Using SEO to Market a Search Engine or Platform

SEO Question: I recently set up a local search site, and was wondering if it made sense to use SEO to market it?

Answer: There are many types of ideas where using SEO to market them will not make much sense. I think you probably have one of them. If you have a platform website which aggregates information and displays it in a way that adds enough value that other search engines would want to index your results then you should look into duplicate content and other related issues, to ensure you are unique enough on a per page level, but generally if you are marketing a platform which has limited content I think you are better off looking into viral marketing instead of SEO.

Things worth looking at:

Things to consider:

  • Ideas spread through communities. Make it easy for a certain group of people or community to share your idea / product / service / offering / etc. If you can connect with their sense of identity that is great. For example, for a local product try to hit up the local media or other sources of power.

  • Read and track sites and communities you want exposure from. Become part of the conversation there. See what types of ideas make the Digg home page. See what type of search sites librarians are talking about right now.
  • If you can talk about search in a way that is interesting to novice SEOs and yet still provide relevant search results at the same time many people will want to read what you have to say. Quintura recently got mentioned by many SEOs because they offer a search service that acts as an interesting SEO tool.
  • Look how easy Google makes it for people to talk about them - from passionate people with health problems, to those fighting against inequality, and for the environment, right on through to people aligned with educational systems and other powerful longstanding institutions.

    All those links from the last paragraph were announcements in the last week! If you are doing things that make people identify with you and feature you as content you don't have to buy too many ads. Google is the perfect case study for how to market a search engine.

Why SEO could potentially be useful to you:
Search is a link rich topic. Many librarians and other trusted sources freely link to search sites. If you can add enough value to make other engines want to index your pages, and can get enough high quality links, then your site should be able to get a bunch of exposure quickly. Just look at how many Technorati tag pages rank well in Google and other search engines.

You need people to care and share to build a platform:
But generally, people participate on platforms because there is some value they can get from there that they can't find elsewhere. That, and giving people a reason to talk about it, are the best ways to optimize your rankings in other engines.

Mainstream Media Deep Linking to Wikipedia Articles

Not sure if this is something new or not, but I just saw a CNN Money article which linked at a Wikipedia article about Joe Kraus as background on him. Given how much the search engines already trust the Wikipedia imagine how much exposure it will be getting if the mainstream media regularly cite it and deep link at their biographies!

Just the fact that the mainstream media would link at articles that anyone can edit shows a big shift in power over the last couple years.

Google Search Counts as Market Value Indicators?

I got a call about a week ago from a person representing talent, who was just about to have their record released, and had just lost a major sponsor due to the limited number of matching pages when someone searched Google for that person's name. With how easy it is to manipulate the number of results shown for a query, it is surprising that huge corporations would put any weight on it. That is like a VC going through Alexa and asking to invest in my site based on my Alexa ranking. Sorta absurd, isn't it?

The only marketing idea I found crazier was that the marketer wanted me to give them that information for free. I love berating marketers and people dealing with economics who try to squeeze a free consultation out of me without paying. I find their shortsightedness / greed amusing. What kind of value do they add to their clients? How much do they value their own time at? It will be funny if they get their website banned because they use blog comment spamming or some other dubious technique when there are so many cheap, fast, easy, and brand friendly ways to manipulate that data point.

Do you think search cues will eventually become a strong market value indicator? Could SEOs get in trouble for manipulating financial markets based on manipulating search engines?

Going to a Paid Only Content Model

SEO Question: We are considering shifting our site from offering free content to a paid only model which just offers a brief introduction into each area. How long will it take for Google and other engines to rank our site worse for changing our business model?

SEO Answer: Many sites flip from legitimate quality content sites to lead generation forms and continue to rank well for years. How long your site will survive on its current authority largely depends on

  • how authoritative your site and brand are,
  • how competitive your marketplace is, and
  • what business strategies competitors will use.

Just by having free content accessible early in the development of a market that can be enough to establish an insurmountable lead in a market. Look at sites like SeoToday ranking in Google in spite of not being updated in a year. But the only way that site will still outrank me a year for now is if I get banned for spamming, destroy my brand, or neglect this site. Over time markets shift, and the search results will have to shift with them if they want to be seen as credible.

If your free content gets many links then you are cutting off significant forward authority by making your site much harder to link at. Put another way, compare how often you see the Wikipedia referenced in a blog post or in the search results compared to encyclopedia Britannica or other encyclopedias that only want to give away a snippet here or there. Wikipedia beat out Britannica by allowing users to become editors and evangelists, while selling the concept of free and open.

Any long tail searches that match your current page content will no longer send traffic to your site when that page content no longer exists. You should notice that drop in traffic probably within about a month of converting your site to paid only model, but your rankings for short tail keywords may stick much longer because those are more reliant on link equity. Link equity typically dies off slowly and it will still take competitors some finite amount of time to replicate your link reputation.

Instead of moving to an entirely paid model I bet you could do better by slicing and dicing up your current content, which could help your business the following ways:

  • allow you to have pages and content relevant for many targeted search queries

  • make it less convenient to work through all of your online content (and thus make your packaged for sale information offerings seem more useful, appealing, and valuable)
  • the different format and slight differentiation than the content you are selling will prevent customers from feeling angry for seeing the same stuff free and paid

I don't just advocate those ideas, that is sorta what I do with this site. Who wants to read thousands of blog posts if many of them are going to be outdated? Why not just buy an up to date guide instead? Of course this model works best if you are selling an information product that covers a broad range of ideas or a field that is rapidly changing.

People are not paying for the value of your product. They are paying for their perception of value. A large amount of that perception is based on removing uncertainty by building trust with free content. Put another way, I think the value of knowing someone found and is reading an article of mine based on a recommendation is probably worth at least twenty times as much as them clicking one of my ads. If my ads cost 25 cents each then each recommended article read might be worth something like $5.00.

Another option might be to leave last year's content available online, and use it to sell current information. When search seems to be picking up more and more momentum and even MIT is giving away free course material I would be hesitant to go to a paid only model. Especially if you consider that sites with lots of content are going to be easy to identify with for many people (and thus be well read and well cited and well ranked in the search results) and what Clay Shirky wrote in Fame vs Fortune: Micropayments and Free Content:

The act of buying anything, even if the price is very small, creates what Nick Szabo calls mental transaction costs, the energy required to decide whether something is worth buying or not, regardless of price. ... The fact that digital content can be distributed for no additional cost does not explain the huge number of creative people who make their work available for free. After all, they are still investing their time without being paid back. Why?

The answer is simple: creators are not publishers, and putting the power to publish directly into their hands does not make them publishers. It makes them artists with printing presses. This matters because creative people crave attention in a way publishers do not.

Each additional user of the web is a potential link source and a potential competitor. As more artists and other passionate people enter your market some of them will compete with you, and few of them will be talking about you if you make it hard to interact with you (ie: require payment prior to them receiving any value).

By sharing content it makes it easier to learn how people may perceive your ideas prior to packaging and marketing them. In a sense, it can give you a target trusted market willing to help you improve your ideas and then help you market them.

Look how much value Google delivers for free, and look how easy they make it for people to talk about them - from passionate people with health problems, to those fighting against inequality, and for the environment, right on through to people aligned with educational systems and other powerful longstanding institutions.

All those links from the last paragraph were announcements in the last week! If you are doing things that make people identify with you and feature you as content you don't have to buy too many ads.

Many people who relied on one page salesletters were only successful with them because there was so little content competing for attention. In a world where more people and content are coming online each day, a paid only content business model is a quick track to irrelevancy.

Uncertainty as a Tax

One of the biggest reasons my first site failed was because I wrote too much content on it, making it more of an AdSense / spamsense model than a consulting website. But as far as conversions go, a site like Clientside SEM will blow my old Search Marketing website out of the water every time. When selling certain services or products filtering and qualifying leads are just as important as generating leads. What good are a million leads if you can only work on one or two a month? But you usually have to build up quite a bit of brand equity to be lucky enough to be able to be so selective with clients.

Many businesses still end up running far less efficiently than they can because they have websites that do not answer common questions. How is your product different than the competition? How much is shipping? How long will it take for me to get my product? Why should I trust you with my credit card details? Each of these pieces of uncertainty act as holes which tax your business:

  • by causing people to trust and value your products and services less

  • by causing fewer people to respond to your offers
  • by requiring more one on one customer interaction when smart site architecture and clear messaging would have worked

Based on this site you probably wouldn't expect me to be a fan of auto-responders and email marketing, but anything that can be fairly automated and helps you drive the sales funnel is a plus. I haven't done much with those on this site yet (other than sending ebook updates), but for many sites having a quick and easy automated way to interact and build trust more than pays for itself by saving time and allowing you to charge a greater premium for your products and services.

One of the advantages to being small and having few customers is that you can pay so much attention to each one, be so close to each one, and use that interaction to streamline your sales stream. The lack of leads can be viewed as a reason to be nervous, but that isn't going to help you as much as if you are receptive to leads and keep using the feedback to convert better each time.

I used to read a ton of books, but the rate which I read has went way down because I am constantly drowning in a sea of emails, customer inquiries, and other opportunities. If you are uncertain what to do there are always more things that we can be learning, and if you are close to customers use that to make your business as efficient as possible so you can be efficient and scale it out once you start getting more exposure.

Also, so long as you are profitable and know you are making changes to streamline your business you probably shouldn't worry if editing a page is going to hurt your SEO (unless you are doing things like changing your content management system or going to introduce big problems like duplicate content issues). Even if you take a short term hit in traffic the traffic will eventually come back if you are delivering more value to site visitors. When you get more efficient that gives you more time and/or capital to put into improving customer relationships / delivering greater value / marketing and brand building.

Roast Me, Please!

Here is your chance to roast me. :)

I just did a pretty big update to SEO Book, and am having a guy who goes by the nickname the grammar hammer edit my ebook at the moment. What parts of it could use some improvement? The feedback I have been getting covers a wide range, but usually it is biased toward being positive. In fact, so much so, that I was recently criticised for not having enough easily accessible negative feedback.

I was stoked when I was recently carbon copied on this email from one of my friends who recently purchased my ebook for a friend of his:

Merry Christmas ____,
SEO Book download link

My advice: don't read it on the clock while working for me :-)

Here are the steps:

1) Read the book, straight through
2) Make a web site, rank it, and make $100
3) Read the book again

Then talk to me, and we make a site together. That's when you get rich. Do 1, 2 and 3 first though.

But it is much harder to get negative feedback outside of grammar criticisms (which hopefully the grammar hammer will fix and help prevent me from making going forward). Rarely do people who ask for refunds want to give any feedback. And while I have been trying to keep up with email, I still have to mix it up now and then to prevent getting burned out, and most of my email feedback has been positive.

If you have read the newest version of SEO Book what parts of it do you think could use some improvement? What parts could use some contraction or expansion?

Also many customers have asked me about shifting to a business model where I offered something like a monthly newsletter for a recurring subscription fee. Does that sound like a good or bad call?

Brian Clark helped me rewrite my salesletter. The new salesletter will be published on Thursday, and the old sales letter will be placed on a different URL so people can see a before and after of the sales letter. In the near future I will also interview him about copywriting, and he will use my salesletter as a before and after test case on his blog. His readers have been critiquing my current sales letter.

Finding the Most Powerful Links

Given that many large brands and mainstream media sites are trying to leverage their brand strength by adding interactive content to their sites and every SEO blog in the world (and some from distant universes) have posts about leveraging social media and buidling trust with link baiting, it is probably a pretty safe bet to think that Google is going to be forced away from trusting core domain related trust...and it is going to have to get even better at filtering link quality as well. You know Digg spaming is mainstream when there are many different business models based on spamming Digg.

Other social media sites are not behind the curve in getting spammed to bits. I recently noticed spam software for mass submission of videos to video hosting sites, and I see del.icio.us and Technorati pages ranking everywhere, and when I look at Del.icio.us I run into tags like this

Wow. Garbage.

When you look in Google's search results for long tail queries in consumer finance or other profitable verticals you see many sites rank which are various flavors of forums, user accounts, xss exploits, and other social spam. In spite of Yahoo! being the most visited website compare Google's recent stock performance to Yahoo!'s. Given that content as a business model does not scale well, traditional monopoly based content providers are going to have to work hard to get users to create / add value to / organize their content. As they do, many of these types of sites will make it easier and easier to leverage them directly (easy to rank content host) and indirectly (indirect traffic and direct link authority) to spam Google.

The brief history of SEO (well as best I know it) sorta goes something like
matching file names
page titles and meta tags
keyword density
full page analysis
link count
pagerank
anchor text
manual and algorithmic link filtering
duplicate content detection and semantic analysis
delaying rankings
delaying indexing
and now we are up to site related trust...which is getting spammed to bits and will only get worse

Anything that has been greatly trusted has been abused. The difference between the current abuse and past abuse is that in the past it was typically smaller individuals screwing with Google. Now Google has become a large enough force that they are actually undermining many of the business models of the providers of the content they are relying on.

Going forward, especially as Google, small content providers, unlimited choice, and easier access to the web marginalize the business models of many of the sites Google currently trust those sites are going to rely on users to help foot the bill. Google will give some content providers a backdoor deal, but most will have to look to user interaction to add value. That user interaction will be spamville. Thus I think rather than just trusting core domain levels I think Google is going to have to reduce their weighting on domain trust and place more on how well the individual page is integrated into the site and integrated into the web as a whole.

If everything Google trusts gets abused (it eventually does) and they are currently trusting raw domain related trust too much (they are) it shouldn't be surprising if their next move is to start getting even more selective with what they are willing to index or rank, and what links they will place weight on.

Jim Boykin recently announced the launch of a his Strongest Subpages Tool. Why the need for it?

If you’re getting a link from a page that no other site links to (beyond that site), what is the true trust of that page?

However, if you get a link from a subpage, that has lots of links to it, and your link is on that page, there’s outside trust flowing to that page.

If you’re getting links from pages that only has internal links to it, I doubt there’s much value in it.

Jim's tool has been pretty popular, so if you have trouble accessing it don't forget that you can do similar with SEO for Firefox. Jut search Yahoo! for site:seobook.com -adsfasdtfgs, where adsfasdtfgs is some random gibberish text. That will show you how well a page is integrated into the web on many levels...page level .edu links, external inbound links to that page, etc. etc. etc. You can also go the the Yahoo! Search settings page and return 100 results per search.

Thousands of Reciprocal Link Partners & Getting Nowhere in Google

SEO Question: I have traded hundreds (maybe thousands) of links. I am ranking great on MSN, but am nowhere on Google. What gives?

SEO Answer: Your site is associated with sites of similar link profiles. If most of your inbound links and/or outbound links are of low quality that may preclude your ability to rank. As your reinforce the identity of your site as being associated with low quality sites you are digging a bigger and bigger hole.

Your site may stay in the search index but just have it's rankings suppressed for your targeted keywords. The reasons search engines may want to leave sites in the index that are using ineffective search spamming methods are:

Sometimes you will see an older site that heavily relied upon reciprocal linking ranking well and think that you can just duplicate their link profiles, but typically it is not that easy. Largely because:

  • when search was less sophisticated and there was less content on the web it was much easier to get quality links

  • they probably have a few decent quality links you will not be able to get
  • they likely built their link profiles over time, during a time when search was less sophisticated
  • their domain might be trusted more (and thus given higher authority and more leniency for algorithmic infractions) because of its age

Recently I pulled the reciprocal links page off a friend's domain and got them about a half dozen average to decent quality links. Their site went from nowhere in Google's search results to the top 30 for their core term in a month. And I still haven't even built any linkage from sites I would consider core trusted seed sites or sites that are extreme topical authorities (in other words, in a few months they are probably going to be doing far better).

Algorithms will continue to advance, and what happened at one point in time, in one engine, with one site, is probably not enough to call it a representative sample. But if you think of search from the eyes of a search engineer, how hard could it be to detect mass reciprocal linking? What website content quality is typically associated with sites sharing that footprint?

Consider the math as well. Time is worth money. And my friend was paying $500 a month for a large scale reciprocal linking campaign. All they needed to do was stop doing that and get about a dozen reasonable links and they were suddenly a market player.

I often get asked about optimizing reciprocal linking methods, but unless they are associated with real social relationships that pull you into your topical clique I generally think they are not worth the effort and have a poor risk to reward ratio, at least if you are intent on building a long-term brand, and want to rank well in Google.

How Google AdWords Ads Manipulate Google's Organic Search Results

SEO Question: I was thinking about buying Google AdWords and AdSense ads or placing AdSense on my site. Will doing any of these increase my link count, Google rankings, or rankings in other search engines?

Answer: PPC ads go through redirects, so they do not count toward your link popularity, but there are other ways to tie together PPC ads and organic search placement. Search engines claim there is no direct linkage between buying ads and ranking, but they only talk in ideals because it helps reinforce their worldview and help them make more money.

Buying AdWords Ads

What They Won't Tell You:
Highly commercial keywords may have the associated editorial results go through more relevancy filters and/or be editorially reviewed for relevancy more frequently. Also, because they want people to click on the AdWords ads there is a heavy informational bias on the oranic search results.

I know some people who have large ad spends that get notifications of new ad system changes ahead of time, and others who get to give direct feedback to allow them to participate in cleaning up search results and minimizing unfair competing actions in the ad systems. So that is one type of cross-over / feedback that exists, but I think that tends to be more rare, and the more important cross over / feedback that exists is an indirect one.

Just by Being Real
You can't really explain why and how everyone does what they do. Some people who find your product and enjoy it enough to leave glowing testimonials will even tell you that they don't know how they found it.

In the same way that targeted ads can lead to purchases, they can also lead to an increase in mindshare, brand, reach, usage data, and linkage data. Just by being real and being seen you are going to pick up quality signals. If you try to factor all of those into your ad buys most markets are still under-priced.

Cross Over Due to Buying AdWords:
A well thought out pay per click campaign can feed into your SEO campaign more ways than I can count. Here are a few examples.

Integrating Offline & Online:
In a TV commercial Pontiac told people to search Google, and got a ton of press.

Big Controversial Ads:
Mazda quickly bid on Pontiac.

Many companies also have strong ties between the legal and marketing departments. If buying or selling an ad gets you sued and gets you in the news the value of the news coverage can far exceed the cost of the ads and legal fees.

Small Controversial Ads:
When I was newer to the field one friend called me the original link spammer. He meant it as a compliment, and I still take it as one. In much the same way I was an aggressive link builder, I was also quite aggressive at ad buying.

I caused controversy by buying names of other people in the industry as AdWords ads. I was prettymuch a total unknown when I did that, but some of the top names in the industry elevated my status by placing my name in heated discussion about what was fair and reasonable or not.

You can always consider placing controversial / risky ideas or ads against your brand or competing brands as a way to generate discussion (but of course consider legal ahead of time).

Drafting Off New Words & Industry News:
When the nigritude ultramarine SEO contest started I bid on AdWords. Some people discussing the contest mentioned that I bid on that word. If an event bubbles up to gain mainstream coverage and you make it easy to identify your name as being associated with it then you might pick up some press coverage.

Industry buzz words that are discussed often have significant mindshare, get searched for frequently, and larger / bureaucratic competitors are going to struggle to be as plugged into the market as you are or react as quickly to the changing language.

Snagging a Market Position Early:
When a friend recommended I read the TrustRank research paper in February of last year I knew it was going to become an important idea (especially because that same friend is brilliant, helped me more ways and times than I can count, and was the guy who came up with the idea of naming the Google Dances).

I read it and posted a TrustRank synopsis. In addition to trying to build a bit of linkage for that idea I also ensured that I bought that keyword on AdWords. Today I rank #1 in Google for TrustRank, and I still think I am the only person buying that keyword, which I find fascinating given how many people use that word and how saturated this market is.

Buying AdSense Ads

Buying Ads Creates Content:
If your ads are seen on forums people may ask about your product or brands. I know I have seen a number of threads on SEO forums that were started with something like I saw this SEO Book ad and I was wondering what everyone thought of it. Some people who start talking about you might not even click your ads.

Each month my brand gets millions and millions of ad impressions at an exceptionally reasonable price, especially when you factor in the indirect values.

Appealing to an Important Individual:
I have seen many people advertise on AdSense targeting one site at a time, placing the webmaster's name in the ad copy. It may seem a bit curt for some, but it is probably more likely to get the attention of and a response from a person than if you request a link from them.

Ads are another type / means of communication.

Appealing to a Group of People:
I get a ton of email relating to blogs and blogging. And in Gmail I keep seeing Pew Internet ads over and over and over again. Their ads range from Portrait of a Blogger to Who are Bloggers?

Going forward they will have added mindshare, link equity, and a report branded with that group of people. When people report on blogging or do research about blogging in the future the Pew report is likely to be referenced many times.

Selling AdSense Ads

Don't Sell Yourself Short:
Given the self reinforcing nature of links (see Filthy Linking Rich) anything that undermines your authority will cause you to get less free exposure going forward. So you really have to be careful with monetization. If you do it for maximal clickthough rate that will end up costing you a lot of trust and link equity.

There are other ways to improve your AdSense CTR and earnings without costing your credibility and authority.

More tips:

Don't Monetize Too Early:
Given the lack of monetization ability of a new site with few visitors and the importance of repeat visits in building trust and mindshare you don't want to monetize a new site too aggressively unless it is an ecommerce type site. It is hard to build authority if people view your site as just enough content to wrap around the AdSense.

Spam, Footprints, & Smart Pricing:
In the past search engines may have discounted pages that had poison words on them. Search is all about math / communication / patterns.

If your site fits the footprints of many spammy sites then your site might be flagged for review or reduced in authority. MSN did research on detecting spam via footprints, and link spam detection based on mass estimation shows how power laws could make it easy to detect such footprints.

Graywolf recently noted that landing page slippage may be an input into landing page and site quality scores for AdWords ad buyers. Google could also use AdSense account earnings or AdSense CTR data to flag sites for editorial reviews, organic search demotion, ad payout reduction, or smart pricing.

Market Timing in New Verticals & Self Promotional Contests in Consumer Generated Media

I recently made another post about the importance of brand building and niche markets, and Solomon Rothman commented that one way to go niche is to go stylized / have a unique delivery approach, which is totally valid. Another way to dominate niches is market timing. If you bet early on markets you are passionate about the odds are pretty good that your investment will pay off big. If you were not the first to market in a vertical you can still leverage the brand strength of other companies and get in early when they create new channels. Many authorities are adding community features to their sites each day. The guide I wrote for Work.com is currently their most popular guide, which is probably going to provide some solid exposure for me for the $0 and hour or two it took to write. And them emailing their top guide writers is also smart on them, because it means that marketers who were able to get significant exposure once may end up mentioning them again to try to fuel their own ego or protect their position on the leader board, and marketing the Work.com site again. If you have a site with consumer generated content offering prizes, logos, and arbitrary status levels provides a way for the most active members to identify with / feel important about / provide free marketing to your community.

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