If you have spent any time working on search optimization, novice to guru (ha ha), then you have spent some time worrying about anchor text. Inc Magazine has an answer for you: just link the entire page to itself. The image above is an accident, I assume because it has been corrected, but for a while the entirety of this post was a link back to itself.

When it comes to anchor text that is too much (710 words).

So what should you be looking for? When you control the link and you want to do “the right thing” you should be linking with an appropriate description of the content that you are linking to like: filtering mail in Google Analytics. If you need a full sentence to describe a link something is suspect — both as a reader and for the search engines.

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credit: smashz

Due to illness I am writing more about Quality Score, rather than coming up with a new idea.

From Google:

I. Quality Score for Google and the Search Network

While we continue to refine our Quality Score formulas for Google and the search network, the core components remain more or less the same:

• The historical clickthrough rate (CTR) of the keyword and the matched ad on Google; note that CTR on the Google Network only ever impacts Quality Score on the Google Network—not on Google
• Your account history, which is measured by the CTR of all the ads and keywords in your account
• The historical CTR of the display URLs in the ad group
• The quality of your landing page
• The relevance of the keyword to the ads in its ad group
• The relevance of the keyword and the matched ad to the search query
• Your account’s performance in the geographical region where the ad will be shown
• Other relevance factors

Note that there are slight variations to the Quality Score formula when it affects ad position and first page bid:

• For calculating a keyword-targeted ad’s position, landing page quality is not a factor. Also, when calculating ad position on a search network placement, Quality Score considers the CTR on that particular search network partner in addition to CTR on Google.
• For calculating first page bid, Quality Score doesn’t consider the matched ad or search query, since this estimate appears as a metric in your account and doesn’t vary per search query.

For those of you that have not looked at the breakdown in an account Google gives you a score based on a 10 point scale. The easiest way to get the first three points is to have a Keyword that matches Ad Text that matches Landing Page Text. So after taking care of the things you control you are at 3 of 10, or Poor. The other 7 factors are not things that you have no control of.

Your historical data is a combination of your clickthrough rate and traffic you have generated, that means the amount of money you spend. Google has at times, during phone calls, suggested that one should pay for higher placement to get better CTR, and thus better historical values. That is not a fair indicator. If your ROI doesn’t hold out at the higher placement you are going to be punished by the system in the form of a higher cost for first page bid.

Your performance in a specific geographic area is another rather opaque performance indicator. If you are don’t do as well in a location you are considered of lesser quality. But, agian, that is going to be based on CTR; if someone local is buying out your first spot you will see a decrease CTR and a loss of “Quality”

The new UI changes also hide the new first page bid cost. In total the new changes have made it harder to track the user important indicators, like minimum cost, and factors that may be hurting your results. Now that on-page best practices account for less than 50% of the quality score you should all consider calling Google directly at 1 (866) 246 6453. Ask them what you should do.

Here is what they say:

• Match Type Doesn’t Affect QS (unless you count CTR values)
• Put A Call To Action in Your Ad
• Geo-targeting Doesn’t Effect Quality
• Buy #1 Placement

The most annoying aspect of the new factors is the Query Relevance factor; according to Google if you bid on Green Beans you are of suspect relevance if you have a page that sells green jelly beans. So Google feels that you have less right to show, and thus should pay more, than someone with Green Been Recipies. That seems a bit arbitrary.

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It has now been a while since the new landing page assessments have been rolled out on Google. How have they affected you?

Compare two directory sites, both show Google Ads and buy Google Ads:

SourceTool.com & Business.com

Which has a better landing page? One clearly has more content. Next let’s look at the search results from the two sites:

SourceTool.com - Green Construction

Ten excerpts from business specific pages that have been added to the directory. Eight ads top and right side of page. The links lead to more robust business listings of the excepts.

Business.com - Green Construction

Business.com serves up Google Ads (16 sponsored listings top, right and bottom of page) and PAID listings. There are no nofollows on the paid links; they go straight to the business site.

The Breakdown

SourceTool provides a value add and full listing for companies supported by advertising. Business.com provides paid links that openly flaunt Google paid link policy. Clearly both businesses make money from click arbitrage.

SourceTool had their minimum bids for Adword raised from $0.06 minimum bid to $1. They spent more than $100k implementing changes recommended by Google to no avail.

Business.com is on of Google’s “Search Partners,” maybe that is why they don’t have to nofollow paid links. So, they get to sell on both ends with no barriers.

In response Dan Savage of SourceTool has flied complaint with the Justice Department. an excerpt from the New York Times:

The ways Sourcetool differs from business.com are what Mr. Savage views as his competitive advantages. They include the way he ranks companies, and a directory page that gives information about each company.

When I pressed Mr. Fox [Google’s product manager for ad quality] about Sourcetool, he refused to tell me why the algorithm had problems with the site. When I asked him why the business.com site was in the algorithm’s good graces but Sourcetool’s wasn’t, he wouldn’t tell me that, either. All I got were platitudes about the user experience. It wasn’t long before I was almost as exasperated as Mr. Savage. How can you adapt your business model to Google’s specs if Google won’t tell you what the specs are?

Google also told me that it never made judgments of what was “good” and “bad” because it was all in the hands of the algorithm. But that turns out not to be completely true. Mr. Savage shared with me an e-mail message from a Google account executive to someone at another company who had run into the same kind of landing page problem as Sourcetool. The Google account executive wrote back to say that she had looked at the site and found that “there seems to be a wealth of valuable information on the site.” Consequently, her team overruled the algorithm.

I think the bolded sections are important for everyone to read. Mr. Savage from SourceTool was spending over $500,000 per month on AdWords when his minimum bids skyrocketed. Clearly he has introduced even more content to his site that makes it surpass, by objective standards, the content on a site that receives special treatment from Google. I suggested a while ago that “Landing Page Quality” is a straw horse for Google. Obviously under different circumstances Mr. Savages money was as good as anyone else’s, and in fact his history must have been exemplary if they were getting $0.06 minimum bids on a wide range of topics.

Google AdWords has been largely obtuse in its handling of anything customer related, including making contact information very difficult to obtain for small time users. It is unclear what advantages, if any, the new landing page standards have accomplished for users. However, it is very clear what it has accomplished for Google; price gouging that helps protect Search Partners.

I invite you to take a close look at the affects the new standards have had on your campaigns.

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From Micheal’s post:

Social media optimization is another form of Web marketing like pay-per-click optimization, like banner advertising, like newsletter distribution, etc.

People need to stop blurring their distinctions between social media and search media. Search media requires a set of very different rules and guidelines. People do try to leverage social media to obtain competitive search rankings but that’s just linking and there are competitive linking methodologies. Linking, as I have often pointed out, is not search engine optimization, it’s linking.

So really what are you optimizing for?

I am a participant in Social Media. I use StumbleUpon and Twitter to find new content. But I don’t get my traffic from social media predominantly. Over the past 365 days my traffic breaks down like this:

Forty-eight percent of my traffic comes from search engines, mainly Google. A close second is referring sites with about 42% of my total traffic, and, finally, the 10% of my traffic that comes from the people with the good sense and intelligence to visit me directly. First, thanks to all the direct people. Second here are my top referrers:

Over the past year StumbleUpon, a social media site, is the second highest traffic sender across all sources. They it makes up 17% of my total traffic over the past year. Two of my top five pages have accomplished their position thanks to StumbleUpon, Internal Linking Strategies & Landing Page Testing. I don’t think that SU is really that remarkable as a traffic source, it doesn’t account for a large source of links, but it does introduce people to my content. I think that the use of social media to supplement your visibility and bring new traffic can be a legitimate part of linking strategy. In spite of all the direct opposition that Micheal voices against links I don’t think even he would deny that your search optimization campaigns should involve a link strategy.

But this calls out an interesting question? Should I put buttons on blog? I have put them on client properties, they didn’t really seem to improve the volume of social media referrals. For this blog in particular, all marketing blogs really, buttons seem redundant and self-important. The people I know through social media should be on their own devices if they think my work deserves to be submitted.

Still Micheal Martinez, I think inadvertently, makes the point that you are leaving something on the table by not taking advantage of social media. My referrals, including StumbleUpon, make a serious contribution to my geographic distribution.

Clearly my traffic indicates that I spend more time grooming this site for organic search, but maybe that is a mistake. If Micheal is right and I could double that channel why wouldn’t I? Especially since it seems to have a positive effect on how widely my work gets distributed.

If you are looking into your Social Media rewards you should call out some specific values that social media may have over your normal traffic sources.

1. Geographic Distribution
2. Contribution to Top Content
3. Syndication Use
4. Variety of Links

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Every single link: Privacy Policy, other Google Apps, the whole page. The question is why? There aren’t many reasons that someone might link to their mail login page (that lives on the Google top level domain), but the only place that the possible link value would pass is back into Google, and the examples of their applications.

I have a shiny quarter for anyone that has a plausible explanation for Google damming PageRank on individual login pages for their web-mail app. I wonder where else they are using this tactic?

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More importantly there is a lingering question: how does a browser serve Google?

We know that Google is not a benevolent organization. They artificially manipulate the demand curve of advertising and continually create opt-in programs that give them surreptitious access to your information. So, why would Google want a browser? The same reason that Microsoft has one, to subtly monetize office products.

Would you like to import this to Google Docs?

The growing office platform that Google has introduced and offered “enterprise” support for means that Chrome will most likely feature product reference as freely as Internet Explorer references Microsoft offerings. Is that a bad thing? Maybe not. The modern Internet surfer now has another corporate master they can choose from. No one is particularly hurt by that, and every person that switches away for Internet Explorer to a browser that uses web standards for rendering makes web development easier.

I hope that plenty of people dump Microsoft for Google, or better yet use Chrome as a baby step to using Firefox or Opera.

Why I won’t use Chrome.

I don’t particularly mind product placement. I do however DEEPLY mind having my browser scrape the searches I make in on site searches. I also detest the idea that Google will be catering search results based off the browser, instead of how I actually ask the question.

For those people who are “old-timers” on the Internet you may remember annoying Browser Help Objects:

Except for the singing this could be Chrome. Not helping you near as much as it is skewing your money on the Internet to specific areas that Google has economic interests in. But, really, there are no parties on the Internet that are actually free providers — you need to decide who you support. For now I still support Firefox.

What is Good About Chrome.

• They are pushing forward a new framework for handling JavaScript that should be faster
• They are introducing independent tab handling (they call it dynamic), so, if one tab dies the others should not be affected.

I like both of these advancements, but I have not seen performance data from Chrome so I can’t say how resource intensive these new features are. Chrome will be good for browsers by creating more pressure for real improvement and a larger web-standard compliant population.

Will This Affect Search Results?

As long as ComScore, Nielsen NetRatings, and the community at large don’t start consider OmniBox as Google searches I think search will be the same. Potentially Chrome could introduce a lot of data to Google and Google Suggest about what people are searching on other sites. However, Google already gets a large number of searches from browser add-ons; maybe Chrome won’t change that data stream much at all.

In the long run Chrome is just another browser. Go play with it. See if it works for you.

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Always Be Testing leveled a challenge against a very popular concept, Best Practices.

What are best practices?

A set of commonly employed policies and actions that are know to produce high results in a business vertical or industry.

Many people talk about best practices when talking about SEO, Usability and Analytics. There is a trap in there. Yes, there are some common basics in each category:

SEO

• Unique title & description
• Keyword in header
• Body content that uses popular phrases

Usability

• Navigation on the left
• Light background & dark text
• Obvious links

Analytics

• Implement the code the same way on every page
• Pair performance indicators
• Look at trends; not specifics

However, especially in usability, what does amazing for one industry WILL be wrong in another. SEO, usability, and web-analytics are not the business that defines your best practices; they are tools that serve your business. Spending a little bit of time looking around the Internet to find out the basics of search engine marketing will likely find at least one common tactic that is played out, or never was effective, in your industry.

The best practices for your business are going to be a combination of factors that leverage how your audience engage the Internet and your site. A/B testing has gained attention in the last 6 months because blindly applying a checklist of factors does not achieve your best results. If you try to replicate the successes of Amazon and Dell you will discover an undeniable fact; you are not Amazon or Dell.

Successful sites take into consideration who they are trying to bring in and focus their attention on fulfilling the visitors needs. Most important to in finding your best practices is not letting yourself be taken in by what seems to be successful for your competitors. Mimicking your competitors is one of the best ways to always be behind them.

Make a list of the most useful benefits your competitors, and sites you like using, have implemented. Look to see if they have a value to your customer, and then tackle your search marketing campaigns with these goals in mind. Making clear milestones will help you keep on track and improve more rapidly as you choose your search marketing priorities.

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This morning I sat down to coffee and blog administration when I saw this:

• Monte Dyer | kzix@eezxu.com | josephite.com | IP: 200.63.42.136
• antihumbuggist chou hobblingly hypotensor jumpseed pavy hafiz protomeristem
• Consolidated Press (http://www.consolidatedpress.net/)
  http://www.cnn.com/2000/US/08/25/inner.city.film.school/
  Lucan Basketball Club (http://homepage.eircom.net/%7Elucanbasketball)
  http://www.contrinex.com/
  Don Bender - Bender and Associates Realty (http://www.benderrealestate.com/)
  http://www.zadokco.co.il/
  Static Electricity Projects (http://www.amasci.com/emotor/statelec.html)
  http://www.musicfanclubs.org/davematthews/
  Not Spam — Aug 18, 3:18 AM — [ View Post ]

And these two, probabply from the same person:

New comment on your post #173 “How Do .Gov Sites Use Robots.txt”
Author : glassland (IP: 58.65.235.211 , 58.65.235.211)
E-mail : rtzedsr@gmail.com
URL : http://www.nybgshop.org
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=58.65.235.211
Comment:
steven usa see student cube microsoft you home

New comment on your post #173 “How Do .Gov Sites Use Robots.txt”
Author : redwaterkeyb (IP: 58.65.235.213 , 58.65.235.213)
E-mail : hgsoevygyt@he.com
URL : http://graysonstone.com
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=58.65.235.213
Comment:
student cube keyboard boy minor australia wood

Why Are You Being Spammed?

In total this isn’t a horrible day for comment spam; I have had worse. But today it felt right to do something about it. To ask the question why do people drop garbled phrases and links in your comments?

You will notice that the last two spams are from the same IP, and for different sites, so I figure this is an agency or individual who is spamming on the behalf of Grayson Stone: Natural Stone Countertops (Denton Tx) and New York Botanical Garden (New York City). The first spam comment contains 8 links to seemingly unrelated sites. So, it is probably also an agency or individual.

They have chosen well trafficked pages that have both received some attention. Often spammers choose older pages that are less likely to be noticed by the blog owner. They come in and leave a randomly assembled set of 6 -12 words to mimic a short comment. Mixed in with the words is usually a link, or just a link through their posting name (usually a mid-to-high competition phrase).

Through this they hope that you will not filter or notice the wonky comment until after Google has noticed it. These spam blasts hit thousands of sites everyday counting on unused and under-administrated blogs retaining some of the links long enough to be spidered.

What Can You Do About Comment Spam?

I think the simplest way to cut down the spam is to help people understand that spamming is bad for their business. When I get a comment that is obviously 3-rd party to the link I actually call the business. Today I called Don Bender and Associates and left a message with Dave Dicky, CTO United Country Realty. I gave him my phone number and let him know that someone is spamming people on his behalf. He called back to let me know that this was NOT a behavior that the business sanctioned. I let him know that the most likely culprit was someone hiring a low-ethics company to do link building.

By letting people know that they are being grouped in with spam you often find they find the practice reprehensible, and want out. Politely letting people know how their efforts are appearing on the Internet helps to expand baseline knowledge of  how the Internet really affect their business.

If you are running a blog that gets spammed regularly you should call 1 person this week and let them know that they are funding the spam that they hate. Most of the time these people are more than happy to get more information.

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Last week when a copy of Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer showed up at my door I was excited and intrigued. What exactly do Bryan, Lisa and John have in store for the reader?

After reading both Call to Action and Waiting for Your Cat to Bark I was surprised to see a title that implied content that is technical and software driven; rather than the theoretical psychologically driven stuff from previous books. It turns out the title is a bit off center, but still largely true.

Calling Always Be Testing a complete guide to Website Optimizer is like calling a cookbook the complete guide to a Maytag oven. Yes, it does tell you what to use an oven for, but it is not the owners manual for the oven. I think this fact dawns on them; the bulk of the content follows a comfortable pattern.

• Questions to Ask
• Exercise
• What to Test
• Apply This to Your Site

Most of the book is about what to test and how to test, not how to use Website Optimizer. Much of the content and examples from FutureNow and previous books are revisited to create a methodology for testing. They call call it a testing framework throughout the book — you could easily call it a recipe.

The first couple chapters and the last section of the book do cover implementation of code and integration with WordPress. However, they do not cover integration of Website Optimizer with Google Analytics. Always Be Testing does a remarkable job of applying the information that FutureNow has been producing on the web and spends some time debunking the concept of best practices. They take a position that whatever you expect to work is probably wrong, regardless of who else it works for. I especially appreciate the section where they discuss Amazon taking actions on their checkout buttons that are generally known to decrease click through. You should read to find out why Amazon doesn’t want you to buy from the flagship store.

If you already understand the concepts of Persuasion Architecture this should be a swift read with plenty of valuable tips to improve how you test your websites and improve your approach to testing frameworks.

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photo credit: willem velthoven

Marty Weintraub gave me a call yesterday. After talking to him for a bit I realized that I should probably cover a response to the concepts, the meat, of his brand ambassador discussion.

Where does one draw the line in building “real,” fictional, and hybrid social profiles? How much should be man…how much machine? What does “authentic” really mean? What are the ground rules? What are the golden rules? At what point does any given methodology in creating corporate brand ambassadors cross over to unacceptable, immoral, or unethical? Certainly the tiers of transparency and various approaches to building social media brand ambassador avatars should be carefully evaluated according to the tactics undertaken and the potential benefits and risks.

First some definitions I like from Three Types of Social Media:

• Identity Media: Content that is produced under the authors real name and fully backed as their work.
• Alias Media: Content that is produced under a screen name.
• Anonymous Media: Content that is created outside a registration wall, with no verifiable personal information.

Obviously brand ambassadors are never going to be anonymous media; you need to establish a relationship to be an ambassador. But there are places for both identity media and alias media in ambassador relationships.

Two Examples of Brand Ambassadors:

Dan@Sprint.com - Sprint has had very bad press over customer service, fraudulent charges, and other poor customer dealings. So, they made a commercial with the CEO, Dan Hesse, and put an e-mail at the end of the ad spot. Dan@Sprint.com is an alias for customer service. People get a phone call from the service center to help resolve their problem. Dan is whoever is next on the roster at the call center. Dan Hesse is a personality front for Sprint Customer Service, he is a hybrid of real humans backing a televison/online persona, this is conglomerated alias.

@Zappos (CEO) - If you are on Twitter @Zappos is Tony Hseih. He is use Twitter, I suspect he loves twitter. When you talk to @Zappos you will often get real interactions. Everything from give aways to invitations to karaoke. Tony has made over 800 posts, most showing who he really is, as identity media.

These brand ambassadors work because there are real people behind them. That is the real requirement, people. Any business choosing to create social media content has to make a decision of putting a person out, Tony Hseih, or a persona, Dan@Sprint.com, what they should not be doing is creating person-less shills.

If you have one persona talking to another owned by the same entity, person or company, you are likely being deceitful.

There are definitely times when an individual will have multiple identities for legitimate reasons (e.g. representative for a community/company and a personal persona) in the same space. But, ethically, those personae should not be directly interacting.

Business that are create brand ambassadors have to make a decision around how they plan to use the the Internet as a medium. If you have your representative be their self the relationship with the community changes when they step away form the position. If you have a persona for the brand then you need to take the time to craft a corporate voice that they will maintain as brand ambassador, and rules for how they will engage the community.

User generated content can be very useful for any company, but customer backlash is not an enjoyable experience. The point of social media, with rare exceptions, is to interact. You do not need to be 100% you all the time on the Internet; many people share different parts of themselves in different communities, but they are sharing themselves. Companies should not join communities unless they are willing to invest real people into maintaining their presence and they should be up front about who they represent.

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