A lot of poor information often gets circulated around the internet about everything really, but the real bone of contention that we have here at Fresh is with the people and businesses that spread bad advice or information about the web. The internet doesn’t seem like a terribly difficult tool to use, but it is one of those tools that if you don’t use it correctly, it can come back to bite you.

A big buzz word for the last few years was search engine optimization, and while it is still as powerful a tool as ever, it seems that some of the uninitiated “experts” have been culled from selling their services online with the Panda and Penguin updates. The very recent buzz phrase this time around is surrounding social media. Facebook, Twitter, blogging, so on and so forth, if you don’t have a social page you’re going to disappear on search etcetera. Facebook is the largest social media player on the web, no one can contest that fact, and within the last couple of weeks they came right out and said they have no intentions of offering a full search service, they are only concerned with Facebook Graph search. So very simple, and very plainly, search and social are two different things. The user base of the internet leverages both technologies to make a decision these days, so to ignore the social side of the web is a bad decision, but if for some reason you do, it won’t affect any SEO campaigns you may have implemented.

Three or so years ago when it became the big thing to sell search engine optimization services, a lot of the same old mantra began to be repeated that you could find on old blogs and forums. Methods like article submissions, link exchanges and ranking reports and their definitions were used to sell a number of businesses poor to terrible SEO campaigns. The bigger issue surrounding these terms isn’t really that they’re old tactics, it is if they are used incorrectly they can get you and your website into trouble with the search engine powers that be. Using article submission as a tactic now a days is a good way to get scooped up by Panda, especially if a post or a blog gets scraped and passed around the web on thousands of sites. Links exchange ala the early 2000′s where you pull the “I’ll give you one for one” is a sketchy tactic at best, and at its worst, there’s no way to follow if that link gets pointed all over the web at any given time. And as for ranking reports, that’s just a phrase that old marketing companies use to try and wrangle your business in as they can show you a report where they help you rank for a long tail (9+ terms) search that no one really performs.

Some of the business owners here in Winnipeg really need to give their websites a good long look, and step forward into the 21st century. Using only newspapers, radio and television is high cost, low ROI, and virtually untrackable where visitors are concerned. A real search engine optimization campaign can correct all of those issues, and we can even right side up a sinking website, all it takes is a little time, and a whole lot of experience.

In the last few months Facebook has come out in the open about their own search offering, and if you are interested in trying it you can sign up for it. It’s an intriguing idea Graph search, but as numerous blogs and articles on the web quickly discovered, the results which are returned can be a little on the flaky side at times. You can even go so far as to somewhat toy with the search interface, and come up with some very unusual search settings as an example.

The service is still in its infancy, it has a lot of learning and lot of growing to do. One of the main complaints that has come up however, that has been consistent across all articles is the web search feature provided by Graph search is lacking. In fact, it’s lacking enough that it may as well be non-existent, so there were writers out there who had hoped that the service would improve over time. It seems that their prayers will go unanswered, for the time being at least, as Grady Burnett, VP of Global Marketing for Facebook said, in no uncertain terms there will be no external search engine. The actual quote from SMX West:

GB: I don’t see that happening. We called it “Graph Search” because we’re focused on letting people search the Facebook graph. So my answer would be no.

There is going to be a handful of different responses to this message from the company, some will be cheering, others will be jeering of course, but those in the search industry who truly understand, won’t be surprised at all. When you consider all aspects of the internet, not just search and social, a picture will begin to form. This map obviously isn’t an exact replication of what the internet looks like, or how it’s divided, but it makes it easier to understand, and see why Zuckerberg, who built the largest social network in existence, isn’t worried about external search at the moment. There is so much more out there that isn’t Google or Bing or Yahoo to worry about, they’re only a fraction of what makes the web so massive.

Search engines catch a lot of flack for various things, some of the items which top the list are privacy concerns, spam issues, and irrelevant search results. The laundry list of complaints and concerns that users come up with about the engines is as varied as the user, and can sometimes border on the silly; like the recent court case Google won.

All things being even though, the complaints do have some merit as there are lingering issues with search and the results pages. There are some unscrupulous users out there that try and ruin it for the rest of us by gaming the search engines. Cloaking pages, hidden links, scraping genuinely great content and sometimes even just running a content generator that spits out nonsense. At a recent event, Matt Cutts came out and discussed some of the top issues that Google actively works on keeping from their search results. Some of the ones that you would expect are in the list, spam content that was auto generated, this usually reads like nonsense and is stuff to the brim with keywords. Not surprisingly, keyword stuffing also made that short list of immediate no-no’s, where SEO is concerned this is even a basic of the basics, you just don’t do it. As it should be expected, pages that are full of nonsense text for no reason at all, it isn’t too difficult to find unfortunately, as you can just run a search for “Lorem ipsum” and you’ll be able to find too many poor businesses out there who have no idea they’re being swindled.

One of the methods that was discussed which is still an issue online, is full on hacking of websites. It started when the web was born, and will likely always exist in some form or another. There are many different levels of hacking, and not all of them are malicious, web developers have been having to deal with Internet Explorer for years with some of these methods. But there are still malicious hackers out there, who will attempt to seize your website and use it to their advantage. You can deter most attempts however just by following safe web practices and ensuring your website software is up to date, and by taking the time to actually look at your own website from time to time. If something looks wrong, investigate and fix it before it becomes an issue.

Search engines and the internet are still very young technologies if you really break down the numbers, they have a lot of evolving to go through in their lifetime. There is clearly some massive potential for growth in all sectors, search, websites, and information sharing, etc, and for as many innovations we make there will be users who try to take advantage. Be aware of your website and it’s content, and try to keep in touch with your website admin and your SEO provider, you’ll be thankful you did.

With the way that search is always changing and evolving, you would have to think that someone, somewhere is going to hit on that perfect search machine. One that combines social signals, with personal preferences, some local results thrown in and to top it all off, be completely unbiased. While the likely hood of that happening in the near future isn’t bound to happen, it’s not impossible.

The first thing that needs to happen for that to become a reality however, is the entire web needs to be free to be indexed. That means forums, social sites, business pages, and any other site which holds any information or service for web use. So the first step would be everyone playing nice, and getting along, instead of locking away portions of websites from the information gathering devices, whether they be spiders or some new type of bot. After it has finally been able to find it’s way around the web and build up new version of a searchable index, then context can be used to create a search process. The real problem with this step is the creation of a new type of page index. There are a half dozen different types of search services out there, and everyone seems to have their own way of doing things. Currently it isn’t any real secret that Google is the king of the castle, but despite their prominence, the potential of them losing their spot still exists.

Using the premise that a new type of index does exist, and a new search technology exists to take advantage of it, this is the point where personal preferences take over. It is this point in search where everyone is unique, and for as different as we all are we still expect a familiar experience. But as an example, with the way that the web currently works, if you perform the same search at home and then on a computer that isn’t yours, you will get similar, although different results. This disparity is what will likely be the game changer for search, if you can receive consistent results, regardless of device, is when the next search king will be crowned. The solution is likely a cloud base type, where your preferences are stored virtually as opposed to locally, as well as the browser not being a program you install on your computer, rather one you just, access. The closest a company has gotten so far to deliver a product in this way, is Google at present with their Chromebook product. And while not terribly surprising that they’re the first to venture into a wholly cloud based product, it would be exciting to see others making the same steps.

So a little while back there was a major site, Interflora which effectively been kicked from the search engines for breaking the search engine rules and passing Page Rank via paid advertorials. That was a couple of weeks back, and they were completely removed from the results pages, now it seems that they’re back in position however. When so many are claiming foul and being wronged by the search engines, is it really just that easy to bounce back?

Google confronted the company on links that were the paid advertisements, as well as linking setups that they had labeled as toxic or suspicious. The number was so high and so evident, some sources saying it was as high as 70% of the links were toxic, that it the manual penalization team couldn’t miss it. Since the company had fallen out of grace with Google, they had a long row to hoe and a relatively short time to do it, as one of the biggest flower giving days the world over is coming up, Mothers day. Due to the circumstances of how they were handled within Google, how they went about dealing with their mistakes, and leveraging the tools available to them within Webmaster tools, their rebound begins to make more and more sense.

Ironically, one of the reasons that they were able to get back into position quickly was due to Google pouring all over their site and their links as they were clearly being naughty previously. They began that painstaking process of of cleaning out their poor backlinks and disavowing using the disavow tools in their Webmaster tools account. It’s a long, and arduous process, but by getting lots of people on the job they cleaned out their entire linking profile and stopped handing out Page Rank to various places on the web. There has been some speculation that properly recrawling every single page and link that was previously tied to the company should have taken months, and with the disavow tool still relatively new and uncertain of it’s inner workings, a couple of theories have cropped up regarding their speedy return. One is that Google manually took care of the process, which is possible seeing as they were well aware of what the company was doing. And the other contender as a possibility is that when the penalty that was leveraged against the site, was lifted even after only a small number of the links were crawled, kind of like a forgiveness nod for cleaning up a mess you created.

Where we are in the end is the company is back in the search pages, it’s linking profile, while not completely fixed, is noticeably better, and there are more questions unanswered rather than answered. It’s likely that due to their size as a business, that Google kept a very close eye on them and are being quite lenient with any remaining links that they may have. The sullen side of the web though is crying foul and chanting that the larger sites on the web get special considerations while the little guy wallows in the depths of the web. Only Google really knows what happened in the end, but regardless of why their return was so quick, it was a great litmus test of the disavow tool, manual reconsideration and search reinclusion requests.

When you’re doing any kind of advertising and marketing, you need to eventually work out the numbers and decide whether or not it has been a worthwhile investment. Thankfully, that time frame for Microsoft has been a scant 4 months, during which they spent who knows how much money on their largely failed “Scroogled” advertising campaign.

It wasn’t pushed terribly hard over all advertising channels, but occasionally you would catch one of their ads, whether it was print, television or online. And the general premise was “Google isn’t playing by the rules, so come and use Bing!”. In a completely unsurprising event, the internet didn’t really notice that MS was stomping their feet and throwing a tantrum, except to maybe pat them on the head occasionally and have a chuckle at some of the videos they made. A link to my absolute favorite one of the handful I saw:

I’m guessing by the way they scripted the ad, Bing would have told you that if you use a pan on too high a heat you would start a fire?? Also, it’s somewhat cringe worthy that the way Bing has decided to upload their videos was to use Youtube, a wholly owned Google web property.

With their Scroogled campaign Microsoft was aiming to make it appear as if Google was infringing on every possible piece of private information, and while Google did start serving ads in Gmail over the past year, most Gmail users have reported that the ads aren’t an issue for them. And Microsofts new webmail service that has been relaunched from Live mail to Outlook.com now, even had the same type of ad service running once you’ve signed in. At least someone in the Bing world decided to actually watch one of the ads or read some of the print they put out, because their content is silly at best, an insult to general intelligence at the worst, and cancelled the entire campaign. Who knows what’s next on the Bing advertising plate for taking a crack at Googles share of the web, they’ve tried positive advertising, and negative attack ads, maybe some day someone will actually decide to take a look at their search tech and make some upgrades there, here’s hoping!

Search engine optimization, internet marketing, online branding, being able to rank a website in the organic listings of the search engine results page has a handful of different monikers. The industry itself is as nearly as old as the web and its search engines, although the methods have drastically changed.

At the beginning of the commercial web, it was essentially no holds barred. Flash ads, pop ups, pop unders, hidden text, all of the things you’re not supposed to do to your website now, was fair game 20 years ago. If you tried any of the above methods however, you’ll not only be creating a poor user experience, but you’ll likely run onto the bad side of the search engines and likely end up with a lost position in the index. At Freshtraffic we’re very big proponents of everyone doing the job they’re supposed to be doing, horses for courses. Everyone has a skillset, whether it’s been taught, learned, or they have an inate talent for a job, we all have different ones. As for myself, I’ve been working and learning in the realm of on site optimization for the last 5 years. I’ve been poked, prodded and (although less now!) often told to stop trying to complicate the job and just do it.

Yes there is a point to the rant by the way, just bear with me a tad longer!

Groupon and sites like them were designed with the idea of bringing deals to the masses, and for the most part it works brilliantly. A business comes up with an idea, say a store has bought too many duvets so the offer a cover and a duvet at a great discount, but only for a limited time and in a limited amount. They create the deal, list it on Groupon and let the web do the rest of the work, simple, beneficial for all parties involved. I’ve never purchased anything through the service as nothing has really stood out to me, but there was this one offer that showed up that I had to take a closer look at. It was for what was titled as a web-master training package for what was listed as 90% savings over the actual cost, amazing deal! Working online for the last 5 years has shown me that there are clear lines that need to be drawn for designers, developers, marketers etc, just that there isn’t any confusion with a website. And basically what the program broke down into was a bunch of 30 day trial materials, and an instructional document, likely a pdf, with which you are supposed to teach yourself how to use more than a dozen different programs. The programs that you were learning to use comprised of everything from Flash, to Photoshop, to Dreamweaver and dozens of other web design and development programs. In the end, while reading the list of over 30 programs you were supposed to learn (many of them doubles of each other), the portion that genuinely made me angry was the 6 hour section dedicated to what they called internet marketing, both e-commerce and SEO.

That entire offer is in a nutshell, what is going wrong with the internet marketing world today. That individuals who finish this course, then turn around and try to bill themselves out as a search expert in a field after 6 hours of training. I’ve been at this for more than 5 years now, and I still have years of work and training to do, to think I could have learned everything for $150 and a handful of hours of reading! I fear for my profession at times, more and more when I see information spread around the web in this fashion. As an example, if you needed to completely renovate your house, would you hire a proper plumber, electrician and carpenter who has taken years of training and expertise to build their skillset? Or someone who took an online course for a few hours to do all of your work?

There are a number of ways to market your business online, the two more prevalent methods are search engine optimization, and using social media to help you garner attention and traffic. Although it’s a little a lesser known method to use to help bolster your online visibility, AdWords, or search engine marketing is a very powerful tool which when used properly can definitely attract highly qualified customers to your website.

Typically the paid results show to the side, or sometimes above the results page after performing a search. The links are often on a different color background and their formatting is different. And if all of those were not strong enough indicators that they’re different than the organic results you’ve received, in the corner of that different colored box you’ll find a small snippet of text that says ‘Sponsored Links’. Think of it as paid advertisement that is trying to capture those impulse buyers out there, the people who buy a package of gum or a magazine in the check out line at the grocery store. If your ad copy is well written, your bid is high enough and you’re trying to build a brand for yourself, AdWords is a medium you definitely need to explore.

The point of the short explanation of adwords and their use, has to do with a court case that was recently settled in the US. It was between two rival companies, and one took the other to court because of their questionable use of adwords marketing. Referring to them as Company A and Company B, it went something like this: Company A wanted to try and garner traffic from searches completed using Company B’s name, so Company A used the AdWords platform so they would also appear on the results page. The judge in the case cleared Company A of any wrong doing, even though Company B argued that it was a breach of privacy, when in fact it was clever, albeit shady, marketing. If Company B had done their job marketing themselves correctly, and had used AdWords as well to ensure they capitalized on searches using their name, then there wouldn’t have been a case to begin with. From now on I’m sure they’ll be more likely to consult with those who know what they’re doing, in order to protect their online brand.

So you’ve started your business, you’ve built your website, and you think your designer followed all of the basics where the web is concerned. You have a little left in the marketing budget and you’ve decided to make your play on the web, the largest marketplace in existence, so where do you start. Search engine optimization is a jungle of misinformation, bad ideas, poor advice, and is full of fly by night operations across the globe. In order to protect yourself and your business, we’ll provide you with some basic information that everyone should have where web marketing is concerned.

A quick read of any SEO related material will tell you that the process relies on your content and the keywords contained within. Those keywords, or keyterms, are the first stop for the search engine spiders when they get to your site, they try to discern what your website about. Once you have identified your target audience, whether it’s specific to an industry or a customer type, you can work with your content, and your keywords serve you best when they reflect your target. If you are a manufacturer of a product for example that can be used by a wider audience, then you need to be aiming for an industry sector, if you make a unique plumbing tool then you want to target plumbers as an example, not home owners doing their own repair work. Knowing which terms to use for which audience can make or break your business, because while any traffic is good, qualified traffic is obviously preferable.

And while it may seem obvious when you say it, sometimes a website doesn’t completely leave development with all of the right settings. You should ensure when your website is live, that it can be completely crawled and indexed by the search engines. There are a number of free services out there that allow you to crawl your site as if you were a bot yourself, and if you find that you can’t access your site you need to correct the issue as soon as possible. Lost traction today, is a lost sale tomorrow, and when you’re dealing with a store front that never closes every second counts. Make sure that your developer knows the steps to keep your site available to the spiders, and has built your site in such a fashion that allows for quick spidering.

Here at Freshtraffic, when we take on a new client we have not only taken on a new goal in search, we have also taken on the challenge of their website. We do get asked from time to time just what it is that we do as a company, and while I won’t get into the specifics of it, I’ll go over just a little of what has to happen in order for us to begin the process of improving your position on the results pages.

We have 3 basic needs when it comes to taking on a new client, and based on the answers we receive when we pose the request for them, can greatly impact our effectiveness. The primary need we have is to be in contact with the person or persons who are making the decisions for the company. Not just the lackey who sold the company on the idea of using search engine optimization to boost their web position, but the person who actually makes the final yes or no call. The reason we need this contact is often times we need to make recommendations for changes to a website, and it saves everyone precious time, and resources, to be able to directly contact the right person. There are times of course, when a company is large enough it is easiest for us to deal directly with a marketing manager for example, but that again is the person who makes the call for us to completely do our work.

We sometimes run into an issue with our second request, simply because our new clients run into the problem of trying to be smarter than their customers. We ask everyone for their wish list of key terms that they would like to rank for. It is at that point that we begin to break down the website, it’s content, and it’s structure to decide if it is even a possibility to use the terms that have been chosen. It is not unusual for us to have to go back to a client and tell them that they either need to supply us with better content, updated content, or a revision in order to fit their desired terms, or to change their terms. The biggest fault with clients trying to be smarter than their customers, is you can end up alienating your target demographic. Keep it simple absolutely applies when trying to work out your key terms, keep in mind your target, and adjust accordingly.

The final major request we make of all of our clients, is really just one of access. Either access to their website, ftp access so we can make sure we can make adjustments on the fly, or management software access, as the majority of new websites coming online are often built with WordPress, Joomla, or a variation there of. The reason we ask for this level of access is simple, often we’ll be discussing a project and make a decision about a new, or refined target. Having the login credentials necessary allows us to make the adjustments needed, whether it is to address a new goal, or to anticipate a market change. Of the team here at Fresh we tend to spend the majority of our time online just reading trends and gathering information about everything that interests us. It isn’t unusual to find us working over a weekend or through the evenings to ensure that you have the greatest possible chance of attaining that number 1, 2, or 3 position in search. It is in both our best interest, and yours, for you to rank as high as possible as relevant as possible, and we don’t call ourselves the best in town because it sounds good, we have the numbers, and the history to back it up.