Latest Articles
Bootstrap SEO: How To Ride A Wave Of Popularity.
December 27, 2007 By Webposition SEO Team
by Scott Goodyear
As an internet marketer, it is often easier to look at some one else’s site and see opportunity than it is to see opportunities on your own site. In this post I want to give an example of what I would call “bootstrap” SEO. Essentially bootstrap SEO occurs when you see some one else’s success, think up ideas on how they might continue to build on their success, but you may instead find a way to build this content for your own site.
Internet marketers often focus on trends in order to divine which keywords and phrases should be the focus when buying pay per click advertisements or building new site content. If you’ve been around the web or if you’ve been watching TV, you’ve probably heard that the World of Warcraft video game is one of the biggest games online with an online tidal wave of approximately 9 million subscribers. While I’m a former player myself, news about the game still piques my interest from time to time.
9 million. It boggles the mind. Even a slice of such a large customer base would make the day of most internet companies. On December 11th, 2007 a Warcraft licensed third party site opened called Figureprints. This site essentially makes a mini-statue of a player’s character for about $115. I’m sure that if even a slice of the WOW customer base purchases a figure print, this site will be quite successful.
In relation to SEO, the Figureprints site had about 1,800 reported links in Yahoo Site Explorer when it launched. After 16 days, they now have over 3,000. (I’m not sure why Google still reports zero links. /sigh ) While I’m not in a related industry, my mind buzzes with related topics that various industries could write about.
I see a bootstrap opportunity here where sites related to 3D printers and printing, model making, custom action figures, character statues, games, comic book blogs, and many others can improve or create rankings. Two examples that come to mind:
Printing: While you may not be able to become a Warcraft licensee, you may be able to bootstrap your rankings by explaining how the 3D printing process works. If your company has a CAD/rapid prototype/3D printer you have just about all you need to create and print up a non-Warcraft monster or hero, but from the same fantasy genre of trolls, knights and goblins. While doing this you can take pictures, capture some video on a camera phone or camcorder, and write up some color commentary about the process. This has the potential to build out to several pages of interesting text and imagery that could rank quite well over time. If you don’t have access to this type of printer, now is a great time to grab the yellow pages or start searching for a company to partner with.
Action Figures and Collectibles: There were mass produced Warcraft action figures that came before and after Figureprints. While it has been written that Warcraft has brought many first timers to the Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game genre, will this have a similar affect on the niche action figure industry? There have been several companies that have produced custom action figures before. Any speculation on how this might change their outlook? There are also thousands of hobby sites where they creatively mash up legs, arms, torsos, sculpty and bits of plastic, in order to create custom made action figures. (Also know as action figure mods.) Any connections to explore there?
The idea of bootstrapping your SEO effort by hitching onto a related site or company’s idea can be quite powerful. The social aspect of talking about the subject in various forums, answering questions, and encouraging discussion around your videos, can create a positive buzz and links to both your site and the sites you discuss. If you are knowledgeable it can create legitimacy and trust in your site or service as well. While creating content around Figureprints and Warcraft may not be everyone’s cup of tea, there are certainly opportunities in other industries and around other topics if you keep an open mind. Good luck in maximizing your online marketing efforts!
Organic and Pay Per Click Rankings: More Than “Hits”, Perform A/B Testing.
By Webposition SEO Team
By Scott Goodyear
The other day I was reading a post at Google Blogoscoped called “How Google Tests Results Quality” and thinking about how many people will use advertising as a crutch for sites that have low rankings. While searchers may click on advertisements and top ranked pages, that doesn’t mean that they like what they see once they reach their destination. This is why some web masters become perplexed that they can have a high “hit” count and high pay per click ad spend but low conversions or sales. This often leads to sentiments like “Pay Per Click advertising is a joke” or “top rankings don’t really matter”.
But being number one can be huge. PPC advertisements can bring in tons of revenue. What many sites fail to do is create good, converting content. If you are in the same boat, are you running A/B tests? Are you tracking trends related to visitor interactions with your site?
SEOByTheSea had a great patent examination of Google Ad patents back in July. One take away is that engines can rate clicks on an advertisement based on an examination of time spent. If I click through an advertisement but spend only a few moments before I click the “back” button in my browser, then click on another advertisement, or perform another search; these additional actions can serve as clues to Google that the quality of that ad is probably low. I would add that this same type of examination of time spent can also be applied to help rate relevance in organic search results algorithmically (by examining trends in searches) or by using human reviewers, as Google appears to do.
If you are paying for an advertisement or if you are getting lots of hits on organic keywords you owe it to yourself to start understanding your analytics package. An A/B test can help you to better fit into the shoes of a site visitor and make running changes to your site. Like Google, also consider hiring contractors to simply surf your site and give feedback. As it’s the holidays, re-connect with your friends and family and see if you can get their feedback as well. All feedback, good or bad, should be welcome.
Link Exchange Spam, Our Site Has Nothing To Do With Snowmobiles.
December 11, 2007 By Webposition SEO Team
By Scott Goodyear
Like quite a few of you, we receive spam and link exchange requests all of the time. We also receive requests from existing WebPosition customers asking that we include some type of automated link exchange module. While I can’t tell you what is in store for the future of WebPosition, I can show you why most software companies shy away from creating link exchange software…
Link Exchange Spam Example
Lets look a recent example of a link exchange email that was sent to us:
“This is John from xxxx Snowmobile. I found your site
marketposition.com and I really enjoyed it. The info is great and the
site is very easy to navigate.
Please consider adding the following info to your web site:
xxxxSnowmobile.com – Snowmobile Parts, Accessories and Apparel
I noticed some other snowmobile related links on this page:
http://www.marketposition.com/blog/archives/2007/10/reciprocallinks.html,
but any area on your site would be great. Let me know what you think.
Thanks!
Ride Safe,
John xxxx
xxxx Snowmobile
xxxx@xxxxsnowmobile.com
http://www.xxxxsnowmobile.com
1-800-xxx-xxxx”
How Link Exchange Software Attempts To Work
As you can tell in the email above, John probably hadn’t done much to edit the basic template that came with their program. And obviously their program didn’t work to find sites related to “snowmobiles”. Since they ended up focusing on this page: http://www.marketposition.com/blog/archives/2007/10/reciprocallinks.html, I’m guessing that they had something about “link exchange” as one of the parameters of their search. Perhaps looking for snowmobile sites that had link exchange pages?
Many link exchange programs go through a lists of keywords that you build, scan through search engine results for related sites and harvest/download a page, section of a site, or entire site. They also scan for email addresses or phones numbers from those pages then use free or private look up systems like whois, public wikis, and other sources. And that is how a link exchange spam is born.
Link Exchange Spam Doesn’t Work
The problem with this is that spam doesn’t work. You can argue that the 1% or so that responds and adds a link is a “success”. Well sure, first hurdle over, snowmobile spammer now has a new link back to their site but search engines aren’t happy about random links on “link pages” which is where most of those links will go. Link pages have been ineffective for a really long time where as content pages with links in them tend to work much better.
As for those 1% responders, they often don’t understand what search engine marketing is about, nor my friends, does the snowmobile guy. Having a link on a SEO/SEM like MarketPosition isn’t going to count for much since we rarely if ever talk about snowmobiles. A link that is put just “…any area on your site…” won’t count for much either.
Having a link on a specific web page of a site is what is important. A page that gets lots of views, that has lots of links to it, and gains new links all the time… that is where you ideally want a link to be. Barring that, on a page that is relevant and has some links is a second runner up. Lets say you were in the “architecture, engineering, and construction” category that Adobe.com markets to. Would you rather be highlighted on the AEC page, in a newer blog article of the AEC blog, or would you want to be listed on some blogger blog that was just created 10 days ago and that will link to anything that is sent it’s way? Which will get more targeted traffic? Which is likely to be used as a resource by industry pundits and others for some time to come?
What If It Was Done Differently?
So what should he have done differently, aside from using the generic form letter/software? Well, how about actually appealing to the web site / web master? What about asking questions about the site, about a point in the article, developing a bit of repertoire for what the site links to and typically talks about before popping the link question? Similar to this XKCD comic, wanting high rankings through links doesn’t make it real. High rankings may actually take some real world work and a bit of search engine knowledge in addition to links.
If snowmobile John did exchange a few emails with me, developed some trust, and then broached the subject, I’d tell him that I would be happy to link to his site under a few conditions (commonly known as the “what’s in it for me” caveat). If he had a relevant search marketing article that was previous unpublished, he could submit that article for publishing consideration. If I liked it, it would probably end up on MarketPosition with a byline that included his name and a link back to his site like this article by Kent Lewis of Anvil Media. If it was a good article and became popular, it would gain him some visibility and it would give him an avenue to publish insights that might not be relevant to his snowmobile visitors. But you probably wouldn’t get that with just a self serving “please, can I have a link, can I have a link?” type of email.
And if he were smart, (yes I looked at his web site) he would turn his generic, carbon copy e-commerce site into something more than just product descriptions and pricing. Consider writing up a guide to getting the best snow gear for the price. Create a review of the newest snow gear that includes MP3 pockets, pouches, integrated headphones, etc. and submit the guide to techy/news/gadget sites like Geeksugar, Gadget Lab, or others who are specifically within the snow sports industry. They may not only link to your article, but also write up a blurb talking about your review, the products, similar products, or something. Good or bad, you could get both a link and a fair amount of traffic. Maybe one day he’ll learn, maybe not. Good luck and holiday wishes to all!