WebConnoisseur

Just found out Andy Beal has created a free SEO eBook based off two years of scholarship entries. There were some educational entries and some funny entries. My entry was all about humor and was shoved near the bottom of the book, despite its popularity because it probably embarassed Andy a bit – heck, I called him a “Master Baiter”. Kudos to Andy for working hard to make the scholarship contest more valuable.

The ebook is availble for a free download here (2.1mb pdf)

In related news, I was recently quoted on Omniture’s iPerceptions integration.

Danny Sullivan just launched a cool social networking site for search marketers called Sphinn. I decided to take Sphinn for a spin and must say it looks promising. It has Digg-like search news voting features, profiles that allow lots of great links to other social sites & personal blog RSS pulls, a shared events calendar, and some cool networking components.

The service just launched, so expect lots of bugs and some spam at first, but from what I can tell, Sphinn will be a great place to keep up on search news that matters and a place to connect and keep track of your fellow search peers.

I just added my 200th LinkedIn connection and I must say it feels good. I’m proud of it because it is an indicator of my networking skills and general likeability, especially considering I’ve always worked for very small companies, have never hired a consultant, rarely consult others, and rarely get to go to conferences. 98% of my network consists of people I’ve had several in-person discussions with and the other 2% are people I share common interest or situations with (more on this topic below).

According to LinkedSEO, I’m the 2nd most well-connected SEO in the Greater Seattle area. I’m sure my buddy Rand will catch up to me soon, but for now Dana Melick is the only person listed above me and it appears that Dana Melick is more of a salesman of SEO services than an SEO practitioner.

LinkedIn is definitely hitting critical mass. In the past couple months, I’ve seen tons of people jumping on the service. Social networking for business seems to have caught on. LinkedIn is doing a great job of staying focused on launching features that compliment their core focus. LinkedIn Answers is working well, groups are cool, recommendations make complete sense and the ability to find unbiased references when hiring people is awesome.

My tips for anyone looking to grow their LinkedIn network:

• Connect with only people you know or trust. This isn’t like myspace where having tons of friends makes you look cool. People are weary of connecting with people with large networks and recommendations from a stranger are essentially worthless.
• If you have a good conversation with someone and get their business card, send a LinkedIn request within 3 days and remind them exactly who you are. Don’t wait to long because you may forget who they are and they may forget who you are, which greatly reduces the likelyhood of a connection.
• Use LinkedIn as your rolodex. It is where you keep all your important contacts.
• Don’t recommend people you don’t believe in. I haven’t done it, but I am confident it will come back to bite you.
• Avoid linking up with recruiters unless you want to scare your boss or co-workers.
• Don’t be afraid to connect with a competitor. Being connected to them allows you to see who they are working with based off their new connections. Besides, you never know when a competitor will become an ally when tackling an issue that affects you both.
• If you participate in Answers, know what you are talking about. Stupid answers (or even questions) can leave a scar on your entire career. No pressure ;).
• Help people out in your network.

And, of course, if you know me or think you should know me, definately check out my LinkedIn profile and send me a request. My email is my [first name]@[the website address you are visiting].com. Here’s a link to my profile:

SEJ is one of the leading search engine publications – one that I always keep in the top 10 of my RSS reader list. Jessica Bowman interviewed me for her In-House Spotlight column. Take a look at the interview:

In-house Spotlight : AllRecipes.com’s SEO Dustin Woodard

I was really pleased with the article – Jessica did a great job. I encourage you to read the whole thing (it is a bit long). Some of the best stuff, in my opinion, is near bottom of the article. It gives good insight into what I do for Allrecipes.

It seems a bit premature to have tips for the Search Marketing Expo considering the first-ever SMX doesn’t take place until next week, but it is taking place in my hometown and I’ve been to enough search conferences to know how to make the most of them.

Below are my tips for those who are new to search conferences and those who aren’t new to search conferences but are new to SMX (should be the rest of us). If you are new to search, I think you are at the wrong conference (SMX Seattle is geared towards advanced search marketers).

New to Search Conferences:

• Some of the best search information is gained outside of the conference rooms – in hallways, at the parties and in the bars. Danny realizes this, and has set up three networking events. Attend them all.
• Many of the brightest minds in search will be at this conference (both search engine employees and those whose lifeblood is tied to search). Listen and remember, not all experts will have a microphone in front of them, some will be sitting right next to you.
• No matter how brilliant or “famous” the people at the conference may seem to you, don’t let that deter you from introducing yourself. I’ve found people in our industry to be incredibly welcoming. Remember, these people aren’t famous outside this industry and they are as much of a geek as you and I are.

New to SMX:

• After being beautiful and in the 80s all week, the weather is expected to flip completely to rain on Monday and Tuesday. It’s really a conspiracy. Seattle wants out-of-towners to tell everyone it rains here all the time. Regardless, we’ll probably be spending most of our time indoors anyways.
• The Bell Harbor conference center rocks. Great views and good location. Wifi is free, so bring a laptop so you can connect to the web during a conversation to show people what you are talking about.
• Andy Beal claims he’ll be videotaping everything. Jump on camera if you’ve got a spare moment, but shoo him away if the camera is taming down your corner conversation. Don’t forget about the WebProNews guys either.
• If you want to try a local favorite beer, ask for a Mac and Jacks (it’s only available on tap).

Other people excited about the upcoming SMX Seattle Conference:
Google Webmaster Central
SEOMoz
Karl Ribas
Todd Mintz
Scott Clark
SEO Chicks
Adam Killam
Matt Cutts

Sometimes being so entrenched in the search industry, it is easy to forget how skewed people’s thoughts are regarding search engines. Even people who work for Web companies that rely on SEO & word-of-mouth for all their new traffic. Here’s a great example from my work the other day when discussing article titles:

“There is also a difference between writing for a search engine crawler and a real person. What is attractive to the search engine may not be the same thing as what is engaging to a person.”

I have a feeling she is not alone. Some people think of the search engine as literally an engine or a robot or an appliance. They have trouble understanding why we spend so much time worrying about it and probably hate this non-human thing that rules so many decisions.

Here’s what I told her:

• In my 10+ years of doing SEO, I’ve never written an article for a search crawler.
• Don’t think of a search engine as an appliance or device. Think of it as real people. For example, if you called me on the phone, I wouldn’t think of that conversation as a conversation with a telephone wire – it was a conversation with you!
• There’s no better indicator of what people want, then what they search for and the words they use.

It’s true that SEOs will format a page or architect a site a certain way to aid in search crawlability, but when writing an article, good SEO’s think more about the user, the ways users think about and search for the content (keywords), and then various factors that play into ranking algorithms (which includes engagement more and more each day).

People scan headlines or titles. Titles should include the keywords, concisely tell the user what they are about to read and be attractive enough to draw them in. You can sometimes get away with creative headlines (especially when teamed with images), but in order for an article to have legs (last beyond the one-time editorial push) they should be SEO-friendly and click-through friendly.

The title of this post is a bit silly. Search engines aren’t human. But they do represent humans. Hundreds of millions of them. There’s no better indicator of how humans think or what they are looking for then the searches executed on these “engines.”

Those who watched TV in the early 80’s might remember a show that aired for three years called the “Greatest American Hero.” The show’s theme song, “Believe it or Not” remains one of the most popular theme songs to this day, having been prominently featured in the Seinfeld TV show and even one of my favorite movies of 2005, 40 Year Old Virgin.

Who’s walking on air now? Stephen Colbert, of course. His mass popularity among bloggers has prompted a linking campaign, naming him the Greatest Living American.

Let’s take a moment to decide whether or not this is true. In 2005, the Discovery Channel ran a feature series called “Greatest American“. Going through their list one-by-one, I searched for the top-rated living American:
1) Ronald Reagan (dead)
2) Abraham Lincoln (dead)
3) Martin Luther King, Jr. (dead)
4) George Washington (dead)
5) Ben Franklin (dead)
6) George W. Bush
..
What? Dubya? You gotta be kidding me. Stephen Colbert makes a much better Greatest Living American. Only Colbert knows how to drop bombs (Google Bombs) while maintaining the popular vote (links) among web savvy Americans. If Dubya really used “The Google“, he’d understand what makes him a “miserable failure” and why is being named the “Greatest Living American.”

Note: Just a couple days after the linking began, Colbert ranked #1 in Google for Greatest Living American. Google’s link bombing algorithm has failed to catch this one so far. Two more Colbert bombs to watch are Giant Brass Balls and Truthiness.

Okay, I took the bait and entered Andy Beal’s SEM scholarship contest. I decided to have fun with it and wrote this entry:

The 10 Biggest Master Baiters in the Search Industry

Inside you will find who in the search industry I find to be the master link baiters. These are the people who are so good at this craft, even expert link baiters themselves can’t help but link to them. It was difficult to pick just ten, especially when there are more prominent figures that attract links by the thousands. Those who break news (think Danny Sullivan and Barry Schwartz) or are in prominent positions (think Matt Cutts or Jeremy Zawodny) are at an unfair advantage. I’m sure they would admit linkbaiting isn’t their primary skill (though I bet they are still experts in this area) and are probably happy to escape the list of having their name attached with “master baiter.”

So, please visit my entry and join the conversation. Who are the biggest master baiters? Also feel free to link to my entry and give the guys on the list a bad time:
http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2007/04/10-biggest-master-baiters-in-the-search-industry.html

Far too often I hear people quoting Alexa data. Even last week, at the 2007 Omniture Summit I witnessed Tim O’Reilly using Alexa charts to prove Web 2.0 success in front of 1,000 smart web analytics professionals. I know I couldn’t have been the only person in the crowd to notice. For Tim’s benefit, and anyone else who uses Alexa Data, please take note:

ALEXA DATA IS TREMENDOUSLY FLAWED

I touched on this in a competitive intelligence metrics post back in October, showing that Alexa’s data is less accurate to determining true site traffic then the # of characters the domain name, but now I’d like to really illustrate how far off Alexa’s data is.

Many people have pointed out Alexa’s data is biased towards a certain crowd and can be manipulated (see the links at the bottom of this post), but none have illustrated the margin of error that I’m about to. Below I take a look at two very different sites with very different traffic stats.

Site 1: Allrecipes – Allrecipes is a leading food site – as you might expect, Allrecipes users are similar to what you might see on the Internet as a whole, though slightly more female.

Site 2: SEOMoz – SEOMoz is a site that caters to the SEO and online marketing community – a crowd more likely to install the Alexa toolbar.

Using Alexa, you might conclude that SEOMoz receives more traffic than Allrecipes:

Alexa Reach Chart:

Alexa Rank Chart:

Both sites are very popular within their target audience, but despite what Alexa may show, Allrecipes has much more traffic. Let’s face it, more people cook food, then perform SEO! In fact, if you were to populate the above charts with actual data, SEOMoz would be a flat sliver near the x-axis. Here’s some real data from Dec. ‘06:

Allrecipes Unique Visitors: 11,023,187
SEOMoz Unique Visitors: 102,523

If you were to use Alexa charts to draw conclusions about either site based off real numbers for one site, your traffic estimates would be off by approximately 11,842%. Numbers that big are often difficult to grasp, so I like to put it in perspective. A mistake of that magnitude is the equivalent of:

• The CIA mixing up the population of Ohio for China.
• Your accountant saying you owe $1,000 to the IRS, when you really owe $119,417.
• A cop pulling you over for doing 60 in a 30, when you were really going half-a-mile-per-hour.
• Telling your spouse you’ll be home in three hours, then showing up 15 days later.

These are mistakes that none of us could get away with, so why should we let Alexa?

I’m not the first to prove Alexa data is flawed. Here are links to other Alexa skeptics:
Peter Norvig, Paul Stamatiou, Josh Pigford, Matt Cutts, Rand Fishkin (thanks for the data!), Greg Linden, Bruce Stewart, Alex Iskold, John Chow, and Markus Frind.

Long-time search engine optimizers have seen meta tags go from extremely important, in the early days of SEO, to unimportant (and a handy litmus test of an SEO who doesn’t know what they are talking about). Meta keywords still remain fairly unimportant, but the meta description tag has made an impressive comeback. If you haven’t been keeping up with recent changes at the engines, you are missing out on a very large opportunity.

Time to Revisit Your Meta Descriptions
Sites that have been around a long time have been forced to live with their ODP descriptions (Open Directory Project, editor-written site descriptions that were full of flaws) or their Yahoo Directory descriptions (another editor-written directory that was terribly neglected). Thanks to years of site owner complaints, on July 13th, 2006 Google introduced the NO ODP tag. Then on Feb. 28th, 2007 Yahoo introduced the No Yahoo Directory tag. These two tags allow you to control many of your search listings.

Here’s what you should do right now:

• Add the NOODP and NOYDIR tags to pages you are willing to write unique descriptions for.
• Write descriptions with your marketing hat on. This is your chance to draw visitors in. Remember to stay on topic for the page your are writing the description for.
• Don’t lie to your potential visitors to lure them in. The search engines have methods, and will continue to develop more, to know whether or not a user was satisfied after clicking on your listing.
• Related to the last point: though swapping out ODP or YDIR descriptions won’t change your rank immediately, I believe it can change your rank over time based on whether or not the searcher decides to click on your listing and if they are satisfied with your site.
• Be conscious of character limits. It’s okay to let your description run over, but it is not okay for your to leave the important info out.

Revisiting and rewriting your meta descriptions may be one of the most important SEO techniques of 2007. A better listing will bring a higher volume of site visitors and strengthen your long-term rank. And the best part: the changes can happen almost overnight.