From McKinsey

… the sexy job in the next ten years will be statisticians. People think I’m joking, but who would’ve guessed that computer engineers would’ve been the sexy job of the 1990s? The ability to take data—to be able to understand it, to process it, to extract value from it, to visualize it, to communicate it—that’s going to be a hugely important skill in the next decades, not only at the professional level but even at the educational level for elementary school kids, for high school kids, for college kids. Because now we really do have essentially free and ubiquitous data. So the complimentary scarce factor is the ability to understand that data and extract value from it.

I think so too and going into the realm of my personal thoughts… I am starting to realize to my dismay how data analysis will be crazily sought after sooner rather than later. I am also beginning to see the end of the Search Engine Marketing Ad market as we know it. There are simply too many people who is able to put up campaigns, optimize keywords and get a Google Certificate. The same people would pitch their skills and their products as a revolutional breakthrough in marketing. (No it isn’t! SEM has been around for 10 years now). Those who have additional skills (e.g web development and social media) would try selling it like a charm. Those are for the playgound kids.

What they lack is a knowledge of organizational decision structures and the ability to handle massive amount of data without Google telling them how to do it.  There are big boys who have or are planning to have a lot of data built in in their ERP, CRM and business information systems, with shocking levels of information silos. On another angle, web services and technical developers have been around for a long time (even longer than SEM Marketers), however as mentioned, they are not skilled in organizational dynamics and handling large amount of data.

I am going to try to tackle that, and be the complete package. Well, here goes…

I have no time for catfights especially among grown adults. However when my savings and money usage is tied to the bank whose Head of cards and unsecured loans acted in an unprofessional manner in securing the presidency of AWARE and who came across as insincere at best (”I did not know my fellow Church members are running” comes to mind), I am having second thoughts over where should I want to put my money in.

Personal branding at its worst.

Says it all! Either be an expert in your field of die in the muddy waters of recession.

Can anyone tell me how is twitter going to be the new Google? I cannot provide any links here, but I swore I have seen that claim a couple of times over the past week. Seriously…

For the past 5 days (and still counting), New Yahoo Search Marketing campaigns cannot be geotargeted to any countries in South East Asia and I suspect Asia as well. It can only be targeted to bundles (Geographic groupings, e.g South East Asia). Its this a terrific way of making some extra money? Whatever it is, it is not working on me. Surely you cannot take this long to fix a key source of your revenue stream.

1. Is your Landing Page Optimized? Are the tools for continued testing and improvements in place?

2. Did you sign on for regular maintenance with your web designer and hosting company? Search Marketing is not a one off project.

3. Did you tag all the important pages?

4. Do you know your business objectives? Revenue? Branding? etc?

5. Have you define your conversion targets? How much should the CPA be? What should be considered acceptable ROI?

6. Did you screen your agency? Are the concerned about delivering your business objectives or do they just want more clicks to drive more revenue to your doorstep?

7. Do you have an idea on how to manage your agency relationship? You would know your business better than them. But do you know their business well?

Before the website is launched and after the website is launched

All the time…

Do not rest, do monitor all the time. Get some professional help (i.e me) in deciding which SEO methods is the most suitable for your website. Do sacrifice a little style but do not deface your webpage in doing Search Engine Optimization.

Test, Test and test more. There is no perfect ads, only perfect moments for the ads. Do not stand still. Shape up or ship out…

How are websites displayed on Search Engines

Crawling the Web
Search engines run automated programs, called “robots” or “spiders” that use the hyperlink structure of the web to “crawl” the pages and documents that make up the World Wide Web.

Indexing documents
Once a page has been crawled, its contents can be “indexed” – stored in a giant database of documents that makes up a search engine’s “index”.

Processing Queries
When a request for information comes into the search engine, the engine retrieves from its index all the document that match the query.

Ranking
Once the search engine has determined which results are a match for the query, the engine’s algorithm (a mathematical equation commonly used for sorting) runs calculations on each of the results to determine which is most relevant to the given query.

Planning for SEO
Speak the Language of the customer
There’s a taxonomy of search – Informational, Navigational and Transitional – and behind each type of search is user intent, expressed through keywords, and optimizing accordingly will attract users at every stage of the buying cycle.

Decide the following
- What will the user Experience be, how will the SEO strategy fit in the overall corporate strategy.
- What are the Keywords to be used for the SEO Exercise
- KPIs (what is considered as a success in the SEO Efforts apart from Top Rankings. Number of searches, conversion etc). e.g if the aim is to drive more traffic to download a document, then the SEO effort should be focused on that instead of creating many goals.
- In house or outsource it to an agency?

Note: SEO should best be done as part of an overall web revamp and marketing strategy (from conceptualizing to design, testing and launching) instead of using it as tool to “Tinker the website to the top”

Getting Websites to be spidered and brief steps on SEO on different search engines

Optimize for Yahoo
1. More focused on Keyword Density
2. Better if the listing is placed on the Yahoo Directory
3. Higher weight age to keywords in URL and title tags

Optimize for MSN
1. Higher weightage on Meta Tags
2. Fresh Content matters

Optimize for Google
1. DMOZ Submitted webpages tends to rank better
2. Request Google to Crawl the Pages if page is not in DMOZ index
3. Acquire backlinks to boost pagerank
4. Use http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters (Webmaster Central) to check if page has been spidered.
5. Webmaster Central
6. keywords, links, meta tags

Register the URL for a long period or extend the contract of the targeted website to create legitimacy for the website

Keyword Selection process
Keywords are the search terms that users will type into a search engine to find a website. Keywords are needed as guides to optimize websites for the SEO Exercise

Places to identify keywords
Google’s keyword tool
https://adwords.google.com/select/keywordsandbox

It looks at the best keywords in an Ad Group and recommends additional keywords. It can also look at a web page and recommend keywords for that page.

Wordtracker
Keyword suggestion tool. WordTracker.com

Competitor’s websites
Visit the top five competitors, open their HTML, and look at their tag. Then type link:www.yourcompetitior.com to find out who are linking to them

Log stats and Analytics tools
Log stats (web traffic statistics). This shows the traffic to the website. Reports from analytics software such as Clicktracks and Google Analytics can find which the common keywords which visitors use to find are.

Experience and Creativity
Enquire customers, use Thesaurus, go by gut feeling. Which keywords will customers use to look for the website?

If there are misspellings. What are they? Will customers use other languages or slangs?

Optimizing Website and Landing Page
Search Engine Spiders are not human, the range of information they are able to read are limited. Therefore the following steps are needed to remove roadblocks for the spider and to make the website more accessible.

Short and relevant URLs and use Keywords in URL
Using descriptive keywords in URL is preferable as it allows for better indexing and more informative as well. E.g www.abctoys.com/bears instead of www.abctoys.com/3432433_d33r432432 or if the website sells toys, having www.plasticjoys.com will not cause the website to be optimized well.

Put the main keyword at the beginning of the URL.
Gifts-Heaven.com is better than heaven-of-gifts.com

Creating search friendly Error 404 Page
Error 404 Pages are crawled as well as well and presents a good source of materials to be crawled by search engines.

Alt Texts for Pictures
Pictures cannot be read by search engines, but ALT Texts can.

Coding
- Avoid flash, and ajax if possible. Log in pages and Frames are discouraged
- Creative external stylesheets or CSS can be used in place of Flash and Ajax
- Javascript and DHTML menus should be discouraged

Content
Meta Text
Here is an example of a Website’s Metatext.

<title>Flowers, Roses, Plants, Gift Basket Delivery – 1-800-FLOWERS.COM – Your Florist of Choice</title>
<meta name=”description” content=”Send flowers, roses, balloons, plants, gift baskets and gourmet food from 1-800-FLOWERS.COM.”>
<meta name=”keywords” content=”flowers,gift baskets,plants,gourmet foods,birthday gifts,bouquets,anniversary,flower,roses,rose,fresh,long stem roses,tulips,flower delivery,service,funeral arrangement,lily,lilies,daisies,love,romance,get well,holiday,florist,special,occasion,Valentines Day,Christmas,Mothers Day,Fathers Day,Easter,orchids,vase,thank you,flower delivery,floral,funeral plants,balloons,sunflowers,tulip,congratulations,daisy,solid,daisy,yellow roses,lilacs,ferns,flower arrangement,international delivery”>

The Title Tag
The title tag is in the HTML’s HEAD section.
This is most likely also what the user sees in the search engine results list.

Write a good TITLE
This will encourage visitors to come to the web page.
Use the keyword first and then the name of the web page.

For example, <title>Flowers, Roses, Plants, Gift Basket Delivery – 1-800-FLOWERS.COM – Your Florist of Choice</title>

Limit to 50 characters (this includes spaces).

The Meta-Description
The meta-description tag also goes in the HEAD section. Here’s an example:
<meta name=”description” content=”Send flowers, roses, balloons, plants, gift baskets and gourmet food from 1-800-FLOWERS.COM.”>

Search engines display the content of the DESCRIPTION tag to the visitor in the search engine results page. However they can ignore it as well (Due to superlative words or spamming) and fetch from the body of the webpage.

Writing the description tag:
• Use the top two or three keywords and write a complete sentence.
• Put the keyword first, then the description, and finally the company name.
• Use up to 250 characters (including spaces).

The Meta-Keyword Tag
The meta-keyword tag tells the search engine what the web page’s main keywords are.

Here’s an example:
<meta name=”keywords” content=”flowers,gift baskets,plants,gourmet foods,birthday gifts,bouquets,anniversary,flower,roses,rose,fresh,long stem roses,tulips,flower delivery,service,funeral arrangement,lily,lilies,daisies,love,romance,get well,holiday,florist,special,occasion,Valentines Day,Christmas,Mothers Day,Fathers Day,Easter,orchids,vase,thank you,flower delivery,floral,funeral plants,balloons,sunflowers,tulip,congratulations,daisy,solid,daisy,yellow roses,lilacs,ferns,flower arrangement,international delivery”>

Meta-Keywords are not so important nowadays but has some value to search engines like MSN, so it is best keep it relevant and not ignore it altogether.

Body Text
Use an H1 heading on the front page.
Google notices it more than the other text on the body
Again use the main keyword

The Content
•Put the main keywords within the first 25 words.
• Write complete sentences
• Avoid superlative phrases such as Best in the World!
• Don’t stuff keywords into the text. Don’t repeat a keyword more than four times.

Links Building
Buying Links
- Adding the Site to Directories.
- Pay-for-Inclusion Services

Directories to be Submitted to
- http://dir.yahoo.com
- http://dmoz.org
- http://botw.com

Back Links and Incoming Links
The goal is to be at the top of the search engine results page when the customer searches for the company’s products. Google ranks the pages according to their PageRank value.

Google assigns the PageRank (PR) value by looking at the number of links to the webpage (these are called backlinks). If there are lots of links to that page, other people consider it to be valuable. If there are few links, the web page will has a low value.

Do not link spam and place links in irrelevant directories, as most search engine considered it as link spam.

Get people in related categories to link to the website through writing of articles, press releases and community interaction.

To find the webpage’s PageRank Value, install the Google Toolbar. PR 3 is somewhat low. PR4 is better. PR 5 or 6 is very good.

Creating Link Bait
To link bait is to create interest in the website or article so that people will like to it. The emphasis is on relevancy and creativity as others will not like to a website which although interesting are not relevant to them.

- Create the interest via social networks such as facebook, bulletin board, blogs etc.
- Run contests
- Give something people want (e.g coupons)
- News story
- Humor
- Horoscope, Fortune Cookies
- Emphasis on creativity
- Adding Social Bookmarking Functionality (e.g Digg, Reddit…)

Is the page spidered? – Tracking Spiders under Google
- Website https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/dashboard?hl=en
- Log in with Google ID
- Verify Site
- Submit Sitemap
- Statistics can be tracked based on crawling frequency and keywords crawled
- Error messages can be generated

Black Hat SEO
Black Hat SEO are unscrupulous or deceptive optimization practices intended to spam users or compete unfairly for Search Engine rankings
- Invisible text (e.g White text on white back ground)
- Keyword stuffing (repeating keywords very regularly for the meta texts as well as for the website for the only purpose on getting the site ranked highly in search engine)
- Duplicate pages
- Domain cloaking: serving different content to search engine robots than to human visitors
- Link farms

Search Engine usually penalize Black Hat SEO optimized Websites.

SEO is a Tactic
SEO is a tactic not a strategy, there are other parts of website which matters and cannot be covered by the SEO exercise.
1. How easily can the customer make the purchase? (Usability)
2. Is search engine generating most of the sales? (Analytics) Maybe it is the e-mail marketing which creates the sales. (Good reason not to remove the E-mail subscription box.
3. Networks can be a good way of getting links (Social Media)
4. Slow loading pages and other issues which makes surfing the site a nightmare (Performance issues)
5. Crappy content and irrelevant texts (Content)
6. Poor Adcopy hinders visitors from knowing what the website is all about.

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago – never mind how long precisely – having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off – then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.

There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs – commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme down-town is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there.

Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall northward. What do you see? – Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks