KeywordIntent Blog including SEO Tips and Tricks

Developers are usually in two camps of whether WordPress should be used as a CMS or not. For those who are in the camp of “WordPress is not a CMS” must now eat their own words.

Even though WordPress was originally built as a blogging platform, with many development deploys since then, it has now become a fully functional, robust content management system.

WordPress announced today that they won the Overall Best Open Source CMS Award in the 2009 Open Source CMS Awards. Last year they weren’t even shortlisted within the top 5, however this year they are rubbing shoulders with Joomla and Drupal.

WordPress is an excellent CMS product for small and large businesses alike.  From a SEO perspective, most WordPress templates with a little bit of tweaking are search engine friendly, allowing search spiders to crawl the content of the site. The ‘All In One SEO Pack‘ is a useful plugin allowing meta data to be customized for each and every post.

The blogging functionality of the site allows website owner to post news, blog posts, media releases and more. Fresh content encourages search spiders to visit more often and thanks to WordPress, content can be added easily.

Congratulations WordPress on your win!

I read some time ago that people will no longer “search” for information or at least it will be greatly reduced, due to friends and connections “sharing” information online through social networks.  Why should I search for something, when content of relevance comes directly to me?

Yes it is true that our friends and friends of friends are sharing information, but it does feel like a barrage of noise some of the time.  It is a constant babble that is difficult to mine through and to find what is pertinent to you when you need it most.

Research shows that we are more likely to trust recommendations from friends than from a stranger or from a business who is trying to sell us something.  78% of people believe what other customers have to say about a product or service (Source: Edelman 2008).  If the customer happens to be one of your friends or a friend of a friend, then their recommendations, comments and research becomes even more believable.

Being called an “experiment”, we have just seen the launch of Google Social Search, a new search product that draws results from friends and friends of friends.  It’s currently available in Google Labs for anyone to try and comment upon.

Read More »

I was recently asked to write an article for iStart magazine, an Australian business software and IT solutions publication. The result is the following article, “SEO Career… The Newest Profession?“.  The pdf version of the article can be downloaded here. Alternatively, the text version of the article is displayed below. It is a little history of my working life.  I feel slightly embarrassed by parading my career highlights, but hopefully I can inspire some people who desire to enter this field of work.  Happy reading.

When I was in my final year at High School in 1990, the world wide web didn’t exist.  Search engines hadn’t been invented and the role of Search Engine Optimisation Consultant (SEO) hadn’t even been heard of.  Computer classes were barely on the school curriculum as it involved a group of 30 students surrounding a monitor and keyboard, each taking a turn to type basics on screen.  It was hardly the ABCs of computing.

My first full time job was at Queensland University of Technology as a computer assistant trainee.  The job was to backup humongous mainframes the size of three to six large refrigerators stuck together.  Each evening, we would pull out and insert new reels of tape.  Screeds of paper would spit out from the dot matrix printer with numbers and text that I did not understand.  All I had to do was find certain numbers and write them down in a book.  It was all very tedious which lead me to great boredom.

One day in 1991 I was introduced to “news groups” at the University.  To my delight, this kept me entertained for hours at a time.  I was amazed that people from the other side of the world would leave messages according to their topic of interest and others would respond.  I didn’t know it then, but this was the beginning of the Internet.  It was about people, connecting with one another, sharing information.   Read More »

Announced at the TechCrunch 50 conference today, Yusuf Mehi from Microsoft shared with the audience that the next release for Bing will provide a richer search experience.  Microsoft sees Bing being more of a “decision engine” than a “search engine”.  The vision is to provide the best in “first search”, but more so, they want to lead the way with richer and more organized information.

Yusuf Mehi, Microsoft Bing Engineer

The next round of Bing development is a result of studying users’ search behaviour.  Internet users are becoming more sophisticated with their search queries.  Search users are changing and moving beyond the “keyword to url” mapping search function.  Mehi and his team found that;

• 25% of all clicks lead to the “back” button on the browser
• 42% of search queries need refinement
• 50% of user search sessions are spent on longer queries.

Short queries, mapping keyword query to url, takes approximately 1-2 minutes.  More complex search queries can last as long as 30mins per search session with people looking to solve a sophisticated problem such as buying a product, finding specific health information or where to go out on a Saturday night.

Currently only available to US residents at www.bing.com/visualsearch, Microsoft launched today Bing’s Visual Search product.  It provides a graphical way to search and discover information.

When searching for a digital camera for example, Bing displays a “Visualize Digital Cameras” link next to the search results. After clicking this link, a rolling cascade of digital cameras is displayed.  While scrolling through the different products, the user is also able to refine their search query by clicking relevant links such as Type, Model, Optical Zoom and other specifications.

Bing's Visual Search - Searching for a digital camera

With Bing, Microsoft is aiming to help users perform simple key tasks within the Travel, Shopping, Health and Local Search categories.  Although, Bing’s visual search engine is not limited to these categories alone.  Bing also presents Popular Galleries, allowing users to select the best of movies, books, celebrities, sport, politicians and more.

Mehi accidently slipped that Bing will introduce “Twitter” results in the not too distant future.

The British found it quite hot last week as they experienced a heat wave and in a bid to keep cool, they hit Google enmass.  The term “paddling pools” was one of the fastest terms sending traffic to HitWise’s Shopping and Classifieds category.

Other fast moving retail search terms included:

“swimming pools” (3rd)
“air conditioning units” (4th)
“air conditioning” (7th)
“fans” (8th)
“air conditioner” (12th)

The chart below shows that the seasons certainly do have an impact on our search behavior and buying habits. You can see that the traffic for these search terms have been the highest since 2006.  (Closer to 0% is higher than 0.015%)

Rob Cottingham from ReadWriteWeb commented on a cartoon, Search Engine Pessimized.  He states, “It’s happening to more and more of the blogs I read: the personality, quirkiness and unique voice that once made them so appealing to me are fading. In their place, an SEO-driven uniformity that puts keyword placement ahead of pretty much everything.”

As an SEO consultant, I would have to agree with Rob.  I’ve been working with a few publishers recently and what makes their headlines so magnetizing and hooks people into reading their articles, are at risk of blandness.

A message that I have heard so often in the SEO industry, is that we are to optimize our websites not only for search engine spiders, but also for humans. Real people folks. Those that feel real emotions when they laugh, cry, shout or grumble when they read or watch something that touches them.

The balance between SEO and creativity is being lost.  Being too far one sided with “keyword rich” content will surely miss the point of what we are trying to achieve.  In most cases, our goal is to generate qualified traffic that converts into an action such as buying a product, subscribing to an email newsletter and even generating repeat usage through brand engagement.

An audience member or customer will only want to establish a longer term relationship with a brand should it be engaging and touch the core of what is relevant to them.

Unlike PPC, a tap that turns traffic on when you shovel money into the Google slot machine, the purpose of SEO is to generate sustainable business.  Sustainability for websites, whether it be a blog, a newspaper or ecommerce site, is to ensure that when people arrive on those sites, they want to return again.

Can SEO and creativity go hand in hand?

Sure they can!  SEO is both a science and an art.  If SEO leans towards science too much, you will certainly loose the sparkle that makes a piece of content go viral.  We want people to find our content, click on it, enjoy it and spread it around the world to like-minded friends.

Getting our pages ranked within search engines is only the first part of the challenge.  On a search engine rankings page of 10 possible listings a person could click on, I want them to click on my website or that of my client’s.  Content headlines need to include both SEO and creativity.  A well written, intriguing headline will certainly get more clicks than one that is optimized purely from a robotic perspective.

Winning the click, is the second part of the challenge.  A quirky headline that is also optimized for search engines, increases the chance of that listing being clicked. Keyword rich content that is also highly engaging and thought provoking, increases the chance of people blogging and linking back to that piece of content. Natural link building, is the best form of inbound links and is an integral aspect of SEO.

Even if there is a homogenous trend happening in the SEO industry, it needn’t be that way. SEO guys and gals need to step up with their creativity.  I for one am not the most creative or the best writer, however, by engaging creatives who can make a piece of content stand out amongst the rest, are certainly worth their weight in gold.

SEOs and creatives make highly effective teams, however, balance is the key.

One thing you have to get used to in the Search Marketing industry are the continual changes implemented by search engines. What might have worked a year ago, may not work right now. Case in point is PageRank Sculpting.

Lisa Barone attended SMX Advanced in early June and during a Q&A session with Matt Cutts, an official spokesperson for Google, found that he (or Google) does not support PageRank Sculpting. This doesn’t mean however, that your site will get penalized if you have implemented PageRank Sculpting on it.

Essentially Google is saying that PageRank Sculpting is not useful anymore and that it is better use of one’s time to fix the website’s architecture in the first place.

PageRank Sculpting is a technique where a nofollow tag is applied to internal links within the site to prevent spiders from crawling or passing PageRank from one page to another. If you had 10 links on the site and half of them are nofollowed, then the theory is that all the PageRank will flow to the 5 that have no nofollow tags.  This essentially boosts the importance of the pages that have not been nofollowed and increases the chances of them ranking in search results.

Matt Cutt says, “Your leftover PageRank will now evaporate”. Essentially you can’t direct PageRank where you want it to go. PageRank Sculpting just isn’t effective anymore. It is far more effective to create new content for your website, rather than bend and shape the flow of PageRank.

In my opinion, it is best to follow Matt Cutt’s advice.   I would rather focus my energy and time on developing a great website that has engaging content and has useful functionality. This will grab the attention of users and the media who will want to share it with other like minded people.

Dave in the Philippines asks…

“If you have a lot of blog content for a new section of a site (100+ pages), is it best to release it over a period of time, or is it fine to just unleash 100 pages?”

Response by Matt Cutts:

I think in most cases, especially if it is high quality content, I would just unleash the 100 pages. If you are talking about 10,000 or 100,000 or a million pages, you might be a little more cautious. It’s not like this would cause any automatic penalty, but if Google sees a site that was nothing the other day and then suddenly there are 4 million pages in the index, then this could be the sort of thing where someone (from Google) will take a look at the site to confirm if it is legitimate content or automated junk that has not added value.

So, 100 pages I would not worry about, but I would make sure it is high quality content. A lot of times when you create content organically, you’ll end up with a page at a time, so go ahead and publish it when you have the new page. You do not have to wait until you have a lot of different content and batch it up and release it. It is okay to release it a page at a time. Especially if it is small scale or high quality content, I wouldn’t worry about it.

The much talked about new search engine from Microsoft is now live.  What do you think of Bing?

www.bing.com

A longer post is coming soon.

Originally named Kumo, Microsoft’s new search engine is now rebranded to Bing and is about to be revealed.  Microsoft is rolling out a TV, radio, Internet and newspaper brand campaign to convince people to “use today’s search engine”. 

Microsoft believes that 42% of all first query searches need to be refined which presents a huge opportunity. The goal of Bing is to reduce the time involved with searching by providing better results the first time round. They will do this by displaying related categories to help provide a better user search experience.   For example, Bing will provide related categories such as Reviews and Prices for product related searches.  Finding exactly what you are looking for within a shorter amount of time is quite compelling if Microsoft can pull it off. 

The question remains, since Google provides a great search experience and is adequate, will users switch to a better engine?  Is a better search experience on another engine just frills that the masses won’t switch for?

In any case, the web needs Microsoft’s Bing to succeed.  Even though Google is not technically a monopoly, it dominates most markets around the world and is certainly beginning to feel like one.  Google still demonstrates its ability to innovate, specifcally with its recent Rich Snippets release and support of RDFa and Microformats.  However, we need competition in the search industry as it provides choice for users and stimulates innovation.  It is obvious that Google’s new use of data was spurred on by competitive moves by Wolfram Alpha.   These new services by Google is proof that competition ensures that the encumbent keeps on innovating.

Can Microsoft innovate to a level that keeps Google on its toes?  I hope so.  There are plenty of smart people who work for Microsoft.  Contrary to popular belief, the brightest people in the world do not all work for Google. Let’s hope that the Microsoft Bing team have the ability to experiment and develop search technologies that can make a difference.