SEO Should Never Stand Alone

Search engine optimization was once a very powerful form of communication and marketing by itself but as time has pushed on and the technology has changed, morphed and evolved SEO alone will become less potent than it once was. However SEO is still very important at the very minimum and should always be implemented and [...]

Search engine optimization was once a very powerful form of communication and marketing by itself but as time has pushed on and the technology has changed, morphed and evolved SEO alone will become less potent than it once was. However SEO is still very important at the very minimum and should always be implemented and taken seriously but coupled with other forms of internet marketing SEO becomes a much more powerful driving force in the online marketing space.

Search engine marketing comes in many different slices and search engine optimization is really just one slice of the marketing pizza. There are many different approaches to SEO which is primarily why so many website owners have a hard time putting a definition on what it really is. It is important that whenever feasible other aspects of online marketing are introduced with your search engine optimization efforts. This will help strengthen your SEO by not only allowing for new pathways to your website but it shows the search engines that you are diversifying your online marketing approach and trying to build your business online the right way. Remember that the search engines are always changing and what helped them grow in rankings a few years ago does not necessarily work now. The search engines reward those who take a diversified approach to their online marketing efforts so it is important to really take a step back and put together a comprehensive online marketing plan that is robust and full of different entrance ways to your website. Search engine marketing gathers strength in numbers so have many different quality pathways or links connecting to your website will allow for you to over time to really grow in visibility.

Social media marketing is one very important element that is just as important as SEO. It is an element that is vital in today’s market place and should be included in your internet marketing strategy at all times. Even if you have a business that is very obscure and niche it is important to find your community online and reach out to them. Depending on what you offer as a business other efforts like affiliate marketing and pay per click advertising are very important compliments to your organic marketing. You should never put all your hopes into one marketing or advertising effort but rather approach it with a multi pronged approach in order to keep things diversified if one should stop working for you.

http://www.searchengineoptimizationjournal.com

Google Social Search Not Very Local Yet

I just checked out Google’s new Social Search experiment.  The idea is that Google can index information from your social network and display relevant content in your search results.  For more detail read Danny Sullivan’s post on the launch.  Here’s Danny’s summary scenario on how the system could work:

Google sees I have a friend on [...]

I just checked out Google’s new Social Search experiment.  The idea is that Google can index information from your social network and display relevant content in your search results.  For more detail read Danny Sullivan’s post on the launch.  Here’s Danny’s summary scenario on how the system could work:

  1. Google sees I have a friend on Twitter
  2. That friend links to their blog from their Twitter profile
  3. Google understands that they are connected to that blog
  4. The friend’s blog has a link to their Flickr account
  5. Google may understand, then, that the person I know on Twitter is also related to their Flickr account, even if that account wasn’t listed on their Twitter profile

I tried it out for a number of local seo and local search queries and it seems like the system still has a ways to go before it gets local.

Search Query = “local seo”

Now I am a big fan of Lyndoman, Chuck Reynolds (thanks again for the Wave invite!) & Bill Hartzer, but I am curious why these guys show up as most relevant to my “local seo” query.   I would have thought that anyone with a social profile connected to the top results in Google for local seo would be in there, but it looks like some combination of Gmail connection plus the strength of the profile’s social network is a big factor here.  There are few of us who can out-social Lyndoman and Bill has been a fixture in SEO circles for a long time so his network is likely huge and filled with others with large networks.  I am guessing Chuck’s Google Wave connection puts him over the top for me.

Search Queries = “local search engine optimization”, “local search optimization”
No social search results.

Search Queries = “pizza”

Looks like Chuck likes pictures of food.  Perhaps no one in my social net lives near me or has written a review of a local pizza joint, but you’d figure if Google shows a 7 pack for a query that the social results would also have some local intent.

I tried a number of other local searches, particularly those that targeted categories and profile names of nearby businesses that I am connected to on Twitter and came up empty-handed every time.

Google Social Search is obviously very new and I am guessing they will get better at surfacing relevant local content as they develop the service.

Bottom Line: This is a big deal.  When Insider Pages, Yelp & JudysBook first started the goal was to make social recommendations a centerpiece of the search experience.  Now Google appears on the path to making it actually happen (note to Google - I think Judysbook has a trademark you might want to check out).  I think this brings up a lot of opportunity in the local search arena - and a lot of potential for spam - if a spammer can infiltrate your social net they should be able to easily surface for a number of local queries where your real network has no data, which at the get-go should be 90% of all queries.

My advice to all of you local search optimizers out there - for now keep your friends close, and keep your friends with strong social profiles who can get ranked for those local search queries even closer :)

and speaking of local social here’s another one Cherrp

http://www.localseoguide.com

Accessing SearchMonkey Structured Objects via BOSS

SearchMonkey and the structured Web
We’ve just announced an all-new Yahoo! Search experience, with many new features powered by SearchMonkey data.  Since launching our open developer platform in May 2008, Yahoo! Search has enabled thousands of developers to shape the search experience for millions of Yahoo! users. If you are interested in building semantic applications similar [...]

SearchMonkey and the structured Web

We’ve just announced an all-new Yahoo! Search experience, with many new features powered by SearchMonkey data.  Since launching our open developer platform in May 2008, Yahoo! Search has enabled thousands of developers to shape the search experience for millions of Yahoo! users. If you are interested in building semantic applications similar to what we’ve come up with at Yahoo! Search, here are some details to get you started.

What structured objects are available?

All of the objects listed on the SearchMonkey homepage are available to you. With the new feature “object refiners,” users can now restrict the search results to specific object types. Site owners contribute data of these objects by marking up their pages with RDF or microformats, or by providing dataRSS feeds. If you’re interested in the actual data of these objects, use the Yahoo! Search BOSS API to request the SearchMonkey data as part of the search request.

How can I access these structured objects?

The SearchMonkey team has been encouraging developers to use our structured data to build semantic Web applications ever since we partnered with BOSS.  Using the BOSS API, you can access SearchMonkey structured objects.

To restrict the result set to pages with SearchMonkey objects, just add “searchmonkey:<objectType>” to your query. The result set from BOSS will only contain URLs that have objects of that type.

For example, the following query returns all of the documents in the Yahoo! Web index that has the words “Sunnyvale” and “pizza” – about 3 million pages.

http://boss.yahooapis.com/ysearch/web/v1/sunnyvale+pizza?appid=wX7OZ3zV34Fy2Y4W4in_vsjFmRhruQNgCxdxn6RUke2c2JVDZdw6bfc1rcEjVnw-&format=xml

But if you only want pages with local business objects on them, you can add “searchmonkey:local” to the query:

http://boss.yahooapis.com/ysearch/web/v1/sunnyvale+pizza+searchmonkey:local?appid=wX7OZ3zV34Fy2Y4W4in_vsjFmRhruQNgCxdxn6RUke2c2JVDZdw6bfc1rcEjVnw-&format=xml

This query returns about 25,000 pages.

Yes, we’ve just thrown out over 90 percent of the result set – but we are after the most relevant results, not simply the greatest number of results. Our new object refiners use SearchMonkey’s structured data to narrow your query from “pizza+Sunnyvale” to actual local business listings within those results. You can use BOSS to retrieve the same structured data and construct any presentation you like.

You can take it a step further and add any of these terms to the query:

  • searchmonkey:video – restricts the result set to videos.
  • searchmonkey:product – restricts the result set to products.
  • searchmonkey:local – restricts the result set to local businesses.
  • searchmonkey:event – restricts the result set to events.
  • searchmonkey:document – restricts the result set to presentations, spreadsheets, and similar document formats.
  • searchmonkey:discussion – restricts the result set to blogs and forums.
  • searchmonkey:game – restricts the result set to Flash games.

What don’t I get?

Not all structured data we’ve collected is part of the BOSS API.  For example, some third parties who provide us with feeds have elected to keep that data outside of BOSS. Structured data annotations from technologies built by Yahoo! Research are also not available to third party developers via BOSS. However, we aim to include all data we find embedded in web pages that deploy microformats or RDFa.

Our goal is a successful semantic Web where we extract the semantics as we process Web content. Every page marked up with semantic data makes that much easier for us to extract meaning from that page. And it’s not just us! Google Video Search has recently adopted the same video markup (RDFa and Facebook Share) that SearchMonkey supports.

What’s next?

We will make many more object types available to you soon. In the mean time, you can learn more about SearchMonkey and how we acquire structured data annotations from this new from this post on the YDN Blog.

Kevin Haas

Senior engineering manager, Yahoo! SearchMonkey

http://www.ysearchblog.com

Seth Godin: Sliced Bread

Malcolm Gladwell: Outliers

Anthony Parinello: Your Price is Too High

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