There are two flaws with the system that I see. Admittedly, I'm going off what I've read. I'm neither an Inlinks publisher or advertiser so I have no first hand knowledge.

1. Advertisers will not be smart about their text link usage. They'll target a small handful of key words leaving obvious footprints in their wake. Only a small percentage will actually spend money on poor links to balance out their purchases.

2. Advertisers will be at the whim of what other links the publishers accept. Even if the advertiser takes all the necessary steps to establish anchor text that is natural looking, their efforts will be in vain when the same publisher accepts other paid link offers from advertisers that are not savvy enough to hide their tracks.

I guess only time will tell…

We've all seen spam pages. More often than not we can point to a page and call it spam with a high degree of certainty. Our brains are good at quickly identifying elements of a page that immediately indicate it as spam. Alas, computers are less capable with such acts of intuition, but a certain category of spam can be easily and methodically classified as such.

Although numerous and beyond the scope of this research paper, some approaches to spam include:

1. Loading pages with popular, but irrelevant keywords. Commonly called keyword stuffing.
2. Synthesizing many pages each with a narrow topic focus which in turn redirect to the page that needs to receive the traffic. Commonly called doorway pages.
3. Synthesizing many pages knowing that each will obtain a minimum PageRank which can all be channeled to the key page.

The first approach is easily detected using term vector analysis. The second two are the subject of the research paper.

Using two datasets of 150 million URLs and 429 million URLs, respectively, the Microsoft researchers set out to demonstrate that spam pages exhibit statistical anomalies that could be used to accurately separate spam from non-spam pages. These statistical anomalies include:

• Length of host name. The longer the more likely it's spam.
• Host name resolutions to the same IP. The more that resolved to the same IP, the more the pages are spam.
• Host-machine ratio for links. The more outbound links to hosts that converge to a small set of IPs, the more likely those pages are spam.
• The distribution of links embedded on a page vs. those pointing to a page. This distribution should follow a Zipfian Distribution and outliers are likely spam.
• A variation in the words used across many pages while the number of words remains constant.
• A high rate of page mutation. That is, pages that change content frequently. Note that news sites, which have just a few constantly changing pages with many otherwise static pages, do not get flagged by this measure.
• Excessive replication of content across domains.

For me there are two takeaways from this research. The first is that spam detection is not just about detecting what a page is, but also what it isn't. That is, a page that isn't like others in some via a statistical measure stands out.

The second takeaway is that this paper supports the notion that there is such a thing as over-optimizing a page, but the threshold is likely changing over time. By that I mean some overly exuberant SEO may push a site out of the statistical norms and into the looks like spam bucket. At the same time, the statistical norms are in flux because as more and more sites are optimized, what is normal changes with those optimization efforts.

Where have I been? That's the question that my readers (both of you, not including my brother) may have asked in the last couple of months. I've been where I've always been, but I've been reading much more than I've been writing. Some of that reading has been research papers of the sort put out by the International World Wide Web Conference Committee (IW3C2) or the Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval (SIGIR).

One of these papers came out of Microsoft and is called Beyond PageRank: Machine Learning for Static Ranking. Ooh. Anything with PageRank in the title, must be good, right? Well, actually in this case yes. The paper was an excellent read and I highly recommend it despite it being from 2006. Because I have a memory like a sieve, I've decided to note some of the highlights for future reference.

A good query-independent ranking or static ranking algorithm is key for search engine success and provides:

1. A general indication of the overall quality of a page.
2. The ability for the search engine to quickly stop searching for results once a particular threshold of quality has been passed.
3. A clue to setting the priority for what pages should be crawled first.

It's generally accepted that Google's PageRank is the best method for the static ranking of Web pages, but the authors of this page have set out to demonstrate otherwise. Their argument is stated as such:

"There are a number of simple URL- or page-based features that significantly outperform PageRank (for the purposes of statically ranking web pages) despite ignoring the structure of the web. We combine these and other static features using machine learning to achieve a ranking system that is significantly better than PageRank (in pairwise agreement with human labels)."

Pretty bold statement, right?

I won't attempt to describe what is meant by a machine learning approach, but some of the benefits cited by the authors include:

• Multiple measures that make it hard for malicious users to manipulate (especially of the measures are kept secret).
• An algorithm that learns allows for a feature to be de-emphasized should it become subject to manipulation.
• Taking advantage of advances in machine learning field e.g. it is apparently possible to adjust the ranking model ahead of the spammer's attempts to circumvent it.

And so RankNet was born — the Microsoft researchers' implementation of a "modified standard neural network back-prop algorithm". And from it a new measure call fRank (for feature-based ranking).

The paper includes details of various experiments which are worth reading, but the gist the results is that fRank performs significantly better than PageRank despite a lack of information about the web graph. As a side benefit, fRank tends to bias pages that web users actually prefer rather than those preferred by web authors when compared to PageRank. I had to mull that one over for a while.

And what simple measures in combination beat the all mighty PageRank?

• Popularity as measured by the number of times it was visited by users over time. The MSN Toolbar provided this data. Yes, the MSN Toolbar, as with other toolbars, could very well be a factor in rankings.
• Anchor text length and number of unique words in that text. I'm not sure what length is optimal, but I guess the authors determine such a value.
• Page elements such as number of words in the body and the frequency of the most common term.
• PageRank as computed on 5 billion pages.
• Domain-level elements such as the number of outlinks on any page and the average PageRank.

Even if you don't own property and don't often pay attention to economic-related news, you can't possibly have missed credit woes that many financial institutions are dealing with these days. Not just in the US, but across the globe. But things in the SEM world are just peachy so why worry about such things, right? Well, having been a web developer prior to the dot-com boom and subsequent bust, I highly recommend you prepare for a day when SEM jobs became hard to come by and new contracts all but disappear.

The first thing you need to accept is that companies don't necessarily react to bad times in a logical way. The PPC folks would argue that their PPC campaigns will never be canceled because they all have a positive ROI. SEOs are no different and they would argue something along the lines that SEO delivers free traffic and so who would be foolish enough to scale back efforts? Politics, panic, fear, nepotism, and a whole host of other things can conspire against you and leave you without a job. If you accept this possibility, then hopefully you'll be open to the following suggestions. For those "old timers" out there that have seen a dip or two in their professional lives, feel free to add your suggestions via the comments form.

1. Diversify Your Skills

To make it harder for you to be laid off, you need to make yourself more useful than the next guy relative to your compensation level. The more you're paid, the more value you need to bring to the table. First and foremost, you should be GREAT at your primary responsibilities. Beyond that, having some secondary skills could go a long way to increasing your value (perceived or real). For example, if you're an expert SEO that also has some PPC experience, web development experience, or even sales experience, you're in a much better position than if SEO is all you do.

2. Get Involved

Have you been dragging your feet when assignments come up that are outside of your job description? Now is a good time to change that approach and get involved. Similar to diversifying your skills, diversifying who you work with and what you work on will make you a more valuable resource. Just be careful to not take too much on. Whining about having too much work to do and missing deadlines isn't going to work all that well.

3. Save Some Money, OK!?

This isn't so you can retire early. Instead, having some backup funds will help you avoid acts of desperation such as jumping ship just when things are turning around or completely moving out of SEM which will make your resume look weaker when the market rebounds. As is often the case with investing, hanging on while others are panicking can result in great opportunities.

4. Have a Backup Plan

A backup plan for what you can do when you can't do SEM should seem like an obvious suggestion. What may not be obvious is the quality of life bonus you get from having such a plan. When you can go to work in the morning knowing that even if you get there and management has changed the locks without telling you, you'll still be able to pay the bills goes a long way to eliminating stress that would otherwise weigh on you day in and day out.

5. Additional Income Streams

A co-worker once asked me if every SEO dreams of building web sites while sitting on a couch and making thousands of dollars via Google AdSense. I laughed and said, "yes". AdSense may not be right for you, but surely there's something out there that is of interest that you can use to earn some side money. The key is make it something that doesn't rely on others paying you e.g. consulting on the side isn't the a good choice, but running affiliate programs is. An alternate income stream probably won't disappear at the same time as your primary income stream so it'll help smooth out any transition and allow you to, as in item 2, avoid the same acts of desperation. Need an example? Check out Gyutae Park who is an SEO by day and money-making blogger by night. Need more ideas? Check out this list from the DoshDosh blog .

6. Establish Your Network Now

The more people you know, the more likely you'll be able to continue working at the things that interested you. It's important to build this network before you need something though. No one likes to get an e-mail from someone who hasn't said a peep to you for over a year, but who now needs a job. Participate in the community that piques your interest and build some equity today while things are good. That community could connect you to the right people in troubled times in a way that going through recruiters and using job boards can't even come close to equaling. In addition, if your current employer is already paying for you to go to conferences, make the most of the networking opportunities.

7. Bring in a Client

If you're at an agency, bringing in a client buys you a get out of jail card. Yes, the revenue from the new client going to have a positive impact on your employer's bottom-line, but that's not the only benefit. You'll also get an added layer of protection because ending your employment would surely become known to the client who may become less inclined to continue the newly formed relationship with your agency.

So there you have it. Seven steps to coming out on the other side of a recession in the SEM market relatively unscathed. I'd like to say that following the steps will be as easy as writing them, but that would be a lie. It takes effort to not become complacent when everything is going well.

Note: This post has been expanded from a previous post now that the bottom has really fallen out of the economy.

Marketers put a lot of time into naming the services and products that their companies sell. Before the advent of search engines, such naming efforts more often than not aimed to appeal to emotions. The keyword-driven nature of search though has forced marketers to at least consider the gap that may exist between what they call something and what their potential customers call that same thing.

And so I read with much interest the reaction to Hugo Guzman's recent article titled SEM vs. SEO. It's the title that caught my eye because it strongly implied that SEM was different than SEO. However, my definition for these terms is that SEO is a subset of SEM where SEM refers to any and all activities related to driving traffic to your site from a search engine. This includes paying for advertising (paid search), optimizing your site to obtain top rankings (SEO), and using other sites to control more of the SERP listings (social media marketing and optimization).

Hugo argues that, "If you go look at RFPs for Fortune 1000 companies, a lot of them refer to SEM when what they really mean is paid search." He's right. I've seen that same distinction used not only in RFPs, but also during phone and in-person discussions with prospects.

And yet, an industry heavyweight, Danny Sullivan, felt the need to restate his position that SEM is an umbrella term that encompasses more than just paid search.

So who's right? That depends. You saw that answer coming, didn't you?

I believe you should write for your audience and use the terminology that will resonate with them. Was Hugo's article intended for the same people sending RFPs to his company or was it intended for search marketing professionals? I can't say for sure who he's actually targeting, but given that most of the responses have largely glossed over the topic of his article while focusing on the terminology suggests to me that he made a tactical error. However, he probably is spot on with his terminology when talking to his clients.

Mind you, I'm biased. The title of my blog is All Things SEM and most of my content is SEO related. Since I don't write for prospects or clients, but rather as a member of and practitioner in the search engine marketing community I like to believe my use of SEM makes sense.

There's just one problem. This comment was caught by Akismet and automatically flagged as spam. Hmmm…

And yet, Google seems to have noticed the Cuil.com is a worthy result for its SERPs.

I think that's all the analysis needed, wouldn't you agree!?

More Accurate Data

The current market leaders in the keyword research space (KeywordDiscovery and WordTracker) rely on data from ISPs. They then take this data and extrapolate numbers that are supposed to reflect the user base of the Internet (for the US). I think most people will agree that this data isn't particularly accurate. It's good for determining relative popularity of keywords, but the absolute values are largely useless. Assuming Google isn't massaging their data before we see it and that the data is otherwise accurate, we now no longer have to worry about inaccuracies from ISPs.

Better Upfront Planning

Search engine optimization efforts often run into issues in the planning phases when a business justification is needed. Without knowing how much volume there is for a keyword, it's difficult to put a value on obtaining a #1 ranking. Have the search volume data from Google now provides an additional data point for such calculations. For example, if a keyword has 10,000 searches a month you can backfill that number into a value per visitor calculation to help determine what it's worth spending to obtain top rankings for that keyword.

Click Through Rates for SERPs

Ever wonder what the click through rate is for a #1 ranking vs. a #2 ranking? As your site climbs up the rankings, you'll be able to calculate CTRs now by looking at the volume data from Google along with your rankings and visits. Gather enough data and you'll be able to determine whether the effort to move from position 2 to position 1 is worth the cost. Yeah usually it is, but now you can show the numbers to the bean counters to get budget approval.

Title and Description Testing

The PPC folks constantly tweak and test their titles and descriptions to squeeze out more clicks. They're able to do this because they can control things like ad position and are given impression data from Google. This data allows them to determine what copy is working best. On the SEO, such testing has been quite difficult because of things like changing search volume. Now that we can grab search volume from Google we can account for its impact on traffic allowing SEOs to play around with titles and descriptions to eke out more clicks without and change in rankings.

Improved PPC and SEO Synergies

PPC and SEO teams (at least the good ones) have often shared data to try and figure out the best way to make use of a limited budget. An expensive keyword on the PPC that doesn't have a positive ROI can become a good target for SEO. Likewise, an incredibly competitive SEO keyword could be targeted by the PPC campaign. This kind of collaboration just became easier since search volume and CPC data are now shown side-by-side in the AdWords Keyword tool. This means that both teams will be looking at the same date during their keyword research and can easily keep their eyes open for opportunities for the other team.

In the interest of a balanced view, check out Note: Michael VanDeMar's argument that the data from Google is in fact not accurate in part because of data from the Google's search network being included.

If you like this add-on and have a Mozilla account, please provide a rating. I'd like to get the add-on out of Mozilla's sandbox and ratings will help me do that. Thanks!

UPDATE JUNE 26, 2008: Chris Bennett and I have exchanged a few notes on the 97th Floor blog. The good news is that Chris and his team will be releasing a new version of the Social Media for Firefox add-on. Not only will it work with Firefox 3.0, but it will support additional social networks. Check out Chris' post for details.I highly recommend you wait for this new "official" version rather than download my version. Doing so will save you the trouble of having to uninstall my version and re-install Chris'.

Back in 2007 the folks from 97th Floor released a promising Firefox add-on to help facilitate cross-submissions between social bookmarking sites. Unfortunately, development on this add-on stopped in October 2007 and it wasn't long before the add-on itself became non-functional.

I've taken it upon myself to fix the code and it is now back to being fully functional. By fixing the code and re-releasing this add-on I've probably stepped on some toes, but it was a shame to see a cool add-on lose its support. I've also made the necessary updates so this add-on will work with Firefox 3.0.

Once installed, the Social Media for Firefox add-on will show you the vote counts on other social bookmarking networks when you're viewing submissions on Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Delicious. Why would you want to see this information? Because you might be able to find a popular submission that is also a good candidate for submission elsewhere.

The only functionality I removed is some code related to tracking requests. This add-on now doesn't send any information to me or to the 97th Floor guys. However, I'm considering adding additional social bookmarking sites to the list. Mixx seems to be an up and comer. Any suggestions?

Download Option 1 - Mozilla.org

Once you've downloaded the add-on, please consider rating it at Mozilla. I need just a few ratings to get it out of the sandbox so that a login won't be required. Thanks!

Download Option 2 - My Hosting Company

Or you can download it here from my crappy host which I can't configure correctly. The downside is that you'll need to save the add-on file and then drag-and-drop it into Firefox to trigger the install. Sometimes I hate computers

Download Option 3 - From 97th Floor

The original creators of the Social Media for Firefox plugin have pledged continued to support. Their most recent update includes the necessary fixes to make this plugin compatible with Firefox 3. Since they'll be adding new features, I recommend downloading this plugin from them.

But the real secret is that #1 rankings are obtained in a much more direct manner:

P.S. If you don't have a sense of humor, sorry to have wasted your time, but please click on one of the colorful icons below before you leave. If you do have a sense of humor, sorry to you too, but please also click one of the colorful icons below before you leave.

P.P.S. If you're Matt Cutts, a friend of Matt Cutts, or his lawyer, note that the MSN search team made me post this.

Just Because You Can, Doesn't Mean You Should

Much of what gets posted to Twitter is not valuable to the community. I'm not saying that there has to be a money-making idea in ever message, but a message to your network should at least be of value/interest to more than one person. I don't need to know that you'll be calling so and so at 9:00pm tonight. Send an instant message instead or use the direct message feature.

Messages are Transient

E-mail, forums, blogs, and even instant messaging allow for asynchronous conversations. If you're a night owl and I'm an early bird, we can still have a useful conversation by sending messages to each other via e-mail with each of us responding when it is most convenient. Forums and blogs accomplish the same thing with people coming and going as they please and give everyone a chance to speak their mind. With Twitter, if I'm not looking at the screen when you post your message, it's unlikely I'll ever see it. It'll get bumped by the 17 posts (see Blah Blah Blah below) from the next person.

Blah, Blah, Blah

The Twitter creators have imposed a 140 character limit per message. Pretty cool idea when you think about it. People are forced to succinctly describe their thoughts or activites. Oh wait, no one actually pays attention to that limit. Rather than being brief, it's easier to just type 17 messages in a row. Get a blog people!

A Rip in the Spacetime Continuum

Twitter is like TV. You can park yourself in front of it, become really engaged, and hours later wonder what you did during all that time. I had a 1 week period where all I did was check Twitter instead of checking my RSS feeds. I can't rememeber a single thing I learned from Twitter nor did I bookmark anything for reference. Contrast that with the incredibly useful AND entertaining items that come through my feed reader and I'm having a hard time justifying continued use of Twitter.

Too Many Followers

We've all seen the contests that encourage people to become followers, right? The only beneficiary of such activities are those that are being followed. I can guarantee you that after a few hundred followers, it's impossible to remain part of the conversation with everyone. Instead, these popular people are likely to just focus on the people with which they had a pre-Twitter connection. Twitter then just becomes another medium to push one's blog posts or other message i.e. one-way communication.

One Way Conversations Get Old

I follow a bunch of people in the SEO/SEM space. I do so because I've come to respect the content on their blogs. The problem is that many of my messages to these people go unanswered. I'm sure part of the reason has to do with the items described above, but the other part is that these people aren't following me and/or aren't open to receiving messages from me. At least on their blogs I've got a good chance of getting a response when I post a comment. If I want to talk while being ignored, I can accomplish that by setting up a meeting at work

Lastly, I want to be fair and acknowlege that Twitter has been useful at least once. After all, I did get this blog post out of it.

SEM recruiters work in the same way in that they fill their funnel by making cold calls, combing through resumes on job boards, and by networking with people in the SEM industry. And while I'm sometimes irritated by the calls I get from recruiters, I also admit that I'm pretty lucky to often find myself in their conversion funnels without any direct effort on my part. So I thought I'd put out a few tips for recruiters, from an SEO's perspective, that might them push more candidates into the top of the funnel.

Note to current employer: I'm not looking to leave. Really.

1. Know What SEO, PPC, and SEM Mean: Nothing tells me more clearly that you're not worth calling back than saying you have an SEO opening where the hiring company is looking for someone to manage PPC campaigns. Most recently a fellow from Aquent did this very thing.
2. Don't Call Me at Work: I work in an open area and the last type of conversation I want to have while surrounded by co-workers is one with a recruiter. If my work phone number is the only contact number you have, call after hours and leave a message.
3. Send Me An E-Mail: I live online and I'm checking e-mail more than I do my phone messages. Not only that, but I can read and respond to an e-mail when the time is right. While my response rate isn't quite 100%, you are much, much more likely to get a response via e-mail than by leaving me a voicemail. Also, an e-mail gives me an easy option for passing on the details to others.
4. Details About the Hiring Company: Give real details. Don't tell me the opening is with a leading SEO company. I've heard that before. Every company out there claims they are a leading company and, by definition, they all can't be, right? At the very least, tell me whether it is an in-house or agency position and the geographic location.
5. Details About the Job: At the very least, tell me whether the job is junior, senior, or management level. How many people are on the team? If in-house, what types of sites are being optimized?
6. Differentiate the Company / Job: Tell me something about the company or the position that makes it different from all of the other openings out there. Are there any industry personalities working there? Are they known for in-depth research?
7. How Did You Find Me? Don't tell me that my name came up in a meeting recently without any context; that someone referred me without telling me who; or that you found me online without specifics. If you do any of those, I'm as inclined to assume you're lying especially in the case of an unnamed referral.
8. Differentiate Your Recruiting Efforts: As with all marketing efforts, grabbing someone's attention by being unique can be quite effective. So do something that other recruiters don't do. Guess how long it took me to notice that the folks at Onward Search linked to one of my posts recently? If only they hadn't chosen to call instead of e-mail me at work a couple of weeks back

I think these items could be covered in a just a few sentences adding next to no additional time to the recruiting effort.

Every now and again you'll come across someone that says search engine rankings aren't important. What most of these people are really trying to say is that rankings make a poor measure for success. I agree that other measures such as organic traffic or conversions are more appropriate. However, I think that checking rankings regularly is still important.

Why Check Keyword Rankings?

One of the best things about rankings is that they can give you a glimpse into what is and isn't working with your SEO efforts. The trick is to check rankings deep enough so that you can see what keywords are moving up long before traffic from these keywords materializes.

Another useful thing about rankings is that they can help with determining the cause behind decreases or increases in traffic. Without additional information, assessing the health of traffic levels can be quite difficult since there may be things like seasonal factors at play. Throw in a broad increase or decrease in rankings and you've got another piece of the puzzle to help determine the root cause.

More Is Not Necessarily Better

People involved in the SEO game often over simplify rankings by showing how many keywords are up and how many are down. Comparisons may be against some baseline in the past or just the previous month. Either way, this basic analysis is flawed. Rankings should include a weighting to provide true insight into progress. A weighting can be any of the following (and probably a bunch I haven't thought of):

• By potential relative traffic i.e. using search frequency data from WordTracker or KeywordDiscovery. Yes these numbers aren't 100% accurate, but in relative terms they're good.
• By buying lifecycle phases i.e. if a keyword is transactional, it should have a greater weight than on informational one. This is difficult to measure, but maybe you could use the data from MSN Labs' Commercial Intent tool as a guide. And of course, this assumes that you want transactional traffic.
• By CPC cost i.e. the greater the CPC cost, the more "savings" there are from increased rankings of that keyword. Again, this could be a difficult measure to calculate and it does rely on a well-optized and active PPC campaign from which you can extract data for analysis.
• By number of terms i.e. a two-word phrase is likely more valuable than a five-word phrase. The fewer the terms, the greater the weight. This is similar to weighting by expected traffic since shorter phrases generally have more traffic. However, this approach may prove to be simpler.

The beauty of applying weightings is that the list of keywords can be quite long which means you can keep track of the long-tail. At the same time, the weighting keeps you from applying too much importance to low-value keywords.

Rank Checker Shortcomings

Rank checking has gone on for years and automated solutions are quite mature now. The official word from search engines is that they don't want you automatically querying their databases, but in practice if you set these rank checking programs to behave nicely you shouldn't have any problems. Sadly it seems that all of the ranking checkers are failing to keep up with the times.

I say this because they all seem to be turning a blind eye to significant developments such as Google Universal. Ideally, rank checkers would recognize any type of result and make note of the position. For example, a number 1 ranking in the "regular" results is a lot less valuable when it is preceded by 10 map links that occupy most of the page so I'd want to know there were local listings. Or wouldn't it be nice if ranking checkers could keep an eye on Google's sitelinks for you? I think so. I suspect that the first vendor to recognize these needs of the SEO industry may grab some additional market share.

And so I suspect that I'll be watching rankings for the foreseeable future with an eye to making sure they provide value. As for those that want to dump rankings, I say go ahead. I'd rather people had less information than I do

Many thanks to Shaun who seems to have been the first to report the issue and Tim Nash who included the bug as part of his look at WordPress security issues.

Every industry is filled with terms that are specific to that industry. Some industries have niches with their own terminology. Such is the case with black hat SEO. Despite having a solid SEO background, I continue to come across terms from the black hat side of things whose meanings I don't know. Every time I do, I make a mental note, but I figured putting them down on "paper" would be a good idea so here's the first batch.

Link Building with XSS

Using vulnerabilities in a web site's underlying code to inject links to a site, ideally one trusted by search engines. The more complicated the CMS, the more likely there are going to be holes in it that can be exploited. Once the links are in place, pinging or linking to the exploit pages can speed up the indexing by search engines.

To hide your association with the link in case it is discovered, put the real site a hop or two away from the link. For example, make the link look like it's an affiliate link i.e. an affiliate you don't control and then you can deny all knowledge and feign anger at such abusive techniques.

Link Dumping

If you can isolate signatures in code that identify a particular piece of software, you can then automate link submissions. For example, if you can determine the signature used by a particular forum software, you can write software that crawls the web (or a list of URLs) to find instances of that software. Once identified, you can then use a script to create user profiles each with a link back to your site.

Automated Content Generation

This term usually refers to using content sources other than your own for creating web pages in an automated fashion. These pages don't necessarily make "sense" and are generally useless to users, but they target keywords that can bring traffic from search engines. Top rankings for competitive terms are unlikely, but it is possible to obtain rankings for the long tail of search which in aggregate can be quite lucrative.

Advanced techniques include measures to make the content unique by mixing from different sources, rearranging of text blocks, and/or replacing words with synonyms.

Parasite Hosting

This technique involves creating content on a host you don't control where the host in question is so trusted that your content can easily rank for the targeted keyword. Ideally the page would serve up legitimate-looking content to search engines, but redirect regular users to a page of your choice where you can monetize the traffic.

A variation of this includes finding no longer used accounts on sites like WordPress. Sometimes people get tired of their projects and just deactivate their accounts. This leaves a trusted URL up for grabs.

Override Back-Button Clicks

When a user leaves your site, you lose the opportunity to monetize that traffic. Instead, intercept the back-button click and direct the user to a page of your choosing. If you're really sneaky you can make the destination page LOOK like the page the user expects e.g. a search results page, but of course is actually that you can monetize.

And in closing the usual disclaimer about black hat being bad for humanity, blah, blah, blah

The phrase is pretty self-explanatory, but to make sure we're all on the same page let me define it. SEO DRoID refers to the observation I've had that just about every SEO project starts to return less and less on the investment dollars put into it. This isn't because everyone isn't continuing to work as hard as ever, but more because the team has gotten stuck in a rut. For example, you'll get some benefit from adjusting a site's title tags, but adjusting them a second time isn't likely to improve things as much. Similarly, how often can you rewrite content to better target keywords before the benefits peak? I've made it a point now to look out for the following warning signs that SEO DRoID may rear its ugly head.

Lack of Flexibility in the Contract

One of the big factors that I believe leads to SEO DRoID is a contract that doesn't allow for changing course part way through the SEO effort. Sure, the client will gladly take additional deliverables free of charge, but they're much less likely to agree to swap out a line item for something else. It's in their best interest to do so, but educating the client isn't always as easy as it should be.

Lack of Creativity

People are inspired by different things and at different times. The key is to be open to the creative process and not rely on the tried and true project process that has served you well for the last 3 years. The rules of SEO keep changing and so must you. Your choices include following the trail that others are blazing and always be behind the pack or to be a trailblazer with your own ideas. The good thing is that once you've been bitten by the success of the creative bug, you'll be hooked.

Lack of Skills

Related to the subject of lack of creativity is the lack of skills. Some people shy away from trying something new because they don't know how to do it. Rather than looking on such a situation as an opportunity to grow (even though there'll be mistakes along the way), some people instead get defensive. What a shame.

Lack of Support

The search engine marketing industry is certainly full of lone rangers plugging away in their home offices. Nothing wrong with that. However, in a corporate environment it's hard to get anything done without the support of those higher on the ladder as well as the support of your peers.

Optimizing an Already Optimized Site

Perhaps the quickest situation in which SEO DRoID appears is when the project involves optimizing a site that was previously worked on by a search engine optimizer. Yes, nothing is quite done the same way that you would do it, but realistically the previous SEO has probably done most of the on-site work such that 2 months into your 12 month contract, you'll be done with the basics. In such a case, I recommend parking yourself and your team in a room for some brainstorming (see lack of creativity above).

Anyone else have to deal with SEO DRoID?

Be Excited

Happy people attract happy people and sad people attract sad people. If you're a happy person, you know that nothing brings you down like someone who spends all his time whining and complaining. Similarly, excited people can actually lift the spirits of others even if the topic at hand seems boring. Don't believe me? Go listen to a professional speaker and then tell me that you don't feel an energy boost.

The trick here is matching your excitement to the topic and the audience. Some companies aren't going to respond to over-the-top excitement. You'll lose credibility fast just like some Food TV hosts that would have us believe the leaf of iceberg lettuce they just bit into is the greatest thing they've ever eaten. You also need to adjust your excitment based on your role in the pitch. The business development guy is supposed to be happy-go-lucky about everything. The SEO's eye's should light up when the audience throws out an SEO question. The media expert should rattle off ideas about new advertising channels with little prompting.

Don't let the deck you've worked on for 48 hours straight and is now projected on a nearby screen stifle your excitement. Prospects will love you for taking their attention away from slide 58 and engainging them in a real dialogue.

And of course, stifle that yawn!

SEO Strategy, Not Tactics

A former employer was the first to really help me wrap my head around the concept of strategy vs. tactics. Those teachings were so inspiring that it prompted me to write an article about SEO strategy as my submission to last year's Marketing Pilgrim Scholarship contest. Sadly, I didn't win, but writing the article helped me expand my own understanding of the differences.

With pitches, presenting a strategy tailored to the prospect will get you a lot farther than pointing out that their site's title tags repeat. Chances are the prospect already knows such things or will be hearing about them 4 more times from the other vendors. What will set you apart is demonstrating an understanding of the challenges the prospect, or at least those in the prospect's industry, face and coming up with an original, yet effective strategy to meet certain goals. It sounds really, really easy and for some it probably is, but for the hands-on, technically minded sort, it can be a big challenge.

Don't Drop the Ball

If you've done the first two things well, the worst thing you can then do to kill your chances is drop the ball. Were their questions that you didn't get to answer during the meeting? Answer them as soon as possible in an e-mail. Did the prospect ask for a copy of the deck? Send it immediately because it's probably wanted for circulation. Does the prospect want to talk more? Continue to be excited! Scale back the team so that not everyone's time is used and just send the one or two most relevant people.

If you drop the ball, someone else will pick it up. I know. I've both seen it happen for companies I've worked for as well as been in the postition to pick it up myself.

People are sometimes hesitant to share tips, but I'd love to hear yours. Don't worry — 99.9% of the people that read this article and your tips won't act on it. Humans are funny that way…

One of the common themes you'll hear when talking to reputable SEO agencies or consultants is that no one can promise #1 rankings. Such statements about no guarantees are false though. You see, I can guarantee you a number 1 ranking in Google for almost ANY search term you want. And I can do it without resorting to black hat techniques. The problem is, the ROI for achieving that #1 ranking would probably bankrupt you. Kind of puts a damper on things, doesn't it?

Buy the Whole Kit and Kaboodle

What am I getting at? Well, to guarantee a number one ranking for your chosen keyword, I would simply look at who currently owns the spot and then I'd buy that site. As you can imagine, such a purchase could easily run into the millions of dollars. Hence my comment that the ROI wouldn't justify the purchase. You'd also need to keep a few dollars in reserve to handle the occasional sifts in the top spots i.e. to buy additional sites.

Buy an Authority Site

Much has been said and written recently about authority links and the impact they have on rankings. So if you want a number one ranking, find some authorities in your area of interest and scoop them up. A few authorities may actually cost less than trying to buy whole companies that already rank number 1. Get yourself a solid SEO to help you figure out a way to spread the link love using your new online properties.

One advantage to this approach is you can target many, many keywords. Hmmm… I wonder if the NY Times is up for sale.

Anyone Can Be Bought

A slightly less expensive approach, but possibly more effective is to simply find the right people at Google to bribe. Yeah, a bunch of folks at the 'plex are rich and don't need more money while still others are above being bribed, but I'm pretty sure someone wouldn't turn down a blank check in exchange for a few algorithm tweaks / hand edits. If you're clever, you'll use the #1 ranking to solidify your position through links and such. Once that's done, you could have the tweak undone to hide your tracks.

Think Long-Term

The law enforcement agency is good at thinking long-term when it comes to infiltrating criminal organizations. You can take this approach too. Hire a bunch of recent graduates to take entry-level engineering jobs at Google; let them eat all of the gourmet food on Google's dime; and wait for them to move up the ranks naturally to a position that puts them in front of the algorithm. Insiders — like those using their knowledge to cleanup with AdSense — can get away with a lot.

Oh and if you want to be particularly devious, have one of your insiders rat out one of your other insiders to give the first insider a boost in credibility. There's a good chance that one insider will want to leave to pursue other interests at some point, so no harm done, right?

Boring, But You Won't Go to Jail

Are the above suggestions too risky? No worries. Pull that invite-only, black American Express card and pay a visit to your favorite SEO's. Buy a majority stake (watcuh out for the VC's who can spot a killing a mile away) in companies that specialize in content creation, web site building, link baiting, etc. Don't shake up management and don't bring in consultants to improve processes, just let the companies function the way they have been. They got to the top by doing what they do and don't need you to mess things up.

Still Looking for How to Ranking Number 1?

I'm impressed. You're still reading. It must be a slow day for you. Sadly, there are no real secrets here to help you rank #1. I wrote this post partyl for fun and partly for a reason I'll let you guess.

Every Departure Creates an Opening

Whenever a search engine marketer from company A leaves for Company B, one job opening closes and another one opens. The number of openings therefore remains constant. However, it feels like there are more openings because the new opening causes a flurry of activity amongst recruiters and job boards. Candidates sense this activity and subconsciously add the new activity with the old opening's activity to come to the conclusion that there are X times as a many jobs available as there were before.

High-Turnover and Poaching

The SEO/SEM world is much like the web development world in that there is high-turnover. Part of this comes about because companies are still failing to provide growth opportunities for those with online marketing skills (SEO, PPC, affiliate). When faced with the prospect of a dead-end job, it's not hard to imagine the motivations behind frequent job switching. In addition, some competing companies are particularly good at finding exceptionally skilled SEOs and SEMs and providing just the right incentive to motivate a job change even when the candidate wasn't actively searching. Both of these situations multiply the number of departures i.e. openings and the overall sense of a growing SEM job market.

Openings Remain Open When Expectations Don't Match

Another issue that candidates must contend with is a mismatch between their salary expectations and the expectations of the hiring companies. When candidates, as a group, want more than is being offered, a job opening remains open. When this happens, more recruiters get in on the effort and post the job to job boards. Because most recruiters don't include the hiring company's name in the job posting, it feels like there are new openings, but in reality, there are just more postings for the same opening.

Sidebar: For those new to the job search game, note that many recruiters love high-turnover. Once a candidate of theirs has made it through the probation period and the recruiter's fee has been paid, there's nothing quite as profitable as being able to place that candidate at another job while ALSO filling the opening the departure would create. It's a short-term approach, but recruiters are often job hoppers and so long-term thinking is of little value to them.

Measuring Job Market Growth

The most statistically valid method for assessing the job marketing is to wait for the various employment agencies to report their numbers. These folks draw from a large data pool so what they report is the best available snapshot of growth. One problem is that the snapshot may be out of date the day it's published. Certain industries seem to go from boom to bust in very short order and if you're relying on 8 month old data, you could be in trouble. Also, aggregate data can hide nuances between markets — a job downturn in Dallas isn't necessarily going to impact people in Manhattan.

I prefer to take a more hands-on approach that has served me well over the years despite the obvious failings when it comes to a statistically relevant sample size. All I do is watch my company's activities. Is my company hiring? Great! Is my company hiring for my team? Even better! I also try to keep in touch with previous co-workers in my industry. A lunch here or a drink there is all that's required to ask a couple of simple questions. I don't ask for specifics, because that would be wrong for my friends to divulge. Instead, all I need are overall trends that will re-enforce or contradict what I'm experiencing first hand. Confirmation provides guidance for determining my next step while contradiction tells me that I need to gather more information.

One thing to be wary of with my approach is to base your decisions on objective measures. It's really easy to convince yourself that the job market is strong when your current job isn't fulfilling as you look for rational reasons to support your decision to move on. So keep a log of job opening changes and only record new jobs when you can confirm they are truly new and not just reposting of previously counted openings.

So what's your take? Is the SEO/SEM job market growing, shrinking, or is it flat?

Now I don't want to get into pointing fingers, because that would be unprofessional. Errr… that's a lie. I really do want to name names because deep down inside there's still a little grade schooler in me too. But I'll resist and instead let you know that there's a hint somewhere on this page of who inspired this post. OK, poking fun of people aside, I'd like to examine whether a formal education in informational retrieval (IR) really does make you a better search engine optimizer. Why information retrieval? Because that's the topic name that these "I'm smarter than you people" most often use.

So what is information retrieval? Unlike search engine optimization which is as uninformative as phrases get, you can accurately infer the meaning of information retrieval.

"Information retrieval (IR) is the science of searching for information in documents, searching for documents themselves, searching for metadata which describe documents, or searching within databases, whether relational stand-alone databases or hypertextually-networked databases such as the World Wide Web."
– Wikipedia

Don't be fooled by that overly simplistic definition. The human brain makes us incredibly effective at information gathering and delivery, but trying to automate what our brains do is incredibly complex. This is why Google hires so many PhD's.

So effective information retrieval is difficult; the theory behind it is complex; and the amount of research is large. Does any of that mean that you can't be a good SEO unless you've cracked open a textbook? Does a formal education in information retrieval even help you become a better SEO?

Before I answer those questions, let me give you my credentials. Or rather, let me tell you that I've never studied information retrieval. My background is in computer science. I've spent most of my career writing software or managing software projects. Without an information retrieval background, some people will undoubtedly say that I shouldn't write what I don't know about. Ha ha, that's a good one. Imagine how many fewer blogs there'd be if people only wrote about the areas they're experts in. I have an opinion, this is my blog, and so I'm sharing that opinion.

Do You NEED An Information Retrieval Background?

If people have an academic interest they should pursue that interest. Having said that, I don't believe SEO requires any particular background. I happen to have a technical background, but others have started from the marketing side. Still others don't have a web-related background at all with some getting into SEO accidentally. I even heard about a guy that started down the SEO road while in the hospital and not able to work due to injury.

I've worked with two people who take IR quite seriously. Both are smart and articulate, but only one actually impressed when it came to real-world SEO. A large number of non-IR-loving SEO's I've worked with are also smart and articulate. What's more, these other SEO's have demonstrated an ability to succeed at SEO whether for client sites or their own projects. How'd they do that without the right education? They're motivated to learn what they need to learn. SEO, like many web-related activities, has a low barrier of entry where hard-working, smart people can step in a do a good job without knowing the nitty-gritty details of building a search engine. Rather than focus on what goes into making a search engine, they focus on what comes out.

Does IR Help With SEO?

An IR background may give a beginner the upper hand. That is, if you take two people trying to do SEO for the first time you're probably better off listening to the one with the degree. That lead will only last for so long. I quickly found out that my computer science degree gave me a leg up in the interview process and with learning new things quickly, but I eventually started to bump into people that could run circles around me who had completely unrelated backgrounds. That's just the nature of many things technology — the best education comes from keeping up with the latest news and trying new things.

Is There Any Benefit to Understanding IR?

The one area where I think having a solid grasp of IR would help is in understanding why a particular technique works or doesn't work. Some people really need to know why something works, while others are quite happy just to know what works. For example, I don't know how my car works (search engine), but I do know that pressing on the gas gives me the desired response (SEO). This situation is acceptable because I know I can go to a mechanic (Google engineers) when my car needs servicing. But no matter how good that mechanic is, he won't make me a better driver. It's still up to me to make sure I get to my destination successfully.

One problem with relying too much on an information retrieval education is that the search engines aren't going to avoid a technique that makes their results better just because it goes against theory. Google is known to make hand edits which are hardly algorithmic and knowing what's going to trigger a manual edit isn't going to come from a textbook.

So to all of you information retrieval experts out there, share your ideas (if you want to), but don't wave your degree in everyone else's face. It doesn't help your case and is likely to hurt it instead. Besides, my Computer Science degree is better than anything you've got. Oops… there's that grade schooler again

One of the things I don't like about Sphinn is that if a post fails to go hot within a couple of days of being submitted, it will NEVER go hot. I'm not arguing that the system isn't fair, I'm just saying I don't like it. A side-effect of this behavior is that my site has now become riddled with Sphinn buttons with depressing single digit counts. Do I need to advertise to visitors that a post failed to reach critical mass? Nope.

So, I've modified some code I previously wrote to hide the Sphinn button until the first Sphinn to now include additional logic for controlling when to hide the Sphinn button. That is, if a post is older than X days and has received fewer than Y Sphinns, the button won't show. X and Y can be set to your liking. In case that description doesn't make sense, here's a screenshot of this code in action on my home page.

As usual, use this code at your own risk. I'm using it on this site, but that doesn't guarantee it's bug-free. And I acknowledge that this code should be in a plug-in rather than requiring template changes, but I'm just not ready to put the time into that just yet. Maybe when there are more features it'll be worth the effort.

To use this Sphinn button functionality, first set up Michelle MacPhearson's Plug-In using Method C as described in her instructions. Then make the following template changes:

BEFORE
<?php show_sphinnit(); ?>

AFTER
<?php include 'sphinn-button.php'; ?>

There are two variables in the sphinn-button.php file that you can adjust to suit your needs:

days_to_show_sphinn_button: Sets the number of days for which the Sphinn button will display even if the minimum number of Sphinns hasn't been reached.

minimum_sphinns_to_show_button: If a post is older than a certain number of days, this will determine how many votes are required for the Sphinn button to display.

Download the sphinn-button code here. The file extension is txt so you'll need to rename it to php once you drop it into your current WordPress theme folder.

If this code doesn't work for you, leave me a comment with error details and I'll try to help you out.

Although different SEO consultants and agencies can take different paths as they grow and become successful, I think many probable start of with the "just get it done" mentality. At the beginning it's all about learning and showing success regardless of the amount of time it takes. And so 60 hour weeks are the norm. Eventually enough work comes along that hiring new employees is the seemingly obvious way to deal with the workload. And so the lone consultant forms a company and small companies become bigger. And that's when things get interesting.

Around this time of growth, it starts to dawn on people that they know what to do and so their attention turns to how to do it better and therefore more profitably.

Hire Junior Employees

This is a common approach and one used by all types of consulting companies. Experienced employees are able to increase the number of projects they can handle by delegating tasks to more junior employees. The key to success here is to have the expert remain closely connected to the project so that the end results are equivalent to what the expert would've achieved on his own. Eventually this approach hits a plateau though as there are only so many people that someone can manage before that person is unable to remain sufficiently connected to the project causing performance to decrease.

Outsource to Lower Cost Regions

The outsourcing trend (both offshore and onshore) is something I've experienced first hand. There was a period of time where I thought pretty much all software and web development would be outsourced. Fortunately that fear was never realized as people learned that it just doesn't make sense to outsource everything. However, I've seen and read about SEO companies outsourcing some of their work such including reporting and link building in an effort to scale.

The problem here is that the more separated the outsourcee is from the outsourcer, the more time and effort is required to get the outsourcee to do things correctly. So if company A hires SEO company B who in turn outsources to low cost company C, the chances of a disconnect between A and C are quite high. Sure, anyone can build links, but how do you properly explain what a good link is when there are a lot of subjective factors swirling around the brand? My experience has shown that outsourcing to low cost regions gets you EXACTLY what you asked for and not necessarily what you actually WANTED. This means you have to be very, very careful to cover all of the nuances that you normally take for granted when the work is being done by a co-worker two desks down from yours.

SEO Automation

I'm particularly interested in the automation side of things. SEO is full of many tedious and repetitive tasks that readily lend themselves to automation. Extracting tags from web pages, initial link target gathering, checking redirects, reporting, and implementation verification are all good candidates for automation. While it's true that it can take a significant time investment to build the necessary tools, these tools can pay for themselves quite quickly since they can easily shave hours, if not days, off of certain tasks. And that savings is multiplied by every user and every project meaning that SEOs on the team can focus on more high-value activities. However, eventually the maximum benefit is reached as some tasks truly require human analysis.

SEO Training and Community

Last on my list of ways to scale SEO services is the idea of training others. In the traditional sense this means a classroom setting where one or more teachers teaches many students. Pulling together the necessary training materials can take a long time, but once they're done they can be re-used over and over again. This potentially allows you to extract greater profit than from actually doing SEO for different sites where much of what you do is unique to each site.

An even better approach is training via an online community. A good example of this approach is what SEOmoz does. They have built a community around a blog, reports, and user-generated content that they can charge for premium training materials and tools. These items are created once and re-used for each new premium member. Every new sign-up brings with it higher and higher profit margin and requires next to no additional time from the SEOmoz team (ignoring the Q&A service they provide).