Jenkins

Books include:

For the more hardcore geeks - but can others can also get the gist of it too:

• Introduction to Information Retrieval
• Speech and Language Processing

Please note: PLSI / A is but one method of learning models for concepts and related words…there are a variety of methodologies that search engines might buy-in to.  Although this is perceived to be amongst the most prominent direction that search engines arehave taken regarding their algorithms, it is always a good idea to keep on reading and researching to stay up to date with the SEO game!  Algorithmic models constantly evolve and new ones are born…here’s a few extra methodologies by Marie-Claire.

Is Semantic SEO the Marketers SEO?

This post looks at the cluttered web, filtering process that focus on meaning and quality in the form of semantic SEO, and simply good quality search marketing services – something we all can work towards. It’s a work-in-progress but I’d be keen to hear your thoughts. Thanks.

The rehashed bit…

Blurring the lines: brands in hands of the social web

Does semantic SEO exist? Most people would say that SEO is exactly that…SEO is semantically driven, as it is driven by the meaning of the words. Although this is only a relatively recent phenomenon in search engine’s information retrieval. It is not necessarily about keywords any more rather about key-meaning.

I needn’t explain why this is important but what I should do is explain it’s ramifications.

Most unoriginal statement of the century

Information on the internet is merging…uh oh here we go – heard this all before! Well it really is. (Sometimes we have to start from the obvious statements to build an argument!).

I want to remind everyone of how it used to be, in the good and / or bad old days…

Standalone websites > Internet in an Information Flux

Companies and websites used to operate online as standalone businesses, picking and choosing where their brand operated. Any brand that was mentioned in a forum or blog was relatively underground. This is a very important distinction compared to where we are now. Just think of the flux and flow of information on a topic – information is continually being encouraged to flow on and off a page through all forms of social media and the like. It can now take an increasingly wider array of forms, but what are the implications for online marketers?

The interesting bit…

Human and Bot Comprehension

We have become immune or numb to this information online, with clever neurological filters, but just think how radically it is different to a basic search engine’s comprehension of the web. Imagine the complexity of the information in it’s most raw form and then try to realise the complexity in evoking ‘meaning’.

Busy Crowd or Quiet Space? An online marketers conundrum

With websites taking various forms, everyone becoming a blogger and information transferring across various social media platforms, it provides a great deal of channels for marketers but so to a great deal of noise. For search engine marketers, this noise can be quite disruptive if we are using the same keywords and marketing techniques in similar ways. How can we stand-out? Does it mean fall into sync with your cluttered neighbourhood and unleash a torrent of content, or, leave some white space by stepping away from the crowd and promoting clarity of meaning? Both cases have been proved to be successful.

140 characters of clarity

Information rich societies are ultimately brand managers’ dream come true and nightmare all wrapped into one big ball of string. Brand managers love communicating clear messages, but are so too clearly misunderstood. Clarity rocks! Does 140 characters express a clear message, why yes, it certainly can. Can 140 characters express a clear message as it moves across the screen where 14 other conversations are taking place…maybe? My confidence in the clarity of the message communicated severely drops when I ask that question.

How can your website, your online presence in general maybe, take a form that markets your activity in a way that stands-out from the crowd, or even apart from the crowd? Your online activity, is your brand…what can you do consistently to represent your brand? Do you use the same colours for all your activity, the same images, same logos, the same presentation style? How often does McDonald’s change it’s logo?! These are the same triggers of recognition that provide visual meaning to your future contacts / network / clientele / friends.

Search Bots and Meaning

For the search engines that dominate the industry, they unfortunately don’t have the capacity to understand these characteristics…so they look elsewhere. In fact search bots have and do fail on many quality scores, focussing more on relevancy and popularity and NOT necessarily quality…hence the rise of social media sites, and more recently SearchWiki.

Search engines are coming around to latent semantic analysis highlighting the importance here, so this in itself makes it especially important in thinking along these lines.

In search marketing, quality is therefore quite obviously deemed to be important – it builds traffic and builds conversions. But what is quality in respect to search marketing? To me quality is something that has relative value regarding purpose and / or meaning. This is almost a definition of semantics.

Semantic HTML > SEO?

A guy I work with, Ben Hunt, from Web Design from Scratch, deliberately focusses on promoting website design that ‘Saves the Pixel’…using semantic concepts in coding and presentation. It works, and, he’s drawn a great deal of attention as a result.

He told me last weekend that he is currently researching [maybe you can help him out?] into semantic pixel saving, to see whether his hypothesis on the correlation between stickiness and semantic html is correct. Simplicity in design and marketing is certainly an option I like the sound of!

As search marketers this is something that we should certainly be interested in, but how can we expand it to be even more relevant to what we are working towards?

Search Marketing can take something away from this…

Semantic HTML might help tidy up the page, reduce the page load speed, increase cross-browser compatibility even…but there’s more to it than that for search marketing. Semantic-thinking, helps us see advantages of so many activities in search that already exist but aren’t always capitalised on…it helps us align our attention with what really matters: meaningful search quality.

Examples of Semantic SEO

I’d be keen to hear of people’s thoughts on the use of semantic-thinking in search engine optimisation, and how it feeds into everyday activities. These are my initial thoughts on semantic SEO anyway…

1. The use of long-tail terms would be one answer…long-tail keywords certainly get your message across clearly….but it’s still an under utilised facet of search marketing. A focussed long-tail strategy can create a great deal of quality, convertible traffic.
2. Thinking about keywords in greater detail, we can think about their role in the context of what has been said – our good old friend latent semantic analysis pops up it’s head again. Meaning is everything in search marketing – semantics in communication is therefore vital…
3. What about your landing pages? Are you focussed on who you are targeting. Have you ever written a landing page for [strictly] one purpose and [strictly] one outcome. I’ve not, although I probably should. One message, one call to action and one outcome…it would be an interesting exercise.  We so often provide too much information, and too many options.  This is why great designers are simply great at what they do: they can see what is necessary for the information to be communicated clearly.
4. Think about the page structure too…everything there regarding the order and layout of the content and code has weighted meaning.
5. Every sort of interaction of information (aka web and website information architecture) presents meaning to search engines…this is what we have to ALWAYS remember as SEO consultants. An example of this is where links act as a sort of funnel where surrounding text and anchor text’s meaning falls through the funnel and carries meaning through to the next page.

I expect there are dozens of examples, please feel to share where search marketers sometimes miss opportunities to express meaning in their day-to-day activity.

Competing on the grounds of meaning

We’re dealing with clutter by making more clutter, so essentially we are crowding the market by trying to stand-out from the crowd. The Tragedy of the Commons becomes all the more apparent as we allow our marketing activity to be driven in this way.

Digital space is essentially infinite, and it seems that we, online commerce and other competing organisations, are competing on grounds of size – scalability of content/keywords/links that drives traffic. And in essence this is how marketing has always been – a scalability game of reach, pick-up rates, visitors, etc. How about if we started competing more along the lines of meaning…scalability/presence plays a role, but more as a bi-product of producing meaning for all those parties your trying to draw attention to search engines.  I believe the best search marketers do this.

Semantic SEO ticks a whole lot of marketing boxes, regarding surfers, visitors and search bots. Shouldn’t this level of meaning be what we work towards as search marketers?  So is Semantic SEO the Marketers SEO?  Yes, I think it is.

[This piece is a work in progress, but I would gladly take feedback on the subject, so please feel free to share you thoughts...]

Could you Buy or Sell Social Media Profiles like Business Assets?

I have been thinking a lot about social media and brand management lately, with the rise of Google’s SearchWiki and growing commercial interest in Twitter and other social media sites, focusing on how to capitalise on or simply monetise this medium more.  Just think how many global social media sites reach right across cultures, countries, languages and interests, 1000’s are out there…

This also got me thinking that Social Media has been used for a whole lot of purposes regarding marketing online, and what appears to me to go a long way is the people who are deeply embedded into that specific social media site; those authority members who go straight to number one because of their credibility. Now, this says to me that this is essentially a huge benefit, an asset, maybe even a commodity that could be traded…without knowing anything more than that I did a couple of searches and voilà, there have been instances of social media profiles going up for sale. So why is this?

The commercial value of social media and credibility

An interview with a anonymous top Digg user suggests that companies / organisations are willing to pay up to $1,200 submission and promotion fees for the privilege of having access to this Digg users reach. OK, so this means that this Digg user, after just 2 years of membership, can take a very respectable income as a return for his credibility in this community, benefiting quite obviously for his participation. But it’s this obvious commercial affiliation that worries people so much.

Selling social profiles is not popular but happens

The sale of online community profiles raised a number of negative responses from the community of bloggers and social media proponents…but why? Here’s a couple of the responses, before I go onto expand that point…firstly, a more response on the selling of Facebook profiles by Social Media Butterfly:

Let me be abundantly clear - this is not what social media marketing is about. If you have to be sneaky about your brand, then something is wrong with your product!

There are a whole lot of responses to this comment, one might be that social media marketing like all forms of marketing is about exposure and there is a very good business case for this practice to occur. Or how about the remarks made by the Blog Herald, regarding another twitter profile for sale:

Personally, I find the whole thing insulting. I hate it enough when my favorite blogs change editorial hands. But to sell a profile or account, that people have chosen to follow, is just weak. I would immediately unsubscribe; and I have a hunch I’m not alone. Hence, making a potential buyer, pay the price.

Well the reasons that it’s not popular are quite obvious, but that does not mean to say it doesn’t happen.

Playing devils advocate, selling social media profiles is no different to buying an established website or business

We don’t like it when our favourite sandwich shop changes hands, we worry that the sandwiches won’t have the cucumber cut to the ‘right’ thickness or they add a splodge of mayo instead of a splidge…we don’t trust the newbie. In business though this happens, and so often consumers are unaware that a company has changes hands. Is this deceptive, in the same way a Twitter profile might change hands?

A social profile as a database for market research

We all know that famous saying ‘information if power’ and we know that consumer information has a real value across most markets, and information and databases are bought and sold, built-up and merged, very legally and legitimately.

This is a business interpretation of why this so freely happens:

• Businesses wish to learn about consumers in their market or future markets.
• By understanding their customers they can provide better goods and services
• We as the consumers potentially receive better goods and services as a result.

Christopher Penn raises the issue over social media profiles as databases of information for marketers, but any information captured online can become a database. My background in marketing leads me on to think about other examples of multiple forms of market research that occurs, sometimes unknowingly to the customer…

• Customer profiling using data in your shopping cart and contact forms
• Prospective ‘ideal customer’ research in high streets
• Keyword research, competitor research, off-site competitive analysis, trend watching
• Emails and telephone correspondence - use of language, requests, FAQ’s, etc
• Website Analytics, e.g. visitor loyalty metrics and site usage
• Website / blog polls
• Newsletter sign-up pages

…naturally, there are a wide variety of methods in which data is gathered on and offline. Is it consistently made clear that this data will / could be used for marketing purposes? Unlikely. So how is this explained to users, maybe via a passive privacy statement, P3P adoption, *small print? It’s not always too clear, is it?

Ethical buying and selling of social media profiles?

Now attaching this notion to the sale of information / profiles it becomes unclear as to whether this is indeed unethical, or maybe it happens all around on a degree already that it has become the norm?

However, can you sell these networks/relationships/connections that have been built (possibly) un-commercially or at least unknowing that the your online friendship will be sold to another with more commercial interests…there’s certainly something seedy about that.

So, as personal information is unknowingly being sold, is this one step too far?

T & C’s and ethical consequences of exchanging data via social profiles

The terms and conditions of many online communities and social media platforms typically disallow, either directly or indirectly, such practices and as soon as such profiles are put up for sale they are removed, hence devoiding their value as they simply don’t exist! This essentially means that this practice will, and probably has already, been driven underground.

Now, a point to promote a little paranoia in online communities…If a member of your network starts behaving a little oddly, maybe they’ve had their profile taken over by another party, but how would we ever know?! Just imagine if Guy Kawasaki sold his twitter profile, currently hovering around 30,000 followers and supposedly valued at about $10,000…he puts out a wild mixture of content, he’s always updating, would you really notice a mild change in links, ideas, content that hit’s the updates if it continues to be remarkable enough?  Paranoia alert!

Blackhat Social Media Marketing: the underground sale of social profiles

With so many articles discussing leveraging social media marketing as part of your online marketing tool kit, it’s no wonder that there is a market for pre-established social media profiles that carry so much weight.

So…..

Having run through this debate in my head, so many times now, it is the nature of the transaction that bothers me…the method in which the credibility and trust is sold. If the intention is made clear and public, I see this as less of a blackhat / greyhat exercise, but in doing so the profile fails to exist.

It will therefore occur underground, and unknowingly to the followers / social network that supports that profile. This deception of trust over a personal profile and associated network seems to me to devalue the respect of your target audience, and in doing this makes it unethical. I personally don’t follow the mantra ‘the business of business is business’, as that discounts far too many ethical principles. Businesses who don’t respect their target market ultimately loose out in the end.

If the profile is run on behalf of a business and exchanges hands as part of the sale of the business, I would not expect the same rules to apply. An example of this is that people’s intention to follow CNN are not following a personality but rather a global brand…this maybe automatically updates / non-personal updates, and is unlikely to offend if it were to change hands. Maybe there are better examples but I think people are likely to be more offended if they are following a person.

BUT, with all blackhat marketing activity a cost-benefit analysis will take place making the decision for them, i.e. the risk is worth it for the reward.

Possible other points of discussion?

Knowledge of what personal data is used and how - People and websites can naturally participate in the P3P policy programme as advocated by W3C, but my understanding is that consumer awareness and website adoption is very low (does anyone have any stats on P3P adoption as I couldn’t find any reputable / current statistics?).

P3P adoption has been very low, so does this mean that we as webmaster are less motivated to promote the use of visitors information than we are to cry out about the use (neither my site currently has adopted P3P as an example [it's on my list of jobs along with privacy policy], or the sites I quoted above…raises an interesting debate, I feel.

Google Analytics Data for sale - I also did a few searches for selling or buying site log files / Google Analytics data…this could add a great deal of value in the right hands, especially for instance a non-ecommerce site selling their Analytics data to an ecommerce site.

Would you sell you site Analytics data? If you were losing interest in Twitter, would you sell your profile (I’m not asking to buy it from you!)? Have your websites complied with P3P?

Can of worms

You may disagree and regard this practice of selling personal profiles as reasonable, and and even whitehat in nature? Many aspects of data are collected in the contact us forms, polls and web analytics  without the knowledge of consumers, so why not treat profiles as databases?

I realise I’ve picked up on a MASSIVE topic, colossal in fact, it is no wonder that I am struggling to keep this post short, as so many points can be expanded, and in this lack of detail there are a number of points that I could clearly add to. Maybe you would like to pull me up on some points; I’d be happy to hear your thoughts…

SPAAM: why I HAD to take a Sphinn holiday…

It’s sounds crazy doesn’t it, why would anyone need to take a Sphinn holiday?  Well there are some good reasons.

What is a Sphinn holiday?

A Sphinn holiday is when you break-away from the addiction (certainly not affliction) that is Sphinn.  A Sphinn holiday therefore entails removing yourself from your Sphinn environment - which essentially entails leaving the country to a place without 24 hour internet cafe’s, leaving your laptop behind, your PC, your mobile phone, blackberry, PDA or other, all at home, locked safely away so that at some later time, you can not have it mailed to you on your holiday. That is a Sphinn holiday.

Sphinn is not a bad place though. Sphinn is where so many of the best search marketers hang-out; a social media site with fast-flowing, new online marketing content that encourages users to share their thoughts and continue to learn more and more about the search marketing industry in ways that relate to them. Great stuff!

Articles range from ridiculous challenges that sucker me in, to classic interviews, interesting titbits, and plenty more help advice and humour…a great place to spend your time.  So why is Sphinn so bad for me?

Why Sphinn is bad for me

Sphinn is bad for me because it is too good.  You know when you go to bed at night to sleep, well I didn’t do that…I lay there waiting for Mrs Ben McKay to fall asleep then sneak down to check-up on Sphinn comments…so much activity goes on across the Atlantic when I’m supposed to be sleeping that actually sleeping is no longer an option - I could simply miss too much.

Is it just me but, embarrassingly, there has been times when I spend more time hovering around the comments feed, looking to pounce on any lively conversation than I do anything else…surely this isn’t healthy?!   But is this really an addiction?

The Free Dictionary states that an addiction is:

The condition of being habitually or compulsively occupied with or or involved in something.

Now, call me silly, call me Ben McKay even, but being immersed in reading blogs, Sphinning, commenting, shunning spam, licking my lips over the thought of the next ‘Hot Topic’ or ‘Greatest Hit’, or even taking pride over finding a gold mine of information from the topics that go underground and not ever making it off the What’s New list, to the detriment of getting my Zzzzzz’s, my sanity, my time away from working, is not a good thing?  So, how did it all begin?

Every addict is asked “so, how did it all begin?”, well this is my story…

It happened fast, too fast for me to know what was happening.

My profile shows me to be a relatively new member but I had in actual fact been a member since some point in 2007 but not an active ‘user’. But something happened to my details (the problem with hapving multiple pseudonyms, aka’s and nicknames) - my password didn’t reset, I re-registered but it left me with an empty feeling of loss and despair…I did however make the decision to be more vigilant, thinking: “OK, if I lose my details again I am going to leave a long paper-trail behind me”…

So, rather than just Sphinning or casually browsing, I started laying down the odd comment, and that’s where it really began.  One comment leads to a response, a response leads to you making a response to a response, which in turn…the addiction overwhelmed me.

I did try to cut-back by just making the odd comment but someone might reply to a comment and then leave me in the predicament of either ignoring them and being considered rude or simply making just one more comment.  Anyway it was too late, I was fully immersed on the world of Sphinn, writing posts about my love of Sphinn and my even greater love for Sphinn Japan.

Rehabilitation

I’m not a total addict though. I did ‘the test‘, to see whether I was in actual fact a social addict of sorts, and came out a little better than what I expected actually, a rosey looking 96% addiction…but, I’ve been told that this still needs a little bit of work.
96%

Like with any chronic form of addiction, whether it be physical or mental…rehab is needed.  For me it took a 4 day break in Poland to get over the Sphinn obsession…success!

Although…monday afternoon, I was back at it. Shinning away!  I am glad to say though, I have not hit the Sphinn pages with such ferocity as before, probably bringing down the average page views by quite a large proportion over the last week or so.  It’s OK though, Danny Sullivan did drop me an email to mention that the servers were in need of a break too.

In response to what I have learnt from my rehab, knowing there’s a whole lot people far worse off than me, I have set-up SPAAM - Sphinn Addict Anonymous Meetings, to give something back.

SPAAM are here to help

Does anyone else have this addiction to any sort of social media?  I’ve seen a fair few twitter holics in my time, but I know there’s a huge number of people out there not ready to admit it to themselves.  It’s OK, SPAAM are here for you.

Psychoanalysing yourself over an addiction to Sphinn is not a pleasant process, I grant you that, but MUST be done.  Remember, you’re only kidding yourself when you say that you’ll be OK, just one more Sphinn.  I’ve said those words to myself before - I still do at time but you’ve got to fight it.  Consider trying the SPAAM patches or the SPAAM gum.

Meetings Time, Date and Location

SPAAM take place daily at http://sphinn.com, where you can share your opinions, support each other and generally try to distract yourself from your addiction by reading blog posts and articles on search marketing.

And remember, here are some addiction cliches to consider before you Sphinn that next fantastic post:

One Sphinn is too many, a thousand is not enough.

A message from SPAAM:

We’ll love you, until you learn to love yourself.

Good luck with your addiction conquest. Ben McKay, CEO of SPAAM and recovering Sphinn addict

Ben McKay is famous, and some!

Being a search marketer you would think that I was used to my name and work being up in the SERPs limelight, but today has borne a new benchmark…

Well, lucky for you guys it’s only going to be a short post because I have to go to Poland for my Birthday early tomorrow morning, but otherwise this would have been a thesis on my new found fame…

I gladly signed-up to a competition to become a famous SEO overnight, and was asked to write the first post for DaveN’s blog…what an honour.  If you’re a little out the loop on the importance of this, Dave Naylor is essentially the original UK SEO.  He was a SEO, before there was an alphabet to give us the title.  Here’s a little bit more about Dave Naylor to fill you in on why I am so pleased…

Read the full, light-hearted post on OfGoog and the SEO industries’ options regarding regulations, accreditation and representation.  Signatures will be sold via my tuck shop.

I heart Sphinn Japan

I love art.  It’s a weakness.  My tag-line is currently “marketing for marketing’s sake…?” - inspired by “art for art’s sake”.  Draw from that what you will, but…I love art.

I also love Sphinn.  A bit of industry space to share ideas, be told you’re wrong, make and lose friends …it really is a hot-bed of excitement!  It’s for this reason, I hang-out there, everyday.  I’m even a 7-day-a-weeker kinda guy.  BUT, after the launch of Japan’s Sphinn last month, my sweet tooth for Japanese art, I’ve got to admit, did kind of give me the ‘grass is greener’ syndrome.  Just look at it…

What is it about the subtle thing’s that the Japanese do that makes them look so damn cool? Now check-out ours, a tad bland would you say…

If you know me, you might know I’m just being picky, and when my blog is in such need of work can I really complain?  I have no gripes with Sphinn, it adds too much value to me and the SEO community for me to ever do that, but I’m definitely learning Japanese, moving to Japan and taking on Japanese clients so I’ve got some excuse to look at that for 2 hours each day.  I heart Japan.

Why every SEO specialist needs to be a marketer

Search engine optimisation relies on the facets of technical insights into the orientation of search engine algorithms and provides only a little guidance regarding marketing, of which may appear to be directly, algorithmically lead anyway.

What I mean by this is that SEO consultants are at risk of continually making decisions because it will help them rank better, getting links on relevant sites, building content, but there are larger forces at work that can make an impact in the longer-term on an exponential level…it’s far less direct as an approach to SEO, but is seen to be very effective indeed.

For me at least, search engine optimisation needs to be about seeing opportunities beyond items such as:

• On-site work
• Link-building
• Content Creation
• Site analytics

SEO needs to be far more about marketing prowess…

Case Study 1.

I worked as a Campaign Manager for a national children’s charity once upon a time, before making a permanent move into search. The campaigns that I set-up had to be on the scale of where they could be self-managed…ultimately, the campaigns were not going to raise the kind of funds that I was aiming for if I had to set-up, promote and run each fundraising event.

I took the strategy of targeting the top of each industry-sector, hitting the biggest companies in the fields that I was campaigning with big ideas, backed-up with plans on how they could be effectively implemented. Some of the largest organisations turned these ideas down for a variety of different reasons, but a bi-product of this was that I could develop these rejections into a to-do list. I gradually moved down and across the industry sector’s, talking to companies about these improving plans, until I found a company to push them on my behalf.

This turned out to be very effective on many counts building relationships with Government departments, national pub chains and gaining large-scale sponsorships packages. Interestingly, the charity was relatively unknown compared to other national charities but because I was able to hit the top of the industry pyramid with creative ideas, we were able to build relationships that very effectively trickled down.

Case Study 2.

If you’re a SEO consultant reading this, you might like to think about the relationship Distilled and SEOMoz have, especially since May 2008. One reinforces the other across the Atlantic, which of course assures the reader that they are in fact reading the best content out there…like many blogs do. That is the fundamental nature of the web, and something that companies do not always strategically take advantage of.

The three points to remember:

1. Find your place in the industries pyramid. Hit the highest point in the industry where you think your skills and resources can be realised and then only work

2. Even the set-backs provide have been a chance to raise awareness to your plans, provide context and talking points in future, and of course develop your ideas.

3. SEO efforts can and are exponentially built from marketing efforts too. Joint alliances, business relationships, can really reinforce efforts to improve rankings. Awareness breeds awareness.

Your next task:

• Come-up with ideal solutions on where you can build an online strategic alliance.
• Find somebody, or a website, with similar interests and aspirations.
• Build the relationships that you already have. Maybe they gave you a link, maybe you comment on their blog a great deal (or vice versa), or maybe you met them at a conference?
• Approach the person confidently but not arrogantly, highlighting the mutual benefits.
• Be proactive in every aspect of your search marketing efforts, even down to prospective keyword research.

Who will your next online strategic alliance be with? Start thinking………now!

McColo host shut-down…less Christmas spam?

It’s funny, McColo shuts down and we breathe a sigh of relief.  This is interesting news on several counts - for a big hitter like McColo to be brought down spans far beyond the USA, but lays down a pretty solid signal to blackhat hosts that they cannot turn a blind eye to spamming.

A web hosting firm believed to have major spam gangs as its clients has been closed down, leading to a 70 per cent global fall in the levels of junk mail.

techradar.com

The reason that it’s funny (in a way), is that the relief is likely to be short-lived.  What happens here is that people employing McColo’s hosting ’solutions’ migrate to new blackhat hosts.  It’s a brief sigh of relief for our inboxes but give it another couple of days, and the spam levels, unfortunately, will be back-up to where they were.

The problem with spam goes far beyond our email accounts, and essentially increase security threats and increased demands on our servers that host our websites and serve web pages to visitors.  Spam is no good on many counts, but we might as well enjoy it’s reduced levels whilst we can.

What a negative post.

Prospective Keywords: beyond the long-tail…

The best thing about keywords are that they generate traffic.  You could essentially be write the most ground-breaking piece of content on the “credit crunch”, but if you don’t use those or related keywords then it might not capitalise on what is already there.  This is where search engine optimisation plays it’s biggest role…

Responsive (and misguided) Keyword Research

The fundamentals of keyword research are based around the principal that you must immerse yourself in what people are searching for using various keyword research tools, such as Google’s, WordTracker and Keyword Discovery, 3 of my favourites, but in my opinion this immersions doesn’t always go deep enough. Being a marketer I believe this to be a little responsive, missing the up-and-comers that even long-tail keyword research may not pick-up on as there may not yet be a search volume for those keywords.  Keyword research therefore has to be designed to be far more proactive.

Prospective Keywords

The thing I found so interesting about digging around for prospective keywords is that essentially you can create your own search volume, build your page / website around these terms and essentially be far more effective in ranking in the future. For instance, my site is currently relatively new, but I woudl hope to start to see “just me and my” and “justmeandmy” further down the line in my analytics data.  Arguably, this example is brand building, but the notion goes far beyond this.

…think about the credit crunch. Not words people strung together before June 2007, but they’re now words that are high on people’s agenda now. Take a look at Google Trends, a tool that maps keyword usage over time:

Keywords in your Community

One of my favourite bits of ‘keyword research’ is spending time in the community of their sector. This is your chance to learn how people use the keywords, how they don’t and how they string them together by spending time reading sector blogs, forums, social media sites…

I put together a mindmap using a new tool of mine that I’ve been playing around with to highlight the opportunities that exist around proactive keyword research, click to expand:

Proactive Keyword Research: click on the image to expand...

Keyword Recognition

Search engines are not the only way people use the internet. Keywords that people use within communities can be quite different to those that used in search engines, so when they do come across your site, see those same words that they themselves use in their community, that may well lead to them valuing your site a whole lot more simply through keyword recognition.

Community Keywords > Trigger Words > Keyword Recognition > Value > Returning Visitors

And just because the visitor found your site initiallly by searching for “SEO”, it might be that next time when they want to find you they look for the words “justmeandmy blog”…simply create your own keywords.