I found an old article on the Top Techno Brands of 2004. This was right before Google went public with their stock offering, “GOOG”. Near the end of the article I noticed a funny little blurb:

If Google make the top 10, this will be a major lesson for the “traditional marketers” and ad company of are really slow to admit the Web and viral marketing campaign can be really effective without big budget in other media!

As we’ve now seen, Google’s stock and market position have sky-rocketed as some people couldn’t have predicted. Viral marketing on the web can have it’s benefits, especially for Google who is still considered a start up company (less than 10 years old), and churns up billions in revenue/cash each year. Have you ever seen an advertisement for Google products (i.e., search, maps, gmail…etc) outside of the web, on TV or in other traditional marketing channels? I have not. This can be a good lesson for those who wish to bypass traditional media channels when considering where to advertise.

You may have heard the phrase “people love to hate” before, so how is this relevant to search marketing? Hate can be a powerful tool and can help strengthen the bond between reader and writer.

Specifically, I’m talking about picking a group of people, an idea, entity, player or some “thing” in your respective field that you are able to bash on or hate, for a logical reason, such that chances are your readers now have the ability to connect on an emotional level with what you’re writing about and can relate to your content, i.e. they dig your bashing because they enjoy bashing about the same stuff too. This means more interest, references and eventually, inbound links to your page(s). Just another way to apply viral marketing techniques.

If you haven’t found yourself an enemy yet, then you may want to consider doing so. Not to say you can just start blindly bashing on any given thing, so be careful. Remember to target the right enemy and make sure that your readers aren’t necessarily in favor of your bashing subject. It’s usually best to present attacks, if any, in a problem-solution example or scenario. Try not to “dwell” or spend too much time on the problem as you want to offer some kind of elegant method for resolution such that your readers can take the lesson home with them.

If Google were to, for some odd reason, shut down their website and never do business again starting tomorrow, how could you guarantee traffic delivery? Aaron Wall posts a great idea, stating that:

…some of the best SEOs think of the web more in terms of the Cluetrain Manifesto, viewing the web as a series of markets and conversations, realizing that if they are frequently talked about then search rankings are a by-product of that.

Web traffic as a by-product of human popularity and not direct search engine rankings: now there’s an idea!

It’s a known fact that Google’s mission is to index (or read) web pages with the hopes of providing the most relevant content to its search customers. But how many websites can Google possibly index? All of them?? HA!! That is a monumental feat even beyond the oh-so powerful Google. The fact is that many websites are part of the invisible web (or deep web); these websites are sitting out there in la-la land with no visible web(sites) linked to them. This means that no matter how relevant these invisible websites are they will never show up on Google, or any other search engine, without some help.

There’s a very interesting article by Raj Dash on this subject; read the full article here.

The invisible web is much larger than the visible chunk. This means that only a small portion of all web pages are actually being indexed by the major search engines on a regular basis. If your business website is not being indexed, and thus is not visible to potential customers, then you are not maximizing your profits. There are many ways to make your website visible to the millions of consumers who search on a daily basis. Raj lists several ways to do this in his article referenced above, but these are only a fraction of the steps necessary in order to get your website the Best Rank possible.

Don’t be content with languishing in the invisible web; make your website visible. Take the steps necessary so that search engines like Google can index your page. If you are unsure of how to do this or you simply don’t have the time, then please contact us here and we can help resurrect your website into the visible kingdom of the web.

Google is ranked the number one most powerful global brand by Millward Brown, read the PDF release here. Google beats out everyone.

I recently read an article on Bees and hive-mind intelligence. About
how “a colony of individuals, operating according to simple rules, can
exhibit an intelligence, problem solving ability and even memory that
is beyond the limits of any of the individuals themselves.”

You can read the full article here

The article talks about how neurons are to a person’s mind as bees are to the “hive-mind” intelligence that forms when bees form a working colony. Ants colonies are also referenced as an example, how they sniff out pheromone trails and calculate the shortest distance to food supplies, avoid dangers, etc. The author explains that certain internet websites are now using this “hive-mind” logic to serve up news stories, for example, to their communities of readers, while the readers vote on stories they read pushing that content higher up on the popularity list - sort of a self reinforcing act of
“hive-intelligence”.

One central point the author makes is that these self-reinforcing hive-mind communities actually sway the opinions of their members by force feeding them the popular content that everyone else finds popular. An interesting example of a music downloading service is given to illustrate this finding.

What the author doesn’t write about, something I find very interesting, is that the search engines themselves, such as Google Yahoo! and MSN, all use this “hive-mind” intelligence to push popular website links to the top of their search engine listings. So there
are four things at work here:

1.) Popular websites are pushed to the top of search engine rankings positions (SERPs) via a “hive-mind” community (you and me and everyone else using the internet).

2.) People are swayed into finding/using/making those already popular websites at the top of the SERPs even more popular, (i.e. linking and referencing the content)

3.) Your opinion about what is popular is “formed” by what is popular at the top of the SERPs, because lets face it, you’re more likely to go with a first page listing than number 47 on page 5.

4.) As a result of the 3 above, your consumer spending and behavior is being quietly controlled: who to click on, where to go for information and ultimately where to spend your money.

Google now offers a “Web
History” tool to anyone with a Google account. Seems like a great
idea. If you choose to enable this service, Google keeps track of all
the websites and URL’s you visit and allows you to later search
through your browsing history just like you would do for a web search.
Interesting! Now Google can see what websites you travel to, what it
is you like, really like, and really really like so that they may
better direct their relevant affiliate marketing messages at you.

We have a new domain name address for the Best Rank Blog, check it out!
Not much to see yet as it is just a simple landing page but more to
come in the future!

I attended my very first Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference last week in NYC. I learned a ton, not only about search strategies, but also about how not to act at one of these events. I spent the first 3 days trying to meet people in hopes of being invited to one of these famous after hours drinking functions that everyone raved about in the chat forums. After day 2, I still hadn’t received an invite to any social functions; I was at a loss. I’m a cool guy, why wasn’t anyone inviting me to have a drink with them??? Maybe it was the constipation-induced scowl I brandished for the first two days. Maybe the new brand of deodorant I switched to was being overworked. Maybe the blinding reflection off my ever-expanding forehead was causing people to quickly avert their attention from me. As I sit back and reflect upon the reasons I didn’t warrant an invite, I can’t help but zero in on my many unsophisticated actions that clearly screamed “NEWBIE”.

So, for any of you SEO’ers, rookies and pros, who are thinking about attending one of these events, below are my Top 10 tips on how to blend in and better your chances of getting invited to a social function.

10. Stick to the Fundamentals Track!!
- It’s easy to get ahead of yourself. If you are a newbie and you find yourself in the Robots.txt Summit, the you are clearly out of place; you may even start wondering if you are at the right conference.

9. Laugh when everyone else laughs!
- When the speaker makes a joke that you don’t understand, it’s a good idea to play it safe and laugh.

8. Don’t give out your contact info to anyone on the exhibit floor if you truly don’t want them contacting you!
- I thought they just wanted to be my friend…I didn’t realize that they actually wanted me to buy something. By the time I got back home I had 24 e-mails from potential business suitors eager to sell me their goods. I hate to say it but I really have no intention of buying anything from you, I just wanted to get invited to an after hours social event. Sorry!!

7. Bring business cards!
- After telling the 47th person that “I forgot my cards” I started to feel like a fraud. They all gave me that ‘you’re an idiot’ look.

6. Realize that lunch is provided for you!
- I didn’t read the itinerary on day 1, thus I didn’t realize that lunch was provided. I found myself wondering why everyone was rushing upstairs. I thought “this is the perfect time to hit the hot dog stand before everyone else does…suckers!!!”

5. Don’t complain about the crunchy cookies they serve at lunch!
- When I saw the pack of cookies, I expected them to be soft. I had a tourettes moment and blurted out some profanity about not getting soft cookies. Needless to say, nobody from my lunch table that day invited me to have a drink with them.

4. At the first session after lunch, be sure and leave yourself a one-seat buffer zone on each side (don’t sit right next to someone)!
- On day 1, I sat right next to a lady after lunch. I think she got a little scared when I started doing the head-bob, funky chicken between bouts of consciousness. The lecture was interesting and all, but why did they have to schedule it during my normal nap time??

3. Don’t carry around that sweet, and oh-so manly, canvas bag after day 1!
- The conference organizers issue you a “gift bag”, which turned out to be a bag full of advertisements. You’re expected to carry it on day 1, but after that you just stick out. I think the NYC investment bankers were a little jealous of my canvas tote…so feel free to use it outside of the conference.

2. Don’t try to impress the SES ladies by attempting to form a rap circle outside one of the session rooms!
- This one is self-explanatory really. I thought it would be cool to make up a rap about search strategies. Talk about your all-time worst backfires.

1. When attending the Danny Sullivan open discussion forum, don’t stop clapping until everyone else has!!
- I stopped clapping after the first 3 minutes (a carpal tunnel thing) and the girl next to me shot me an evil ‘how dare you disrespect him’ glare. I promptly put aside the pain in my wrists and continued clapping. Who knew he was so popular??

Follow these simple rules and you will fare better than me!! See you all at SES in San Jose.

Don’t gain links too fast! Read up on how google combats spam by checking, and flagging, a web page’s spikey “back” link rate of growth.