I want to spend sometime talking about the Google Stock - GOOG

I promise to tie this into SEM very tidily at the end.

Currently I have “The Google Story: Inside the Hottest Business, Media, and Technology Success of Our Time” loaded onto my iPOD.

The author quotes the founder Larry Page as saying - have a “healthy disregard for the impossible.” Brin and Page have seemed to be more interested in achieving solutions to problems that interested them than being taught what was or was not possible. In the building of Google they did not follow in the footsteps of established SEs such as AltaVista, which had a 54% market share at the time, instead they went their own route. Before they started Google they tried to license/sell the PageRank technology to AltaVista, Excite, and Yahoo! All of them passed.

Clearly Google is and remains a better search engine. Of course, the rest of the field has noticed the revenue potential of search. MSN and Yahoo! mimic Google in many ways. Such as their text ads.

What would have happened if Google launched a site that followed AltaVista, Excite and Yahoo! Would Google have tried to monetize every pixel on the screen? Would Google give preference to companies with money? Would we even be talking about Google right now? Maybe Google would have been relegated to the history books and some other dynamic duo came up with their own version of Google which I?��d be writing about right now. And of course Larry and Sergey would be successful programmers or even VPs or CEOs in their time and probably worth millions, but certainly not billions.

On Saturday I was having lunch with my family. My dad asked me, was it black Friday yesterday? I had no idea what he was talking about. He was referencing the beating GOOG took on the market. It had dropped all the way to $399, from earlier highs of $470. This did not bother me because I don?��t apply the lessons/fears created from the dot bubble to GOOG. Google is a special company with big ambitions and the talent and vision to pull it off. I think we are only at the beginning of what Google is going to show us.

I think it takes a special breed to fly in the face of conventional wisdom and established practices. And I think one of the last questions we should ask when we are wearing our SEM/SEO hats is ?�?What is the competition doing??��

Neo, I believe. Um, sorry - that is the Matrix Revelations.

Larry, Sergey and Eric, I believe.

An e-commerce site we are involved with has a small survey at the end of its checkout process.

It asks people how they found the site. Here’s a screen capture of the results. The interesting question here is this. Is this a result of our efforts or more an indication of what people use to find products. For example, if they increased their spending on print advertising 10 fold, would Print Ad move up to roughly 80? Are they creating a self fulfilling prophecy?

One of the KWs that brings in the most traffic for this site is #1 on Google and #2 on Teoma. Yet, Teoma has no mentions. And look at Yahoo! The site ranks very well in Google, but OK in Yahoo! Should the difference be that much?

I currently own GOOG. And this kind of knowledge gives me the courage to hold on to it while the stock takes a beating with the rest of the tech sector. Yahoo! had poor results and the stock got hammered. I think Google took some of the market share from Yahoo! The online spending has not gone down, its gone up, and it is estimated to do so into the future. So if Yahoo! is down, is that because the spending across the board is down or is that because Google increased its market share. I’m betting on Google increasing its market share.

If anyone has information showing Yahoo! out referring Google, and the site in question ranks well in both engines, I would like you to leave a comment.

Yes, very easy to push to hard and not get rankings.

A friend of mine was asking me to check his site because Google does not like him.? That translates into no meaningful rankings.

Lets say his desired KW is [red widget tools].? So with that ?�� here?��s the work up on his site.

URL = http://www.red-widget-tools.com
Title = Red Widget tools News
Description = Red-Widget-Tools News - latest XX-YYY and Red-Widget developments.
Keywords = red-widget, red-widget spin, red-widget spin, red-widget tools, red widget spin, redewidget, red-widget

Phrases on the page:
Red-Widget Tools = 2
Red-Widget-Tools = 4
Red-Widget = 40 (does not include the above)

I think the site is a little stuffed.? My friend might want to lighten up a little bit.

Have you ever wished you could get a peek at web stats for other sites? Most websites have their stats securely tucked behind a username & password login.

How about the ones that don’t?

Try this search:

allinurl:/plesk-stat/webstat/

Yeah, 15,000 results. If you live and breath the web like we do, you should find this very interesting.

Or just tag /plesk-stat/webstat/ on to the end of a domain (but remove the www’s)

Like this:

http://www.sample.com

You would try:

http://sample.com/plesk-stat/webstat/

Happy hunting!

The most effective tool I?��ve ever come up with for managing my e-mail is at the same time the simplest thing I?��ve ever done.

I added a random code to my signature block, i.e. 9527417171, and then created a rule in my e-mail that test all incoming message for that code, if the code is present, the e-mail is filtered to a special inbox.

I went even a step further. In some places where my e-mail address is posted on the net I?��ve added code to place a subject line containing that number. If anyone should send me an e-mail by clicking the e-mail link that number will be placed in the subject of their e-mail.? I?��ve even used it in my contact forms.

The advantage to this is my spam filter does not get a chance to incorrectly filter a message containing that code. It also pulls the important messages out of the inbox from all of the other e-mails that I want to read, but are not as important.

I?��ve been a long time fan of Google. I was one of the first at our company to recognize how it was such a special company and in turn very important to us. I talk about Google a lot with the people I work with and with the people in my personal life.

People around me have started to rely on Google as much as I have. And they will quip terms like ?�?I googled it.?�� None of them will say ?�?I MSNed it.?�� Or ?�?I Yahooed! it.?��

I?��ve started to notice that people who I don?��t have influence over are now saying things like ?�?I googled it.?�� The most memorable was in Costa Rica. I was in a small internet caf?�. Sitting to my right was a man in his 40?��s with his teenage daughter to his right. He wanted to find something on the net and looked a little baffled about what to do. His problem was he appeared to be computer illiterate. He asked his daughter a couple of times for assistance. She huffed at him ?�?Dad, just Google it!?��

Priceless.

Google Video now allows you to embed their videos in your site. Click this link to see a sample of a Google Video embedded on our site.

If you want a laugh view this one: Very Funny Video Found on Google

Wouldn’t it be great if we could simply edit Meta tags and get high rankings?

Many years ago I read Stephen R. Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” One thing Covey discusses is the glitter of the “Personality Ethic.” He mentions how some people try to find some “quick and easy way to achieve quality of life … without going through the natural process of work and growth that makes it possible.” Then he goes on to say, “The Personality Ethic is illusory and deceptive. And trying to get high quality results with its techniques and quick fixes is just about as effective as trying to get to some place in Chicago using a map of Detroit.”

What Covey says is nearly identical to what I’ve been saying for years regarding search engine optimization: There are simply no quick fixes.

I wish I had a dime for every potential client who came to me and said, “We just need you to fix our Meta tags so our site will rank highly with search engines.” These people don’t realize that if it were simply a matter of fixing Meta tags, they could probably do it themselves!

Why Not Meta Tags?

Search engines don’t have a whole lot to work with when trying to figure out which sites to show in their list of results for any given keyword search. Considering this, it’s actually quite amazing how relevant most search results tend to be, given the sheer number of pages on the Internet these days.

For an internal search engine that just searches through pages or products on your site, the information provided in the Meta keyword tag can really help to narrow down the most relevant pages that one of your site users might be searching for.

Unfortunately, the differences between an internal search engine and a public one such as Google are many.? For instance, with an internal engine, there are only a relatively small number of pages or products to search through to find a relevant page. Plus, the content and Meta tags on the site are trustworthy, since your goal and that of your internal search engine is to help people find exactly what they’re looking for on your site.

On the other hand, with major search engines, their database contains basically every page on the web that they know about.? They can’t necessarily trust the Meta tags they find since a site owner’s goals may not necessarily be the same as the major search engines’ goal (i.e., you would like your site to show up in the search results as much as possible for as many keyword phrases as possible, but the search engine would like to show the most relevant pages, whether those are yours or someone else’s).

This makes changing or adding Meta tags on your site neither a quick fix nor a slow fix. It won’t fix anything and it won’t have any effect on your search engine traffic.

What About Content?

Sure, you can add all kinds of content to your site and hope that will be a quick fix, but writing lots of good content cannot be done quickly.? It will generally take years of writing a little bit every day or every week, to eventually end up with a genuine archive of truly useful information.? It’s highly doubtful that if you’re somehow generating 100 pages a week, you’re actually creating good content. You’re either stealing from elsewhere, auto-generating it from some sort of icky software program, or you’re some kind of robot with too much time on your hands!

How About Links?

It is true that links are very important to helping your site gain visibility and search engine traffic.? But quick-fix link schemes are not going to result in long-term high rankings for your site. Everyone knows to avoid “link farms,” but nobody seems to quite know what they are.? No worry, because it doesn’t matter whether something is a link farm or a link scheme or a link popularity bonanza software extravaganza.? If you set out to get links for the sole purpose of increasing your search engine rankings, you’re already thinking backwards.

Forget about link popularity and instead think about your target audience and how you can let them know your site exists. It’s really just marketing, plain and simple. You have a website and a business that presumably is [better] [more unique] [cheaper] [friendlier] than the others out there and it needs to be marketed. You may even have to spend a little money to publicize your site. Good, old-fashioned newspaper, magazine, and even TV ads that mention your website can really get your site noticed.? The more visible your site is, the more it will be talked about in the right circles, and the more links it will obtain just because.? Even PPC ads can help, because they put your site in front of people looking for what you offer. The point is that people have got to find your site one way or another while you’re waiting for your SEO campaign to kick in.? It’s your job to figure out how to get it in front of them as often as you can.

Regardless of how you market your site, don’t count on becoming an overnight sensation.

This brings us back to Covey’s Personality Ethic. Sure, someone can edit your Meta tags quickly and submit to 50 billion search engines and trade links with 90 million useless sites. However, if you haven’t invested the time up front to create a website with great content that speaks to the reader in plain language that real people use (in other words, without technology buzzwords), you will not see good long-term results.

How To Achieve Long-term Results

You may achieve high rankings very quickly for words that nobody is searching for, but as Covey so aptly put it, these will be illusory and deceptive results at best. If no one uses those words in the engine’s search box, all the #1 rankings in the world won’t keep your business afloat.

It’s imperative to think of the search engine optimization process as a long-term investment for your site, so here are 5 tips to help you invest in your future success:

1.? Thoroughly research your keyword phrases using the paid versions of Wordtracker or KeywordDiscovery .? Keyword research is completely and utterly the key to everything that is search marketing.

2. Make sure your site is not made up of graphics alone, as these cannot be read by the search engine spiders that come a-crawling. (This is especially true of graphics that look like text — these are often used when a particular font is desired.)

3. Be sure to use natural, easy-to-understand language that conveys the message of your website and includes keyword phrases you’d like your site to rank highly for.

4. Make sure your Title tags and link anchor text all jibe with the visible content on the page.

5. Be patient! You knew I’d end with that one, but with Google’s aging delay in place for new sites, patience is more important than ever. It’s most likely going to be a good 9 months before you start seeing much (if any)
traffic from Google’s natural results.? ? ? Don’t be discouraged, but instead
use that time to constantly make your site better than the other guy’s.

Remember, you are working toward the future. Good placement achieved by doing things the right way will have staying power over time with very little additional effort. Like everything in life, if you spend the time and money to do it right to begin with, the long-term results will always be impressive.

Jill

History has been made at the Detroit Autoshow. Geely, a Chinese car company, is the first Chinese car maker to show a car at the Detroit Autoshow. They plan to make them available in 2007 and will sell for less than $10,000 US.

You might rightly be asking why is this worthy of posting to a search engine marketing blog. Fair question. The reason it is worthy is it underscores what is going on in the world of globalization. Markets are opening up, borders are having less friction, and Mr. Chow wants to eat your lunch.

In the world of digital deliveries we compete with everyone that has access to the net. But we also have the opportunity to sell our services to everyone that has access to the net. So, yes the field of competitors grows daily, but so does the organizations/people we can sell to.

No two services can be exactly the same. There is always the question of quality and ability. SEO/SEM has a huge component of understanding local culture, which can not be easily learned without living it. Recently I was in Costa Rica. My wife and I had rented a car and we did a lot of day trips. Everyone outside of the resorts speaks Spanish and about as much English as I speak Spanish (which is about 10 words.) I got into the habit of using the thumbs up to indicate several things.

• Fill up my car with gas.
• Fill up my tires with air.
• Yes, that is good.

I kept saying to my wife I should really find out if the thumbs up means anything different here. I started to get concerned it might mean the same as a middle finger extended in North America does.

BTW - just so you know this is not a silly thought here is what the equivalent of the middle finger extended in UK is. It is the index and middle finger forming a V with the back of the hand facing the recipient.

Also, SEO/SEM only one company can get their client to a certain ranking for a certain KW. No two sites can have number #1 for any given KW. Currently we do very well for our clients and I don’t think we are replaceable.

Ah, but is it about being replaceable or is it about taking the American spirit to heart and capitalizing on this trend. The smart SEO/SEMs will capitalize on this trend. How we do that is going to remain a state secret, because trust me, it ain’t easy. But here’s a fair warning to Mr. Chow - I’ve made reservations at your table and my chop stick skills are coming along quite nicely.