Monthly Archives: January 2012

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Google blacked out its logo earlier this week to protest two bills currently making their way through Congress: the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). They’re not alone; many websites went completely black, displaying statements as to why they oppose these bills and often linking to other sites for more information. But the battle’s not over yet.

The ostensible goal of these bills is to prevent “rogue, foreign websites” from infringing on copyrights in the US, and to punish those who break intellectual property laws by downloading pirated content. SOPA and PIPA are supported by the movie and music industries here in the US – specifically, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). These organizations are widely known for overreaching to protect their intellectual property, filing excessive lawsuits aimed at illegal downloaders but often catching innocent people. Does anyone truly expect these heavyweights NOT to act abusively if either of these bills becomes law?

The bills themselves were improperly drafted by lawmakers and lobbyists with no real understanding of the Internet. Reddit offers up an excellent explanation of some of these issues in both SOPA and PIPA. They start with the bills’ definition of what constitutes a “foreign” website. The bills give a definition for a “domestic Internet site.” Such a site is one that has a domestic domain name or IP address – and that is defined as a domain registered or assigned by a registrar or other authority located in the US. Foreign sites are simply sites that are not domestic.

Right away there’s a problem. All sites with .com, .net, and .org addresses would be considered “domestic” – even if the site is hosted on servers that are not located in the US. That means wikileaks.org and thepiratebay.org would be considered “domestic,” even though they’re not hosted in the US. Conversely, sites like Redd.it and bit.ly would be considered foreign, even though they’re hosted on servers in the US!

That’s just the beginning of the definition-related issues with these two bills, but for now I’ll spare you the details. Among other things, the bills allow the office of the Attorney General to take action against a “foreign” infringing site (this is why the definition is so important) under certain circumstances. The site has to be directed to a US audience, and has to be used as a means for engaging in, enabling, or facilitating the activities of copyright infringement. The problem is, “facilitating the activities” can be read pretty broadly. Arguably, a site that explains how other sites abuse intellectual property could be painted with this brush.

So what actions can the Attorney General take if one of these bills were passed? There’s a long list, which amounts to requiring US search engines and sites to remove all links to the site, forcing US advertising services to no longer serve ads on the sites, preventing US payment companies (like PayPal) from doing business with such sites, and something called DNS blacklisting. Harold Feld explains why this is not just a bad idea, but a major security risk.

Oh, and remember how misguided the bills’ definition of “foreign” website was? Their definitions of search engines are equally broad, such that many sites with user-generated content (like Reddit) would qualify as search engines.

Next: Who Watches the Users?
 

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More By Terri Wells

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Article source: http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Search-Engine-News/SOPA-and-PIPA-Bad-Ideas/

After 17 years, it comes down to this. In a surprising move, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang resigned from his position on the search company’s board of directors – and from all other positions within the company. This resignation is effective immediately.

Yahoo’s announcement of Yang’s resignation notes that Yang also resigned from the boards of Yahoo Japan Corporation and Alibaba Group Holding Limited. It also includes this excerpt from a letter Yang wrote to Roy Bostock, Yahoo’s chairman of the board: “My time at Yahoo!, from its found to the present, has encompassed some of the most exciting and rewarding experiences of my life. However, the time has come for me to pursue other interests outside of Yahoo!” Yang also expressed enthusiasm for the appointment of Scott Thompson as Yahoo CEO two weeks ago.

Yang’s resignation crowns a tumultuous four months at the beleaguered search engine, during which it fired one CEO, entertained a variety of buyout offers, reportedly considered any and all options moving forward, and appointed a dark horse as its new CEO. While Yahoo’s press release offers few reasons for Yang leaving, speculation abounds. During Yang’s tenure as CEO, from 2007 through 2009, he turned down a $47.5 billion takeover bid from Microsoft – a misstep he may never live down. It caused Yahoo’s stock to tumble, to the point where the company is now worth around $20 billion.

Some believe, therefore, that Yang was pushed out, rather than leaving entirely of his own free will. Perhaps he simply saw the writing on the wall. A number of activist investors in Yahoo, such as Daniel S. Loeb of the hedge fund Third Point, have called for both Yang’s and Bostock’s dismissals. All nine directors on Yahoo’s board are up for re-election this year, and shareholders can nominate rival directors starting late next month. Yahoo has not scheduled this year’s shareholder meeting yet, but with matters aligned as they are, Yang may have realized that this might be his last chance to exit gracefully.

It’s a sad fall from grace for the co-founder of a company that once dominated the Internet as much as Google does now. To add insult to injury, Yahoo’s stock rose about four percent in after-hours trading right after the company announced Yang’s resignation. It might be the best move for Yang if he wants to see the company he helped start prosper. Evelyn M. Rusli,writing for the NY Times, reported anonymous sources close to negotiations as saying that Yang “played a heavy hand in discussions with potential investors,” and that “At times, Mr. Yang’s opinions seemed to diverge from the board’s consensus…creating a tense – and occasionally confusing – backdrop for negotiations.”

With Yang out of the picture, potential deals with Yahoo’s Asian partners – Softbank and Alibaba – may go through more quickly, releasing value for the company’s shareholders and capital for making changes. Yahoo’s new CEO may also find himself with more room to maneuver without the company’s co-founder looking over his shoulder. It will be interesting to see where this company from the pioneering days of the web ends up.

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Article source: http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Yahoo-Optimization-Help/Jerry-Yang-Resigns-from-Yahoo/

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Many people have heard of link wheels. These are a somewhat old (and black hat I might add) technique for getting ranked well. The problem is that all too often the advice that I see given regarding how to build them is either poor advice (such as doing it the black hat way) or just plain wrong. Fortunately, there’s a way to do them that doesn’t require you to go over to the dark side and risk Google penalties.

Often, as I stated above, link wheels are used as a black hat strategy. Now, Google doesn’t like spammy manipulation of their search results. They hate it, in fact. So if you’re going to follow the black hat approach, you’ve got to know that Google’s algorithm is designed to try and find you and delist you. That’s not really a great way to put together a long term business, in my opinion.

For those that don’t know what a black hat style link wheel is, allow me to explain.

There are plenty of “user generated content sites” on the Internet that can rank quite well on Google for a variety of reasons (domain age, # of inbound links, etc). These are sites like Squidoo, Tumblr, Blogger, and WordPress.com. The idea behind a “link wheel” the way the black hats do it is that you can throw a ton of junk content onto these sites, then add a ton of junk links to them. Because there are already so many links to these sites, Google won’t find it strange that there’s more, and even though the content is junk, it’s still content and Google can’t (yet) determine the difference between good content and junk. 

The huge number of spam links, combined with the junk content, does (for a short while) increase the page rank of those sites, which you then link to your main site. Each of the user content sites has some decent PR, which is then passed down to your main site.

The idea here is that by linking out to so few sites, the PR that is passed is done so with a fair amount of strength. By obtaining a bunch of inbound links (often tons of garbage links in the black hat strategy) to these sites, you can “protect” your main site from the black hat activities of the sites in the link wheel, while keeping the great PR.

Now, that’s a “traditional” black hat style link wheel. The thing is, doing it that way is actually (in my opinion) way too much work. As Google catches on to the black hat linking activities of one of your link wheel sites, it bans that page and you have to create another. You’re basically in a constant foot race against Google. Doing things this way means that you have to stay one step ahead of Google, creating these junk, spammy sites faster than the search engine can find them and delist them.

Let’s face it, Google is in the business of NOT ranking sites with crap content that have a ton of forum and blog spam links to them. So as Google finds these sites, new ones have to be created, each one as spammy as the previous site. I hope you aren’t in the business of spamming people, blogs, forums, or the search engines. 

Further, do you really want your business associated with junk content and blog spam?

Not only that, but to me that seems like an awfully large amount of work, especially since there is a much better way to go about it. You see, on the surface, everything that I’ve said so far might make it seem as if this strategy isn’t useful for a real business. However, nothing could be further from the truth. Link wheels, implemented properly and “above board,” don’t have to put you in a position of fighting Google.

You can implement them in a way that not only won’t put you in a foot race against the Google machine, but also helps to build your credibility in your market place (instead of destroying it the way a black hat link wheel could).  Building a link wheel this way actually assists in a more complete and total domination of Google against any competition that you may have.

Next: White Hat Link Wheel
 

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More By Matt Goffrey

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Article source: http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Google-Optimization-Help/Real-Link-Wheel-Secrets-To-Top-Google-Rankings/

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Google must feel very put-upon at times. It tries to help searchers find what they’re looking for, and prides itself on not being evil. Lately, though, whenever it does the former, observers accuse it of doing the latter – even if some other search engine did it first. Such is the case with Google Flight Search.

Just in case you missed it, this new tool came on the scene about four months ago as the first fruit of the search giant’s purchase of travel software company ITA. At the time Google acquired ITA, the US Department of Justice required it “to develop and license travel software, to establish internal firewall procedures and to continue software research and development” in order to “protect competition for airfare comparison and booking websites and ensure those websites using ITA’s software will be able to power their websites to compete against any airfare website Google may introduce.” If you want to review Google’s announcement of the purchase, you can see it here.

I haven’t used the tool very much myself yet; for whatever reason, it doesn’t  work yet for the places to which I want to travel. Greg Sterling gives an excellent run down on how it works. Basically, if you put a travel-related search into Google – “flights from nyc to san francisco,” for instance – you get some extra information. A box appears below the sponsored results, but just above the actual links, that shows you some of the flights available on various airlines, along with their times and flights.

You can click on a link in this box to see more Google flight search results, or choose “Flights” from the links in the left column; they’ll both take you to the same place. It’s a sophisticated filter that lets you choose airports, departure and arrival dates, connections, duration of flight, number of stops, and more. When you’re done, you get a list of flights that meet your criteria. In some cases, you can click on the flight and book it directly from these results.

It seems to be both the positioning and booking aspects of the filter that put Kayak and other travel-focused search engines up in arms. Danny Sullivan noted that the Wall Street Journal even ran a story on the filter, though it claimed the new travel results started appearing in December rather than in September 2011. According to Sullivan, the article only quoted Kayak as slamming Google for the move. He said that they complained that Google has an “’explicit policy to intercept general search queries with their products,’ and therefore, ‘their argument that they’re not engaging in anticompetitive practices doesn’t hold up to basic logic.’”

Should one competitor in an industry get stoned for engaging in the same practices as its rivals? As Sullivan explains – and as I’ll get to in just a minute – that’s exactly what’s happening here. In fact, Google is being more even-handed, in a way, to travel search engines than its rival Bing. But Kayak’s cozy relationship with Microsoft’s search engine gives it no cause to complain about this behavior.

Next: Pot, Meet Kettle
 

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Article source: http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Google-Optimization-Help/Google-Flight-Search-Not-a-Monopolist-Move/

Yahoo officially named PayPal president Scott Thompson to take over as its CEO. Thompson brings a deep knowledge of technology to this challenging position. Will it be enough to get the beleaguered search company back on the right track?

You can read Yahoo’s official announcement here. It’s interesting to note that Thompson was a dark horse for this job; many outside observers didn’t have him on any of their lists. He clearly brings a different perspective from his predecessor, Carol Bartz, who was abruptly fired a few months ago.

Let’s start with his background. Kara Swisher notes that Thompson is a “genuine Internet geek.” He became president of PayPal in early 2008, coming to that position after serving as the company’s CTO, charged with handling its information technology, product development, and architecture. He worked at IT in his three previous companies (Inovant, Barclays Global Investors, and Coopers and Lybrand) creating and overseeing global architectures and technologies. Translation: he’s understands how to handle large systems, make them grow and scale, and keep them secure in the face of extensive demands – even when they’re handling sensitive information, such as financial transactions.

Perhaps the most relevant factor for Yahoo is that Thompson was guiding PayPal’s mobile strategy. As the father of three teenagers, he gets mobile’s importance for the future. At the 2009 Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco, he observed that none of his children use their phones to actually make phone calls; nor do they use ATMs. They keep in touch with their friends via text messages and Facebook, and they handle most financial transactions electronically. They rarely if ever use e-mail.

As Greg Sterling noted on Search Engine Land when writing about Thompson’s appointment, “Mobile is another area that Yahoo badly needs to focus on. While it had an early leadership position in mobile product development and advertising, that has been entirely erased by Google in the  past two years. Thompson’s knowledge of and experience with the mobile market may also be extremely helpful to Yahoo.”

Good as Thompson is in some areas, there are certain skills he lacks. He has no background in advertising or media. Sterling believes that Yahoo executive vice presidents Blake Irving and Ross Levinsohn, if they stay on board, can easily compensate for those weaknesses. But whether they stay is an open question; new CEOs tend to bring in their own teams. At the moment, there’s no way to tell whether Thompson will do this, or if Irving and Levinsohn will choose to leave on their own.

What does this latest development mean for the various asset-related deals in the works for Yahoo? Ray Bostock, the company’s chairman of the board, indicated in the press release announcing Thompson’s appointment that Yahoo “is considering a wide range of opportunities for the Company’s business, as well as specific investments or dispositions of assets,” so some of those may still go forward. Expect to see a deal involving China’s Alibaba Group and Japan’s SoftBank for the purchase of at least part of Yahoo’s stakes in Alibaba and Yahoo! Japan sometime in the coming months.

Does Thompson have what it takes to drag Yahoo out of its deep slump and fully into the twenty-first century? He may not be Steve Jobs, but he’s been living and working in the future perhaps more than any Yahoo CEO in recent memory – and he seems unencumbered by inconvenient prejudices for or against particular technologies. To judge from his conference presentation, rather that being afraid of change, or considering it a necessary evil, Thompson embraces it. He brings both hope and a badly-needed breath of fresh air to the troubled search company – both of which it has lacked for far too long. I wish him good luck with this monumental task; he’s going to need it.

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Article source: http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Yahoo-Optimization-Help/Yahoo-Hires-PayPal-President-for-CEO/

You don’t need to stick to funny videos or oddball lists or even play off of current memes to create viral content. You can dazzle your readers with something that’s genuinely useful. Keep reading for a few ideas on how to write content that will educate your readers and make them link as well as think.

This short piece wraps up the ideas I’ve culled and expanded upon from Jordan Kasteler’s article on Search Engine Land. I’ve tried to explain how you can use these different ideas for content and customize them to your own situation. Done well, any of these ideas can attract links from tons of readers. When posted to social sites, these links will likely attract even more visitors to your site, and be noticed by the search engines. They may even improve your site’s standing on the search engine results pages.

Let’s start with the most visually appealing of the remaining three approaches: “The Visual Aid.” It can be really hard to understand something unless we actually see it, which is where this type of content comes in. Infographics fall into this category; Kasteler uses one on world food consumption as an illustration of a good visual aid.

There are two nice things about this infographic. First, it’s very simple, so the idea it’s trying to get across is easy to understand. Second, it’s interactive. You can click the two prominent tabs to access the two starkly different bar graphs; you can also hover over any country identified in the bar graphs (the bars are numbered, and so are the respective countries) to get specific information for that geographical region.

As you can probably tell from my description, there’s a real art to making a good infographic. Done right, it presents a large amount of information in an easy-to-digest format. Ideally, it should make your reader stop and think. (Infographics can be entertaining and just for fun, too, but I’m focusing on educational content in this article). Flow charts, informational videos, interactive maps, well-constructed graphs – these are all examples of visual aids, and all can attract an audience and links if done well. If you’re in real estate, for instance, why not consider doing an interactive map of the local neighborhoods that shows users important information about each one when they hover over it?

Let’s move on from visual aids to what might be the epitome of educational content: “The Tutorial.” You’ll find a lot of those here at SEO Chat and throughout the Developer Shed family of websites. Everyone loves articles that tell them how to do things, even if it’s something they don’t think they’ll ever do. I don’t ever plan to try lion taming or swinging from a trapeze, but I’d definitely read an article on  how to do it!

The best aspect of this type of content is that you can get as simple or comprehensive as you want. Write a basic piece, or create a complete beginner’s guide to whatever it is you’re writing about. Ideally, of course, you want it to be on topic for your site – as Scarves.net did with its piece on 37 ways to tie a scarf. You may find that once you’ve written one, you have more to say; you can write a whole series of tutorials that explain different aspects of a related topic, as on this juggling site.

The final type of content I’m going to discuss here covers more than just educational ground. Kasteler calls it “The Hybrid.” It involves combining two or more different approaches in the same piece. For example, if you make a list of 50 things that belong in every medicine cabinet and organize it in order of importance, you have both a Ranked List and an Epic. Use an element of urgency, such as “50 Must-Have Items for Your Medicine Cabinet,” and you’re adding the power of the Urgent Attention-Grabber. Invite your readers to comment on what they’ve found most useful in their own medicine cabinets, and you’re tapping into the Collaboration approach. Mix and match to come up with your own powerful viral combination!

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Article source: http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Search-Engine-Optimization-Help/Educational-Viral-Content/

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In an attempt to promote its Chrome browser, search giant Google appears to have broken its own rules against buying links and using thin content to increase SERP standing. What’s going on?

Danny Sullivan reported the story for Search Engine Land. He noted how Aaron Wall, upon performing a search for “This post is sponsored by Google,” saw it return more than 400 pages. All of these entries appeared to be part of a marketing campaign to get the word out about Google Chrome. The links in the results led to a variety of blog posts with headlines such as “What Can Chrome Do For You?” and “Take Your Small Business to the Next Level with Google Chrome.”

Okay, by itself, this isn’t necessarily incriminating. But here’s the problem: these posts linked back to the Google Chrome download page – and the links didn’t include the nofollow attribute. Without that attribute, the links will pass PageRank, or “link juice,” reading in Google’s algorithm as a vote for the page. If Google did indeed sponsor these posts, then it effectively paid for those links – and whatever link juice they get from them.

I assume I don’t need to tell you that paid links are against Google’s own Terms of Service. Matt Cutts, head of Google’s webspam team, made it clear nearly two years ago that Google frowns on sponsored posts that pass PageRank. As Cutts explains in his post, “Clear disclosure of sponsorship is critical, and that includes disclosure for search engines. If link in a paid post would affect search engines, that link should not pass PageRank (e.g. by using the nofollow attribute). Google – and other search engines – do take action which can include demoting sites that sell links that pass PageRank, for example.”

Google has taken action against websites before for this kind of behavior – even its own websites, when they get out of line. Sullivan’s list of websites that Google penalized for this conduct include JC Penney, Forbes, and Overstock, plus Google-owned BeatThatQuote and Google Japan. Does this mean that Google will have to ban the Google Chrome download page?

Possibly not. Of the posts he’s reviewed, Sullivan observed that “most do not seem to have links to Google or the Google Chrome page. In addition, I expect that Google probably never instructed anyone to directly link to anything.” That’s how JC Penney handled the PR storm when the New York Times article revealed how it managed to snag a high standing in the SERPs for so many valuable keywords during the holiday shopping season. The retailer claimed that it didn’t know that its SEO company was breaking rules, and never instructed the SEO firm to engage in black hat practices. What really bothers me about this, though, is that Google made the rules in the first place. How can any advertising company that’s dealing with any branch of Google NOT realize that they should avoid using anything that even remotely resembles paid links?

Next: Paid Links Bad, Thin Content Worse
 

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