There’s a new meta search engine on the block: Sputtr.   It doesn’t really matter as everyone uses Google, but my initial reaction to it was positive.  I like the design and layout of the website…it has a “web 2.0″ feel to it.  Big font. Bright colors.  Etc.

It’s a fairly user friendly interfact that allows you to easily search all of the major search engines and social media websites within a few clicks.  Just enter your query and then click on the icon of your choice to view the results at that engine or website.   There are plenty of options listed on the site but Sputtr also gives you the option of suggesting a new search site if you feel there is a good one missing.

From their about page:

Welcome to Sputtr. A refreshingly clean way to search the things that matter the most.
Now you can save valuable time by having all the right searches on just one page!

It’s simple - reeeaal simple.
It’s fast - faster than most others out there.
It’s a collection of all your favorite search engines - all on just one page!
It’s pretty - at least we think so.

delivery?

How To Distinguish Paid vs Organic Listings
A lot of people probably don’t even realize that the listings are paid and not organic. The listings themselves may look the same if the manager has used the same Titles & Descriptions for their pages. You can be identify these paid listings by this in the string http%3a//rdrw1.yahoo.com/click.

• Sample Search Submit Pro CPC Listing

Why Do I Care?
On a given Yahoo! search results page there are 10 organic listings and 14 PPC listings. When more and more paid listings creep into these natural 10 it reduces the amount of real estate left over for organic search results. Do you know how many organic spots are left for the keywords you’re targeting? While doing a few spot checks on popular keywords I noticed an alarming amount of CPC listings, some 50% or more. That means there are 19 PPC listings and 5 organic listings. That’s horrible. I was curious how this affected the different keyword markets. I grabbed the top keywords for each market KeywordDiscovery.com’s “Industry Terms” directory and to get a feel for the impact on heavily monetized keywords I then took the top keywords from this list of “top paying keywords“. I then checked the top 10 rankings for each and documented the # of paid listings found. Below are the results.

As you can see the top keywords listed in each industry are not heavily saturated with Search Submit Pro CPC listings. Only 32 of the 132 keywords, 24%, have CPC listings and only 4 of them, 3%, have 5 or more paid listings. This could be due to many of them being domain names and brand names. We then see that 70% of the keywords in the “Top Paying Keywords” list have Search Submit Pro! CPC listings, and 33% of those keywords have 50% or more CPC listings.

Reviewing these keywords you can see that the financial industry is pretty saturated. The majority of the keywords with 50% or more of the top 10 rankings being CPC listings are finance related. I decided to pull and evaluate the top searched keywords for the “loans” category. In the left column of the first graph below are the top 30 keywords returned for “loans” by KeywordDiscovery.com and the number of paid listings found in the top 10 rankings for each keyword. The second table is the same keywords and paid listing data but sorted in descending order of number of paid listings. When checking the rankings I see that 26 of the 30 keywords have at least 1 CPC listing representing an 86% saturation. Of these, 16 of the 30 have 50% or more CPC listings, representing 53% saturation. Some keywords like “home equity loans” and “online loans” are 100% CPC listings which means there are ZERO organic listings within the first page of search results on Yahoo!. Other gems are “loans”, “home loans”, and “cash loans” which weigh in with 9 of the top 10 results being paid listings from Search Submit Pro. Damn…that’s brutal.

I found this article from 2002 on SEW where Danny evaluated the Paid Content Disclosure on each search engne. As Danny states:

Yahoo: Paid listings sold by Yahoo are clearly labeled as “Sponsor Matches,” along with a helpful link that says, “What are Sponsor Matches?,” leading to a further explanation. As for paid inclusion, some “Web Site Matches” will be for sites that appear because they had to pay a mandatory fee to be reviewed. This is not clear on the search results page. Further, clicking on the “Help” link on the search page, while bringing up a page describing the search results, does not make clear some sites must pay a fee to be listed with Yahoo. Fail. Finally, for content promotion, this happens in the “Inside Yahoo” area, a clear-enough heading and which is also explained on the search help page.

Danny’s comment on the lack of disclosure within Yahoo!’s search results is still true today. That said, they have updated the information within their “About this page” section that is linked from the search results. It now states:

Web Results and Local Results may have financial relationships with Yahoo!, but have not paid for placement. Web Results may include links to sites that participate in the Content Acquisition Program (CAP). CAP enables content providers to submit web content directly to Yahoo! for review and inclusion in the Yahoo! Search index; content providers that participate in CAP through the Search Submit program pay for these services.

Web Results: Web Results are the most relevant web pages found in response to your search query. Web Results are generated from the billions of web pages discovered, crawled, reviewed, submitted, or otherwise included in the Yahoo! Search index. More than 99% of web pages in the Yahoo! Search index are included for free through Yahoo!’s web crawl process.

So, how does this factor into YOUR campaign and rankings?

Are the organic listings for your keywords being taken over by CPC listings?

Do you think consumers need to know these are paid listings?

Interesting article at Webpronews.com today discussing a recent ban imposed on Netvertise, Inc. by the FTC. Apparently:

The FTC alleges the company violated federal law by selling franchises for Website design, promotion services, and SEO software under false claims.

In addition to the ban, Netvertise will have to return $160,000 to its customers, as part of a settlement, which is not technically an admission of guilt.

The FTC claims the company inflated the earnings customers would make with their services and Netspace SEO software to lure franchise buyers.

The FTC says Krasnow’s company misrepresented franchise incomes with unsubstantiated earnings claims, overstated the value of the Netspace software, and that the Netvertise provided consumers with “defective” disclosure documents.

Interesting…I’d never heard of them before. If they’re scamming innocent clients out of cash then this can only be a good thing.

I was doing some research to prepare for another post, but to my surprise I found something even juicier. Yahoo! is cloaking their (fixed typo for the professor) Autos pages, serving keyword stuffed pages to the SE crawlers and regular pages to the average users. I was browsing as Yahoo!’s Slurp crawler and therefore was able to see this.

Below are two screenshots. The first thumbnail on the left is what you will see on this page, http://autos.yahoo.com/used-cars/forsale.html, if you are crawling as Slurp. The second thumbnail on the right is what you will see on the same page if you are surfing as a normal user.

So, they are clearly serving different content to their users and to the search engines. The pages they’re serving to the bots are heavily keyword stuffed. I honestly don’t know where they could cram the word “used cars” on the page again. It’s everywhere.

If you look on Yahoo!’s “Search Content Quality Guidelines” it states:

What Yahoo! Considers Unwanted
Some, but not all, examples of the more common types of pages that Yahoo! does not want include:

• Pages that harm accuracy, diversity or relevance of search results
• Pages dedicated to directing the user to another page
• Pages that have substantially the same content as other pages
• Sites with numerous, unnecessary virtual hostnames
• Pages in great quantity, automatically generated or of little value
• Pages using methods to artificially inflate search engine ranking
• The use of text that is hidden from the user
• Pages that give the search engine different content than what the end-user sees
• Excessively cross-linking sites to inflate a site’s apparent popularity
• Pages built primarily for the search engines
• Misuse of competitor names
• Multiple sites offering the same content
• Pages that use excessive pop-ups, interfering with user navigation
• Pages that seem deceptive, fraudulent or provide a poor user experience

I’d say the page in question above falls into all of those items I highlighted above. Yahoo! is repeating the keyword “used cars” over and over to inflate their search engine rankings. The text is hidden from the user. It is giving the search engines different content than what the end-user sees. And lastly, this page is built primarily for the search engines.

Normally, I could care less if someone is spamming or using shady techniques. You do what you have to do to rank, and as long as you don’t take a shot at me, all the power to ya. I don’t believe in spam reports and I don’t believe in snitching on competitors. BUT, I don’t feel that this applies to the search engines. They are the ones placing the “quality guidelines”, penalizing websites, banning websites, and trying to enforce the rules that they’ve made up. And they penalize and ban websites for less than what Yahoo! is doing above. How is that fair? With one hand you’re going to ban a site and in effect reduce their revenue and with your other hand you employ the same strategies (or worse)? Come on now.

DaveN’s got some solid advice on building links. Check out the full post here:

3 step plan on links

1) 1st batch of links: You need to gain your authority to play in that market place, but don’t over do it, being way too authoritative for an industry is sometimes worse than no authority at all. Try and get some links from press releases and on sites that don’t normally sell links.

2) 2nd batch of links: Once you have authority status get some blog love, but avoid Pay Per Post blogs for now. Take GetClicky.com: I’m not getting paid for that review or link, I did put my affiliate code in so I could see how many people I passed into getclicky.com and signed up… I’m geeky like that.

I think I have sent 180 people to date, 23 people signed up via my link, and only 13 people had balls to comment on my blog lol, but I will have passed a little of my authority onto GetClicky. Once you have enough blogs that have gained authority status linking to you, you’re set for stage 3.

3) 3rd batch is a free-for-all, you have gained authority and your stage 2 links should be pulling in the search terms. This means you will get scraper sites linking to you, so buy text link ads on lower grade sites, PPP and review-style sites. Your authority should pull you though.

Sometimes you’ve got to start slowly from step 1 with a new site or campaign.  Other times you’ll be lucky enough to inherit an authoritative site and you can skip right ahead to step 2 and/or 3 and start attacking the main keywords.

I just read this article by David Tischler entitled “Beware the Duplicate Content Filter“. The overall message of the post is correct: Proceed with Caution. That said, what he states just isn’t true.

There was one part, however, that made the little hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Here’s a quote, “Bear in mind, authorities and experts in a given field are often seeking collateral exposure, which you can provide them. The exercise is to find an article published online that contains content related to your industry and ask for permission to “reprint” it on your site.”

I must strongly disagree; reprinting articles from other sites can cause problems with duplicate content. When the search engines determine that the content on two different pages are duplicate, one will be chosen seemingly at random by the “duplicate content filter” in the algorithm and sent to the supplemental index (otherwise known as Google Hell). You are better off writing original content that refers to the article and providing a link to it.

I suppose if you took article domain.com/xyz.html and copied the exact HTML to yourdomain.com/xyz.html including all of the same text, surrounding copy, HTML, Title tag, and & Meta tags, then your page would probably end up in the supplemental index. But who would do that? How lazy are you?

The fact of the matter is that it is possible to re-use content if done properly. Your site can’t be a mirror copy of another existing site. Your page can’t be a mirror copy of another page. But there are certainly plenty of areas in the middle where content such as press releases, product specifications, news articles, product reviews, and other pieces of content from the same source can be re-used and can be found ranking in the same SERP. I have plenty of concrete examples from today’s SERPs.

I don’t think many people know how to walk the line though. They don’t know enough about the situation or they’re too green and not able to cut through the FUD.

So, like I mentioned before, David’s overall message of caution is correct. You need to be careful or you run the risk of being bitten in the ass. But, it can be done and it isn’t as black and white as he suggests.

I mean, if the search engines can do it, why can’t you? For example, all of the Yahoo! Movie News is technically duplicate content as the articles are licensed from the Associated Press, E! Online, Reuters, and other content providers. Other sections of Yahoo! are the same.

And check this out. Yahoo even has duplicates within their site. And still ranks!

• Yahoo! Article 1 - McGregor earns minimum wage on stage
• Yahoo! Article 2 - McGregor earns minimum wage on stage
• Google Ranking - McGregor earns minimum wage

Or even better, how about both of them ranking next to each other? Here you go!

Sidenote: It actually looks like Yahoo has some sub-domain issues going on. This search for “site:yahoo.com ‘McGregor Earns Minimum Wage’” brings back 3,860 results. Are those their different servers?

You need to ask yourself if the content presents value to your users. If it does then you can proceed without worrying because even if the pages don’t rank well they’ll still give your users a better experience on your site. If they are simply search engine food you may want to rethink it.

Now, I have no problem with what Yahoo! is doing since it probabaly presents value to their users.

BUT, don’t generate half of your website based on someone else’s content, duplicate content, and then state this in your Quality Guidelines:

Pages Yahoo! Wants Included in its Index

• Original and unique content of genuine value

What Yahoo! Considers Unwanted
Some, but not all, examples of the more common types of pages that Yahoo! does not want include:

• Pages that have substantially the same content as other pages
• Multiple sites offering the same content

Oh the irony…..

I made all of my arrangements for the SMX Advanced conference that is coming up on June 4th & 5th.

I’m pretty excited about this conference. For one, I’ve never been to Seattle. It sounds like a great city. It also sounds like SMX Advanced is shaping up to be a decent conference. Here’s the agenda. Here are a few of the sessions that I plan on attending:

Duplicate Content Summit
More and more, SEOs are growing concerned about duplicate content issues. Does syndicating your content in feeds mean you give up being seen as the original source? Is content scraping that’s out of your control going to knock you down in the rankings? In this session, search engines outline how they currently handle duplicate content detection, followed by lots of time for the audience to suggest and explore future directions.
Moderator:
Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land

Speakers:
Vanessa Fox, Product Manager, Google, Inc.
Amit Kumar, Senior Engineering Manager, Yahoo! Search
TBA, Ask.com
TBA, Microsoft

SEO, Meet SMM
SEO has a lot to gain from SMM, social media marketing. Getting your content into the major social media sites does more than provide an initial traffic jump. It can generate links or provide rankings you might not be able to tap into with your own site. In this session, SMM essentials that SEOs need to know.
Moderator:
Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land

Speakers:
Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-Founder, SEOmoz
Cindy Krum, Senior SEO Analyst, Blue Moon Works Inc.
Todd Malicoat, Internet Marketing Consultant, Stuntdubl
Neil Patel, Author, Pronet Advertising

Personalized Search: Fear Or Not?
Google’s change earlier this year to make personalized search results more prevalent has many SEOs wondering — is it game over when everyone has their own unique search results? This session looks at the shift, tips on staying high even with personalization and what might come in the future.
Moderator:
Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land

Speakers:
Matt Cutts, Software Engineer, Google, Inc.
Michael Gray, Owner, Atlas Web Service
Gord Hotchkiss, President and CEO, Enquiro
Tim Mayer, VP of Product Management, Yahoo! Search
Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land
TBA, Ask.com

Penalty Box Summit
Had a site hit the search engine penalty box? In this session, search engines share the latest on how they give you official signs of this, along with reinclusion procedures. The session includes lots of time for audience-driven discussion on penalties and how procedures might be improved.
Moderator:
Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land

Speakers:
Matt Cutts, Software Engineer, Google, Inc.
Tim Mayer, VP of Product Management, Yahoo! Search
TBA, Ask.com
TBA, Microsoft

Better Ways
Keyword research. Link building. Page titles. Yawn. You know the fundamentals of SEO cold. Still, no one knows everything. Been wondering if there’s a better way to get something done? Put it to our panel of experts!
Moderator:
Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land

Speaker:
Alex Bennert, Director of Client Services, Beyond Ink
Greg Boser, Search Engine Marketing Consultant, WebGuerrilla
Jim Boykin, CEO, We Build Pages
Christine Churchill, President, Key Relevance
Todd Friesen, Director of Search Engine Optimization, Range Online
Cameron Olthuis, Director of Marketing and Design, ACS
Aaron Wall, Author, SEO Book

Give It Up!
No more secrets time. In this session, our panel of noted SEOs all share some of their favorite and largely overlooked SEO tips. Then we turn to the audience for more sharing. Attendees vow not to blog what’s discussed (on your honor now!). Matt Cutts and his mighty notebook might be barred from the room. Alternatively, any search reps found lurking have to give up a secret of their own or head for the hallway.
Moderator:
Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land

Speakers:
Greg Boser, Search Engine Marketing Consultant, WebGuerrilla
Bruce Clay, President, Bruce Clay, Inc.
Todd Friesen, Director of Search Engine Optimization, Range Online
Mike Grehan, Founder and CEO, Searchvisible Ltd.
Jennifer Slegg, Owner, JenSense.com
Stephan Spencer, President, Netconcepts, LLC
Mikkel deMib Svendsen, Creative Director, deMib.com
Shari Thurow, Webmaster & Marketing Dir., Grantastic Designs
Jill Whalen, Owner, High Rankings

I’m also looking forward to this conference because it’s bringing a lot of SEOs and affiliates out of the woodwork. Some guys that I haven’t seen in 4 years or so will be at SMX. Should be a great time. Conferences like this are always great for meeting new colleagues too.

So, will you be there?

I got this article, “So…Should We, or Shouldn’t We?“,  in my inbox.  Jill Whalen posted an article, “Don’t sweat the small stuff“, a few days ago advising SEOs not to worry about the nitty gritty details like keyword density, proper Title tags, or implementing the use of <h> tags throughout their pages.   It was followed up by Lisa Barone’s article “Sweat The Small Stuff: Search Engine Optimization Is In The Details“, which as you can imagine suggests the opposite.

This seems to tie directly to Brian’s post entitled “About.com Asleep At The Wheel“, where he found some things that About.com and their SEO team are failing to implement.

So, who’s right?

Jill has a point.  And Lisa has a point.  But the fact is that SEO is a package.  It all matters.

Look, if you are overwhelmed with the amount of work you have or sites you manage, then you can probably only afford to see the sites from 30,000 feet.  It’s the old 80/20 rule.  You probably don’t have the time to optimize each Title tag.  You probably can’t get into the code and optimize it by getting the text close to the top of the code, implemeting <h> tags, externalizing CSS and JS, and reducing code bloat.

But you know what?  I CAN.  And a lot of others can.  And we might pass you by as a result.

It’s a resource issue that you, as a manager, need to identify and resolve.  If you are a one, or two, or three man team within a huge corporation how much good do you think you can do?  If you have 100 sites to manage, how much time can you dedicate to each?  Can you be in all meetings at once to ensure all projects are in compliance with your SEO best practices?   If you have the resources you need you’ll be able to assign individuals to the 30,000 foot view, but have others getting their hands dirty in the small SEO details.  Don’t settle for 80/20.

I just read Lee’s post entitled “Are Search Engine Rankings are Dead?”, with the followup “R.I.P. Search Engine Rankings?” from Jennifer at Search Engine Guide.

Are they right? Partially. Yes, the landscape has changed. That said, it hasn’t changed enough to a point where the ranking is no longer a metric. Similar to the reported “death of the page view” as a web metric. Until there are some major changes in the advertising and publishing businesses the page view will remain to be the metric with which billions of dollars worth of business is exchanged.

Why are rankings still important?

• Because not everyone is as internet savvy as you.
  • We as an industry may realize that ranking for “blue widgets” doesn’t matter because it pulls in less traffic and less conversions than “red widgets”, but many others do not. I had a real world example of this earlier this year when one of our East Coast based sales reps asked me to put together a list of rankings revolving around a specific company name. He didn’t care what traffic it generated. The rankings themselves were the sales material he needed when walking into his presentation.

• Because it helps to measure performance & trends.
  • Tracking specific rankings and referrals from each will allow you to measure the overall performance of your SEO campaign.  Small fluctuations won’t give you much insight, but if a monthly report comes out with decreases or increases across the board you’ll be able to identify a need for change.  It also allows you to identify trends.  Let’s say your boss notices a decrease in Google referrals over the past two months and asks whether this is a result of negative performance from the SEO campaign.  You may find that none of the rankings have changed or shifted dramatically and that the change in traffic is seasonal or the result of an economical factor like rising gas prices or the war.

• Because it gives you goals.
  • If you aren’t targeting a specific keyword, what are you targeting?  If you’re #5 with XXX referrals a day, don’t you think the #1 spot will get you more traffic?  Targeting a specific keyword or set gives you goals that your team can work towards.

So, after all this, what could or should your SEO reports entail?   We have a custom reporting system that we built in-house.  Here are some of the things that we report to the various teams and executives.

• Traffic (page views, uniques, visits) trends
• Search engine rankings by engine w/ trending
• Search engine referrals by engine w/ trending
• Site conversions by type
• Conversion rates by type
• Site “health” w/ trending - this includes pages indexed, backlinks, PR, Alexa, etc.

What do your reports include?

Check out these results.

• Query: seo company “why we’re different”
• Query: seo company “why we are different”
• Query: seo company “what makes us different”

I don’t have the time to physically check each site, but I know where I’d place my bet. I bet the percentage of SEO companies that are in fact “different” is less than 5%.