Current Search Share 2010/2011

This is the current organic search share for the end of 2010. You can click on the image for a larger version.

Organic Search Engine Market Share - Global 2010/2011
(Rounded data in brackets)

1. Google/Ask 86.21% (87%)
   
2. Bing/Yahoo 9.06% (9%)
   
3. Baidu 2.97% (3%)
   
4. Others 0.68% (1%)
   

2010 was a busy year for search, due to Google pulling out of China and merging with Ask, and the Yahoo/Bing merger. In order for the above chart to be useful, I've merged the Bing/Yahoo and Google/Ask data, even though for much of the year these were separate search engines.

Yes, you can use this in your presentations, as long as credit is given.

Raw sources: Hitslink, Comscore, E-Consultancy, eMarketer, Hitwise, Nielson Media Research, McAnerin International Inc internal analytics data.

SEO-Browser Updated!

We've updated the SEO-Browser!

You can now use it to visit sites from the US or Canada, which is very helpful for multi-country sites. More countries will be added later, as the demand grows.

Canada: ca.seo-browser.com
USA: us.seo-browser.com

In order to add this functionality, we had to put in a FREE one time signup. Don't worry, we don't share emails with anyone.

You can still use it in simple mode without a signup, but the advanced mode is starting to get too difficult to program without assigning users and sessions, hence the login.

Eventually, the advanced mode will add things like ranking reports, etc - all of which require user/password combinations for privacy and data storage purposes, so this is preparation for that.

Interesting Antispam Tactic: Bot Bomb

My son Tas plays an online game called Mabinogi and today mentioned to me a new feature in the game, which had been overrun by something called bots.

Bots are basically programs that control player characters within the games, taking over for the person who is supposed to be doing it. There are many types of bots, including ones that do repetitive tasks so they player doesn't have to, and the worst, spam bots.

These basically stand in the middle of places where people congregate and shout out advertising (typically game money that in turn was gained by bots, sold for real world money). This is against the game rules and makes it no fun for players who are actually trying to play the game.

In order to combat this (which was ruining this and many other online games) the creators of the game did all they could from a game security perspective, but it was simply too difficult to keep up with and detect the spammers, which went to great lengths to simulate human behavior well enough to fool a computer.

But not a human. Experienced human players can detect bots (and spam) almost instinctively.

The game designers finally decided to try something different: using humans to detect bots. Within the game, they created something called a "bot bomb" which can be thrown at a suspected bot. The "bot bomb" then asks a very simple question, that any human player would be able to answer with no difficulty. Essentially a reverse Turing test, like a CAPTCHA.

If the bot fails, it's logged out and the account flagged. Time limits are in place to prevent humans from being "bot bombed" by being hit with so many that they can't respond properly.

Why is this on my blog? Because game theory is a very important aspect to how the modern web functions. There are more similarities to dealing with search and SEO as an online "game" than with offline human to human behavior, to the ongoing annoyance of search engines.

It occurs to me that a method that accurately and easily harnesses humans as spam detectors, while not overloading the system with unmanageable amounts of spam reports (and fake spam reports) is something that can be learned from by website owners and search engines alike.

Use humans to detect the spam, but use the system to verify it independently, in order to minimize false or malicious reports.

Interesting.

Ian

New Use for Canonical Tag - Geolocation.

I've been messing around with it, and I believe that I've found a new use for the Canonical tag - geolocation of gTLD's.

Simply park (not redirect) a ccTLD on your site, upload an HTML sitemap that points to all your pages with the ccTLD, then place the canonical tag with the gTLD on your pages.

Viola - the search engine "tags" your pages as geolocated via the ccTLD, but only displays the gTLD.

You keep your .com, but have now geolocated your site without having to host it locally.

This is a variation on a technique I've been using for a while, but much cleaner due to the addition of the canonical tag.

Ian

The Relationship Between Search Behaviour and SERP Landscape (Part 2)

This is the second and final part of a 2 part series on the relationship between search behavior and SERP landscape. Part 1 is here.

PART 2: THE EFFECT OF SERP LANDSCAPE ON SEARCHER BEHAVIOR

The seeds of this article arose when I was studying differences in searcher behavior between countries.

I noticed that in many countries, especially those who are relatively new to the internet being widely available, searchers seem to show, in general, lower stages of search behavior, often progressing no further than Stage 2 - Exploration.

At first, I assumed that this less sophisticated behavior was due to less experience with the internet, an assumption I now know to be false and, to a degree, ethnocentric.

The assumption that searchers in these countries are less sophisticated due to a lack of experience can be supported by the massive growth rate (500% or higher is common) of internet availability, but does not explain why even people who have had the internet for years in these countries still tend to show less sophisticated search behavior as a whole than searchers in developed countries.

There is no "national searcher" - everyone progresses by themselves as an individual due to their own experiences. Additionally, in many of these countries (typically developing countries) people who have internet tend to be well educated and spend a lot of time online - they should progress fairly quickly, yet often do not. So the question is - what's going on?


I believe the answer lies in the SERP landscape, and it's been hidden there due to the halo effect of the online industry as a whole.

You see, my research appears to show that searchers everywhere will naturally try to progress through the stages of search sophistication as they use search more and more.

However, if the SERPs do not support that progression, the progression stops. In short, increases in the sophistication of tool use is limited by the sophistication of the tool itself. Some tools simply lend themselves to more sophisticated actions than others.

How could this happen? Many ways.

Sometimes, it's due to limitations of the search engines themselves. Back in the days before Google, searcher behavior was also fairly unsophisticated, since attempts at sophisticated searches were generally foiled by small indexes filled with spam. It simply wasn't worth the effort to try to improve your search techniques when the search engine still gave you poor results.

Another reason this could happen is due to the available results. If nothing but spam is available, then you will get nothing but spam. If local websites are designed in a manner that is not search friendly, then no matter how good you are at searching, you are still unlikely to find what you need, because the search engine simply doesn't have it to give you. It may exist, but it's not available through a search engine.

GIGO - Garbage In, Garbage Out.

It is this second reason that appears to be why searcher behavior tends to "stall" in some countries and languages.

Although part of the blame sometimes lies on the search engines themselves for not adapting to local restrictions, culture and resources, the majority of the blame for this is, very simply, poor websites from an SEO (and often usability) perspective.

As websites for the region or language become more sophisticated and accessible to search engines (and start carrying useful information rather than being just web brochures), the search engines will begin to be able to provide a better sampling of results, thus allowing more advanced searcher behavior.

Analogy - Buying some Beans

As an analogy, think of going shopping to go get a can of beans at two different stores. The first store is a well run national chain with a huge selection and a logical, clear layout. Since you have been there many times before, and you already know exactly what you want, you will probably know exactly what to do, even if you have never bought beans before at that store.

You will go to the aisle that is most likely to contain the beans, glance quickly down it for the area most likely to contain the beans and head right there. On the way, you have probably already checked for coupons and sales, and have a very good idea of exactly what brand and size you want, along with what brands you may not want. You may also know whether you want to get the beans from the "All Natural" aisle, the "Ethnic Foods" aisle, or the general "Soups and Canned Goods" aisle.

Within seconds, you have exactly what you want, after following what is, if you think about it, a very sophisticated and effective search pattern, that was helped by a large, well-organized selection to choose from. This is Stage 4 - Control mode. You take control of your search and make it work for you.

Next, contrast this with going to get a can of beans from a nearby store that is very messy, disorganized and has little stock. First, forget coupons, the "All Natural" aisle and all of that. If you are lucky, there might actually be a "groceries" aisle. Your can will be there, in with the other cans, if you are lucky. If there is an organization to it, it's not readily apparent.

At this point, you have to throw planning and sophistication out and basically just start hunting through the shelves until you find a can of beans. The chances of it being exactly what you were looking for are remote, so you may then end up sifting through yet more cans in a vain hope that there might be another choice (hopefully one that has not expired). You may even decide to give up and either skip the beans altogether, or go check a different store. You are in Stage 2 - the Exploration mode.

In this scenario, it's not YOU who has changed and become less sophisticated, it's the shopping environment that has. You basically had to degrade your planning and shopping behavior to deal with the fact that sophisticated actions can only take place at the top end of the available actions, and the available actions are reliant upon the choices, support and quality present at the time.

Conclusion

In short, searchers in China, Mexico and elsewhere are only searching in unsophisticated manners because the SERPs themselves are unsophisticated, not because of some sort of cultural norm, which is often currently the assumption.

I hear this all the time: "The Chinese search like this" or "Mexicans tend to do searches this way", but this is ethnocentric and misleading.

It would be more accurate to say that "searchers in China do this" or "searchers in Mexico have to search this way". The sophistication of the searches are based on the sophistication of the search landscape, not the searchers themselves.

There are 2 major conclusions of interest to the search community that can be taken away from this, IMO.

1. If a market shows unsophisticated searcher behavior (as evidenced by the types of searches performed), then there is almost certainly an excellent potential market for SEO (along with an attendant lack of awareness of SEO in the first place). Additionally, due to this lack of sophistication within the market, SEO and PPC are likely to very effective. There is simply less high-quality competition.
   
   
2. Since searchers will increase in sophistication as the available search landscape evolves, it is important to prepare websites for more sophisticated searches (ie long tail terms, searches for specific on-site information rather than just contact information, etc) rather than simply rely on current KW research. You will need to evolve within your market as your searchers do. And they will, as quickly as the market does.
   

Hopefully these 2 articles have been helpful to you. I know the insights I've taken from coming up with them are serving me well with my current international SEO efforts.

Ian

The Relationship Between Search Behaviour and SERP Landscape (Part 1).

PART 1: STAGES OF SEARCHER BEHAVIOR

The following is original research developed from several hundred interviews across 9 countries (Canada, USA, Mexico, Brazil, China, Japan, Korea, England and France), combined with insights gleaned from both formal training in cultural anthropology and HCI (Human-Computer Interaction - aka usability). That said, I could be totally wrong. But I don't think so.

I was explaining this theory to a businesswoman in Brazil a couple of days ago and it occurred to me that I hadn't written about it yet, nor had I actually shared any of this with any of my SEO colleagues - forgive me, I'm writing a book on international SEO and as a result my blogging has been slow lately.

Here is the insight: People search differently at different stages in their comfort levels and experience with search engines, but progression through these stages are in turn affected by the SERP landscape they are provided.

This is most prominently (though not exclusively) visible within intranational searches, but this behavior can also be seen in any area where the SERP landscape is different from "standard", such as mobile search, image search, local search, and so on.

Searcher Behavior Stages

The speed of progression through these stages can vary based on how often the searcher searches (dozens of times per day vs a few times per month), the topics for which they search (each major topic will have it's own progression), and whether they get help or training (or have previous experience).

But this is the general progression of search stages:

1. Trust. A searcher at this stage is a novice, and has no idea what to expect as far as results for their search. In general, they will click on the first link that is not clearly spam or inappropriate (some novices to computers in general as well as search will not even attempt to look for spam or inappropriate results - they will simply trust the search engine to answer their question). If they don't find what they are looking for, they tend to blame themselves for making a bad search or assume the information is not available.
   
   Searches tend to be simple and general ("taxi" or "how to babysit"). Repeat searches may get slightly more complex (ie the addition of a location - usually at the end of the search as an addition to the original) but not too much more complex - they tend to assume the search engine is much smarter than they are and will figure it out. Users at this level often do not realize the difference between PPC ads and organic results (or don't care).
   
   
2. Exploration. Fairly quickly, searchers tend to progress to the next stage (since the first tends to be unfulfilling), which is exploration. At this stage, there are several ways it will play out, but the most common is the "serial-clicker" - someone who goes though every (or almost every) result in the desperate hope that one of the results will be an answer. Another common scenario is the searcher, rather than going back to the original search results, will begin to click on links within the site they landed on, surfing from page to page and site to site. MFA sites make a lot of money based on this behavior. This is a very important stage to remember, and I'll tell you why in Part 2. These searchers may go several levels deep in the results (page 3 and beyond).
   
   At this point the user is still trusting of the search engine, so search queries tend to be very similar to the trust stage. Instead, the searcher is modifying their own behavior (still assuming the problem is with themselves or with the available data) by clicking differently and exploring the results to try to find their answers.
   
   
3. Analysis. At this stage, the searcher starts getting smarter and more experienced. They have come to realize that clicking on more links isn't really the answer. At this point, depending on their personality, the results they have seen so far, and other criteria, they will begin to change their tactics. Some of the tactics they may try include one or more of the following:
   
   
   • looking at the results page for likely candidate sites before clicking on any (aka "sniper" mode)
   • trying other search engines
   • beginning to use more sophisticated searches and planning ahead (ie putting the location first, then the query)
   • Figuring out the difference between PPC and organic listings (and tending to avoid PPC)
     
   • Finding and re-using "tried and true" search patterns (like "X reviews" "X FAQ" or "X wiki"
     
     
4. Control. At this stage, the searcher becomes sophisticated and takes control over their searches. They realize that the results a search engine provide are in part controlled by the search query itself, as well as the results available. This is usually the level most people eventually find themselves at.
   
   At this stage, advanced search tactics are used, such as:
   
   
   • tiered searches (searching in a general manner, then using information gleaned from those results to perform the "real search" using the information and keywords from the previous search - like looking up the wikipedia entry for a topic, then using keywords and ideas from that to perform a second, "real" search)
   • searches based on likely content or title of a desired result, rather than the user's question
   • long tail searches become more prevalent
   • Simple parameters such as quotes or "results from this country" are more likely to be used
   • Actively trying to prevent bad or off-topic results by using negative parameters or less ambiguous terms.
     
   
   
5. Expert. Most searchers do not reach this stage, as it requires study and is more difficult to do than the results are generally worth for most searches. Experts will use advanced search parameters, tiered searches, and other advanced techniques that require a good knowledge of search engine behavior. This category includes information and search professionals (SEO's, researchers, topic experts, advanced students).
   
   Searches are planned out, often "long tail" or tiered, and can include advanced and multiple parameters. PPC ads, often avoided at the control and analysis stages, will begin to be clicked on if they appear to answer the query. Experts are after the best result, and don't usually care how they get it. They will intelligently make exceptions to general rules of good searching if they believe the result will be good.
   

Well, that's my list of searcher behavior stages.

The next thing to realize is that these stages may repeat themselves for different queries or topics.

For example, someone may search at a Control or even Expert stage for a topic related to their work or hobby, but when confronted with something totally new (like planning a wedding) is likely to go through the stages again, though usually at a much faster rate than a new searcher would (sometimes in a few hours or less).

They know nothing about the topic, so they need to start by trusting the search engine again.

While the above information is useful in and of itself, in Part 2, I'll go over how people (and entire cultures/nations) can get "stuck" at certain stages, and the effect this has on international SEO and SEM.

Stay tuned.

Ian

Keyword Research Schedule

I was doing some keyword research this morning and was reminded of a very important issue that I'd like to share.

It's February, and I just did some KW research related to Calgary (my home town,and a place I'm very familiar with, as far as KW research goes).

Services like KeywordDiscovery and Wordtracker typically default to showing what's in their database for the last few months (usually around 3 months or so).

That means that right now, I'm seeing KW's like "calgary valentine sale" and almost no searches for what I *know* is one of the biggest KW's for the city - the Calgary Stampede.

If I didn't know better, and used this KW research, I might come to the conclusion that the Stampede wasn't that big of a deal. But it is, and KW research done in August will clearly show it.

This seasonality especially affects seasonal things like tourism, tax preparers and so on, but keep in mind that it will have an effect on almost all industries, either directly or indirectly. For example, the end of summer is when a lot of people move to go to school. This results in more searches for anything from pots and pans to computers to local nightclubs as the new residents start to settle in.

As a result, I recommend doing KW research at least once per quarter (ie every 3 months) and to aggregate the data at least once per year.

Aggregation should be the following reports (keep them in a binder or in a folder somewhere):

1. Quarterly KW Reports, saved by year.
2. Yearly aggregate reports of the quarterly reports for the year, also saved by year.
3. Quarterly Reports, aggregated and *trended by KW* from the same quarter for each successive year.
4. Yearly trended reports of KW popularity. This is so the temporary huge popularity of a topic isn't directly affecting your decision making. "Pam Anderson" was an extremely popular KW back in the early 2000's, but not so much today, for example.
   

This will typically give you enough good information to act on, yet not be terribly onerous to create, analyze and report on.

Ian

Optimizing Powerpoint Presentations

I give a lot of presentations, and I optimize things for a living, so it was just a matter of time for nature to take it's course and for me to start wondering what the hell I was doing.

See, there are a lot of different types of presentations (I'm talking about ones that use slides or PowerPoint here). There are presentations intended to inspire, presentations intended to sell, presentations intended to convince, and presentations intended to teach. Each type of presentation will require it's own format and style.

I do mostly the teaching type, and I love doing them. Like anything else worth doing, if it's worth doing, it's worth doing right. For years I've been a frustrated victim of PowerPoint and so-called "advice" on how to make a great presentation. Enough is enough. It's simply not fair to the audience for someone in a technical field like SEO to try to teach them using the wrong presentation style.

Bad Advice

It's not so much bad advice, as it is the wrong advice. If you go looking, as I have, on how to make a great PowerPoint presentation, you'll find that most of the advice boils down to: "Make a presentation like Steve Jobs". All pictures, little or no text.

What was the point of this again?

Maybe that's great advice for Steve Jobs, who is trying to sell you overpriced, proprietary hardware and software by making it seem really, really cool, but for someone just trying to teach people how to get better rankings or convert visitors into customers, cute graphics and drop shadows simply don't cut it.

People at search marketing conferences don't want to be inspired (they already are, that's why they have a site they want to promote), they want to get their money's worth by learning tactics and strategies they can actually take back and use. It's about being practical and effective, not about getting excited over the latest color available for the iPod.

You simply can't use a Steve Jobs / Seth Godin type of presentation to do anything other than inspire. There is nothing wrong with inspiration (I love Seths work), but inspiration won't fix that 302 redirect issue you have, or give you a checklist for finding good links.

The worst part is when you need to take notes. As an audience member, you probably can't write fast enough, (or perhaps were at the session next door) and may want to download and review the presentation later instead. Fat lot of good that picture of the monkey with a banana with no text will do then!

Presenters at technical conference learn this very quickly (assuming they even get invited back) and change their presentations to include examples, data and text so that the presentation will be more useful - basically helping the audience take notes, so they can spend the time listening to you rather than scribbling madly.

That's the point, really - avoiding too much note-taking or boredom. Inspirational presentations do this with big picture statements and great graphics, technical/teaching presentations do this by providing the notes so you don't have to write them yourself. Both accomplish the same goals, just in different ways.

Over-Correction

This brings me to the next annoyance with technical/teaching presentations - information overload. These presentations are the opposite of inspirational ones - they are basically a speech or lecture in slide form. I've even seen people do the entire presentation simply by reading every line of every slide - horrors!

An old presentation of mine from 2006. Ouch.

I think these presentations are even worse than the inspirational ones, in that although it solves the problem of note-taking, there really isn't a reason to attend the conference anymore, is there? These presentations are boring - which is one of the worst insults you can give to a presentation, in my opinion.

The font size keeps getting smaller as more and more information is packed in, the number of slides increase dramatically, and many presenters find themselves fast forwarding or skipping slides due to time constraints. This is very, very annoying.

Showing me a smaller amount of information than you know is one thing, but skipping by slides of potentially juicy information because you ran out of time is unprofessional and frustrating.

Making the Ideal SEO/SEM Conference Presentation

So, what to do? How do you inspire people enough to make them interested in what you have to say, but at the same time, give them enough information that it's worth it for them to get inspired in the first place?

Well, let's break it down. What do you need to accomplish? You need to:

• Make the presentation interesting and even entertaining to a live audience.
  
  
• Free people from the necessity of writing a lot of notes. It's great for them to make "AhHa" notes to themselves as they listen, but they should not be trying to scribble down every word you say for fear of missing something. If your audience is doing this, you should have stuck with blogging.
  
  
• Provide answers and resources, which you can use during the Q&A, as well as helping people who download your presentation. Although some people don't like to allow their presentations to be downloaded, they are missing the point (among other things).
  
  If your presentation is about your branding, then you are giving a commercial rather than a presentation and you should do everyone a favor and get the hell off the stage (unless the audience knew they were going to see a commercial in the first place). If you are trying to teach people, put a copyright notice on it, ask for a link and attribution, and let them download your notes.
  
  
• Identify yourself. This is not only great from a branding and marketing standpoint, but it's also helpful to your audience, should they wish to contact you. How will they remember? You've let them download the presentation! It's now like a giveaway pen with your logo on it, except it's a lot more useful, more likely to be saved, and contains much better contact information. Virtual swag, and costs you nothing to reproduce!
  

The Perfect* Presentation

*A good presentation should be like a website - always being tested and improved. Perfection is a goal, not a state of being, especially for anything using computers.

Section 1 - Splash Page. This should introduce your presentation and yourself in a simple and easy to understand format - no marketing hype. Also the perfect place to point out where you can download the presentation, since the audience looks at this while you are being introduced, and it's really the only time they can/should take notes. They usually also look at this slide the longest, since it's a placeholder during the introduction. Never underestimate the value of a splash page. A splash page/slide has a job to do, and they are only useless if you forget that. Use it wisely and well, or don't use it at all.

Section 2 - TOC. As my old drill instructor said, "Tell 'em what you're gonna tell 'em, tell 'em, then tell em what you told 'em". Resist the urge to put in every slide - just the main topics and sections. This is the perfect opportunity to point out you have additional information at the end of the presentation that won't be shown (I'll get to this in a moment).

Section 3 - Visual Presentation. The main event! This is where you keep the graphics clean, the text light, large and punchy, and the entertainment value high. Don't go into excruciating detail. Provide an overview and enough information so that people will be introduced to what they don't know and what kind of questions they should be asking you and themselves.

Remember many members of your audience will only be interested in certain sections, and just want an overview on how it all fits together. But don't over correct and be too shallow. A good way to accomplish this is to do an overview on a topic or sub-topic and then give some specific, practical tips related to that topic or sub-topic.

Section 4 - FAQ. If you have one or two questions that always come up that are not easily addressed in section 3 - put them in here. This is an audience favorite, and establishes you as helpful and available, rather than just a lecturer. This section is optional, but recommended. It does 3 jobs - it answers questions, it signifies the end of the official presentation, and it provides a time cushion where you can easily skip this part or go into greater detail, depending on how much time you have, without making the audience feel they have been ripped off.

Section 5 - Resources. This is where you put all that juicy info that you can't put in the visual presentation because you'd need to use small fonts and crowded screens. Charts, data, links, a bibliography and so on can all be placed in here. This is a great incentive for the audience to download your presentation if they want, but if they only wanted an overview, they don't feel they are forced to. You can also put in the kind of information you may want handy during the Q&A part of the session, but didn't want to get into during the main presentation.

Section 6 - Contact information. This is more than just your name and email. You can include a company overview, services you offer and even things like special offers and discount codes. This is your reward and incentive for making the presentation useful and available for download. It's low-key and not pushy, but highly effective at getting your marketing message out without ruining the on-stage presentation.

Wrap Up

I hope this has been helpful to you (and your audience). If you decide to use this format, feel free to leave a link in my comments area to the presentation for others to see and be inspired by.

Ian

Are you an SEO/SEM in Mexico or Brazil?

I'll be visiting Mexico from Feb 16-24 and Brazil from Feb 24-Mar 3 for the purposes of meeting other SEO's, learning about the local search marketing environment and culture, and generally beginning to learn more about and promote those two countries as excellent SEO targets for international businesses.

If you live in either place (specifically Mexico City, Acapulco, Cancun, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro) I'd love to meet with you - I'm also looking for local contacts and sources, and can in turn introduce you to my other contacts and sources internationally. I'll buy the beer :)

And, just to make this post more interesting, I'm in the process of finishing up (finally) my book (International SEO) and I'd like to share with everyone the top 20 international SEO/SEM countries (there may be a few surprises in here for some people):

This list was created by comparing overall population, internet users, internet penetration, broadband subscribers, and user growth for 194 countries. Ranked in order of internet broadband users:

1. United States
2. China
3. Japan
4. Germany
5. Korea, South
6. United Kingdom
7. France
8. Italy
9. Canada
10. Spain
11. Brazil
12. Netherlands
13. Taiwan
14. Australia
15. Mexico
16. Turkey
17. Russia
18. Poland
19. India
20. Vietnam

I intend to meet with SEO's and other search marketers in every single country before publishing the book, hence my trip to Brazil and Mexico.

Cheers,

Ian

3 Factors of International SEO

International SEO is just like regular SEO, but with a type of personalization.

Arguably, the first step towards true search personalization by the search engines was international search. This was followed by local search and universal search, with even more coming ideas coming along, including logins, "answers" and so on.

But it started with international search, because that was the big issue - how do you develop relevent results if you can't even present them in the language of the visitor? How can you claim a result for someone looking to buy something is relevent if the companies in the results don't even ship to where that searcher is? Unless you restrict yourself only to a certain region, you can't.

As a result, international search is, even with all it's little issues and odd behaviours, one of the more settled and stable types of personalization. Which means you can actually DO international SEO, rather than hoping you are doing it. As a matter of fact, I'm writing a book on that very subject right now.

First things first: standard SEO still counts. You still need good technological setup, links and content. If you don't start here, then internationalizing your site will only make things harder, not easier.

Once you have that in place, here are the 3 main factors for internationalization:

Localization

Localization is the act of making your site relevent and useful to visitors from a particular locale. This includes:

• Translation and language localization (examples include US vs UK spellings and regional terms like "pop" vs "soda")


• User interface (examples: sites aimed at Asian languages should be more link-heavy than English sites, you need to avoid menu systems that assume that the words in the menu are a specific width, and your order forms need to accept addresses in the local order)


• Keyword research - there is no Chinese "WordTracker" or Keyword Discovery" program currently available. I often need to do PPC campaigns to do any KW research at all. This is why I use SEO-trained translators - they cost more, but are worth it.

Geolocation

Geolocation is the process of figuring out the best localized site to present to a particular visitor. Often this is done by matching a visitor IP from a country to the country-specific version of a website (IP Geolocation), but this is a simplistic method that doesn't account for todays highly mobile workforce - an American visiting Japan may want an American site, or they may want a Japanese site, you don't know, and can't guess easily.

And what country is Google from? More specifically, which site do you present to search bots, and how do you do it to avoid problems. This is an entire article by itself, and it's not as easy as you may think.

Geolocation, then, is the process of both choosing the right version of your site for visitors, and also helping the search engines make the same choice.

Here are some ways to help do this:

• Geolocating the website. The most important step of the process is letting everyone know what country your site is targeted to. You can ONLY target one country per page, and in reality, for most organizations, one country per site or sub-site. Methods of doing this are using a ccTLD (country code top level domain like .ca and .uk) and using an IP address that is assigned to a particular country.


• Geolocating the visitor. This can be done in several ways. You can detect their IP address, you can ask them to identify their preferred site, and you can detect their browser settings.


• Visitor language detection. Many countries have more than one official language, and even countries that only have one official language may have substantial alternate linguistic populations ( For exampe, Spanish speakers in the US, English Speakers in Korea). This means you can't just assume that country=language. This can be either detected using browser settings, the keyword used, user choice, or (last resort) geolocation.


• Website language detection. This is harder than you may think. Many language share words or have similar characters, making it hard to automatically detect a language if you are a computer. This can usually be solved by declaring the language within the code.

Globalization

Globalization in this context means bringing it all together. Combining the localization and geolocation in order to present the best site for any visitor. Creating a system that treats every visitor as special, and dealing with their language choice as easily as dealing with the fact that they want your product in size 8, or shipped overnight, or paid for in Euros.

Geolocation and Localization focus on the differences between the countries, languages, and cultures of each visitor, while Globalization focuses on the similarities between visitors, and works towards communicating a message or selling a product seamlessly.

The main mistake I see during globalization efforts is an inappropriate division of responsibility. There are some things that head office should be in control of, and some that the local office should be in control of.

Head office should run the branding and overall marketing strategy for the company. Local offices should then take that strategy, and devise tactics that will work in the local market that further the global strategy.

This means, of course, that head office should control the urge to create "strategies" that are really tactical - like choosing the exact wording of ads, and so forth. Because none of that will matter during translation, and will almost certainly make it worse. Let the locals sell to the locals. You just provide them with the tools and support to do it.

Likewise, local offices should control the local tactics, such as specific marketing copy, photographic images (other than product shots) and, within reason, timing. Launching a major campaign on your new fast food item may not be a brilliant strategy at the beginning of Ramadan, for example.

But local offices tend to be focused on their own area. They may not understand the global issues (including supply line problems) and often don't have as strong of a sensitivity to the "brand" as head office does. A local office in South America infamously changed the BMW logo to better match it's new website, for example. You don't do that!

Conclusion

In order to properly do international SEO, you need to address all three aspects of it - localization, geolocation, and globalization. Once you get these parts are working in harmony, you'll find that it's actually fairly easy to continue to do and improve upon.


Ian

Search Engine Share 2008

I just made these for a presentation, based on the latest information I have for this year. Enjoy.

Organic Search Engine Share 2008 for North America

PPC (Pay Per Click) Search Engine Share 2008 for North America

Ranking Reports - a Defence.

You know you are getting old when you have an uncontrollable urge to start a post starting with words like "in my day.." , "I remember when.." or "I've seen this before..."

But it's true - that's the problem. People who don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it, or to even live through something worse. I was reminded of this while reading a recent forum thread about ranking reports.

Someone started complaining that Google had prevented a certain piece of ranking software from getting information from them. This was almost universally followed not by useful advice, but by a bunch of people saying ranking reports were useless. You see this type of thing with regard to PageRank, as well.

I appreciate that the posters meant well, but I really wish people would think clearly, rather than spouting off the latest over-correction crap they've heard recently. Regardless of the topic, there seems to be a consistent flow to this:

1. Something is pushed too far. Could be a theory, or political view, or whatever.
   
2. Experts, concerned about this, issue reasons why those pushing too far are wrong
   
3. A new generation of people, in a fit of rebellion against the status quo, quickly grab the "new way of thinking" and then, you guessed it, go too far with it.
   
4. Eventually, there is a counter-rebellion and the thinking about the topic matures, now that both sides have been expressed fully and challenged.

The examples are legion. Think about any political, civil rights or scientific revolution and you will see this. So it should be no surprise that it affects SEO, as well.

That being the case, let this be the first shot fired in the counter-revolution against Ranking Reports.

See, in the old days, no one did ranking reports. Who cares how you rank if no one ever visits your site? Instead, server reports were used. In this case, it was often "hits". At the time, hits were not a bad measurement. Pages were very light on graphics, and e-commerce wasn't really a workable concept - people were after "branding" and "buzz". In this context, measuring hits was an easy and fairly accurate way to measure the popularity of a site.

Even today, a popular site will tend to have more hits than a similar unpopular site. You can complain about issues with hits all you want, but the broad brush stroke is usually still representative.

Of course, there are many problems with hits - they are a method of measuring server performance, not visitor performance. A page with a single graphic on it counts as 2 hits (one for the html page and one for the graphic) whereas a page with 50 images on it (even 1x1 pixel images) would count as 51 hits. In both cases, there is only one visitor, however. This was exploited by spammers and bad SEO's who, rather than increasing visitors to a site, would sometimes just slowly add more invisible pictures to the pages in the site, thereby increasing the hits without increasing the actual visitors.

Soon, the industry became more sophisticated, the experts began to call for ranking reports instead of "hits" reports, and we began to move from server-based measurement to search engine based measurement. Instead of measuring our performance using internal criteria (server logs), we switched to external criteria (ranking reports).

After all, it can clearly be shown that your rankings directly affect your traffic and sales. I can see this in both PPC and SEO everyday across many industries. Additionally, measuring based on rankings was more closely tied to the job an SEO does - optimizing for search engines, not for server performance. Life was good. For a while.

Then, the problems with ranking reports began to emerge - first, search rankings can fluctuate from day to day and even minute to minute. Second, some clients wanted daily and even twice daily ranking reports for their top terms. This placed a lot of pressure on both SEO's and search engines, in many cases for no good reason. There is a point when granularity exceeds the information. You can measure too much, and too deeply, getting lost looking at bark under a microscope when you should be looking at the forest, or at least groups of trees.

Other issues with ranking reports were just as serious - ranking well in a term that no one searches for is useless, and sending unqualified traffic was just as bad (and even worse) than sending no traffic at all. Finally, search engines started placing robots.txt files on them. Suddenly, ranking reports didn't look so good anymore. The experts changed course again and began to recommend analytics, instead.

Ironically, we've come full circle. We started doing server based measurement (hits and unique visitors), abandoned it in favor of search engine based measurement (ranking reports) and have now come back to server based measurement - except now we are a lot more sophisticated. We don't want hits anymore, we want unique visitors, time on site, fallout reports, and all sorts of other Key Performance Indicators (KPI). This is cool. It's scientific, it's visitor-focused, and it's got all sorts of pretty graphs and charts.

Ranking reports are now in disfavor, to the relief of bad SEO's who can now justify bad rankings (and their dislike of doing linking campaigns) by talking about how rankings don't matter - it's visitors and sales. How very convenient. It sounds great. Very forward-thinking and modern. Except it's wrong.

Why? Because there is no context. Your visitors and buyers have increased - big deal. Maybe your competition's has also increased, but at a rate ten times yours. But you won't know that, because guess what? You are only looking at your own server for information. If it's not on your server, it doesn't exist. Analytics ignores the outside world and just builds a better navel gazer.

It's all well and good to make yourself better, to optimize the user experience and to increase conversions, but I have news for you - a qualified visitor does not usually stumble randomly to your site - they arrive from somewhere, and that is very often from a search engine. To say rankings don't matter is to do your clients and yourself a great disservice. The best website in the world is no good if no one can find it.

So what now? Go back to ranking reports? No - their weaknesses are well known and legitimate. The next step is to blend your rankings and other external data with your analytics. The visitor experience of your website doesn't begin when they land on your page, it should start as soon as they start looking for what you have to offer. Branding, buzz, social media, PPC and SEO all play a part in this, and thus far analytics has not adequately addressed it, particularly in SEO and social media.

Oh, they can say that people coming to the site based on keyword "X" convert at such and such a rate, but they usually don't suggest new keywords, or tell the analyst where the site ranked for keyword "X" that day, or whether the site was on the front page of Digg that day, or whether there was a news article, blog post or twitter campaign going on. That's important, but since it's not on their server, it doesn't get reported. There is no context, and therefore the information is suspect.

SEO's who "don't believe in ranking reports" don't get it. That's part of their job. If you want to avoid the robots.txt issues, do it manually or use a human-operated script rather than a robot (yes, there is a difference). It will help stop you from over-doing it, anyway. But to say that you optimize sites for search engines and then say that you don't believe in checking a search engine to see if your site is optimized for it is ludicrous.

If you have done your keyword research, a ranking report is a legitimate and extremely important part of the puzzle. It's only a part of the puzzle, not the solution, but it's a very important part of it. Data without context is meaningless, and context is provided from external sources of information, not self-referencing (internal) sources.

I think, like analytics moving from "hits" to KPI, search reports need to become more sophisticated, as well. A simple ranking isn't enough. You need more information. In many cases this information can come from analytics, but it can also come from linking reports, SE saturation, social media buzz references, and many other places. I call not for the return of ranking reports 1.0, but for ranking reports 2.0 - newer, improved and more connected to the visitor.

Doing the job properly requires BOTH server-based and external information sources. I hereby issue a call for all search marketers to move past the current myopic focus on analytics and to look at the whole picture - that's where true understanding lies.

Ian

Proposed SEM Standards (Part 1)

There is no way that one person could hope to write an entire Standards document for an entire industry, so I'm breaking this down into smaller parts that I feel would be the most helpful to others.

In this case, the following is a proposed set of Standards for creating Standards. Yes, you need rules for making the rules. In the full Standards, this would be the first section.

Naturally, comments here or elsewhere (as long as you quote what you are commenting on so we are all on the same page) are welcome and actively encouraged.

More information on how Standards fit within and relate to a Code of Ethics and Guideines

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Search Marketing Standards

In accordance with the Search Marketing Code of Ethics, the following Search Marketing Standards reflect the general consensus of the search marketing community.

The Creation of Standards

All Standards outlined in this document and any amendments thereof shall follow the intent and purpose of the Search Marketing Code of Ethics, and no Standard that directly violates a principle of the Code of Ethics shall be created.

Interpretations and Guidelines for Standards shall also be made in accordance with the principles of the Code of Ethics.

Standards shall strive to be consistent, useful and clear.

Standards should be written in such as way as to not stifle innovation, creativity or informed professional judgement, while still providing for a coherent, consistent and authoritative frame of reference for the industry and the public.

Standards should be written in a manner that is respectful towards, but independent of, other stakeholders in search, such as website owners and search engines.

No Standard shall be created without the opportunity for debate and discussion within the entire search marketing community. Standards are necessarily independent of the organizations and companies promoting them, and discussion and debate cannot be limited to only members of a particular company or organization.

Standards Creation Process

All Standards proposals shall undergo assessment and debate within the search marketing community.

• Method 1: A proposed standard is created and offered publicly for comments.
• Method 2: A particular Guideline or Best Practice achieves such a consensus amongst the search marketing community that it begins to act as a de facto Standard. With community permission, it can be promoted to a Standard.

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Ian

Proposed (Draft) SEM Code of Ethics

For more information about how a Code of Ethics fits in with Standards and Guidelines, see the previous post.

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Search Marketing Code of Ethics

We, the search marketing professionals who are voluntarily adhering to the statements of principles set out below, do hereby believe in and commit to the following:

Truth

We shall strive towards truthfulness and integrity in our dealings with others.

We will accurately disclose relevant significant potential conflicts of interest to our clients.

We shall avoid deceptive marketing practices.

We will clearly, accurately and fully disclose realistic potential negative consequences of our actions to our clients in advance.

Responsibility

We are responsible to our clients. Clients should never be harmed by our actions, and are entitled to be dealt with in a fair and accountable manner.

We are responsible to the profession. We will not engage in actions that are likely to bring the profession into disrepute in the eyes of the public.

We are responsible to society. We shall obey all laws pertaining to our professional actions and efforts.

We are responsible to ourselves, to continually improve and update our skills and knowledge.

Respect

We shall treat others with professional courtesy and conduct.

We shall hold the private information of others in strictest confidence.

Fairness

We shall treat clients fairly and in good faith, and are entitled to expect the same in return.

We shall use our best efforts to act on behalf of a client, while maintaining a professional demeanour towards other stakeholders.

We shall not encourage clients or the public to have unreasonable, unrealistic or unattainable expectations regarding the profession, the industry or the services offered.

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The Creation of Draft SEM Standards

UPDATES:

Draft Code of Ethics posted

Proposed SEM Standards (Part 1)

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As promised, I offer the following several posts to the SEM community as proposed draft Code of Ethics, Standards, and Guidelines.

First, a primer on how these 3 things fit together:

Code Of Ethics

A Code of Ethics is a general statement of common principles and ideals. They are usually not intended to deal with specific issues, but rather outline an overall approach and philosophy.

In law, this would be the equivalent of a constitution. It should rarely, if ever, change.

Example: SEO's shall avoid deceptive marketing practices.

This is fine as a philosophy, but of course it's not terribly clear what "deceptive" is in all cases. Sure, this would deal with directly and fraudulently lying to people, but what about something like IP delivery or cloaking, where there could be arguments as to whether they are deceptive or not?

Industry Standards

Standards are generally accepted and codified rules that are created to provide structure and guidance to a Code of Ethics. These can include definitions, best practices and so forth, but are generally at a high level.

Standards can change with the times, but should generally be written in such a way that such changes should be minimal. The idea here is to stabilize things and to give people something they can rely on.

Continuing with the legal analogy, if a Code of Ethics is like a Constitution, then Industry Standards are like laws or statutes.

Example: Avoid IP delivery methods that present substantially different information to search engines from what a human visitor would experience.

This is more helpful than "avoid deceptive marketing practices". It answers most of my questions and is the one-liner to take back to my client or boss. This would deal with 90% of the questions.

But what if I'm dealing with a technical issue that is more complex than this? I think I need more guidance, since I can think of a few examples where even this definition doesn't cut it. And what does "substantially" really mean, anyway? Well, now we look at Guidelines, which interpret the Standards.

Guidelines

The guidelines could be very large and detailed, and include information like alternatives to IP delivery, some example scenarios, or (worst case scenario) say something like "we don't know exactly what the result of doing X would be, as there is evidence that sometimes it works , and sometimes it doesn't. Proceed with caution."

Or, it could say: IP cloaking to go past verification pages is OK, but using it to go past paid login pages is frowned upon because it creates a poor user experience.

Perhaps a separate guideline would say that you can do this for paid pages if there is notification up front (before clicking on the result) that the page is paid.

Or it could actually be an entire forum thread with the whole community arguing their various points of view. That's OK. Some things are complicated, and often there are many ways to accomplish the goal.

Continuing with the legal analogy, if a Code of Ethics is like a Constitution, and Industry Standards are like laws or statutes, then Guidelines are Case Law: the individually tailored decisions of judges and juries based on messy and unique circumstances.

From my perspective, Ethics are easy, and standards could be set in a committee. It's the guidelines where all the fun happens. That's where the exceptions to the rules happen, where the weird situations get looked at, and so forth.

One of the big issues (and the source of most of the debate on this subject) is that many people think that proponents of standards are intending to put things that belong in guidelines into the standards or ethics. That would be a bad idea.

Debates like the proper use of nofollow, etc belong in the guidelines, because sometimes there is no clear, correct answer. Sometimes the best you can do is to make people aware that there is a controversy and what the issues and risks are. That's perfectly acceptable in a guideline, but not in a Code of Ethics or Industry Standards, which need to a reliable and clear to both SEM's and the public.

Once there ceases to be controversy over a guideline, it can be considered for promotion to a Standard. But it would not be unusual to have some guidelines never getting promoted. SEM's are a contentious, opinionated, independent bunch, and I expect our guidelines will probably reflect that.

At no point should the establishment of standards interfere with or prevent a professional from using their judgement or solving a problem. The standards and guidelines should exist to help and guide, not to hinder or hold back.

With all this in mind, and after reviewing the following (excellent) resources, I'll try to present some draft versions of all of this, hopefully to start a discussion and lend some structure to the debate.

• Business.gov
• American Marketing Association Statement of Ethics
• CMA Code of Ethics and Standards of Practice
• BBB Code of Advertising
• Business Marketing Association Code of Ethics
• DMA Corporate Responsibility Guidelines
• Bruce Clay SEO Code of Ethics
• EthicsWeb

Ian

SEO-Browser.com Update

One of the nice things about being the co-creator of an SEO tool like the SEO Browser is that when I have an idea for something I'd like fixed or added, it's a lot easier to make sure it happens ;)

Of course, I have to pay for it, but at least it happens...

For those of you who don't know what the SEO browser is, it's an online SEO tool that lets you see your site the way a search engine sees it. Although this sounds like something you can do in any text only browser like Lynx or Firefox with certain options turned off, there is a lot more to it than that.

Some of the features (some you have to go into "Advanced Mode" to see. It's at the top of the SEOBrowser page):

• Text only mode browsing of the site.
• Image and object alt attributes are shown, but Italicized to let you know it's alt text.
• Issues with robots, metatags, etc are highlighted
• The character count for titles, meta information, etc are listed.
• You can see pages in advanced modes, such as with "stop characters" removed or in compressed mode (how a search engine actually stores the page)
• You can see WHOIS info, DNS Info, Header response etc
• Toggles Highlights your keywords so you can visualize the page easier.
• Lists the KeyWord Density for every keyword on the page.

One of the only things it doesn't do is give advice. It's a tool for professionals to gather information with, not some sort of mechanical SEO tool. I don't believe in programs that try to replace the skill of a real SEO. Basically, I designed it to do what I needed. Then shared it.

Anyway, I'm pretty proud of the latest tweak. It's such a simple thing, but can be huge when you are dealing with complicated sites. When you go to each page, it lists the response code at the top in orange.

That's all. But in practice, it's actually really important. I'll give you a few examples. Non-SEO's may not appreciate these, but the rest of you should be able to figure out why I like this so much.

First, you can just go to my home page: mcanerin.com [SEO Browser Version]

You'll see it's just a 200OK. Big deal. Now, lets get more interesting. Check out these pages by loading them into the seobrowser:

• Apple.ca [SEO Browser Version]
• SureServer Error Page [SEO Browser Version]
• Yahoo.ca [SEO Browser Version]
• IBM.com [SEO Browser Version]

Cool huh? And very, very useful for people debugging sites. Try to spot the errors (some of them serious) in the example sites above. Then maybe take a look at your own.

Ian

Search Standards, Part 2

...Continued from Part 1

3. There are already laws to protect people from SEO scams. Sure, you could argue that the law covers all that. Heck, you could (and some people do) argue that we could get rid of all laws but the 10 Commandments. Just interpret everything, and let all your customer relations and the organization of your profession be interpreted by courts and bureaucrats every single time someone enters into an agreement or wants to do something.

You'd think that of all people lawyers would say that they don't need standards, and that the existing laws would cover all the possible issues in the profession. Just trust the court system. But they don't. Maybe lawyers know something about laws that you don't?

Like, "who's laws?" US law? UK law? Chinese Law? California Law? Nevada Law? Personally, I think everyone should follow Alberta law. ;)

Arguing that the "law" will protect people is making the ethnocentric assumption that the laws where you live are the "right" ones. And that they are flawless. And will be able to deal with all of the issues specific to your profession. And that everyone worldwide will agree to them. Those are some pretty big assumptions.

Did you know that both Chinese and French law make it illegal to compare products? They believe that if your product can't stand on it's own merits, it's got no right to start trying to make it's competitors look bad to try to make itself look good. So much for bidding on competitors names. Legal in the US, illegal in France. Yes, Google lost that one.

German contracts tend to be quite short. Why? Because there are laws about what all contracts in Germany have in them, so most of the "boilerplate" in US contracts (ie Acts of God, etc) are unnecessary. The law also overrides the contracts, should the contract say something different. It's kind of funny to listen to US contract lawyers in Germany whine and complain. You should probably know that if you ever sign a contract with a German company. Whose law wins?

At least if you have standards, the local courts of a particular jurisdiction will be able to look at those standards and take guidance from them. Ever hear of "generally accepted accounting principles"? That's a legal term. Courts use it. But the principles are set by the accounting profession, not the courts. Why? Because judges are not accountants. They are not SEO's, either.

"Generally accepted SEO standards" may one day save your bacon. Unless we don't have any. In which case the court will probably side with the client, since the professional is supposed to know better and is held to a higher standard. Golly, that's too bad for SEO's.

4. There's no such thing as "cheating" in SEO. I'm assuming that this is referring to cheating search engines, as opposed to cheating customers and clients. Because that happens a lot more than it should.

Once again, standards are not about SEO's and search engines. I don't care about search engine guidelines (you need a standard to have a guideline, anyway). No, standards are about the public. And the public doesn't like to be cheated, mislead, kept in the dark or lied to. Eventually, if the SEO community doesn't enact it's own standards to protect the public, I have no question that the public will demand that the standards are created (via either the courts or legislation) and foisted upon us.

And we'd have no one to blame but ourselves.

Conclusion

Standards? We don't need no stinkin' standards. But the public does. The SEO community needs to deal with the fact that they and the search engines are not the only ones involved in this issue. That's part of the process of becoming mature: becoming aware of the needs of others. Joining the larger community. Practicing responsible behavior. Caring.

I think it's time we grew up and took responsibility for our own profession, before someone does it for us.

Ian

Search Standards, Part 1

I was interested to read Jills recent article on search standards, and I had to respond, even though I adore her and (literally) owe the start of my career to her. I started responding on her forum, but since it got too long and the article wasn't actually posted in her forum, I decided to respond here, instead.

I disagree. Although it's all well and good to approach things with a completely laizzes faire, buyer beware attitude, in practice standards are not about SEO's.

They are about the public.

SEO's don't need protection from other SEO's. Neither do search engines.

Why do lawyers and doctors and firemen and engineers and almost every other industry have standards?

Do lawyers need protection from other lawyers? Is there a big concern that by implementing standards your lawyer will not be able to help you sell your house or write your will? Or that shady lawyers would take advantage of those poor, unsuspecting judges? Bah.

The standards are there so that the non-legally trained public has the right to be informed about their rights and obligations, and has a reasonable expectation of a certain level of service and professionalism.

In SEO, they have the right to know what the hell you are talking about when you talk about "attraction", "entry" or "zebra" pages.

So, to address the points in the article in order:

1. There are too many ways of skinning the SEO cat. This is a straw man argument. Of course there are lots of ways to do business, and to approach a problem. That's not what standards are about. That's a checklist, not a standard. A standard could say something like: Don't do things that are proven to be harmful or not work, not "you must do things exactly in the order of X.

Good standards are written in the negative (thou shalt not) as opposed to the positive "thou shalt do this and only this), unless there really is only one acceptable way. Arguing that they would prevent innovation is assuming that the standards would be written in such a way as to prevent innovation, then knocking it down. That's a false assumption. If it hasn't even been written yet, how can you argue that it will prevent innovation or seek to enforce specific practices? You can't. Argument fails for lack of substance or evidence.

2. We can't even agree on the definition of search engine optimization. First, a definition isn't a process, so standard definitions are not even addressed in argument 1, above.

Second, and to the meat of this one: There is nothing stopping people from arguing about definitions and standards for some things. Physicists still can't decide what gravity or light really are. Doctors differ between the "surgery" and "medication" camps. That doesn't mean they don't have standards.

But if there is a set definition that the public can understand, it is in the public's interest to be able to know what they are getting. Sure, you can call your reciprocal link building system a "Proto-Relatic Symbiosis Program" if it makes you happy, but the client should know that you are building reciprocal links, not building rocket ships. And they should know what the pros and cons are of doing so are.

Standard definitions help the public understand what they are getting into, and allow them to compare services. If you want to define "SEO" differently from the industry standard definition, go ahead, but you should not be able to hide behind your custom definition ("I know the contract says I'll do SEO on your site, but I define SEO as only setting up a link farm"). Contracts require a known vocabulary and a shared understanding of the terms of the contract.

Let me be clear about this: if you define things differently than your client, and you sign a contract without clarifying them, you don't have a valid contract. This works both ways. A client can define "SEO" or "PPC" in a very different way than you, and then refuse to pay unless you have completely and fully outlined your definitions. All of them. Does your contract do that? If you gave your standard contract to me, could I find a loophole? I'll bet I could. Do you want to bet your income on it?

Standard definitions help prevent these issues. If you have a different definition, fine. Outline your definition in the contract. Nothing wrong with that. But to not have standard definitions is to open yourself to lawsuits, miscommunications and angry clients.

Continued...

Ian

PPC - SEO Continuum

Almost all sites benefit from a combination of both PPC and SEO. There are only two exceptions:

1. Pure "hobby" sites where the goal isn't to make money or impress anyone but you and your friends. Most people's blogs and MySpace pages fall into this type of category. Although there are some highly profitable blogs, most are not, and not intended to be. Using PPC in this case is akin to publishing a book using a vanity press - costly and only useful to massage your ego.

2. Pure affiliate sites. These are often pretty much duplicate content and, depending on the affiliate program involved, can be virtually impossible to SEO (some companies only allow you to use their own prepackaged pages, for example). In this case, SEO won't help you much, but PPC can be very effective.

If you look closely at these two examples, you'll see that there is a continuum involved. At one end, you have pure information or branding sites, with no intent to profit, and at the other end, you have pure commerce sites, with no intent to inform or brand.
This creates the following scenario:


Ian

The Biggest Information Integration Mistake

Has this ever happened to you?

You phone the customer service line of a large company (bank, telephone, Google AdWords, etc) and get an automated voicemail system.

This voicemail system then asks you for information "to help you get to the right party". You then dutifully punch in your telephone number, bank account number, or client number, whereupon you are transferred to "the appropriate party".

The "appropriate party" finally answers the phone and then they ask you a question. You know what question they ask, don't you?

They then ask you for the SAME DAMN INFORMATION you just gave them.

Sometimes, they then transfer you to one or more other "appropriate parties", who all, without fail, ALSO ask for the same information.

Why?!!!!

In this day and age of analytics and customer tracking, why do companies consistently drop the ball with one the the most important visitors they can possibly have - the current client who needs help or is unsatisfied?

Although privacy laws make it clear that you should not be handing out your customer information to just anyone, they also acknowledge that you are entitled to (and must) collect, pass on and use the information necessary to complete the transaction requested by the visitor. Otherwise there is no point.

It is the height of rudeness to ask someone to give up some of their privacy to you and then for you to treat that information as unimportant and disposable, in the process inconveniencing them.

It's kind of like asking someone for their business card, looking at it, then throwing it away in front of them. Followed immediately by asking them to give you their phone number again. It's stupid, wasteful, inefficient and rude.

This also applies to online forms - deleting a customers form data and forcing them to start over just because they had one typo is bad usability, bad form, and bad programming.

Rules for collecting personal information:

1. Create and enforce a privacy policy that is designed to both protect your visitors and to allow you to do the job your visitors want you to do, safely and securely.

2. Never collect personal information that you do not need to do the job (any additional information should be anonymous and aggregate), and make sure that it's with permission.

3. After you get permission to collect personal information - use it to help the visitor. That's why they gave it to you in the first place, and is the basis of the permission.

Ian