SEO Expert, Evangelist and SEO Consulting Services - Tony Adam

This last week has had some interesting events occur over the big revolt against Digg. Now, big news sites like Wired, NY Times, etc. have posted stories, many people are talking about it on twitter, etc. The question is whether or not these constant issues being brought to the forefront are going to effect the Digg site and brand in a negative way, especially in a time when it seems Digg is entertaining a buyout opportunity.
Over the past month I have seen this topic thrown around in person, via twitter and now a live stream on Ustream - The Drill Down (brought to you by Andrew Sorcini, Muhammad Saleem and Reg Saddler). The Ustream podcast is now available for download, RevoltNation, Part 2: Jay and Kevin Respond, this was basically the tempers of top Digg users flaring and demanding some answers. Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson graciously appeared on the show to talk about all of hte issues at hand, including rumors of an “auto-bury”, the banning of digg users, the un-responsiveness and finally, the ever-infamous algorithm change. (For more on the algorithm change, see Kevin Rose’s post: Digg: New Algorithm Changes)
Now, I am not a top Digg user or a power user even for that matter but I still find this debate very interesting, because I have always loved using Digg. But, I have been finding certain things really pestering me lately. I’ve noticed that the user base is becoming almost like that of Slashdot, very quick to judge and with only one mindset. Secondly, the algo changes seemed a bit unnecessary, even with those using Digg as a marketing and SEO tool. Jay did mention that the algorithm usually takes a few days to finally work itself out, but, making that large a change is just too much too soon. I could understand something like 50-60 diggs to make the home page, and then pushing it to 80 over time and then finding the right balance. The overall experience to me now seems like it is only a select few posts that go hot and the rest stay in upcoming, which is not really the main place people look for stories. Is it just me or does that mean relevance is lost?

What I found interested in this whole situation is that Jay Adelson said to Wired Magazine:

“Let’s be realistic about what happened yesterday,” Adelson says. “It wasn’t a revolt. To me, a revolt is when a statistically significant group of people cause a disruption. These guys are significant to me personally, but this wasn’t a revolt. I hope that the next time a small group of users voice their concerns, it’s not represented as a ‘mass movement’ or a ‘revolt.’”

When a large group of your top users stand up and say, “We are unhappy”…that is a revolt. Jay should have understood that from the vibe of the room. Granted, I think that everyone was happy that Jay and Kevin went on the show to talk about the situation, which was the stand up thing to do. I think they recognized how severe the situation could have gotten and they decided to attempt to mitigate that risk. (See Full Wired Post: Digg CEO Jay Adelson’s Take on the So-Called “Revolt”)

Digg has seen its Alexa ranking drop to the mid-hundreds (Digg ranks 144 currently according to Alexa) from being in the top 100 previously.

Here are some great reads about the recent Digg News:
Digg Causes ED Among Social Marketers; Will it Now Go Limp Itself? - Andy Beal
Near-Revolt on Digg Underscores Site’s Dependence on Its Users - Wired
Top Digg Users Revolt Against Algorithm Change on Site - NY Times

What do you think this will do to the Digg community? Will this effect buyout opportunities negatively? Or, does the old Hollywood saying of “Any buzz is good buzz” apply?

According to the Nielsen online reports it seems like Microsoft has increased its search market share from 12% to 13.8% in December from the previous month. (See MarketWatch Article) All things considered it seem that Microsoft has picked up close to 2% of the search market, a big gain for the company. So, if we can trust the Nielsen online ratings, what has attributed to the gain?

Now, a lot of people are talking about Google losing “search share”…but I really want to focus on Microsoft. More specifically, I want to examine the current promotional aspect of Microsoft’s search space. They have been trying to push the Live Search Club to searchers to give away prizes like t-shirts, etc. Something that I found interesting about this, was trying to create a “search community” more than giving away prizes.

In a world of increasingly popular social media sites like Digg, Reddit, etc., does creating a social or “prize give away” aspect to search give users a reason to use a search engine more then the next one? Is it possible to push people away from the mammoth lead that Google has gained and sustained? At the very least, could Microsoft make a push into second place, pushing Yahoo! to third?

Granted, really making a play at taking over second place in the search engine wars is a REAL possibility since Yahoo! is in flux at the moment. The question really is, can Microsoft take a good amount more of the search share away from Google? Or, is this promotional aspect to Microsoft Live Search an attempt at gaining fickle traffic that will begin to fizzle away as it looses its gusto?

Last week I talked about how to stay active, answer questions, etc. to keep brand awareness high and reputation management under control. This week, I’m going to give you an overview of how to dominate the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages) by using Social Media to your advantage.

We all know since the “Web 2.0 Evolution” there has been a massive influx of Social Media properties on the web. That being said, you can use this to your advantage from another Branding and Reputation Management aspect by using them to control the top 10 results listed in the SERPs for your branded search. (e.g. digg)

Here is what you do:

1. Find Social Media sites that are relevant: Do some quick research and find the sites that are relevant to you. If you do real estate, using YouTube is a great site…at the same time…if you are a large tech company, TechCrunch’s “CrunchBoard” is a great place to get a public profile about your company. Quick note though, keep this up to date…some brands do a bad job of this.

2. Build your branded social media page: Getting a public page on hot spots like MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, etc. is very easy to do and build. There is already a template behind them, all you need to do is adjust it so that you are branding your page appropriately. Some sites, (e.g. MySpace) require some markup/css, but still very simple. Most organizations have already done this, if you have, GREAT!, you’re already one step closer to success.

3. Subdomians: Google has cracked down on the subdomain issue as of late, but, that being said for branding purposes, it is still helping out in dominating the SERPs. For example, having a careers or jobs mini-site/subdomain on your brand (e.g. careers.myawesomebrand.com) will give you yet another listing.

4. Blogging: O.K., I realize this is not so much related to a social media site…but it is related to the SERPs and control them. Blogging around your topic and creating linkbaitable items will not only get you a ton of traffic, but the true success comes from the amount of links for your site. So, be sure to set your blog up on your domain as a subfolder (http:://thegreatestbrandever.com/blog) or as a subdomain (blog.myreallycoolbrand.com). Along with all of that, you can use your blog as a great tool to pass some great PR value and Link Popularity to your Social Media sites.

5. Link Building:  Doing link building on your “.com” is not the only place to focus.  Granted, that being said, most social media sites do contain some heavy PR value and a good starting point.  So, with very little effort, but an effort none-the-less, you will be able to rank those pages.  So, send a link from your “.com”, your blog, etc. and a small link building effort should help.

Now, remember, these are the 5 steps to achieving Search Engine Results Page domination.  Doing only 1 or 2 of these things will help your organization, but, you will receive the most effectiveness by following the steps and ensuring the dependencies.
Overall, your goal for the overall effort is reputation management and ensuring that your brand is controlling the SERP for a branded search (e.g. “Digg”).  Doing so can have a tremendous amount of value and reduce a ton of negative publicity for your brand.

I’ve wanted to start writing more about Social Media and I think the best way to start would be to talk abut what I love doing, and that is building my own personal brand and how it applies to an organization as well.

I have always considered it to be tremendously important in getting my name out there whenever possible, it has been absolutely crucial to my career development. This approach also really applies to companies and organizations as well. How you represent yourself online through Social Media can play a very important role in how your business is perceived by many. Building an online brand as a whole might be a bit more complex than building your own brand. But, when it comes to the aspects of Social Media though, more specifically thought leadership, it is definitely not as complex.

You can do this quite simply by doing the following:

Answering questions online: LinkedIn and Yahoo! Answers can be a great place to get some Brand Awareness by showing off some of your knowledge and expertise with a community. Branded usernames and/or individuals representing your brand through these services also builds a trust in your organizations ability to follow through on the products/services offered.

Comment, Comment, Comment: Commenting on Blog posts by sharing feedback and or getting involved in the community shows a real passion about the topics at hand. Especially in communities like technology/web/internet, you will gain a massive amount of respect if you can hold your own.

Be active on your own blog: So, you wrote a blog, people are getting to it, linking to it, and commenting on it…you’re done right? WRONG! There is still another step to this, staying active and responding to your comments shows that you care about the community following you. The Mozzers over at SEOMoz do a great job of staying active on their own blog, and same with Aaron Wall of SEOBook.

Ever heard of “Twitter”, if not, you better!: Microblogging using sites like twitter is an awesome way to reach users and amazingly enough, control any negativity. Although it is widely used for sending out updates and such, using the “track” feature, you can find out what people are saying about your brand. Steve Ganz at LinkedIn does this CONSTANTLY and I am always watching him follow up with complaints, issues, etc. and it just makes me feel good knowing that some people really “get it.” As a matter of fact, a blog post recently talked about how LinkedIn Hits the Mark.

All of the above items will help you build brand awareness and control the reputation of your brand.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and how you are using this or other things to either build your personal brand or corporate brand through the use of similar strategies.

So, I figured to ring in the New Year of 2008, I would post about how the whole SEO industry should really start to take an understanding of Web Standards in the design of Websites. Semantic Web Design and using CSS for layouts is not really cutting edge people!! We have been doing this since 2001!

I have been so thoroughly frustrated with the quality (rather, lack of quality!) that I am seeing in some of the top agencies and experts in SEO. Even being at Webmaster World PubCon this year and sitting in on some of the interactive site reviews I was horrified by the lack of real web knowledge.

Now, as much as I love the SEO industry, I feel the need to call everyone out that is doing this. We are at a point where the web is becomming more and more semantic and browsers are standards compliant (See: Private Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 build passes Acid2 test).

What I am not going to do is start giving you a tutorial for how to build CSS layouts or semantic websites. Although this is an area of expertise of mine, there are TONS and TONS of resources for this out there already. (Resources Below).

Building Web Standards compliant websites that are semantic will add tons of value, not only to your services, but to your overall value as an organization. We are no longer in the 90’s and do not have to use tables for design purposes and layout, CSS is extremely powerful now. Using a CSS layout will dramatically reduce the amount of markup on your page. Also, use semantic markup up in your html document, such as using semantic CSS styles, insert the appropriate HTML (e.g. paragraphs, strong instead of b), etc. There should never be a class named “style6″ or a div id with the name “leftside.” Classes should be named “footer” and similarly your div id’s should signify the content on the page, (e.g. div id=”logo”).
Here are the two **VERY IMPORTANT** reasons that you should build Standards Compliant websites with semantic markup.

Crawlability and Indexability is of course one of the most crucial things when working with SEO, because, the truth is, if a search engine doesn’t crawl your site, you won’t have any business. Standards compliant and semantic markup allows the search engine to read through your html documents with many pre-determined factors. To break this down in its simplist form search engines read through an html document the same way that we read through a written or “Word” document. From a User Experience stand point, page load times will drop and allowing the page to even render correctly will increase conversion.

Websites Maintenance can be a big part of the work that is taken on for consultants, agencies, and SEO Experts. Especially in larger organizations that have hundreds or even thousands of pages. Using the methods that I have been talking about will allow you to dramatically reduce the time it takes to even put up pages or re-design pages on a site, thus reducing your cost to build new or update old pages. This leads to you offering discounted rates, increasing customer loyalty, and/or increased margins for your organizations. From an SEO perspective, the benefit of building a site this way is that you do not have to attempt to stuff keywords into your content, less markup will in-turn help with keyword ratios on the page.

In summary, please build standards compliant websites that contain semantic markup. You will see a great benefit from it and help in cleaning up the web!

Resources:
A List Apart Articles - Great Web Design Resource
Web Standards Project - Do I really need to explain this?
Designing with Web Standards - A GREAT book by Jeffrey Zeldman that explains why Web Standards is important (yes, even for SEO) and goes into code level detail.

If you are using Standards based design with your websites and/or are practicing SEO…please comment!…I’d love to hear and share your thoughts!