In using the term “bursts of attention”, I’m referring to bursts as defined in a paper entitled “Bursty and Hierarchical Structure in Streams” written by Jon Kleinberg of the Department of Computer Science at Cornell University. The paper examines a fundamental problem in text data mining with regards to targeting and extracting meaningful structure from document streams that arrive continuously over time. What Kleinberg is referring to in the paper are email and news articles because each of these two delivery mechanisms tends to showcase topics in a brief burst of intensity that eventually dissipate to varying degrees, depending on the permanence of the medium. Kleinberg’s work focused on developing a formal approach for modeling such bursts that could eventually lead to flexible frameworks and establish useful analytics. 

Taken a step further, it is important to note how language can morph after the advent of a burst, essentially building inertia from cultural residue. As SEO specialists can attest, setting a series of keywords is essential to your website’s longevity at the top of the search results page, but staying there will be the hardest part of the job. I believe it was Jack Nicholson who said “Getting to the top is easy – it’s staying there that requires hard work.” In the online world, language can change at an alarming rate, requiring that website owners and administrators be aware of the shifting sands that tend to reshape the landscape of meaning and emphasis. Particularly in news articles, bursts of attention can give birth to new phraseology that must be monitored to see if the changing tides of language have effected the word usage you used to sell your site to the search engines – or if new phrases can be employed to boost your web presence. 

I recently attended a corporate training session with a travelling hype artist who said that, in order reclaim your day, you must turn off the news, listen to Baroque music, and limit your email time. I was alarmed that anyone could get paid to promote the “head stuck in sand” maneuver as a corporate survival tool and I mentioned to the instructor that Baroque music was in some respects the western world’s first attempt at multimedia and was not meant to be tuned out, but rather was meant to be experienced in the full embrace of the arts, and I promptly wrote his ideas off before they escaped his constantly nattering mouth. And I would urge you to say no to this prescription for success if keeping your website current is high on your priority list.

Taking a long, cold look in the mirror, Ask.com admitted in their January post that search engines, including their own, have a fundamental flaw that prevents users from obtaining quick and efficient results. “Many times users have to repetitively rephrase the query before they finally get the answer they want. That’s because today’s search engines are still very sensitive to the way queries are constructed, returning different answers for variations of the same query.”

The new suite of semantic, web text, and answer farm tools devised by Ask.com have been packaged as Direct Answers from Databases (DADS), Direct Answers from Search (DAFS), and AnswerFarm with DADS being the most relevant to the Ask.com bread and butter – providing answers. The way DADS works is to parse the question then in real time form separate database queries from the original question that each return answers from structured data. Ideally, this should negate difference from separate but similar questions and allow Ask.com to deliver the correct answers in an efficient manner.

To increase their association with the grass roots, DADS, DAFS and AnswerFarm are being tested on NASCAR-related search items. The goal of the tests will be to gauge whether the users are getting the correct results faster than a Skol Bandit can hit a spittoon outside the Piggly Wiggly.

Not sure if the rubber will ever hit road with semantic searching, or what’s around the next corner for Ask.com – maybe they should ask themselves and see what kinds words of advice DADS can provide.

Knol is a blending of research and how-to articles that meekly brands itself as “a unit of knowledge”, but it can very easily be seen more as a power pack designed to take on Wikipedia. Even in the confines of beta, Knol has outpaced Wikipedia’s early growth milestones. Capitalizing on the explosion of social media sites, Knol is an environment where posted material can easily lead to community discussion, or be reviewed, tagged and graded by professionals and peers alike. And addressing some of Wikipedia’s shortcomings, Knol allows individual authors to collaborate with colleagues and edit the work of others in the pursuit of a more complete subject entry.

The benefits of Knol to any SEO campaign are obvious. Because Knol is a Google entity, it’s PageRank is a respectable 7, and the best part is it encourages links. If you recall your Article Marketing 101, you’ll recognise a great potential for opportunity in that Knol is a world-class collection of white papers and research findings planted by experts from all walks of experience and varying degrees of expertise, and there is no reason why you shouldn’t pick at the keyboard and offer your body of knowledge.

As the mega-status of Knol continues to grow, its massive web content and reams of pages means it will be a regular feature on Google search results. To date, Knol doesn’t have the draw to displace Wikipedia listings at the top of the search results page but it continues to make gains and getting in now will only add to your site’s movement, especially if you are just beginning to get a pulse.

Another great perk with Knol is that you can embed YouTube videos in you text. It is stunning to consider that 99% of videos returned in Google video results are YouTube based, and if you use YouTube as a tool for product demos or how-to walk-throughs, your videos can add meat to your Knol, but can also help you tap into members of your target demographic who may be looking for video on what you have to offer. If you avoid the tacky hard sell, some of these YouTube visitors may follow you to your site and may become optimally converted.

Case in point – in a week that saw advertising revenues shrink across the board in traditional media outlets like the Chicago Tribune and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, it is interesting to note an article that appeared on mediapost.com entitled, “Economy Accelerates Shift To Digital Advertising”. The article’s title implies, and rightfully so, that the shift away from traditional media advertising was already underway before the economy tanked as many marketing budgets heeded the demographic shift away from traditional media outlets to iMacs in coffee shops. But what is interesting in the acceleration toward digital advertising is the implied underlying reason – efficiency. Any form of traditional advertising is inherently inefficient because it does not, and cannot, truly know the audience. As a writer, I know the truth behind the adage “know your audience”, but until digital marketing came along, their were very few marketers who could actually say they knew their audience – sorry, test cases don’t count.

According to the mediapost.com article, here’s the cold hard numbers on marketing expenditures for the near future. I should warn you, these are just projections, but they are based on hard numbers – indicators of where money is going. According to the U.S. Local Media Annual Forecast (2008-2013) by BIA Advisory Services and division Kelsey Group, through 2013, companies will reduce their investments in local advertising in favour of more ad dollars going toward digital rather than traditional media. Further, the article projects that U.S. local advertising revenue will decline from $155.3 billion in 2008 to $144.4 billion in 2013, representing a negative 1.4% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). “Companies will continue to increase the amount spent on interactive ads, from online to mobile to digital out-of-home that relies on IP platforms to transmit targeted messages. The Kelsey Group estimates the amount spent on interactive ads will more than double from 9% in 2008 to 22.2% in 2013.”

More than double – when was the last time you heard those words applied to growth? I think we’re on to something here.

Social bookmarking is basically the practice of bookmarking a Web page in your browser, as you would normally do, but with a twist. Using an application that understands metadata, you can store, organize, search, and manage your bookmarks for public consumption. The degree of sharing can be tailored to suit individual comfort levels. Bookmarks can be shared with a defined group, or on a larger scale, they can be shared with selective networks, accommodating any arrangement of public and private domains. Viewing of the bookmarks can also be tailored by grouping them by date, or predefined category, or even by search engine. 

By sharing your bookmarks, which I hope would contain several bookmarks to material found on your site, you are bringing attention to your website, and if your bookmarked material is located deep in your site, you may be able to generate additional traffic flow to other parts of your site. In some respects, you can tell a lot about social bookmarking groups based on the set of parameters that distinguishes the group, and if you are able to share your bookmarks with the selective group, you are basically bringing a targeted location to a defined audience, and your material will be available to them even before they perform a search. As others in the group book mark your content, the popularity of the material increases along with the rankings offered by the social book marking site, all of which help to build web presence for your material. 

Of course, there is the dark side of social bookmarking – the evil lunch meat can start to creep into your space. Spammers have caught on to the popularity of social bookmarking, and to cash in, they have unleashed bookmarking campaigns that target the same Web page multiple times with a chorus of popular tags in a hodge-podge of simple-minded greed. But have no fear, contrary to popular opinion, developers are social animals too and love coming up with creative solutions for overcoming abuses. 

Here’s a great article on detecting spam in social bookmarking systems.

Like my veggies, search page results fall into two different categories: organic search results and advertisements. Organic search results only appear in the search page results if they have an association with the user’s search string. In this way, the results are unmanufactured. Manufactured results are advertisements slipped into the search page by the search engine companies to look-like the organic search results. In this way, the advertisements are manufactured. When you contact an SEO firm, the power they possess is to increase your standing in the organic search page results. 

The truth of the matter is that the search page results of the major search engines are a mix of advertising and organic search results with the advertisements often designed to mimic the appearance of search results. This mimicking trend has developed to such a point that many search engine users cannot tell the two apart, but this is nothing new. A 2005 study conducted by the PEW/Internet and American Life Project, entitled “Search Engine Users: Internet searchers are confident, satisfied and trusting – but they are also unaware and naïve” found that “–only 38% of users are aware of the distinction between paid or “sponsored” results and unpaid results. And only one in six say they can always tell which results are paid or sponsored and which are not. This finding is ironic, since nearly half of all users say they would stop using search engines if they thought engines were not being clear about how they presented paid results.” More recently, some major search engines have begun to offer slight visual differentiators or clues to distinguish between the two types of results – claiming, it’s only good business sense to do so.

Another underlying component of organic search results is that they are purported to be completely non-biased – that is to say, that the search engine company will not accept any amount of cash to influence an individual site’s ranking. With this stipulation in mind, organic search results help to keep the search engines running clean.

To be considered for inclusion in a search result, your website must be indexed by a search engine. And to be submitted, there are two paths: automatic submission, and manual submission. I’m not one for blanket statements, but it is safe to say that by-in-large search engines do not prefer automatic submissions. There are arguably a handful, or maybe even a half-dozen, big search engine players, and between them, they are bombarded with millions upon millions of automatic submissions every day. To try and dissuade the fans of automatic submissions, measures have been put into place that border on manual submission tactics, like requiring passwords and mandatory fields.

Indeed, the hatred of automatic submission software by search engines is so severe, that many search engines have banned their acceptance altogether because of the software’s inability to properly place the content into relevant categories. And if that were not enough, search engines, always weary of spam, will not tolerate any type of automated submission efforts that have even a passing resemblance to spam and the resulting action will be your material being banned from entry. Instead of using automatic submission software, you can try a submission service, but all in all, the benefits of using a paid submission services (a.k.a., an automated service) are minute simply because given that they are a business hellbent on profits, they will automate where possible. But if the submission service route is the way you want to go, you should be aware that the best submission services will provide you with enough education to allow you to operate the software and run with it on an ongoing basis.

So, that all being said, I guess that leaves you with submitting your site manually. It’s a no brainer – manual submission allows you to tailor where your material will be listed. A standard practice for automatic submissions is to list your site with unfamiliar search engines and call it listed, or even worse, automatic submissions can often associate your site with objectionable sites. Compare the hit and miss variety of automatic submission with the tailored results achieved by submitting your own site – you are in the driver’s seat when it comes to picking your site’s category, and as a result, your targeted audience won’t have to look for you under “Other”. 

The submission process is an extension of the due diligence that you and your SEO firm went through to create your optimized website. You didn’t let a robot optimize your site, so why would you leave it to 3CP0 to submit it? At the end of the day, the site should be submitted according to the intended audience who determine through their phraseology the descriptions and keywords that define your site.

For a detailed account of the ins and outs of submission, check out this article from MSNBC.

In the wake of the bleak chill of the January 5th proclamation came a foul wind of blogger furry – cold fingers in fair-trade coffee shops united in a chorus of chippie typing – and the battle lines were soon drawn across the boardroom table. Condemnations were posted Martin Luther style as bloggers railed at the established corporation for fleecing them with a scheme for raising campaign bids without consent or notification. Rumors began a steady churn and soon there where voices in the angry mob suggesting some account optimizations took liberties like shifting campaigns onto the lower-quality content network – an extreme violation of terms and conditions considering content network was apparently turned off within the master settings.

The revolutionary communication tool – the Internet – was soon ablaze with open hostilities toward the old guard. Yahoo!, the Atari of search engines, looked to be wounded beyond repair (yet again). But just when the tide of mistrust looked to be an all-consuming fire, The Team at Yahoo! Search Marketing emerged from out of the maelstrom and spoke the truth from the balcony overlooking the surly crowd gathered in the electronic town square. In a post entitled, “The Truth About Account Optimizations” Yahoo! personnel endeavored to set the record straight on their gift of account optimization. The tone of the post was almost holy, in that Yahoo! claimed their account optimization changes were brought to fruition because they had the interests of the little guy at heart. YSM was doing little more than giving freely of their body of knowledge and their wealth of experience. The pitch-fork waving crowd hushed and listened intently – some among them actually wanted to believe – but what they heard next was a slight. The Team at YSM labeled bloggers as misinformed, “Unfortunately, we learned that not everyone in the blogosphere understands this new program, which we believe is the result of misinformation more than anything else.”

Since the January 27th post on the Truth about Account Optimizations, a number of disturbing threads have emerged on blogs and in general conversations on this topic. Yes, there were people in the crowd who wanted to believe, but by slighting a self-empowered audience, Yahoo! has done little to correct its sometimes toxic reputation, and by signing the post as The Team, it makes me wonder who’s calling the shots over there. As far as the bloggers response is concerned, I get the bit about voicing your displeasure, but blogs are meant to be communication tools for exchanging ideas, not an avenue for slap-happy tirades. At least the moderator of the Yahoo! blog had the foresight to post the rants so that the average person could get a taste of the blind dialogue. 

The truth of the matter is that most of us in the SEO field want healthy alternatives in the search engine marketplace… end of story.

Whether you do it yourself or press into service a colleague or an available expert, it doesn’t matter, what does matter is that you produce relevant material that will leave the reader with a sense of gratitude and associate your name and brand with valuable information. Let’s look at it this way – your organization specializes in XYZ, and while there are a number of well-established firms offering XYZ services, you want to rise above the rest because you’ve been doing XYZ since the beginning of time and you’re tired of being lost in the pack. If you were to start pecking away at the keyboard and pour out your years of service to XYZ you might be surprised at the volume of valuable information that will flow out of your nervous fingers. 

But wait – I know what you are going to say – I have all this valuable information that I’ve spent a lifetime acquiring and you want me to post it to the Web so my competitors can take it for nothing? Yes – and here’s why. Your competitors may take some information, let them have it, but to the vast majority of online users, you will be associating your name, your company’s name, and your brand with the definitive body of knowledge on XYZ. Remember, a body of knowledge that has relevance to the wider community is one very powerful method of building trust with customers, and writing articles is one method that anyone can do to help build this body of knowledge. Even if you only post the material to your own website, if the material is sound, others will link to it and thereby drive targeted traffic to your site. 

There are several benefits to article marketing. Firstly, you build business credibility by growing your reputation as an expert in your field. Your voice, and therefore your brand, become associated with reliable material that users find usable, and like I mentioned earlier, you get inbound links that increase your reliance to search engines which ultimately nets you get better search engine positions.

If you wish to have your site optimized, the SEO firm should be able to provide you with a report of your article activity. You will be amazed at how far one collection of words can travel. For a good overview of article marketing, visit the good folks at Wikipedia.

The Controlled Environment school of thought relies heavily on test results garnered from controlled environments that then determine the best tactics for increasing conversion rates. The second school of thought, the Pretesting school, involves more effort being placed on understanding the audience through research and interviews and then creating a targeted message that appeals to that particular audience. In the Controlled Environment school, it is not uncommon to deploy marketing mechanisms before fully understanding the audience. With the second school of thought, campaigns can be released on the public without a full testing regime ever being put into practice. 

In a recent article entitled “A case against multi-variant testing”, the author makes a very good case for resisting the urge to put all of the effort into testing. The article clearly states that testing can produce consistent increases of 30%, but where testing fails the marketer is when it is the sole method of preparation for conversion optimization. The article’s author makes an important distinction in saying that optimization that is heavily reliant on testing assumes that websites exist in a bubble and have unlimited resources available to help crunch through the sea of possible test combinations. We know this is simply not the case – websites are as human as we are – they have limits and liabilities just like we do because we built them and maintain them with our resources.

While conversion optimization practices are proven winners when it comes to increasing conversion rates, it must be understood that punching numbers into a software package is not going to give you long lasting results. When you are looking to have your conversion rates optimized, make sure that you don’t spot a pattern of quick spikes in increased traffic and conversion. The name of the game is to continually convert not to sucker a few unfortunates. At the end of the day, marketing is a social endeavor that relies on the vision of science – marketing was born from psychology and the study of human behavior. Marketing is about influencing human behavior. According to the author of “A case against multi-variant testing”, marketing loses its spirit or intention when the writers rely too heavily on multi-variant testing software, in effect removing the human part of human behavior. It is important to have an array of software tools for conversion optimization, but the aforementioned author prescribes that human power and intellect should be what guides that software.