Google has just released a 22 page PDF document outlining recommendations for basic web site optimization principles.  The guide covers a number of basic elements, such as titles, meta descriptions (yes, meta tags are not dead), no follow link attributes, and more. 

Download the PDF here: http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

and read the full release info on the Google blog here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/11/googles-seo-starter-guide.html

Google has pushed back on this type of information for years, and overall, I think it validates value of what a good SEO can do for a web site, and it validates the practice overall.  Good SEO not only helps webmasters be found, it helps the search engines identify relevant content. 

Gabriel Baker is hosting the first Texas Domainers and Developers Convention at the Gaylord Texan fromNovember 3 - 6.  Several hundred people are expected to attend, and it features a number of speakers over the four day event.  There will also be a silent and live domain auction, with a list of many Texas oriented names onthe block. 

Discounted passes and additional information is available at the official site: http://www.tdadc.com/

DFW Search Marketing Association to host search advertising discussion on October 15, 2008 at the Renaissance Hotel in Richardson, TX

Dallas, TX /October 9, 2008 – Search engine advertising is growing in use. This year alone almost 40% of all online advertising dollars are spent on search display ads, according to a recent survey by the IAB. On October 15 at 6 p.m., the DFW Search Marketing Association will be hosting a panel discussion on “Pay Per Click Management”. Focused on the needs of beginners and advanced users, this two hour session will cover a range of topics on how to successfully create and manage a search engine advertising campaign.

“This will be the first time that our organization has focused an entire event exclusively on the use of PPC,” says Tony Wright, President of the DFW SEM group. Jeff Martin, a board member of DFW SEM will be moderating the discussion. “This promises to be a rich environment of information and ideas from some of the leading search marketers in Dallas,” says Jeff.

The networking event starts at 6:00 PM, and the speakers will begin at 6:30 PM, ending at approximately 8:30 PM. The event is open to all DFWSEM members and non-members, including marketing professionals and the general public. The event is free for existing members and $30 for non-members.

Meeting location

The Renaissance Dallas-Richardson Hotel (http://www.richardsonrenaissance.com/) is located at 900 East Lookout Drive, Richardson, Texas 75081. The hotel is in the Richardson Telecom Corridor, on the east side of 75 Central Expressway, approximately one mile south of George Bush Tollway. The hotel phone is 972-367-2000.

About the DFW Search Engine Marketing Association (DFWSEM)

The Dallas/Fort Worth Search Engine Marketing Organization (DFWSEM) is dedicated to education and promotion of the Dallas/Fort Worth search engine marketing industry, conversing various topics related to search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click search (PPC), as well as other emerging media. The group meets quarterly at the Renaissance Hotel in Richardson, Texas, and is open to anyone interested in search engine marketing, including in-house marketers, independent consultants, and agencies. Initially founded in 2003, DFWSEM is the oldest and longest running local search engine marketing group/meetup in the country. Member agencies include DexterityMedia, Vizion Interactive, iCrossing, Range Online Media, Key Relevance, MarketNet, AffGoo, Creative Support, Did-it, SearchDex, WrightIMC, Lead Maverick and Bridgepose. For more information, visit http://www.dfwsem.org.

DFWSEM is sponsored by Lead Maverick (http://www.leadmaverick.com).

The next Dallas FW Search Engine Marketing Association meeting will be held at the Renaissance Hotel in Richardson, Texas at 6:15 PM, Weds, Oct. 15.  The presentation is focused on PPC and search engine advertising.  Members get in free, non-member tickets are $30 per person.

Read more at dfwsem.org. 

My latest Search Insider column takes a look at the origins of a few key terms in the digitalmarketing lexicon: SEM, SEA, and SEO. It was spurred by Bob Heyman’s article in Search Engine Land last week.   

Here is an excerpt from the article:

“A story last week on Search Engine Land (“Who Coined The Term SEO?”, by Bob Heyman) got me to thinking about the somewhat nebulous origins of the term “search engine optimization”, or “SEO”, as well other common search terms such as “SEM” and “SEA”.   There are a number of claimants and facts around the term “SEO”, so I revisited a few of them, and found a few additional interesting facts along the way.

Before I go into the SEO claims, the origins of the terms “SEM” and “SEA” are pretty clear.  In 2001 Danny Sullivan achieved a consensus with the readership of Search Engine Watch on the term “search engine marketing”, noting that the organic-centric SEO no longer covered the full range of tactics in the search space, given the rise of pay-per-click.  “The phrase “search engine marketing”, or “SEM”, very logically covered a wide range of tactics related to search engine visibility, and somewhat relegated SEO as a subtheme within the overall practice of search marketing (see “Congratulations, You’re A Search Engine Marketer”).”

Read the rest here:

http://www.mediapost.com/blogs/search_insider/?p=891

A follow up to my Search Insider post on the McCain and Obama acceptance speeches. Based on some feedback I received in the comments section, and went and took a look at personal references during the speeches, and found some interesting data. McCain referred to himself in the speech, using “I” more than any other word.  Here is the rest of the breakout:

McCain
“I” (and related contractions) - 153 times 3.29%
“We” (and related contractions) - 87 times 1.87%
“My” - 62 times 1.33%
“Our” - 51 times 1.09%
“You” - 51 times 1.09%
“Me” - 38 times 0.81%

Obama
“I” (and related contractions) - 81 times 1.68%
“We” (and related contractions) - 77 times 1.6%
“Our” - 56 times, 1.16%
“You” - 44 times 0.91%
“My” - 19 times 0.39%
“Me” - 12 times, 0.24%

Read the rest of the post at Great Finds:

http://greatfinds.icrossing.com/analyzing-the-keywords-of-mccain-and-obama-acceptance-speeches/

My last column for Search Insider was posted on Sept. 24, and titled, “Despite What Google Says, Flash, Dupe Content And URLs Are Still Major SEO Issues.”  In it I detailed a pattern of what I beleive is is flawed SEOadvice, or at least advice that is creating some uniintentional confusion with marketers and IT professionals.  The Google Webmaster Central blog has been publishing some info that is simply not correct, and of course, every time this happens, the whole SEM industry has to go back and reassure their clients that they are not violating any rules that could get them penalized.  The jury is still is out whether this is some kind of Sun-Tzu-confuse-thy-enemy-type-mojo coming from the Googleplex, but one thing is for sure: The more confusing the search landscape becomes with this kind of info, the more important a search marketer’s role becomes.

http://www.mediapost.com/blogs/search_insider/?p=881

Here is the opening of my latest column at MediaPost Search Insider.  Click at the link at the bottom to read the full article.  Lots of interesting findings into the overall tone of the candidates speeches, using a good old fashioned SEO keyword analysis tool.

———————————————————

While tag cloud generators are all the rage for visually analyzing the text content of various popular websites and documents, I decided to go back to an old-fashioned “keyword density” analyzer tool to take a look at Obama’s and McCain’s recent party nomination acceptance speeches.  Keyword density tools have been used by search optimizers for many years to determine the keyword frequency and weight of words and phrases on a Web page.  The more popular tools rate the frequency of one-, two-, and three-word phrases throughout a document, showing the overall number of times presented, as well as the relevant percentage of mentions throughout a document.  This type of analysis tends to be more useful to SEOs for two- and three-word phrases, but for this analysis, the tool will also shed a light on single-word themes to illustrate the overall tone of the candidates’ acceptance speeches. 

On a side note, I personally don’t care much for the phrase “keyword density”, because these tools typically don’t weight keywords in a document – or in other words, they don’t take semantic markup elements into account – they score on the frequency of words in a document.  Even if a particular tool does provide weighted analysis on keywords, it’s an educated guess at best, because there are too many variables used by engines to determine actual weight, and the engines also aren’t telling how much they weight these elements.  So to clarify, this analysis focuses on the frequency of words in the speeches. 

More…. read the full article here:

http://www.mediapost.com/blogs/search_insider/?p=871

My latest column on demographic search engines is up at MediaPost (”Thoughts on Demographic Search Engines”, registration required.  I am intrigued about several aspects of this new approach coming from IAC, with the first one called RushmoreDrive.com. 

http://www.mediapost.com/blogs/search_insider/?p=862

Back in Big D after almost a week at the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose.  I was there to co-present an eight hour session on the SEMPO Insititute’s Insider’s Guide, along with SEMPO Institute dean Terry Plank, and MSN’s Jorie Waterman.   

One other highlight was attending the Google Dance at Google headquarters in Mountain View.  The theme was “Glow in the Dark”, and the place was very lit up by night fall.  There must have been at least three thousand people there.  I took some interesting pics on my phone, and I will get those posted soon.

I also had the opportunity to judge the first SES awards.  Overall, a great show.

My latest column is posted at MediaPost Search Insider.  This week I covered some of the key findings from a survey released by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, which was focused on search behavior “on a typical day”.  Here is the first part of the article highlighting some of the key findings - a link to the full column is a the bottom:

The sample group consisted of 2,251 adults, ages 18 and older, surveyed between April 8 and May 11, 2008.  The big question in the survey was, “did you happen to [use an online search engine] yesterday, or not?”, and yielded 1,553 who said ‘yes’.  Here is what they found:

-          Overall, the amount of daily search users grew 69% between 2002 and 2008.

-          While coming in a close second to email in this study, search beat out other daily Internet activities such as reading the news (39%), checking the weather (30%), researching a hobby (29%), surfing for fun (28%), and visiting a social networking site (13%).

-          Daily searchers are more likely to be “socially upscale”, and college educated with an income of $50,000 or more per year.

-          Internet users with broadband connections were much more likely to search than those with dial-up at home (58% vs. 26%).

-          Users between the ages of 18-29 and 30-49 were higher-than-average daily searchers (55% and 54% respectively).  Of searchers 65 and older, only 27% were daily search users.

-          Men are generally more aware of the differences between paid and natural search.  The study found that men say they have searched more frequently, and are more confident in their search abilities. 

Read the full column here:
http://www.mediapost.com/blogs/search_insider/?p=852

Here is the first half of my current column at MediaPost’s Search Insider.  This is great story, and it is very exciting to see another piece of Internet history happening before us.

Originally published in Search Insider:

In my last column, I discussed some of the challenges of moving an existing website to a new vanity generic top-level domain (gTLD).  In this installment, I will provide a review of several existing gTLDs, and discuss the branding and search impact, and also the process of applying for a gTLD.

For a quick recap, ICANN, the governing and administrating body over all Internet addresses, voted in late June of this year to allow individuals and corporations to apply for .anything, or literally any word or phrase exceeding three characters not taken. A new top level domain can be used as a registry, or for one’s own Web presence.  Under the new policy, the following names are true possibilities as a home for an online Web presence:

http://www.2020.abc
http://dallas.cowboys
http://bach.music
http://www.checkmy.email
http://yourband.mp3
http://username.myspace
http://caramelmacchiato.starbucks
http://batman.movie
http://thisisspinaltap.imdb
http://olympics.wikipedia

Let your imagination run wild. But first, let’s take a look at other existing generic TLDs.

The branding of a TLD – why .com will always be king

If the marketing novelty of the vanity gTLD seems to outweigh all other considerations, it may be a good exercise to first analyze the current landscape.  Ever heard of .Museum?  Yes, it’s a real working gTLD (see this redirected URL for http://nyc.moma.museum; their main URL is http://www.moma.org), though the average Internet user is wholly unaware of its existence.  .Travel has been in existence for almost two years, but very few travel sites have adopted it as their primary address on the Web.  More commonly, major travel and hospitality brands have reserved these names and pointed them at “Brand.com” as a matter of driving traffic, and for brand and trademark defense. Other extensions such as .Jobs and .Pro have yet to gain mainstream appeal, even though their categories have wide potential within their respective theme-space.  Another highly anticipated extension, .Mobi, has also failed to gain mainstream adoption as the default address of the mobile Web, with most major brands choosing to host their mobile presence on their legacy brand.com or subdomain (ex. m.cnn.com), targeted to mobile devices. 

Your own awareness of these gTLDs (or lack thereof) is a direct reflection of how well that TLD was branded. Enterprise marketers will face the same challenge if/when they change over their existing .com presence to a new extension.  Hosting your Web presence on .com benefits from a TLD brand that everyone has helped build. The .Com  domain had no brand until U.S. advertisers got behind it, and a valid question to ask is whether or not your new gTLD is ready to compete against this level of awareness and trust.  The answer is really simple – no single advertiser has the budget to match up to the amount of collective ad dollars that have promoted .com – it is synonymous with the Internet, more so than any other domain brand.  This may be obvious to most readers, but marketers should keep this fact in mind as discussions around changing to gTLDs progress in their respective organizations. 
 

The birth of the search-optimized Top Level Domain

Shifting gears a little bit, let’s pick back up on the natural search aspect of gTLDs.  Having a generic keyword theme in a vanity gTLD also doesn’t guarantee natural search success or authority.  Just like a new domain, the Top Level Domain still earns its authoritativeness in the search engines.  It has long been recognized by SEOs that engines have shown bias and trust towards content and links on …..

Read the rest of the column here:

http://www.mediapost.com/blogs/search_insider/?p=842

This one seemed to come out of the blue this morning.  New search engine debuts, from a team that includes former Altavista lead engineer Louis Monier.  I ran a few queries, and the most interesting thing I noticed was that it picked up relevant listings that I had not found before.  But I have a few questions and personal thoughts about my experience:

- “Cuil” (pronounced “cool”) could not be any more confusing, and they would have to get “cool.com” to make it right.  The problem is that the owner of that name is well known for holding on to his names, as he can afford to.  Driving traffic to “cuil.com” will only drive traffic to “cool.com”, especially if word-of-mouth picks up. Google and Yahoo don’t have this problem.

- I saw a lot of relevant images, but they were misaligned with the results.  It seems to infer that the image came from the site it indexed, but it wasn’t.  It’s confusing, and irrelevant.

- The layout can be disorienting, and does not allow for easy scanning of the entire list.  It would be nice if users had more control of the results display, including a standard ordered list, reduction of the desc/snippet, and prominence on the URL (a lot of trust is placed in the URL).

- The index could stand to be freshened up a bit.  I found pages that had been removed months ago.

- The top 10 could use more diversity at the domain level.  I found a lot of pages from a single domain that had little to offer.

All said, I’m keeping an eye on this one.    Lots more to review - but this was my first impression. Danny Sulivan has a detailed review here: http://searchengineland.com/080728-000100.php
 

My latest column is posted at MediaPost Search Insider, the first of a two-part series on the impact of new vanity ICANN generic top level domains (gTLDs).  The title accidentally got hacked off - it should say “.anythinggoes”, so it looks a little out of context in its current state.

http://www.mediapost.com/blogs/search_insider/?p=831

Also, here some additional columns I wrote for MediaPost that discuss the importance of a domain move, and the importance of planning for search:

Five Tips For Assessing the Value of Natural Search
http://blogs.mediapost.com/search_insider/?p=624

The Unfolding Search Story of Bodog.com
http://blogs.mediapost.com/search_insider/?p=614

Seven Challenges of SEM Planning and Execution
http://blogs.mediapost.com/search_insider/?p=408

Solutions to Seven Challenges of SEM Planning and Execution
http://www.mediapost.com/blogs/search_insider/?p=417

Needless to say, everyone in the local search engine marketing industry is a bit surprised at Google’s decision to close their Dallas office.  The DFW SEM association posted a formal response on Business Wire, which is starting to get picked up on various search blogs. 

http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS206136+10-Jul-2008+BW20080710

This $100,000,000 estimate does not take into account all of the SMB’s in the area, which we expect would push the actual spend up considerably higher.  It also doesn’t take into account the spends in Austin, Houston, and San Antonio.  In addition to the twenty people from the Dallas office, Google be thinking about adding 100 more to serve this market, and also consider a more localized approach. 

As local SEM’s, we were very pleased to have the Google office in the area.  Yes, they serviced accounts nationally, but Dallas people were also present and highly visible at local interactive marketing associations such as DFWSEM, the DFW IMA, and The Dallas Ad League.

I certainly wish them all the best.

More coverage from Search Engine Watch
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/080711-115754