I broke into the Vault using Ask.com

Most internet users don’t enjoy signing up for services to receive the information/data they are seeking. Placing personal information out there, no matter whether it is a simple email address or your name, is no fun for anyone. Paying for information is no fun either.

I was doing a quick search the other day, looking for salary information and company surveys for Bear Stearns & Co. when I came across Vault.com. Because Vault.com gives you raw facts from submitted surveys and reviews, I was quite curious to see what they were surveys referenced in regards to working for Bear Stearns & Co. Vault will give you a little snap shot into the submitted survey and then leave you hanging if you want to “read more.”

If you want to read more you must subscribe. Not just subscribe as a standard member, but you must be a GOLD member to read the surveys. Yeah. Pay up buddy.

All I could think to myself was “that sucks” and I almost by-passed the juicy office drama (or surveys as you’d like to call them), when I realized that there might be a back way into these pages by using search. I mean, they may be indexed right?

So as easy as it was, I went on Ask.com to use their search. “bear stearns vault.com” and I was already off to a good start with my results.

In the Ask.com search results, it allowed me to “view more results from vault.com” which I found quite nifty; so I took a peek. To my astonishment, I was viewing the results of the lovely surveys I was after with a direct link into their back end.

No signing up, no information required. I was in the vault!

That just shows you how knowing how to search can save you time and money. I broke into the Vault using Ask.com. I simulated these same results using Google, but it took a little more search criteria to get there.

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Am I more “me” on the web or off the web?

The web is truly another world of its own. “You” on the web are different than you away from the computer screen. This is because the web sucks you in and opens you up to a whole new portal of people and personalities; which allows you to expand your own. So are you more yourself on the web, or off the web?

We can even change (and most of us do without realizing it) who we are on the web. I am quite shy in a crowd, even a bit anxiety ridden, but when I’m on the web, nothing can stop me. I’m quite fierce and outspoken in my own little online world. I tell all fairly freely.

Online social networking websites allow us to interact with each other in ways we never thought possible 5 years ago. Beyond the chat rooms, beyond simple email between friends and family, online social networks give us a way to debate with others, express our opinions, and be more open about our beliefs.

We can even find out more about ourselves by socializing with others like us on the internet. Special interest websites and social networking groups allow us to interact with others that have the same religious beliefs, diseases, health issues, job industry fields, demographic regions, interests, etc. More and more, we interact online with others and find ourselves sucked into this other dimension. We open up to those we hardly know, expressing our most secretive, deepest and darkest self beings.

Online users do this because they feel their information is somehow kept private. Keyboard and screen keep us from feeling tracked or violated in any way. Actually a sense of freedom is felt while browsing around the net.

Not everybody knows that their information is being tracked. And even if they do, they are lightly conditioned to be OK with the fact that our information is out there to be tracked by anyone who wants it. Why? Because we are already open to the thought of web personality, interaction, and search.

Google picks apart your brain.

Again: Since we are so open with each other on the net, this allows search engines to track who we are (demographics, gender, age, interests, etc.).

The search engine that tracks us the most is obviously Google. Beyond our general search (even though the General search statistics are tracked too), if we have set up any type of account with Google, our online search activity is being tracked to properly display SERPs that will pertain to our specific liking. Good ol’ Google helped us find that specialized social network we are now apart of.

Just like with a psychologist, the more they know you, and the more you tell them about yourself, the better they can help diagnose you. Proper therapy or medication (or in our case search results) can be administered.

Many search engine optimization and marketing specialists fear this change, as it will be harder to ‘game’ the search engines to provide them top rankings that result in more traffic. However, by search engines being more in-tune with each individual user, they will be able to display more accurate results, which in turn provide better conversions. These changes will actually make my job a little easier.

For the most part, we wont have to target demographically related keywords. Google will already know its users demographic location, age group, special interest, and past search conversions.

How can this necessarily be a bad thing? The future of Google excites me actually. This means going beyond marketing, beyond user function and click troughs, beyond funneling a user to purchase a service or product.

We are going to need to understand our potential users reason for possibly coming to the website to convert them. I just hope Google makes these statistics readily available in our Analytics. This way we can continue to provide clients with the most accurate analysis (demographics, gender, age, common interests, etc.) for their website.

So go ahead and take over the brains of all us Google guppies, analyze what we’re into, and give us the results we want.

Posted in SEO Articles, The Osearch Blog | 1 Comment »

Google! Stop Stealing my SERPs!

I was doing a simple keyword analysis for a client of mine when I came across something I have never seen before in Google. I know they toy around with the supplemental results, I know there have been rumors of them selling organic placement, but this didn’t fall into either of those categories.

What I found was that instead of using a suggested keyword list for my searched term as normally done, they provided me with an ‘inset’ second list of SERPs distinguished with “See results for: equity apartments” as shown below.

When I scrolled over the link to discover the link’s path, it was clear that Google is carefully tracking the click through for the input suggested SERPs. At first I thought maybe Google was selling the placement for keywords relating to my original terms. But it seemed unlikely, as they were clearly marked as being keywords I was not searching for.

So I then viewed the SERPs for equity apartments, and found out that the 3 placed SERPs were ranked the top 3 in their correct order as viewed using “equity management” SERPs.

When I scrolled over these results, thinking that maybe Google got rid of the sponsored section look to make everything flow, I noticed the links without the Google tracking. So the input links were the top 3 SERPs for their designated keyword.

This still boggles me a bit. I was reading a Sphinn article by Kimber Cook how Craigslist was stealing her clients Google rankings, and now I feel that Google is stealing my Google rankings. In this case, it narrows down the 1st pages results to displaying only 7 results pertaining to the originally suggested keywords. The spots with the highest lead conversions (SERPs 3-6), are being replaced with other semi relevant suggestions.

I would love to know how readers of this article feel about this discovery. Anyone know what’s going on?

Melinda Roberts

obu Web Technologies, Phoenix Search Engine Optimization

Posted in SEO Articles, SEO Industry News | 2 Comments »

There’s no doubt that a picture is worth a thousand words. We’ve heard it time and time again. As you will notice that on a lot of social networking sites, top ‘dugg’ articles are simply images. They take the same “link baiting” approach, but instead it is applied to images.

Here’s one of the top dugg articles on Digg.com today (08/14/2007 @ 11:03AM Arizona Mountain Time) with over 416 diggs. This is a clear example of the comedy approach in link baiting. The linked to image is just a hand drawn comic created by an internet user (most likely using MS Paint). The comic is so simple, yet it makes people laugh. It made someone’s day, so they’re going to blog about it. In return, the viewers dugg it.

[edit: by the time this article was completed, this article moved from the first page to the second, and almost doubled it’s hits in less than 2 hours]

Another way to get link bait by using images through implementing the “news” approach (posting “top secret” or “just released” photos).

For example: Before the launch of the xbox 360, there were insider photos on what the console was going to look like.

Social networking website users want to know the news first; especially when it comes to tech toys. News is one of the fastest spreading link bait approaches. Problem is they are harder to come by.

It is relatively easy to see the benefit of link baiting through the use of images. Especially in the first example I posted (comedy approach).

Even pointless images, such as the one dugg below, gets some love from the digg kids.

A few of the pros consist of:

• Cheap to create
• Quick to make
• Easy to post
• Fast to view
• A pleasure to blog about

So if you run into writers block, take a step back and think of a different way you can occupy your time. Grab your readers attention by creating a image link bait post. You will be surprised at how fast you get noticed. Just don’t forget to mention in the title that an image is present. That approach seems to work best.

Author: Melinda Roberts

Leader of the Phoenix Search Engine Optimization department at obu Web Technologies

Posted in SEO Articles | 1 Comment »

This Arizona Search Engine Optimization website has been live now for about 30 days. We are tracking the results of this website as it moves up the search rankings in this case study, which we have just updated.

Follow along and pay attention, we are electing to be fairly transparent in our methods for educational purposes, (and of course to showcase our results driven process). SEO is a repeatable process, you just need to serve the information that the market, and search engines, are looking for.. aka write quality content and use the tools available on the web to promote it.

Until next month..

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After reading a link baiting article written by Todd Malicoat (stuntdubl), I started thinking about how one’s personality plays a roll in how they write their link baiting approach. Let’s be real here. There are more factors than just choice alone that play into how we link bait. Embedded from birth, our personalities influence the way we write and come across through the screen. Words without personality lack hook potential. It’s the guy (or gal) behind the monitor that places the worm on that hook.

So how do you bait your hook?

Controversial Hook

You know who you are: The instigator. Controversy comes naturally to you. Dark sense of humor, strong opinionated and witty SEO professionals often take this approach when it comes to link baiting. It just comes naturally to piss people off with such great personality traits.

With this type of hook comes a major consequence if done wrong: Being shut out. Saying the wrong thing about the right people (or even their views) can shut you out a social networking circle faster than you walked into it. Just be careful about whose toes you step on. Also make sure you know who their backup system consists of.

Shock Factor Hook

Personalities that practice the shock factor hook approach are those that don’t give a flying you know what. Often times these folks are the life of the party. These people must be the center of attention at all times. They are real social butterflies with a knack to be known.

Shock hookers are also great at marketing their ideas by grabbing people’s attention. By being free spirited with no care in the world, shock factor hookers have the advantage of digging deep into the situation to uncover buried facts. They are the “hard core thinkers” with whit and a will to be noticed.

The shock factor hook is similar to the controversial hook as it goes beyond the standards and ruffles comfort levels. What sets the shock factor hook apart from the controversial hook is that with the shock factor hook there’s no attacking a someone else’s viewpoint. Posting “new news” gives the shock factor hook an advantage and opens the doors for controversial hookers to attack you; Hence, you receive press from both ends.

Resource Hook

Those that seek out the resource hook are the ultimate nerds of the internet world: Organizers, truth seekers, thinkers, as well as those just starting out in the SEO world. Most search engine optimization professionals start at this level until they gain enough trust to make their own assumptions.

Un-easy writers also dive into this approach. Afraid of putting out an opinion of their own, they use resources, and follow already well-known professionals to feel reassured of their articles potential.

This could possibly be labeled the safest way to achieve links, while building trust of your own. Another plus of this approach is that resource articles are often printed, bookmarked, and tagged. What’s the down side? Links move at a slower pace.

News Hook

Eager, strong willed, and go getter personalities often jump into writing the news hooks. These people have to know what’s going on at all times. A lot of busy body night owl’s with an abundant amount of time on their hands go niche in this link baiting tactic.

Link baiting with news is easy on the writer; but this type of bating is so saturated with writers that it takes one hell of a writer to make an article worth linking to. Writers with a niche for news hooking often lack a direction with their purpose.

News hookers take an on going new topic and write updates on it as it happens. Often times it is hard to get the “insider scoop” on newly approaching topics.

Just like the resource hook, this one is another slow and steady wins the race. This is another easy way to gain trust, but difficult to survive with.

Conclusion

Since there is no one-kind of personality trait that pertains to making a great SEO professional, different types of hooks can be found throughout social networking sites such as del.icio.us, digg.com, and even the site geared towards mainly SEO, Sphinn.com. We can even plot traits in our local newspaper, on magazine covers, and in the content we read along the web.

No matter what type of fish you are looking to catch, always remember the bigger the bait the bigger the bite.

Posted in The Osearch Blog | 9 Comments »

Here is a quick roundup of some useful Search Engine Optimization related blog posts and articles we came across the last week or so. SEO is such an interesting industry in part due to the rapid dissemination and advancement of SEO techniques and information. If you are a fledging SEO, make sure you stay on top it. If you are a business owner looking to purchase SEO services, be sure to gain at least a general understanding of the concepts, but you shouldn’t need to focus to heavily on keeping up to date with everything, thats where a professional search engine optimization firm comes in.

On to the goods for this week:

• Lucia talks about the foundation of SEO - Quality Content
• When to know you have had too much SEO
• An oldy by goody on what to look for when building links.
• Rand lets it fly on what to look for when hiring an SEO company.
• In case you run vBulletin software, here is write up for SEO
• Social Media advertising in the UK
• Another write-up on SEO Best Practices
• Matt Cutts lays it down on keyword stuffing… this is a no-no
• And of course our new SEO case study on 800plumbing.com

Thats it for this week..

Posted in SEO Industry News, The Osearch Blog | Leave a Comment »

We have just pushed live a new SEO case study for one our SEO clients.  Read the case study here.  The client asked us to help with gaining national exposure for his business, in which his primary goal was to attract potential franchisees for his vanity number service.  Our Search Engine Optimization techniques delivered the goods once again.  The high profile exposure has helped him sign additional marketing agreements and exceed his online marketing goals for the quarter.

The website itself still needs some enhancements to help better convert the new-found traffic, but our primary goal with this client was to elevate the levels of targeted traffic with our Search Engine Optimization services.

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There has been a lot of talk about the new Sphinn.com network. After looking around and researching its platform, you will discover that there are top SEO professionals and SEO newcomer’s alike sharing ideas and debates over important matters involving everything from search engine optimization, to website usability.

Many will argue that Sphinn is just another popularity contest since it’s platform is much like digg. I was taken aback by reading so many complaints regarding this “popularity contest.” Isn’t SEO in itself a popularity contest?

A Sphinn user, Ciaran, argues that Sphinn is a popularity contest because Rand Fishkin (the head honcho on the site) gets more sphinn’s (votes) due to the sole reason he is already well known. “Not simply because people recognize Rand’s name, but because his position as chief blogger on SEOmoz puts everything that he writes in front of a much larger audience than anything I or other lesser known bloggers would get on our own sites…”

Well I partially agree with Ciaran’s statement, but isn’t that the way it goes with any networking site? Look at Tom on Myspace. Obviously he has gained trust through his audience simply by being known as the owner; the head honcho. Rand Fishkin is the mac daddy of the Sphinn, as obu is the dilly of Arizona SEO.

Rand answers back saying “I disagree that Sphinn is a popularity contest - it’s a “value” contest. People appear to be voting on what they find “valuable” from sites both big and small. I was actually impressed that there were several blogs and sites on here I’d never seen or heard of before.”

Right on the money Rand. But doesn’t popularity equal value? Rand also states “I disagree that a popularity contest is necessarily a bad thing - so long as it coincides with value.” Doesn’t being branded have more trust value than the generic guy? Regardless of how you want to define popularity, Sphinn allows those with value to become more popular. There’s nothing unusual about that.

Think back to high school and what made the popular kids popular. They were the ones that looked the best, presented themselves the best, provided the most entertainment, and were in the in crowd. Rand won that hand’s down through hard work and dedication; being in the game longer than the others. You can’t knock greatness for being great. You must earn it.

We are all trying to achieve this same goal online: To be the most popular (aka valuable) in our niche. Every link we get is a step towards winning that popularity contest. Every successful article written and “dugg” brings us 1 step closer to being successful in this online marketing game.

Everyone wants to hang out with the cool kids, but secretly wants to know what the outsiders are pondering in the corner. Sphinn gives us the best of both worlds.

Posted in The Osearch Blog | 2 Comments »

Some interesting stuff has been going on in the SEO world of late. Here is a quick run down of items of interest.

• Sphinn.com launches: a “digg” for SEO content.
• Get all your SEO questions answered over dinner by winning Hooley’s contest.
• Todd Malicoat has a great post about Online Reputation Management.
• A good list here of Social Media sites to push your content too.
• Another good list for Product SEO.
• An interesting look at whether Yahoo is selling space in thier SERPS

Posted in SEO Industry News, The Osearch Blog | 1 Comment »