“masterpiece” by 415style

I was talking with Amanda Peyton who I met after the Internet Week version of the NY Tech Meetup about SEO and gave my thoughts on why and how it is important. This was following another great event showcasing 50+ companies in the first NYTM Showcase demo room.

She asked “does SEO even exist?” to which I replied with what I believe is a very good analogy I will use going forward to explain my thoughts on SEO.

Seo is like Art

The gatekeepers who decide whether or not your page is “optimized” are the search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. This is done via a blackbox that people have tried to game, crack, follow, and abide by for many years.

The analogy holds true for art as well as the gatekeepers who decide whether or not your work is “art” are the major museums such as the MoMA, the Met, and the Guggenheim (at least here in NYC).

Each group is similar as they have different specialties and themes, and their own flavor of what works and what does not. They are curated and handled differently, but ultimately have the final say.

People spend vast amounts of time arguing whether or not something belongs in a museum or not, and one of my favorite examples is the painting Blue Monochrome by Yves Klein which is one color on the entire canvas.

I will avoid the argument for the moment of whether or not this is art, but clearly it has some foundation as it is hanging in the MoMA.

The same holds true for websites. You can build a site, optimize it, and throw it online and call it “optimized” but only the engines will determine if this is really the case. Your reward for optimizing towards the guidelines set forth by these gatekeepers is ranking. This is now heavily influenced by outside links coming in, but still determined by the engines.

So I challenge anyone who really questions the validity of SEO and so called SEO-experts, and use my analogy of artwork. If it were that easy, everyone would pickup a blank canvas, some paint and brushes, and create a masterpiece – whatever that may look like.

Post from: Eric Friedman
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SEO is like Art

Motoko Hunt

On my first “real” job, I was a corporate interpreter/translator. Then I got into marketing, and worked as Senior Marketing and Procurement Manager at Japanese trading firm in California. I managed marketing and procurement contracts between the Japanese Government, Japanese Defense Agency, top companies in heavy industry, and the manufactures/suppliers in US. I learned great deal about how the business works locally and Internationally.

Back in mid 90′s, I started to do some web site localization and press release translation work for US businesses targeting Japanese market. Did some display ad purchases, e-mail marketing, site submissions… all the good stuff.

It’s great that now as a Search Marketing Strategist, I get to use my past experiences with language, International business and online marketing work to create search strategies for my clients.

2. International SEM and SEO have become more important in the last few years – what areas should people focus on?

With both SEO and SEM, you need to research the market before you enter. You’ll need the data from keyword research, competitive analysis, market trend, etc. to create effective campaigns.

In Japan, more than 85% of people search to gather information about the services or products that they plan to purchase. Search is what make or break your business now. If you are not sure of the market, the paid campaign is a good way to test the market, keywords and the messages.

If you are targeting Japan, China and Korea, the mobile search is something you should look into as it’s driving so many traffics in these markets.

International SEO and SEM are not just for Multinational Corporations, but also for mid-small businesses. I know many small businesses in US are doing great targeting Europe and/or Asia.

3. What are some resources US search marketers can use to get up to speed on International SEM?

You can find some great information on web. ComScore, Nielsen and eMarketer have great market data. Government websites such as Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, and Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has some good data, too.

Many blogs out there are good resources, too. I write about Asia and Japanese markets on my blog and Multilingual Search. WebmasterWorld.com has forums about International markets including Asia.

Also, if your company has offices or partner companies in other countries, talk to them. They know the market and their target audience.

4. What are some campaign successes or failures you can share recently involving a campaign both inside and outside the US?

It’s not a US company, but H&M just landed in Japan this Fall, and creating a good buzz in the market. They opened mobile site back in July about 2 months prior to the opening of the first store in Tokyo. Through online and off line advertising, they pushed people to mobile site where they ran the pre-opening campaigns to draw interests and create an initial customer base.

The press release was picked up by many bloggers and shopping related websites, which created more buzz for them. As a results, when they opened a website (PC version) in September, they had almost 600,000 accesses to the site in the first month.

This example is not just about SEO and SEM, but a great example of how SEO, SEM and mobile marketing should be integrated to bring a success.

5. What are some tips for optimizing your site for multilingual compatibility?

Once you optimize your site structures and templates, you can use the same one for all markets. You shouldn’t need to optimize the same structure and templates again and again. You do need to optimize the content for each market, and here are some issues to keep in mind:

SEO/SEM Guideline – Create a guideline for SEO and SEM campaigns, and train everyone involved in the process using that guideline. Once the process is started, enforce it so that everyone keeps following the guideline. Setting up a good reporting/monitoring system helps, too.

Domain structures – Engines are set to determine the country of the website using the hosting location and the domain’s country code extensions such as “.jp” and “.uk”. Even if you have a site targeting UK, if the domain is structured as www.companydomain.com/uk the site won’t show up in the UK search results when the users set it to search UK websites. At least with Google, you can now set the Geo Targeting to tell Google that www.companydomain.com/uk/ is their UK site.

6. What are the latest flash in the pan “memes” in International SEM and SEO?

“Globalization”. There are numbers of great benefit of Globalizing SEM and SEO campaigns. You can save time, money, manpower, etc. But at the same time, it is a huge challenge especially for a large size corporation to “nail” it at each market. Perhaps, there is less room to localize content, etc. to make it work better in each market. Perhaps, they don’t have enough manpower or budget in each market to take on the localization part of the work.

In Asia, mobile search market has been doing really well, in many cases, more effective than regular SEO/SEM campaigns. But, I haven’t seen it taking off in US at all. Even in Europe, mobile search is not as big as it should’ve been.

7. Where can people find you and get in touch?

I speak at SES Chicago and other conferences in US, Europe and Asia including SES, SMX and AdTech. I’m managing SEMPO Asia committee, and attend SEMPO meetings in US especially the ones in NY and New England. I can be reached at motoko “at” ajpr.com. E-mail is the best way to reach me at least initially, since I’m out of US frequently. I’m on Facebook, Twitter (motokohunt) and Linkedin.
Marketing.fm is a Media Partner with SES

Post from: Eric Friedman
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Interview with Motoko Hunt about Search around the World & SES Chicago 2008

This topic comes up more and more as I have seen websites with different approaches on handling and manipulating content on the web. There are more questions than definitive answers right now, but I am glad to see an official post about this. Anyone who follows the webmaster forums knows that this information has been around for awhile, but not officially aggregated in one place.

Something worth noting from the post:

Let’s put this to bed once and for all, folks: There’s no such thing as a “duplicate content penalty.” At least, not in the way most people mean when they say that.

and in conclusion:

In summary: Having duplicate content can affect your site in a variety of ways; but unless you’ve been duplicating deliberately, it’s unlikely that one of those ways will be a penalty.

There will certainly be more questions that arise from this but they are at least trying to round up as much information in a centralized trusted place as possible. Maybe somebody should create a knol about it

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• Duplicate Content Penalty – a Myth or a Reality

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Google Explains Dealing with Duplicate Content

There are many ways to deal with the issue. Generally speaking, if there are multiple copies of a site or there are multiple copies of content you’ll want to suggest to them that while we can leave the content open to visitors, the search engines need to “see” only one copy of the content. So, you will want to use a robots.txt file or other means of disallowing the search engines from indexing more than one copy of the content.

That said, in very general terms, if I see someone about to launch a website that I know will hurt their SEO, I tell them NOT to launch until they’ve addressed any issues that could be less than “optimal” for SEO (redirects are not set up properly, URLs are horrible, pages are “invisible” to the search engines, or any other issues).

If you already have multiple sites with similar content, what steps (other than taking one down or developing completely new content for one of them) can you take to minimize the negative effects on your SEO?

Again, the “easiest thing” can be to make sure that the search engines can only index one copy of the content. There can be very legitimate reasons why you would want to keep multiple or similar copies available to human visitors, including having different versions for PPC landing pages. The best thing you can do, though, to minimize the negative effects on search engine optimization is to be aware of all of the duplicate content and to make sure that the search engine crawlers can only get to one copy. If it’s absolutely necessary to market each website separately, and there are many (thousands of?) pages of content, I would recommend that they – at a minimum – edit the first paragraph of content to be unique and ensure that Titles and Descriptions are unique.

As blogs become increasingly popular, many companies are developing unique domains for their company blog. If this content is syndicated through their homepage or elsewhere, will that have negative affects on their homepage’s SEO?

Generally speaking, most companies will tend have a “shorter version” of the content on their company home pages. It is typical for a home page to include the title (which is a link) and a brief description of the article or blog post. Having an RSS feed or other type of feed on a web page generally is not considered duplicate unless that content is the only content on the page. Most home pages generally have a lot more content on the page than one syndicated feed. In fact, we have seen that these small snippets of content on the home page, being regularly updated, can have a positive effect on SEO as search engines do like to see fresh content, rather than a home page that never changes.

Do micro-sites with completely original content, but which are affiliated/associated with the parent company/homepage, have a negative affect on SEO?

It really depends on the content of the micro-site on whether or not it has a negative effect on search engine optimization. If the micro-site has original content then it is a good thing. However, lately, we are recommending that a blog or micro-site be put directly on the main domain name rather than developing a completely separate site with a completely new domain name.

Does duplicating homepage content on social networks/profiles hurt your SEO? (E.G. if a company creates a myspace page and copies much of the content from their homepage onto their myspace page, will that be considered duplicate content)

Generally speaking, if you were to take content and text from your current website and put it on social network or a profile it typically is not considered to be duplicate. There is usually enough other text and enough other content on the social networking profile where duplicate content is not usually an issue.

How does a search engine identify that two sites are related/tied to one another? What if someone copies my webpage content to their page, but I have no association with them, do I get penalized?

In most cases, the page that gets crawled first will be the originator of the content. Any other pages that the search engines find (like someone who copied your web page and put it on their site) will be considered duplicates of the original. The same concept applies when you take copy from one of your web pages and put it on another; the first page crawled is the original; all others are duplicates. So, this illustrates the importance of trying to ensure that your original content, that exists on your website is crawled/indexed first.

For more information about Mark checkout his company website http://www.vizioninteractive.com/ or see him at SES 2008: San Jose

Duplicate Content & Multiple Site Issues

More and more site owners are concerned that they might get penalized accidentally or overtly because of duplicate content. If you run mirror sites, will search engines ban you? If you have listings that are similar in nature, is that an issue? What happens if you syndicate content through RSS and feeds? Will other sites be considered the “real” site and rob you of a rightful place in the search results? This session looks at the issues and explores solutions.

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Interview: Mark Jackson Organic Search SES 2008: San Jose

You are participating in a keynote roundtable this year at the SES 2008 show in San Jose about attributing sales to Search – How much credit does an SEM program deserve?

It obviously deserves its fair share but this is the problem we are trying to solve… That search should not be an island and should be collaborative with other marketing activities. Historically, Search Marketers have tried to compete with other budgets rather than trying to be complimentary. We are trying to get marketers to understand they should work together and how to play nice with other marketers.

How do you determine the success of a Search campaign? What are some benchmarks for success?

It really varies. There are two key things we look for in metrics:

Most people with their search campaigns are only interested in Response Oriented — this is where the goal was to provoke people to do something. They want to know how many clicks and people buy. We are doing these but starting to do more around Awareness Oriented metrics – how many people became aware of us or our products during this phrase and what was their depth of their engagement with us.

Too many people exclude generic words from their campaign because the ROI is not positive but if they measures the awareness lift similar to GRP’s it opens up a different perspective. The current brand recall studies show this has tremendous value to the business. Additionally, we look at the “why only x” in terms of clicks and conversions. I have never been happy with a 5% click rate which means that 95% did not connect. If our client is the market leader they should be getting more but too many marketers do not take the time to understand why they are not getting their fair share of that opportunity.

What are some examples (generic or specific) of companies doing search right or wrong?
There are many large and small companies doing search wrong. Just about any search you do you will see mistakes with both paid and natural search. I see a lot of big companies that still have not effectively integrated search into their marketing organization. Those doing it well are many of the brands on the panels at this next SES. I am impressed with what Intuit has done as well as Intel – both are examples of well integrated search programs.

What is the latest “flash in the pan” meme in search marketing?

Social Media optimization – I think there are a lot of hacks out there that are jumping on this bandwagon since it is hot now. We are seeing a lot of chatter about optimizing social media content. While a lot of this is good information it is done after the fact rather than anything strategic that creates continuity. There are some companies who have embraced it and have tied it into a larger traffic and messaging strategy.

What are next generation search marketers thinking about?
They are thinking about content optimization across multiple formats and how to maximize all intersections with searchers. They will also be looking for was to integrate search into the entire content creation workflow.

What is one area you would like to see people spend more time on when looking at SEM analytics?

Monitoring paid and organic search integration.

Please share some of your professional background and why enjoy being CEO/President of Global Strategies?

I am one of the pioneers of Search Marketing. I got started by sending requests for inclusion into Yahoo! Directly to Jerry Yang when they were just starting out. I helped Outrider grow into the largest search agency that was acquired by WPP in 2000. After taking a break from search and working on a few internal consulting projects I formed GSI to work with companies to integrate search into the workflow for scale. We have grown to be a leader in enterprise and global search marketing. Why I enjoy being the CEO? I get to oversee a great team of dedicated Search consultants and work with some of the biggest brands in the world. I get to travel the world to meet with clients and teams. Last year I logged over 300,000 miles and visted 20+ countries. The travel around the world gives me the opportunity to experience many different forms of search marketing techniques and opportunities.

For more information about Bill Hunt or his company checkout Global Strategies.

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Interview: Bill Hunt – SES 2008: San Jose

What is your background and what are you doing for Relevant Traffic?

I am part of what I would call the first generation of Europeans embracing cultural and language diversity. I was born in Denmark, travelled in my youth and studied in 4 different countries and in 4 different languages before beginning my career in France.

After having worked mainly in the French internet sector in various companies and functions, I became one of the founders of Relevant Traffic Europe, a Europe-wide Search Engine Marketing agency delivering technology solutions, search campaigns and consultancy in 11 languages and over 20 countries.

I today head a team of experts residing in various subsidiaries to accumulate and distribute know-how within client delivery and for tailor-made client solutions.

What are key issues to think about into the UK & Europe SEM market?

The key issues to think about for doing SEM in Europe are three-fold: user constraints, language preferences and cultural flavour.

User constraints are really about understanding the context the user will be in when doing a search. Mobile internet is more important in Europe due to a high equipment rate and although this is not as omnipresent as in advanced parts of Asia, this could be a good example of a user constraint. More relevant user constraints are those in relation with the buying experience: what are the most common means of payment or delivery of goods in the country – what is the currency used. Will there be problems with VAT or import taxes, what will be the connexion speed, will the keyboard lay-out work with the application. All of these elements of user constraints are quite essential as they could represent an completely blocking obstacle in the conversion funnel.

The second element to be dealing with can be equally blocking. It is of course the language factor. You will need to be addressing web users in their own language, that is, if you are not marketing entirely indispensable services (most people are of course not)… The language issue can be quite complex as it dictates the keywords and key phrases that you will be using in SEM. The language dimension not only important for the SEM efforts but more so on the destination web site. In some cases a language specific microsite explicitly stating that the remaining service will be in English language can be a solution. In most cases, however, if your web site is only in English, you might as well not market towards a specific region at all.

The third element is somewhat softer – it is the cultural dimension of your marketing campaign. Culture is often considered to be something difficult to grasp but in SEM the cultural dimension is very concrete. It furthermore ties into both the user constraints and language issues. As an example an English language Ad from a US campaign may not be efficient in the UK market because of both different word connotation and politeness. A message can be more or less direct and in this way be considered more or less aggressive by two different audiences in different cultural settings. Another dimension to the cultural context is the type of message used in other marketing channels both on and offline. The type of message your competitors are using will add to the cultural flavour. From our experience within Relevant Traffic, a higher cultural immersion into the local jargon and standards of communication will always give a higher return. The cultural dimension will allow you to tap into the long tail.

So to sum up, if you miss out on the user constraints you might as well not start marketing to a geographic area (sell in Euros to the UK where they will pay in Pound Sterling). If you have got the user constraints right you will get some initial marginal returns even if you haven’t fully managed the language dimension (you can get away with targeting the UK with a copy and paste US campaign). If you want to compete within high volume business areas, you need to also consider the cultural dimension. “When in Rome, do as the Romans”…

What are the hot issues surrounding international SEM at the moment?

The hottest issue around international SEM is an extremely boring one called organisation. According to the level of branding against conversion required in a Paid Search strategy, an entirely different set-up could be required. For highly competitive international SEM, it will be necessary to have feet on the ground in every major language/country segment and establish an efficient command line and an aggregate reporting. For a brand campaign with mainly visibility objectives a more centralized organisation and a stronger command line can be established with less feet on the ground. Major international organisations with multi-national presence are today struggling with a major headache issue of finding out how to organize international SEM internally as well as how to work with international agencies externally. For each organisation the setting could be different.

How do you decide which markets to move into next with your global marketing plan?

When building an international marketing plan, timing is often a problem so let’s forget that and just concentrate on how things should be: For each country/language segment, a comparison of adaptation costs with market potential would easily give a prioritized list of markets to target. For a US company, this equation will very often generate a prioritized list starting with something like this:

1) Canada/EN

2) United Kingdom

3) Australia NZ/EN

4) Mexico & Central America/ES

After that it get’s harder and the following markets will involve Asian (Japan, China) and Western European markets (Germany, France, Spain, Italy, …)

What are some international SEM resources on the web that you recommend?

I will mainly recommend e-consultancy.com which is a great resource with in-depth reports. I have also had great use of the European Interactive Advertising Association’s market information: http://www.eiaa.net/

What are some great non-US blogs to read for international search gurus?

I spend very little time on non-US blogs so I won’t recommend any.

What is the latest “flash in the pan” meme in search marketing?

There have been so many Flash in the pan meme’s out there both in paid and natural.I like the recent “Google can now index Flash” one. My feeling is Google always could and never really will index Flash in the way they should… but at least this will get the SEO industry more ways of making it all sound very complex

What is your blog or a place that people can get in contact with you?

Best place to hook up right now will be on Search Engine Strategies in San José where I speak on the 18th of August. Also happy to receive you in Paris or in one of our other European offices.

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Interview: Anders Hjorth – SES 2008: San Jose

Image via Wikipedia

We’ve improved our ability to index textual content in SWF files of all kinds. This includes Flash “gadgets” such as buttons or menus, self-contained Flash websites, and everything in between.

This is something that has been in the works for quite some time and will most likely make many entertainment web designers very happy. Although, I will say that in my experience Flash design and lack of SEO has not deterred major companies from building out Flash sites. There is\was an overall lack of information about the subject and by indexing this content Google has alleviated much of the discussion around the issue. They have needed a more official position on this issue for quite some time and now they have it. As always there is great discussion happening in the comments of the Google post.

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Google improves indexing Flash pages