I discovered a very interesting thread on Webmaster World from an experienced SEO Professional who decided who to pin two websites, competing in the same industry, with each other.

The first site was pushed using old school SEO practices, including paid and reciprocal links, content development, doorway pages, etc.

The second site was build in a more ‘organic way’ focussing on unique content, with no paid links or doorway pages, but with a blog, videos, blogs, RSS feeds and Twitter integration.

Guess which one is earning money and getting quality Google traffic? You got it, the “SEO’ed Site.”

The forum member wrote:

Site 1 (AKA “SEO’ed Site”): after just 3 months it was skyrocketing past some pretty hefty competition with traffic increasing well each month. The site was making £10,000+ a month for the last six months we had it and just sold for a rather nice figure.
Site 2 (AKA “Quality Site”): has struggled to rank anywhere, even for it’s own name, and traffic has been stagnant since the outset - it made a loss for the first 8 months and made just under £3000 in it’s best month which was last month.

My two cents: Although the results of this case study are quite interesting (depressing for a white hat SEO), I am not convinced that we can draw any conclusions of this. I believe that, depending on the industry and the degree of competition, you can be successful with a less aggressive/more organic SEO campaign. Additionally, I would not not include reciprocal linking with any random site and true doorway pages as part of “regular SEO practices”, as described in the thread.

I recommend to read all the details in the forum thread.

April 1st is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four. (Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson, 1894)

Todays I don’t envie all the reporters out there. It’s is April Fool’s Day, and one needs to be on the lookout for what is real news and what is fake news. Here are my 5 favorite April Fools hoaxes from the search industry, starting with Google.


Google Mobile launched Brain Search, which uses their hoax technology CADIE (Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity) to “index your brain to make your thoughts and memories searchable”. The Big G also mentions some use cases for the new application: you can recall “the name of that guy across the room, where you put your car keys, why you started dating this woman in the first place”. Hehe, hillarious.

Yahoo launched a new search service called Ideological Search. The service allows searchers to “control the ideology of their search results for the first time in search technology history”.

MSN’s Live Search simply redid their homepage. Not a big effort, but still funny.

YouTube turns its videos upside down (add “&flip=1″ to URL to activate.

Reddit looks like Digg for a day.

Bonus (not search, but media related): the British newspaper Guardian announced that it will discontinue its publication after 188 years and publish its news via Twitter. Considering the state of the print media, not such a bad idea, isn’t it?

What were your favorite April Fools hoaxes on the web this year? Let me know in the comments!

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• SEO Book.com: Why it Makes Sense to Target Longtail Keywords First
  Another great post by Aaron Wall. He writes: If I target the most competitive keywords first (without a strong competitive advantage - like a network of sites to build off, an old trusted website, a huge brand, or a strong domain name) then I might never get to self-sustaining. There is no award, little traffic, and virtually no value for ranking on page 2 or page 3, even if it is for an exceptionally competitive and high traffic keyword like credit cards. Longtail keywords are easier to rank for.”
  (tags: seo keywords search traffic blog tips)
• SEOmoz | Whiteboard Friday - Positioning Your Blog
  This week SEOmoz CEO Rand Fishkin discusses how to position your blog within your niche. Blogging is obviously an incredibly powerful tool for building a brand and can be effective in almost any industry. However, there are important considerations to take into account when you’re setting up a blog.
  (tags: blog blogging tips branding video)
• Search Engine Journal: Build Links for SEO & Call to Action
  A great thread over at WebProWorld forums discusses how to both encourage more people to click the link while making it user- and SEO-friendly. Advice: “Click here” links are bad for accessibility and usability
  (tags: seo links linkbuilding usability)
• Forrester Research: US Search Marketing Agencies, Q1 2009
  Forrester’s evaluation of search marketing agencies against 72 criteria finds this market more mature than during our 2006 Wave. Forrester asserts that three agencies have set themselves apart from the rest of the pack; iProspect, iCrossing, and 360i. Among other findings: Percent of clients using vendor for both paid search and SEO - The big three were all at around 40%.
  (tags: seo study search marketing statistics)
• Inside AdWords: A change to our display URL policy
  The Google AdWords blog has finally announced that the new display URL policy will go into effect the week of February 24th. The new policy will disallow multiple display domains.
  (tags: google adwords advertising internet)

• aimClear Search Marketing Blog: Analytic Mashups For Advanced Keyword Research
  These days predictive utilities like Trellian, WordTracker and AdWords are only half the keyword research story. State of the art processes combine these standard search predict tools’ output with “what we already know,” by mashing in site-specific datasets at the keyword level.
  (tags: seo search statistics sem keywords ppc)
• ResearchBuzz: New Search Engine Wants to Give You Just the FAQ
  ResearchBuzz writes about an interesting search engine called SnappyFingers, a Q&A search engine that has a data set of over 13 million questions.
  (tags: searchengine search article)
• Google Throttles Blog Search Indexing | SEO Theory - SEO Theory and Analysis Blog
  Great article by SEO Theory writer Michael Martinez who takes a look at the downturn in Google Blogsearch quality and indexing over the past couple of months.
  (tags: google blog search seo article)
• Search Engine Journal: What Else Would You Like to See on Google Search Results Page?
  Great article by Search Engine Journal about FireFox addons that let you access alternative data right from Google SERPs based on your search query.
  (tags: seo tools search serps)
• Pandia Search Engine Detective: All-in-one portal for search engine and SEO research
  Pandia Search Engine Detective is a one stop shop for search engine intelligence. This useful collection of links to all kinds of search engine and SEO information is now updated with new categories and links.
  (tags: search searchengine tools seo)

I just wanted to let everybody know who is working in the internet related field (or who is fascinated by the world wide web) that there is a great event to meet like-minded people and do some networking. It’s called Geek Dinner, an event which is happening every month in Los Angeles and many other cities throughout the United States. You don’t have to be a super nerd to attend, a little interest in all things digital is enough to mingle with this friendly and cool crowd.

I went to the 33rd Geek Dinner in L.A. which was held January 17th at the restaurant uWink located in the Hollywood & Highland Center. It’s a cool place (they call it an “interactive entertainment and dining experience”) where you can order through a touch-screen computer located on every table. The event had pretty good turn out. I chatted with many interesting people, and Heather Schlegel, the hostess-with-the-mostess, was working the room with her usual great enthusiasm.

For those who live in the Los Angeles area and are yet to join, you can check all the news on their website, the group page on Facebook - or get all the updates directly in your email inbox by signing up via  la-subscribe@geekdinner.org. And if you have a web service or your own event to promote, Geek Dinner allows you announce it to the crowd at the end of the event.

The next L.A. Geek Dinner will be this upcoming Tuesday, February 17, at the same location. You get get more info and RSVP on Upcoming.

Please spread it around and bring your geeky friends. As Anita wrote:

You know that the geek dinner is the gateway L.A. geek event. Once you start - you’ll just go hardcore on to Barcamp, Mixergy, Twiistup or one of Mahalo’s Movie Nights…

P.S. See more of my pictures I took at the Geek Dinner on Flickr.

• Search Engine Journal: Building Links With Content? Get Your Point Across!
  Julie Joyce gives us a lesson in effective writing that gets your point across in an effort to build links with quality content.
  (tags: seo blogging article links linkbuilding tips)
• Best Rank: How Social Media Marketing can help improve Organic Search Engine Results
  Great article on the effect of using social media sites like Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon, and Delicious to increase your search engine rankings. Case study with Google analytics metrics provided.
  (tags: seo linkbait search marketing socialmedia linkbuilding)
• Agency Clients Slash Budgets 20% or More, Digital Only Bright Spot - MarketingVOX
  "Among North American CEOs, 62% said that they think digital will grow this year, while 39% of non-North American CEOs said the same."
  (tags: marketing advertising future statistics business online budget digital)
• Daily SEO Tip: 7 Ways to Turn Your Site into a Link Magnet
  Loren Baker gives us 7 tips on how to make sites linkable. Among others: presentation, interactivity, accountability, social proof.
  (tags: seo blog blogging business building link)
• beu blog: 2009 Google Flash SEO |
  In case you missed their recent announcement about Flash, Google and Adobe have teamed up on a new algorithm to index text content in Flash. As a result of the new algorithm for Flash, Googlebot now indexes “textual content in SWF files of all kinds” and extracts URLs embeded in Flash.” A case study by Brian Ussery.
  (tags: internet seo search blog marketing google article webdesign flash)

Julia Angwin wrote a great article in today’s edition of the Wall Street Journal, about SERPs (search engine position ranking) and controlling your reputation online. She writes that among the top spots result in the search results for her name has been an (in her opinion dissatisfying) article she wrote four years ago.

Since he was about to publish her new book and wanted to make this unflatering article disappear from the the Top 10 of her SERPs, she explored various options how to achieve that. Her insights mentioned in this piece are part of ‘SEO 101′ and illustrate the Do’s and Don’ts when trying to control your online reputation (since Google is the dominant search engine in the U.S. and most other markets, she’s focusses her story on the ‘Big G’).

These are my favorite six takeaways from Angwin’s article:

1. It’s extremely difficult to remove items from Google search results. Persue other others. Only if you can prove that another site has stolen your social security, credit card or bank-account numbers and posted them online, the search company might consider to remove the offending data. In that case it’s still recommended that you contact the owner of that site directly.

2. You should take control of your own web presence. Create original content that is compelling to readers and can be easily accessed by search engines - and you’re in the right direction to be in charge of your reputation online.

3. Develop a linking strategy. Get incoming links from relevant and authoritative and websites. (In Angwin’s case, this certainly paid off.)

4. Make search result with the annoying content disappear with your social media efforts. Increase your online visibility by creating accounts at social bookmarking sites (Del.icio.us, Furl, Stumble Upon), social networking profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace and micro-blogging sites like Twitter. Talk about your expertise, share insights, thoughts, web finds and other links with others.

5. It’s the crawlability, stupid! A beautiful website with tons of stunning pictures doesn’t do the trick. You need high-quality content which can be easily be crawled by the major search engines.

6. Don’t forget the meta information on your site. You know, texts like the “title tag,” which is displayed at the top of the Web browser and describes the page to a search engine. Often forgotten by noobs, but crucial.

7. You can work to boost your results, and then lose control in an instant. Even if you think that you did a great SEO job, your work is never done. Among many reasons: the search engine constantly update their algorithms, other web content than texts is becoming more and more important (videos, music, podcasts, etc.), your competitors (who are trying to grab the top spots of the same keyword like you) never sleep.

Do you have other suggestions on how to get control of your own SERPs? Leave a comment!

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