Digital Hollywood Internet Marketing Conference Today

Well I finally made it to Hollywood last night at midnight thanks to my car breaking down yesterday and someone breaking out my back rear window. It's always a bummer to spend $300 just to get back to the same state you were the day before (having a working car...lol). But, undaunted, I made the journey last night to my favorite city outside of San Diego and I am ready to rock! I don't speak today until 2pm but we have an 8am meeting that I am currently at waiting for other speakers to arrive. We are also right next to the Dreamworks people who are showcasing here as well.

Today I am going to be speaking on the best practices of an ongoing SEO campaign. In other words, after you optimize pages and get all the groundwork done, what are the next steps that you can take to keep improving your rankings after the initial optimization lift. We are going to talk today a little about linking strategies, more about Google Web master tools, and content development just to name a few. Anyway, gotta go! More updates soon.

Ask.com Celebrates "Cinco DO Mayo"

ASK.com today decided to do their best Homer Simpson impersonation (DOh!) by celebrating "Cinco do Mayo" (c'mon fellas, let's do some proof reading):

A Visual Comparison of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft

All the noise today about Microsoft dropping it's bid for Yahoo (hopefully it stays that way) inspired me today to take another look at the differences between the search engines and why one (Google) is utterly dominating the competition (Yahoo and MSN). And suddenly as I looked around the office and noticed some of the "swag" that my fellow BOLers had picked up from the search engines at various conferences, I was immediately struck by the obvious. The bottom line is, company culture has everything to do with why one company is winning and the others are losing. And that culture ironically is perfectly illustrated in the following picture. Google uses sophisticated technology and spends the money to do things right, Yahoo has some clever ideas but they aren't quite up to speed, and MSN is still lost in the past:

Mystery of the Viewstate Variable - Does It Really Affect SEO?

One of the more interesting questions that has emerged recently in the world of SEO is the mystery of the Viewstate variable. This handy little invention of Microsoft's twisted mind allows form users to recapture data they had previously typed in a form in the event that they hit the back button after already submitting the form. It's another way to get the functionality of session IDs (another search engine headache..lol). If you want to know more about the what the Viewstate variable is and why it is used, check out the Wiki article about it or this article. But the price you pay for this nice little feature can be large, literally. Many Viewstate variables can grow to be HUGE, some of which over 100K. And that has prompted many SEO professionals to become concerned about its potential effect on SEO. But will it really have any affect on your search listings?

There are really two main issues at the heart of potential SEO problems for the Viewstate variable:

1) The size of the variable can prevent the search engines from indexing some or all of the page.

2) The size of the variable pushes content down on the page, which makes it less important in the eyes of the search engine.

Let's look at each of these issues a little more closely to really understand the concerns.

The first issue really stems from Google's old "Best Practices" in which they used to recommend that Web masters make Web pages less than 100k because that is all they indexed for any given page. Thanks to technology advances, Google now indexes more than 100k. I have seen up pages of more than 500K indexed in Google and I am sure they do much more than that nowadays. Yahoo also has a the ability to index much more than 100k. So from that perspective, it is unlikely (although still theoretically possible) that you Viewstate variable will prevent search engine crawlers from indexing your content because of a file size issue.

The second issue is a little more problematic to draw a conclusion from. The thing is, although many SEO professionals including Rand Fishkin and Bruce Clay (scroll down half the page and read Bruce's advice on Tables which has a direct correlation to this issue) subscribe to the theory that keyword prominence is important to SEO rankings, it is not clear if the engine would view the Viewstate variable as being equivalent to text and / or whether or not the search engines would view the prominence of the content any differently if it was preceded by the Viewstate variable. In other words, it may just ignore it, in which case the page content is pretty much equivalent with or without the variable as far as the search engines are concerned. And from a logical point of view, it makes a certain amount of sense. However, when it comes to Google and SEO in general, assumptions based on logic don't always pay the bills...lol.

My philosophy about SEO has always been to eliminate as many unknown variables in the process as possible. And while I may have convinced a few people based on these observations that the Viewstate variable has no effect on SEO, it is virtually impossible to set up a controlled test to determine the effect absolutely. And so, because the potential for issues exists, my opinion is, don't leave it to chance. Or in this case, don't leave it to Google to decide if the Viewstate variable harms your search rankings. There are also some reports of problems with implementing Viewstate variables as it pertains to SEO (**note in this thread, Joe Brinkman of DotNetNuke proposes another possible solution). The other point I would make in justifying a change to the Viewstate variable to make it more SEO friendly (as well as PPC friendly) is that with big sites, this variable can have an affect on your load time and overall site performance. So it bears looking at even if you decide not to change it, to at least optimize the variables it stores.

So now that we have determined that we are concerned about the SEO effect that the Viewstate variable might have based on its default implementation, what can we do about it? We have four options:

1) Get rid of it (in other words, turn the Viewstate variable off).

2) Move the Viewstate to the bottom of the page. Another article about moving the Viewstate.

3) Make it smaller. You can use Viewstate decoder software to understand what variables are being passed and then eliminate the unnecessary ones. This can be very effective as the default setting for Viewstate is often times more than necessary.

4) If you are really technical, Peter Bromberg explains how you can move Viewstate to the server. ** Special disclaimer, I have never tried this personally but based on Peter's credentials and the content of his article, I believe this would be a good solution.

In the world of SEO where there are over 100 variables (according to Google) that can affect rankings, its always a good idea to eliminate as many potential problems as possible. It's also a good idea to not only optimize your site for rankings, but for users as well. And that means having as short of load times as possible. And with that in mind, I recommend using one of the four solutions presented here to make sure that the Viewstate variable is causing you problems you can't see.

SEO Content Strategy - The Importance of the "Application Page"

I'm back! lol. Sorry about the long delay since the last post but business has been going crazy around here and it's been hard to find time that wasn't dedicated to clients over the last two weeks. But no more excuses, lol.

Today I wanted to talk about content. Everyone knows (or should know) that sustainable search engine listings are based on compeling content. There are a number of different categories of content that are commonly used on most Web sites. These include "products", "services", "industries served", "support" or "help pages". But one category of content that is often missing from sites is "applications". And the reason that this category of content is so important is that it tends to be the most keyword focused.

When people are searching for your product or service, they often times do not know that they want your product or your service, or even your company. What they do know is, they have a problem. And that problem is often times associated with a specific "application" of your products or services. So for example, let's pick on Black and Decker, one of the most prolific tool manufacturers in the world. This is a great looking Web site that is broken into well thought out categories. It's easy to find any tool that you are looking for, assuming you know what tool you need. But what if you don't know what tool you need. By building content around a do it yourself section of the site that focuses on the most common applications of their tools, Black and Decker could target thousands of additional keywords including "deck building", "kitchen remodeling", "home improvement" as well as other relevant words that would have a high propensity to result in both sales and targeted branding.

A good example of a site that does "applications" well is Home Depot. Check out their "Know How Section". You can see they have the content to target those thousands of keywords that we were talking about. Only problem, they haven't even optimized their page titles yet! Doh! Well, you can't win em all I guess, but I still bet Home Depot gets more searches for related keywords to that content than Black and Decker does. And more importantly, they are serving their customers better.

Content that addresses the primary needs of your customers not only causes an increase in conversions and helps your site to become a more trusted resource with users, it also allows you to target some of your most important keywords through organic search. One of the most effective SEO strategies ever invented is a steady stream of keyword focused content based on keyword research. And looking to "applications" of your products or services for those keywords is a winning formula.

Google Now Crawling Forms to Find "Invisible Web"

Google announced today that they have started to experiment with filling out forms to get access to data that they currently can't see. Unfortunately there are still a lot of potential variables that can prevent your content from being indexed but it is a step in the right direction. Don't skip the noscript tags for your drop down menus just yet though. This experiment is so far confined to a limited number of trustworthy sites, and, remember that the no script tag is still good for accessibility for users without Java script. So while this is good news for searchers in general, I don't think it really changes much of the optimization process. Especially if you want to have a consistent pattern of indexing. One interesting note is the confirmation that Google does scan Java script and Flash for links, although again, to ensure that Google sees what we want it to see, existing optimization techniques should still continue to be used.

Shady crazy guy tries to trademark SEO

Good thing Sarah Bird was paying some attention to pending filed trademarks at the US Patent and Trademark Office and found someone named Jason Gambert trying to file a trademark for the word: SEO. The trademark is actually near it's final stages of getting approved and Sarah blogged about it on SEOMoz.

SEO, the acronym for Search Engine Optimization is so widely used just like saying you are a consultant and you offer consulting services. You can't just trademark "consulting" since it is not something that originally belongs to you to identify your product or service as part of it's brand. Although SEO may not be a dictionary word, it is still an acronym that is commonly used since the late 90's for Search Engine Optimization. It is a generic service that is almost like a verb in some ways.

Now some dude, named Jason Gambert attempts to register SEO as his trademark with his main premise as SEO is his process and it is not a service. After several declined statements from the US Patent and Trademark Office, he still shoots back and somehow convinces the trademark office to reached near the final stage. Right now it is openly published for opposition.

What will happen if Jason Gambert does get to register the word SEO as his trademark?

We can't tell the future but what he can do is file a cease and desist order to every company that uses the word SEO and say they cannot use it because he owns the trademark. So far this battle is led by Sarah who already started the filing of opposition which cost her $300 by the way. But if ever this still does not get the attention of the approving lawyers at the Patent and Trademark office, maybe more voices may help. Besides $300 is a small price to pay by any good SEO company.

• Sarah Bird's Story


• Status of Jason Gambert's Trademark Registration of SEO


• Where to File for a Notice of Opposition Sorry I am no lawyer to give specific how-to steps. I suggest consult your company lawyer how to do this.

I felt compelled myself to blog about this and I believe every SEO blogger should blog about it and get more people to tell the US Patent and Trademark Office that SEO is a service, not a process by Jason Gambert. SEO is almost common language to every ad agency and web design/development company today as it is part of their services.