Blind Five Year Old

Last week David Risley wrote a blog post for Search Engine Journal that recommended that you forget all about SEO and write for readers, not search engines. His advice borders on dangerous, in part because some of it is accurate.

My recommendation is to write posts designed to help, provoke or inspire your reader.

That’s great advice. However, his definition of a reader is far too narrow.

Search Engines are Readers Too

Future readers are searching for your content. They’re typing queries into Google right now. The search engine has read your blog and come to some conclusions about when and where to show your content.

SEO is about making it easy for the search engine to come to the right conclusions. It’s about ensuring that the content you write is displayed for the right searches.

Search engines are the gate keepers to the more than 15 billion searches performed in the US every month. They are powerful but they are not smart.

Welcome to Kindergarten

A search engine is like a blind five year old. They don’t care what your site looks like and they have the intelligence and attention span of an average five year old. This is why SEO is important and why you do need to write for search engines.

Search engine algorithms are tasked with trying to understand the value of an item of content. But they don’t really see the page and they don’t truly read the content either.

Search engines do not understand the text they are reading. You can’t sit them down after they read a blog post and ask them reading comprehension questions. They are not human, nor are they some super-advanced form of artificial intelligence.

This is why quality writing will not be enough.

Sit a five year old down in front of a Don DeLillo novel and they’ll quickly become bored and confused. The plain fact is that there are thousands of well written blogs that languish in the dark cobwebbed corners of the Internet.

Dumb and Dumber?

I know what you’re thinking. “Am I supposed to dumb down my writing for the lowest common denominator?” Yes and no.

Let’s cover no first. No, you should still write helpful, provoking and insightful content. It should be intelligent and have a point of view. The search engine does not require that you lose your personality.

However, that writing should be concise, well-structured and devoid of generalizations and logical assumptions. This will help all of your readers, search engines and humans alike.

So yes, you should write in such a way that, at a glance, a reader can understand and engage with your content. And to be fair, David Risley does actually provide some good direction on the structure of content and in covering the SEO Holy Trinity: Title, Meta Description and URL.

Good Writing + Social <> Links

Risley also understands that links are perhaps the most important part of SEO.

If you provide enough value, you’ll get people spreading your link across other blogs. You’ll go viral on Twitter. You’ll get people Digging your posts.

This works … for a small percentage of blogs in certain niches where the author has enormous amounts of free time. Does that sound like you? Probably not.

When was the last time you saw a serious blog post dealing with Alzheimer’s Disease reach Digg’s front page? Do you think a book review of David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green is going to get massive viral adoption on Twitter?

Rely on this technique as a way to optimize search engine traffic and you’ll be sorely disappointed. Social marketing is a piece of the puzzle but it is not a plug-and-play panacea for link building. If links were this easy to get, they wouldn’t be that important.

Search Traffic Creates Links

Get people to your blog through search engine traffic and let the same type of viral link building take place. The idea is to get your content matched to the right queries first, and not wait for social marketing to inform the search engine of your content value or for which queries it should be displayed.

Get the people who are naturally seeking out your content to do the link building. This way you are not constrained by the size of your social network, nor are you held hostage by the ephemeral ADD nature of social media.

Write for Search Engines

Write for search engines because it will benefit all of your readers. Subscribers will find more focused, accessible and valuable content that respects their time and new readers will locate your content with greater efficiency through their natural search patterns.

Writing styles adapt to their environment. Novels versus business writing. Haiku versus grant writing. So, come to to terms with the fact that good blog writing requires a different writing style. Embrace it and search engine and human readers will thank you.

Manny Ramirez is the latest athlete to be caught using performance enhancing drugs.

Who Cares!

That seems to be the overwhelming reaction. From radio host Gary Radnich to one of my favorite blogs – Reign of Error – they’re not just tired of the scandals but they fail to see that it’s a problem.

Like accused in the criminal offences the range of excuses and rationalizations seem endless. But we must realize that it is the right of the accused to find criminal defense attorneys for hire.

Some view athletics as a form of entertainment and, as such, they don’t see a problem with steroids or cheating. If they’re entertained, they don’t care.

Athletics != Entertainment

I submit that athletics is a form of competition. The competition is entertaining. It is not entertainment. The latter is used by far too many to equate entertainment to business. Athletics is not a business. Don’t get me wrong, plenty of people make a business from sports and competition. But they are not synonymous.

If athletics is entertainment then lets get rid of wins and losses and forget about those silly standings. Instead it’ll just be like 81 trips to the movies. I assume you’ll have no problem with that.

By all means, lets crown the winner in terms of who was most entertaining. Forget the World Series, lets track who made the most money and have an end of the year awards ceremony. We can fight about whether the most profitable team should have won the most entertaining team award. Which outfield wins for best supporting cast? That sounds delightful!

Still think sports is entertainment?

Why do people leave when it’s a blowout? It doesn’t mean that there won’t still be home runs or touchdowns or goals or dunks. It means the competition is over! So please stop saying you’d be pleased as punch to sit and watch some ‘roid filled lunk hit 6 home runs in a 34 to 0 laugher.

Can you blame them?

Many say it’s hypocritical to blame these cheaters. ‘Wouldn’t you take steroids if it meant making $20 million a year?!’ My answer is no. I wouldn’t.

I understand this motivation. I acknowledge that it can be a very alluring idea for some. But I would not cheat for money.

The heart of this argument comes down to greed and it exposes a very real problem with American culture.

People seem willing to accept those willing to do anything in the quest for the almighty dollar. Success is no longer about attaining our best through hard work, practice and determination. Success is about attaining a big bank account … period. That sad statement is reflected in our ambivalence toward cheaters.

Cheating is a slippery slope

If it is okay to cheat to make more money, this means Ken Lay and Bernie Madoff shouldn’t be vilified. They were simply taking every advantage they could to get ahead.

This means you shouldn’t be angry at Wall Street fat cats. And don’t even try to be upset about mortgage lenders. No whining about politicians taking money from lobbyists. Stop complaining about black hat SEO and click fraud. Get comfortable with colleagues sleeping their way to the top. You can also approach the bankruptcy lawyer for hire to take this issue to court to bring out the fraudants present in this field and punish them severely.

These people are all just trying to gain an extra advantage. They were all just doing what they had to to make a buck.

If you accept cheating in sports, you accept it everywhere. You abdicate your outrage and muddy your ethical discernment. So spare me the ‘hypocritical’ tripe and look for that label in the mirror.

Empathy not sympathy

Some sympathize with the athlete (particularly an aging athlete) who is trying to stay competitive. To them I say that it is okay to empathize with the athlete – you might understand why they did it – but in no way should we condone or accept this behavior.

I understand the weakness of these athletes. Just like I might understand the reasons behind someone perpetrating a violent crime it also includes domestic violence. Recent study reveals that domestic violence cases are decreasing. when I came to know about dropping domestic violence claims I was happy . But we must steps to eradicate it completely.

There should be no entitlement to ability nor having the same ability for perpetuity. There is no exemption for entropy.

Winning through cheating is not winning

Let’s give the marathon record to the joker who rode the bus for half the race. Hey, he was just trying to use any means necessary to win, right? What’s the big deal!

Winning is not about short cuts.

In 2003 I completed the Mount Diablo Challenge in one hour and twenty-six minutes. I was not first that day. Not by any stretch of the imagination. But I won that day.

A year of training – of hard work, sacrifice and determination allowed me to climb 11 miles and 3,200 feet that day. I still rely on that day and others on my bicycle to remind me that hard work pays off, that seemingly insurmountable goals can be overcome through hard work.

Cheating! I’d wonder if it had been me or the drugs. I’d have robbed myself of that hard won self confidence and fulfillment. No thanks.

Lip service

Oh, we try to promote the idea that it is the journey that matters and not the destination.

It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.

We tell our kids this but many now fail to honor this adage. Some, sadly, even find this statement quaint and outdated. And that’s scary because isn’t this what America really stands for?

America shouldn’t cheat freedom to win.

Everyone is doing it

Nonsense! Everyone isn’t doing it, and even if they were every mom has the perfect response.

If everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you jump too?

Only a few get caught

Others focus on the fact that only a few cheaters get a lot of media coverage and that many cheaters never get caught. I find speeding is a useful analogy to show the specious nature of this argument.

A lot of people speed. Only a few get caught. Those driving candy apple red sports cars at excessive speeds may get caught more often because they naturally attract more attention.

The fact that only a few get caught, or that those driving really fast in extravagant cars are often singled out does not change the fact that speeding is against the law.

Bonds, Clemens, A-Rod and Manny get an unfair amount of attention for their misdeeds because they’re the candy apple red sports cars of the bunch.

Life is unfair. Get over it.

Life Is Unfair

Oddly, some use the ‘life is unfair’ argument in support of cheaters. They throw their hands up in the air and shout that it’s never a truly level playing field.

So I’ll revise the argument. Life is unfair enough without our artificial contribution. Or to rely on yet another saccharine saying – ‘Two wrongs don’t make a right.’

Don’t Cheat Yourself

Don’t give cheaters a free pass. Don’t say it’s okay because it’s just sports. Don’t say it’s okay because it’s entertaining. Don’t say it’s okay because it’s about money. Don’t say it’s okay because you understand why they did it. Don’t say it’s okay because winning is what really matters. Don’t say it’s okay because you can’t catch everyone.

Don’t cheat yourself with these flimsy arguments. Even if you don’t aspire to some lofty ethical paradigm, think of it as preserving your own self interest. Don’t invite cheaters into your own life.

Two weeks ago I was on vacation in San Diego. Of course I took my MacBook Pro, particularly since the rental had great wifi. So I was able to check in at work, maintain my FriendFeed addiction, locate the nearest Peet’s and do research on attractions and restaurants.

Upon returning from vacation I caught up on RSS via Google Reader. In fact, I was searching for new feeds and clicked on the ‘browse for stuff’ option. Now, I can’t say Google recommendations have been that great, but it’s easy, it refreshes quickly and it has provided some decent matches.

Geolocated Google Reader Recommendations?

Much to my surprise I saw a number of recommendations with a San Diego theme. Simple GeoIP was my first thought. But that didn’t explain the fact that many of the recommendations were related to San Diego and food. (Sadly, I declined these before I put two and two together and took a screen capture.) The only other food related blog I maintain is the fantastic TasteSpotting. But that’s where it starts and ends.

Then it dawned on me. I’d been searching and surfing San Diego restaurants! Sure, I used Yelp and OpenTable, but I searched Google (and Google Images) for restaurants with the best views. In addition, I would click through to the restaurant’s website to see the menu.

With a little research I confirmed that recommendations are based on Web History (emphasis is mine.)

Your recommendations list is automatically generated. It takes into account the feeds you’re already subscribed to, as well as information from your Web History, including your location. Aggregated across many users, this information can indicate which feeds are popular among people with similar interests. For instance, if a lot of people subscribe to feeds about both peanut butter and jelly, and you only subscribe to feeds about peanut butter, Reader will recommend that you try some jelly. This process is completely automated and anonymous; your personal information will be protected in accordance with our privacy policy.

Confused Google Reader Recommendations

The Google Reader recommendations algorithm is easily misled by a vacation or a spate of searches on a specific topic. Together, as in my case, and it’s even worse.

This isn’t a new problem.

Marketers have long had issues with this type of behavior. Buy a baby shower gift and you might suddenly be presented with a host of baby products. Get a Gilmore Girls DVD set for your mom and you wind up getting a promotion for The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2!

The complexity of trying to identify and exclude these ‘non-standard’ signals often make recommendation engines ineffective or just plain wrong.

Simple Google Reader Recommendations

As tempting as it is to use web history and location to generate recommendations it might be better to simply rely on feed history and collaborative filtering of aggregated subscriptions. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

At a minimum, it’s time for Google Reader to turn the dial down on web history and location so recommendations don’t suffer from topical whiplash.

Is there any argument that the capital of the Internet is San Francisco?

Sure, there are other areas of activity. New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, Boston, Austin and a smattering of international destinations all have enclaves of Internet related activity. But the heart of the Internet remains in San Francisco. Or the Bay Area to be more precise.

Just think of the companies based in the Bay Area. Google. Yahoo. Facebook. Twitter. Yelp. Craigslist. eBay. YouTube. FriendFeed. Wikipedia (relocated from Florida). WordPress. Mozilla. Photobucket. Apple. Netflix. CNET. Adobe. Ask. LinkedIn. Snapfish. Digg. ZEDO. Pandora. CafePress. Salesforce.

I’m not even scratching the surface of all the start-ups and other sites, nor am I straying into traditional technology which would be another long list.

The Language of the Internet

Nowhere else is the language of the Internet spoken so fluently. Talk of browsers, social media, search engines, eCommerce, digital media, programming and more are par for the course. You’re bound to hear it if you sit down in a Starbucks and eavesdrop on conversations.

In New York it’s Wall Street. In Los Angeles it’s Hollywood. In Chicago it’s advertising. In Austin it’s music. In Seattle it’s … coffee and the weather. In Boston it’s … the Red Sox. In San Francisco, it’s the Internet.

Under this assumption, the White House is Google. I admit that I haven’t figured out who or where the Capitol is located. (Nominations anyone?)

The other cities mentioned above serve as Internet embassies. These embassies are important, but make no mistake, you’re in a foreign land. The locals don’t speak the language.

Finding the Internet Capital

I know a little more about this topic since I lived in Washington, D.C. for a little over 6 years. Washington D.C. is, without question, the capital of politics. Again, that’s not to say you can’t be a political animal in your own state or city, but D.C. is where it all comes together.

Even in college I couldn’t help but talk about politics and legislation as I drank yards of beer with friends. I knew it was time to leave when the bathroom graffiti was about NAFTA.

I moved from San Diego (yeah, I’ve hop scotched here and there) to San Francisco because I wanted to get into Internet marketing.

Why not do it in San Diego? Well, back in 1999 there was really only one San Diego based option – MP3.com. And the number of applications to openings was staggering. (So was their eventual implosion.)

On a lark (and to my wife’s shock) I sent three resumes to San Francisco based companies. I got three interviews and eventually landed one of those jobs.

San Francisco Detractors

Some simply don’t get it. They view the Bay Area, or Silicon Valley (the latter term seemingly used as a pejorative), as too focused and too caught up with itself. It’s expensive they moan. You live in a bubble and don’t see what’s really going on they shout.

Mind you, the same type of arguments can be applied to Washington, D.C, government and politics. But there are checks and balances.

Internal factions remind us of the outside world. We have our fair share of contrarians. Bubbles pop. And yes, from time to time ambassadors from Internet embassies remind us that there’s life beyond our corner of the world. And there is great work happening beyond the Bay Area.

But at the end of the day …

The capital of the Internet is San Francisco.

When is an error not really an error?

The other day Google Webmaster Tools informed one of my clients that it had found over 1,000 404 errors. Numerous Google folks (including Maile Ohye) have told me that an excess of 404s will adversely impact SEO.

Supporting this thesis and to help in tracking down these renegade links, Google has relatively new functionality that tells you what pages a 404 was linked from. Thank you Google.

Very quickly I realized that all of the ‘linked from’ pages were cached pages. Pages with a discovery date of between four to six months ago. Internal pages. Pages that have since changed. In fact, pages that no longer have a link to the dead page.

No thank you Google.

Clearly it would have been nice if this client had 301 redirected all of these URLs. But when doing a major architecture change you’re often going to orphan a number of URLs. It happens. And if you’ve retired the links internally, and no external links existed, the pages essentially disappear.

Unless you’re crawling an out-of-date copy of the page.

Of course you can request a URL removal via Google Webmaster Tools. But am I really going to do this for 1,000 pages? It’s painful even if I can narrow it down using a directory or subdirectory.

Instead I can implement 301 redirects for the offending URLs. All for the sole purpose of ensuring that a cached crawl of internal pages doesn’t trip a 404.

Both of these options seem unnecessary.

If Google finds a 404 in a cached page why wouldn’t they seek out the original to verify that the problem currently exists? It seems like an easy business rule to implement and would likely reduce the volume of URL removal requests.

Is it that easy or am I missing something?

Today I read Edelman Digital’s Five Digital Trends to Watch for 2009, curated by Steve Rubel. One of these five trends was ‘Digital Discovery’ or ‘The Power of Pull’.

For more than 100 years, marketers have largely focused on reaching stakeholders through push, e.g. paid and earned media. Now, however, in an age when Google dominates, it’s equally important that we turn our attention toward digital discoverability. This requires that brands create relevant content that people will “pull” through search engines and social networks.

Call it whatever you want, but Digital Discovery is just a fancy name for SEO.

I like Steve Rubel and find his blog posts informative and often thought-provoking. So why exactly is he carefully sidestepping the true craft of Search Engine Optimization? Why not call linkbait … linkbait? And is this actually a trend for 2009?  The ‘SEO for Press Releases’ session is a golden oldie on the search conference circuit.

So perhaps it’s the audience of public relations professionals who are late in adopting SEO that shaped the report? Do they view SEO as snake oil? That we’re all a bunch of hucksters? There are bad SEOs and good SEOs, just like you’ll find good PR flaks and bad PR flaks. It doesn’t mean that I begin to call public relations something like ‘brand maximization’.

It irks me. Steve is a respected voice in his industry and beyond. This was a missed opportunity to help change the perception of SEO.

I’m still trying to find how to get the most out of Twitter. (I get far more from FriendFeed.) But here’s an easy example of how not to use Twitter.

The level of noise on Twitter seems high. Ditto the number who feel it’s an obligation to follow back. Or perhaps this is just what increased usage gets you?

Why has Heroes become less and less interesting and nearly comprehensible with each successive season? The cancellation of The 4400.

The 4400 was a USA Network show that ran from 2004 to 2007. The general theme of The 4400 was the effect on society of having a small band of people with special, super powers. Sound familiar so far? Just wait!

An agency (NTAC) was formed to track down and deal with The 4400. Huh. Sort of like the Agency on Heroes.

The agents, Tom Baldwin in particular, at NTAC have close ties, even family members, who are part of The 4400. Huh. That’s sort of like Noah Bennett’s situation on Heroes isn’t it?

A schism develops within The 4400. That’s odd, isn’t that what happens on Heroes?

The 4400 create a formula that gives regular people a 50/50 chance of developing special powers. Sort of like what Mohinder is trying to do on Heroes, right?

It turns out that The 4400 have been given these powers by people in the future in hopes of avoiding a catastrophe. Heroes doesn’t have an overall theme based on changing the outcome of the future, does it? Oh yeah, it does!

One of the central characters in The 4400 is Isabelle, the offspring of two 4400s. She has incredible power, more than most other 4400s. Who does that remind you of? Wait, it’ll come to me … Peter Petrelli or maybe Sylar.

Isabelle, this seemingly unstoppable individual is stripped of all her powers. Uh, yeah, that sounds familiar. Didn’t that happen to both Peter and Sylar?

Jordan Collier, the mastermind behind The 4400 has the power to remove abilities from other 4400s. Gee, that sounds a lot like Mr. Petrelli!

I could go on, but I won’t because I think you get the picture.

Why does Heroes suck? The problem is Heroes has run out of 4400 material from which to crib and they have little idea of what to do next.

Did you notice the back cover of the October 2008 Money magazine?

Yes, it’s an AIG ad. Here’s a close up of some of the text.

We’ve been in tougher jams than this? Apparently not.