See this TechCrunch article for more detail on Google and Twitter …If you stop and think about this, it just makes sense to some degree. Google dominates in the area of search. But they don’t do ‘real-time’ search of conversations and that’s where Twitter is strong. If you haven’t used the http://search.twitter.com — do so and you’ll see the power of this new era. Type a few keywords in and watch as it updates for you in real-time, listing the Twitter conversations going on with those keywords.

We’ll see… rumors are rumors.  But just because it makes sense to a bunch of bloggers doesn’t mean it will happen.  Personally, I’d like to see it occur provided Google doesn’t sit on Twitter like it did Blogger and slow the development of the platform.  But I have my doubts Google will make the leap because there is so much in flux right now. New developments in social media and social networking tools are happening almost weekly from startups and the majors.

For example, where does FriendFeed fit into the picture with their announcements this coming Monday (April 6th) for major changes?  I’m personally more interested in these developments because it’s a more powerful communication tool then Twitter.  And what will Facebook do?  My goodness; there are so many changes occurring in the social tools space that 2009 is an exciting year of unpredictable change for most of us. Hardly a new concept though considering the last few years, but that’s another more philosophic topic.

Robert Scoble seems to be leaning away from the idea that Google would buy Twitter. As you know, opinions are like noses, everyone has one. What do you think?  Kara Swisher is reporting that there is no Google deal under discussion to buy Twitter.

Tom
Reposted with permission from MarketsofConversation.com ©2009

While most readers of this blog do not work for local businesses, many of you know local ‘bricks and mortar’ business owners needing some guidance about advertising locally.  I am also assuming that most of you have a bulky yellow pages taking up room on a shelf in your home.  Mine has never been opened since it arrived at my front door, and it has stayed out of the recycle bin only because a day may come when my internet connection goes down.  So it was not surprising for me to read a recent article in SearchEngineLand.com that two thirds of people looking for information about local businesses are abandoning their print yellow pages for the internet.  A July 2008 study by TMP Directional Marketing shows that of the 90% of people looking for local business information, about a third use print yellow pages, a third use internet yellow pages and local search websites, and a third use search engines.  However, those using search engines are often directed to internet yellow pages and local search sites, making these directories very important for local businesses!  For example, of the top twenty organic results on Google for ‘austin tx party store,’ only two of these link to the websites of stores in Austin selling party supplies.  All the others comprise eleven different national yellow page directories, local search directories, and party specific directories.

So local businesses need to pay attention to directories – but which ones should they choose? It is important to do keyword research to know what terms people are using to find the products and services you offer.  If you then use these keywords to run searches through Google and Yahoo!, it will become clear which directories have visibility, and you should spend some time adding as much free information that is allowed on those directories. SearchEngineLand.com gives additional guidance here, showing the usefulness of Google Trends in determining the web search volume of particular sites. Google trends will also show regional distinctions between directories – Citysearch is by far the leader in Austin, but comes a distant third to Yellowpages.com and Superpages.com in Dallas. Google Analytics will also help businesses see how internet traffic is coming to their site.  A minimum amount of advertising can be done on a number of high ranking directories, and then the performance of those directories can be tracked over several months.  Directories in their ‘resurrected’ form can definitely help small businesses!

Search Engine Marketing isn’t just for companies with substantial marketing budgets selling nationally and internationally.  ‘Bricks and mortar’ businesses in metropolitan areas are often shocked when they discover how much search exists for their products and services in their city. 

For example, there are approximately 3,500 (broad) Google searches per month on pet grooming services in Austin, TX (metro population approx. 1.5 million).  Strategic optimization with appropriate keywords like ‘Austin dog grooming’ and ‘mobile pet grooming Austin’ could drive a substantial amount of searches to the website over time, and a pay per click campaign starts at just a nickel per click on many of those keywords.

Even better, most businesses don’t know that the local search results—at the very top of the Google search results—are a FREE service. To sign up, click on the blue link at the top of the listings for your category, then go to the bottom of the page with listings. There’s a link for Information for Business Owners. From there, complete the forms on your business, and verify by phone or post card.

If you are a small business, more people are searching for your products in your city than you think - find out how small business SEO can work for you!

We have talked with three companies over the last few weeks who are all focused on creating or leveraging their directories. Although directories are nothing new, these companies are focused on capturing and aggressively maintaining position for the terms in the industries that they serve.

Specifically, they are generating content, using solid, white hat SEO practices. This gives them the ability to essentially sell (or rent, as John Rasco says) their high ranking position to companies who either need the position quickly or could not afford the time and expense for real SEO.

I see this tactic as being somewhere between PPC and SEO. The rankings are in the natural search results, but you have to buy this position from these intermediary companies… and you lose this listing as soon as you stop paying. Sounds like PPC to me.

Another big disadvantage for clients of these services is that these results are for the directory sites. Client sites are not building authority. Companies offering this service seem to have their own angle on this approach. I can certainly see the advantages of this for some companies, but it is certainly not a good long term organic SEO strategy.

I think these types of sites will become more and more prevalent, unless Google starts filtering them out.

Here is a question I get fairly often:

I notice in your Twitter posts/tweets that you have a “tiny url” for the website postings you want the reader to see. What is TinyURL? How is this different from a regular URL?

GOOD question, Bob. Here is the answer: Twitter allows only 140 characters and that include any URL you may insert into the text. The problem with URLs is many of them are very long and hairy, as you’ve probably noticed. So … thanks to TinyURL freeware, here’s what you do to solve that problem:

1. Go to http://www.tinyurl.com
2. Scroll down a bit and you’ll see a box titled: Enter a long URL to make tiny:
3. Do what it says and click on the Make TinyURL button.

OR, if you want to add TinyURL to your toolbar:
1. Click and drag the following link to your links toolbar: TinyURL!
2. Once this is on your toolbar, you’ll be able to make a TinyURL at the click of a button. By clicking on the toolbar button, a TinyURL will be created for the page you are currently on. 
3. Next time you’re composing a note in Twitter and want to include a page’s URL, open another window (or tab up) so you can see the content there. Grab the URL and click on the TinyURL thing on your Toolbar, and it will give you the short version you can copy and paste into your tweet.

Try it out. You can always delete your test twitter.

BONUS:
This question also comes up about Twitter: Why should a business bother with Twitter? Well, what you have to keep in mind is there are two parts to the Twitter opportunity, and you don’t see the second one unless you know about it. I’ve had all sorts of businesses contact me when I twitter about something because these businesses are constant running SEARCHES against all Twitters for keywords. When they find something, they send that person an email (or Twitter). It’s the ultimate one-on-one marketing.

Go to Google and type Twitter Search and you’ll see all kinds of search engines. In fact, Twitter actually purchased a specialized Twitter Search software company that has been integrated into Twitter – see http://search.twitter.com/. 

The business leverage here is getting more intimate with people who are exposing so much about their daily lives (business and personal) that you can hook into this and engage with them. Answer questions, help them out, solve a problem for them, sell them a product they are looking for, fix something broken they are complaining about.

I tell you, when someone pops up in your email box telling you they saw a Twitter you posted and they are offering some help, it just about blows you away. This is true for B-to-B and B-to-C.

Another feature is the list of hot topics that are shown at http://search.twitter.com/, so go exploring and see what’s possible for you and your business on Twitter.

Tom

SEO’s prevalence can be maddening. Recently, a client’s design firm questioned our methods and suggested that they not implement our strategy. From the client’s point of view their concerns seemed valid, especially since the designer lists SEO as one of the services they offer. They suggested that below the fold copy with lots of keyword phrases is borderline black hat.

First of all, we only suggest an ethical search engine optimization strategy. Successful organic SEO needs keywords to be used within the copy, and it needs to be readable. Our objective is to get more leads for our clients. By combining an effective SEO strategy with good SEO copywriting techniques, we can bring people to the site and help convert them.

So, was that last paragraph readable? It has lots of keyword phrases. Although that paragraph is a bit aggressive, it is not even close to black hat. Maybe our client’s designer felt that actually using keywords is black hat?

I was surprised by their suggestion that below the fold copy is a problem. (“Below the fold” is any part of a page where you need to scroll down to see it). The location of the fold is determined by each person’s screen resolution. If your monitor has a high screen resolution, you can fit more on the page.

Suggesting that search engines don’t like below the fold copy is ridiculous. Search engines (and the spiders they use to crawl your site) don’t have a monitor and, therefore, do not see a fold for copy to be below. This argument also implies that people are either fooled by scrolling down or that they don’t like to scroll down.

And that’s where their hidden agenda is illuminated. As “usability experts”, the designer apparently feels that anything below the fold ruins the design. They don’t like to scroll down, so they assume that the rest of the world should not be required to scroll down either. When I look at their site, I see limited scrolling, limited copy and limited rankings on the search engines.

The client did the right thing. They sent us the concerns and let us address them. It’s important to understand where your advice is coming from.

Yahoo and Google have worked out some paid search advertising deal, announced yesterday. They assure us that it’s not a monopoly or merger. I don’t know what it is, though. From the linked Search Engine Land post, it sounds an awful lot like everything will be run through AdWords, with Yahoo getting to keep a share of the profits. What I want to know about is what this will do as far as the Yahoo Search Submit services go. Are all of the Yahoo paid search services coming over to the Google side or just pay-per-click and contextual advertising?

Guess I shouldn’t get too far ahead of myself in what is sure to be a very gradual roll out that already has the anti-trust people in the Senate very, very interested…

There has been a recent change in the Google algorithm, meaning many sites have seen changes in the rankings for cherished search terms. After muttering about it for a couple of weeks, I’ve decided not to take it personally. We’ve been #1 for one particular term for years, so suddenly becoming #2 is not THAT big a deal–especially since the competing site doesn’t have anything like the depth of information, the links, the content or the design licks that our site does. After all, it’s the human who decides which site looks interesting.

And, it’s relatively easy for a site to concentrate on a single term to compete, but our methodology for site optimization looks at 25-30 terms. For our own site, there are 50 terms we monitor, and we have dozens of terms on the first page of Google…we do a good job of filling the niche we defined as our target. Over the years, we’ve been through several major algorithm changes, and the good news is that things settle out, and the cream still rises to the top. None of our clients has ever seen substantial change to their rankings, after the storm passes.

None of us likes change, but change forces us to adapt. High gas prices help us act on our conservationist values, and we suddenly understand the cost of running errands one at a time. Something we all need to do from time to time is to consider how Google looks at our site. What pages are being served up, and which are not being served? There are two major factors to consider: quality content, and quality links.

Take your list of targeted terms and take a fresh look at your rankings. Page one rankings are definitely keepers. Terms that are not in the top 20? It may be time to remove them from your strategy. For those terms that fall onto the second page, now is a good time to think about building them up–move the content higher up in your site, or replace some of those dud terms with these up-and-comers. Also, think about longer keyword phrases that you might have unique content for–unique is a high value at the Googleplex.

Are all your links pointing to the home page? Then you’re missing a huge opportunity. Keyword-based links that point to relevant content pages can be just the thing to pop a #15 ranking onto the first page–and since the vast majority of people only look at Page One results, it’s well worth the extra effort to sharpen your SEO strategy with quality content and quality links.

I’m taking care of a friend’s cats while he’s out of town. While I was leaving his apartment, a stink bug flew at me and attacked with extreme prejudice and unmitigated ferocity. OK, I’ll admit that it was probably just trying to find someplace to land peacefully, but my head is not as bug-friendly as it may look.

I began flailing my arms about in desperate defense, ultimately relying on the plastic bag in my hand as a weapon against this cruel stink bug berserker. You may remember that I am taking care of cats. The plastic bag, which I was taking to the dumpster, was not empty.

During the melee, I noticed the neighbor woman watching in amusement. Stink bug: 1. Tom’s dignity: 0. Eventually, the stink bug landed on the door, and I fled the scene.

You may be wondering what this has to do with search marketing. Sadly, this incident is like so much that’s going on right now.

Google, a perennial source of ranking mayhem, has recently updated their algorithm causing many sites to lose rank on key pages. A natural reaction is to swat at these competitor stink bugs by doing what you’ve always done. If this doesn’t work, it can turn into a frantic swatfest of title tag tweaking and copy rewriting.

Search marketing is evolving. Old strategies that once gave you an edge are now standard operating procedure, which means that you must have your SEO fundamentals down pat.

Optimization, especially B2B SEO, is most definitely a long term strategy. Developing lots of great content and building solid links are the two fundamental long term strategies that must be the focus. However, this is evolving. In addition to the content you create for your site, you also need to build resources that you publish on other sites. These should have links back to your site (when possible), and they should always have value to the audience.

Ranking will always fluctuate. Ultimately, if you’re approach to search marketing involves proactively implementing a long term strategy, you’re on the right path. If your approach is reactionary, you’re basically swinging cat poo.

Back to work after Mother’s Day, it hit me. Does Google = Mom?

You decide for yourself. Choose the most appropriate response for each question below:

1. Establishes and subtly enforces — to keep things in order — a system of reward and discipline for a set of known rules:

a) Google
b) Mom

2. Establishes and subtly enforces a second system of reward and discipline, this one for which the rules are not disclosed:

a) Google
b) Mom

3. Encourages — through a complex strategy of intermittent delayed reward for compliant behavior — the habit of always trying to do everything right to be sure she’s happy:

a) Google
b) Mom

4. Occasionally must take away everyone’s privileges when actually only a few have been bad:

a) Google
b) Mom

5.Works tirelessly to survey, decode, categorize, store, and retrieve stuff — on demand and usually in under two seconds — so most of the time we can get what we need or something pretty darn close:

a) Google
b) Mom

6. Has earned the cultural endorsement of having a noun that names them be also used as a verb:

a) Google
b) Mother

7. Fill in the blank: “If ___________ ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.”

a) Google
b) Momma

Am I on to something here?