Gmail to Get More Protection From Snoops - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Noting that many power users have already turned on HTTPS protection, Google now says that is considering going further. “Ideally we’d like this to be on by default for all connections, and we’re investigating the trade-offs, since there are some downsides to HTTPS — in some cases it makes certain actions slower,” Ms. Whitten wrote. “We’re planning a trial in which we’ll move small samples of different types of Gmail users to HTTPS to see what their experience is, and whether it affects the performance of their email. Does it load fast enough? Is it responsive enough? Are there particular regions, or networks, or computer setups that do particularly poorly on HTTPS?”

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Selling SEO

Image via WikipediaWhen I want to sell SEO to someone, I tend to do it very simply.

I ask them what keywords they think describe their business. Most people intuitively know what a keyword is, and they know what categories in the Yellow Pages apply to their business.
Let's say the answer is: "Tools. I sell mechanics' tools. Garden tools."
I launch a browser, and type "tools" into the Google search box. 1,070,000,000 results. Let's cut that down a bit just for the sake of sanity and reality.
Select 'pages from Australia', and launch the search again.

1. Much better: 345,000.
2. Now 'mechanics tools': 317,000.
3. And 'garden tools': 216,000.

Big numbers, yes. But not as incomprehensible as a billion and change.
Those sites did good SEO. They're listed number 1 through 4 out of 300,000 or so.

Look again at the sites on the screen. There are maybe 5 or so above the fold.
Now, see these guys over here under 'Sponsored Links'? They're paying $4-$6 a click to be on the same page. (A little preparation goes a long ways here..)
Do you remember how much you paid for those test ads we ran about keywords? (A few days can easily cost $100-$200.) That means the Sponsored Links are paying a couple of thousand dollars a month to be on the same page as the sites that did SEO.

You might spend a couple of thousand to get your pages into the top of the natural search results. But they'll stay there for a while. It depends on what you do with the pages. But if they're at the top for a few months, it's gonna take a lot to get them out of position.

And remember, 40% of Australians won't buy from Sponsored Links on principle? That means your SEO dollars are that much more valuable. 60/40 is 1.5. So if you spend $2000, it's worth $3000 - 1.5 times $2000. -thanks to the peculiarities of the Aussie market.
Those guys over there probably know that (pointing to the Sponsored Links), but they're bidding against each other over what's left.
Now if we're really successful, we'll get your site into those positions for particular brands or even popular tools.

It isn't hard numbers, no. But the point usually gets across. The approach is demonstrable and understandable. The customer doesn't have to be a math wiz to figure it out. It also sets some achievable targets for the future.

Spin, Duck, and Dodge
Some of the strategies and tactics out there are pure manipulation.

DON’T DO THIS: Get lost in the details.
Do you think the CEO (or small business owner) wants to hear about meta tags, site architecture, content and link popularity?
Probably not. He or she just wants to hear one thing: How will SEO benefit me? Which brings us to…

DON’T DO THIS: Dodge direct questions.
While “talking points” are a powerful way to stay on
message, make sure you know when to answer a direct question.

I realize this is 'good sales technique', but I'd prefer to give a direct answer to a direct question. If someone has taken the time to learn enough to ask questions, they deserve an answer. I may warn them the answer may have a lot of detail, but if they're willing to hear the full answer, they'll get it.
As much as possible, I'll focus on the benefits. I don't want to wade through the vagaries of site structure and different search engines either. But try explaining the benefits of a heading tag without mentioning the rest of the page structure.
If you want to end up in a situation analogous to spaghetti code, wait til someone has told your prospective customer: "I don't even bother with the keyword or description tags. The search engines ignore it anyway." And then have to explain.

DON’T DO THIS: Focus on to many benefits .
Remember the power of threes: When information comes in three bits, it usually sticks.
Too little and it sounds half-baked, too much and it sounds too good to be true—or your audience will forget your additional points.
Stick with three, high-level and pertinent benefits.

I have to agree with this one. Somehow, I want to know what the person really wants from an SEO campaign. Not only do I want to know, but I want to put those goals down in writing (or email) . Setting goals in writing makes me accountable. Having the goals in writing also avoids my having to hit moving targets, and the horror of all technical projects: scope creep.

Is the goal of the site to sell products? - or a service? -or is it to generate leads?

• If the goal is to sell a service, the site structure is different than if to sell products. For example, the most accessible pages will focus on the service. There will be more pages supporting the sale of the service.
• If the goal is to sell products, then the products should be front and center on the homepage. Services will only be another option amongst the products.
• Generating leads is analogous to branding. If the company name is associated with a service or product (i.e., branded) then the search terms will lead directly to the site. Otherwise, the site should focus on the benefits, and let the benefits to the consumer get the lead.

It's possible to have a site do all three things, of course. One focus will support the others. There may be a lot of pages though.
If the stated goal is to sell a service, and somewhere in the process it changes to selling products, then back to selling the service - the site will just be an unsuccessful mess because it's much harder to hit a moving target.
That's a form of scope creep. If you don't write things down, scope creep can slosh back and forth, increasing then decreasing, to create nothing but dissatisfaction and confusion.

DO THIS: Talk the talk.
Now you have your three key SEO benefits.
The next step is to transform them into “talking points.” Political junkies out there will be very familiar with talking points, and to see them in action is a thing of beauty. No matter what question is thrown at them, they somehow manage to weave back to one of the talking points.

I'm not very big on buzzwords. You know you're getting there when the customer starts picking up the jargon of SEO.
Not just as buzzwords though. - like throwing out "ex dividend" pretending to know all about stocks - but when customers use SEO terms in context to describe what's happening, and why.
It's also a good sign that you're failing to get the point across if your customer hasn't picked up the basic terms, too. You're missing something in the communication. It's time to regroup and rethink how you're presenting your efforts.
When both you and your customer manage to weave any discussion back to the goals, you've got yourself a team effort.

Learning to communicate with customers is a way of showing them respect. You're not there to impress them with your brilliance or superiority. Your job is to help them achieve their goals. You're there to make your customers part of your SEO team. Part of that job is to help them understand their goals, and how you can help achieve those goals.
After all, they are the experts in their business - not matter how large or small the business.

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

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One Keyword per Page

Image from WikipediaSearch Engine Herald ran an article by Noel titled "SEO Basic - One Keyword per Page" which stuck in my mind for a bit, so I posted the following comment:

What do you mean by ‘optimizing’ when you say one keyword per page?
The LSI process tracks the use of associated terms to interpret the subject of a page. If you define ‘optimization’ as terms within the 2%-15% keyword density (some people target 5%-12%), then the goal of optimization would be to get as many of the commonly associated terms into that range - not just one keyword.
Whichever range is used, getting just one keyword (or phrase) into that range dictates some very short pages. Google once looked at only the first 250-500 words of content in order to build up their index quickly, that’s true. That was a few years ago.

The result was many SEO people writing a lot of short pages that resembled intrusive advertising as opposed to truly relevant information.

But Google has changed its perspective recently to favor pages with around 1000-1200 words, which arguably allows for more pertinent information.
Many business websites find it difficult to find 500 words about a category or product, much less 1000, which reflects Google’s long-standing policy to return SERPs which favor information as opposed to sales pitches.

The article is on SEO basics. My comments took the subject matter a little further. I just didn't think this short article was being very clear, that's all.
I'd just finished a keyword density analysis on a homepage. There was one word on the page that was within the indicated range. I'd rewritten the page to have 17 words and phrases within the 2-15% range. All but one of the terms clearly pertinent to the topic and the goals of the homepage.

Homepages can be difficult for SEO.
A company may provide a number of services and products that need to be presented along with a brief introduction to convey the attitude and quality of the business.
The Value Proposition of the business is often expressed in a slogan that is not commonly associated with the type of business.
The wider the distribution of services and products, the more the keyword density will be diluted. This is the challenge of SEO and web design.

It's much easier to get the right mix of keyword density for a page on a category of services and/or products; or for a particular service or product. Although finding 250+ words to say about some products can be difficult too.

LSI can actually make writing relevant pages easier, too.
A little research can reveal a number of associated terms on most topics, which means the text can flow more easily and include greater detail without losing relevancy. In fact, using the right combination of terms can make the page more human-readable and more relevant.
Complexity isn't always a negative. Humans are complex. I suppose it could be said the complexity of content has to match as closely as possible the complexity of the target audience.

The complexity offered by LSI and longer pages poses the challenge of writing content that is still scannable. Web users still scan the page. Very few read more than about 55 words or so.
Visitors can be induced to read more of the content by good presentation and interactive content, but that has its limits. A great deal depends on assumptions about the type of traffic the site will draw, and the marketing goals.

Australia
Is it fair to tell a DYI web designer to try to target only one keyword or key phrase per page?
Part of the answer depends on the locale. The article referenced above was written for the US market, where competition is fierce. Content designers in the US market have to contend with a more balanced apportioning of the search engine market.
In Australia, Google with LSI still controls 80% of the search traffic. That's really the basics in this market.
Australian web designers must write for the cutting edge technology, or seek traffic elsewhere. Most Australian sites are designed to be marketed within Australia and New Zealand.; if not regionally within Australia.

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

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Google's Universal Search

This is one I saw coming.
I've been telling clients to get out their webcams and post the video to YouTube to help increase the visibility of their business online. Only a couple of clients took me up on the suggestion. It was hard to overcome the poor Internet connectivity in Australia.

Universal Search
Google's default search will be a Universal Search. The SERPs will include videos, images, news, blogs and web pages. - Everything. It's going to change the SEO/SEM services dramatically.
Universal Search is presently only available in the US. As it spreads across the world, Optimization will include more types of media. The competition for top SERP listings is too competitive to avoid.

You see, really Google is more than a single search engine. In fact, it's many search engines. It's surprising how few people actually use the other search listings. Here's a list:

• Blog Search
• Book Search
• Catalogs
• Code Search
• Directory
• Finance
• Images
• Local/Maps
• News
• Patent Search
• Product Search
• Scholar
• Video
• Web Search

Each link on the list represents a search engine within Google. Until now, you had to find and use the other search engines. Universal Search, already implemented in the US, will mean all of these search engines will provide SERPs.
If you want just websites and webpages, you'll have to specify that option.

For example, one of the most useful is the Images search. Sometimes, trying to illustrate a website in meaningful ways -something other than pretty girls and other fluff- can be difficult. A quick run through the Images search can give you an idea how others have tackled the problem.
Google News is not comprehensive, but it does provide very recent, relevant information.
For example, I try to stay on top of web developments. I have a weekly email alert on the News search about SEO in Australia.

How will Universal Search affect SEO?
Most websites in Australia are static. The wildfire of SEO services indicates the majority of those sites are not optimized, or even structured. (You gotta wonder what those folks were studying in Web Design classes?)
A few gurus have put out the opinion that for a site to appear high in a Universal Search, the site is going to have to incorporate more universal elements: blogs, images, documents, videos, etc. Naming conventions for these elements will become significant. "img100016.jpg" will be replaced with "black-shoes-look-great.jpg". Because images have their own search engine at Google, it isn't inconceivable that the name of an image could become as significant as a URL.
That presents a problem for a market where business is only beginning to realize the potential of the Web. (Most of my clients are already in the 21st century, I'm happy to say.)

Connectivity still an issue
Some people simply responded: "I can't watch YouTube. Why should I think my customers will?" - And they were right.
Finally, Internet connectivity is improving in Australia. Consumers have become aware of the "Fraudband" -ADSL 256 mbps and below- offerings and ignoring them. Improving does not mean fully implemented. Telstra's rollout of ADSL2 and ADSL2+ is still "aspirational" over the next 9 months. Fraudband is still being sold.
("Aspirational" was Howard's latest way of saying "non-core promises". It's a little like selling opportunity in a multilevel marketing scheme...Howard lost the last election, btw.)

Google may delay the Universal Search rollout for Australia
It may be a good business decision for Google to hold off on providing the Australian market with Universal Search. Large areas of the country, even metropolitan areas, may not have the bandwidth to explore the links.
Google commands nearly 80% of all search traffic in Australia. If a large portion of the Web community cannot click on the SERPs from Universal Search ("USERP"s?), Google could lose its primacy.
The Australian market only represents 1% of the world's Internet population, but it is a rich, competitive and -most importantly- growing market for PPC advertising. Google has only had its regional facilities running for about a year. Yahoo Australia (Yahoo7) offers a much more reliable regional PPC service, and doesn't carry the negative baggage of Google.
The decision for Google will come down to ROI, I imagine. Is the growing Australian market valuable enough not to risk the losses from Universal Search?

Aspirational ADSL
Telstra and other large providers are lowering prices and increasing speeds. Sometimes so quietly you can hardly hear the moss move. Telstra will let customers upgrade to faster speeds free, but the person has to ask for the upgrade. Sometimes the new plan cost less than the fraudband! On the ground, most consumers aren't aware of the situation -yet.
The majority of Australian consumers can now see YouTube videos, use VoIP, and even watch some TV on the Web.
Telstra and Optus are filling TV screens with ads offering a wireless router with ADSL. The "networked home". Great idea. It's been working fine in New Zealand for more than 4 years. Relatively few Australian households enjoy the benefits of a networked home.
(Please forgive the obvious cynicism. It's unavoidable. Australians have been retarded for so long by their government and the large telcos.

A practical run through
Take images as an example. Run a quick search on any topic in Google Images. You'll quickly see that many images were named by software. The name may be from a digital camera, or from the website where the image was purchased.
In the world of Universal Search, that's a missed opportunity. The name of the image may become as powerful an optimization tool as the URL is today. In the Image Search, the name of the image is comparable to the URL of the page; possibly even the page title. It remains to be seen how important to Optimization ALT and TITLE tags will be. Will they be a part of the web page? - or will they be incorporated into the Relevancy calculations for an image?
It's easy to see that ALT tags could become much more important. Those web designers who used the ALT tag to stuff keywords into a document are going have to rethink their (key)words.
Image quality and file size will become more important.
Evenless relevant images will be important for building links. Initially at least, it's not hard to see many sites will fill with images. The practice might come to be called "image bombing", where a site crowds as many images as possible onto its pages to increase its visibility. At least initially, it will improve rankings and conversion rates. How this practice will work out in the long run is yet to be seen.
Hopefully, web designers will press relevant illustrations of business processes; and better product pictures. If not the Web Designers, the SEO people will, I assure you.

Illustrators' Renaissance
Universal Search could drive a renaissance of vector graphics in place of bitmaps. The size of the image file will not just an issue for page download times.
A blotchy image will drive away visitors. Images with good contrast and composition look better in thumbnails appearing next to the link in the search results.

How many web designers have howled into the dark night about having to explain complicated business functions in text, knowing full well that most of the viewers will scan over the page (and never read the well-crafted words)? Good illustrations, animations, and videos that illustrate business processes and services will have a renaissance of sorts. These creative concoctions will have full ranking with web pages and blog articles.

Blogs and Blog articles
Blogs have been the lost hinterland in Australia. Sometimes I think the Outback has a better reputation than blogs.
As it was with Internet access only a few years ago, blog numbers are dominated by large business, national media, universities and TAFEs. Young people are blogging on the social networking sites, of course. Many sites offer free blogging. There are a few blogs set up as ecommerce sites. But few Australians are in the blogosphere.
Citizen journalism here is hindered by restrictive and capricious laws. The concept of slander in Australia is restrictive. It doesn't matter if someone is telling the truth, if the content damages the reputation of the subject, the author is liable for slander.
This is not the United States.

Blogs and blog articles will have to be SEO'd to the same level as web pages under Universal Search. This opens up opportunities for businesses to drive traffic to their websites.
It depends on the editorial policy of the blog, and its goals.
Small and medium sized businesses can demonstrate expertise, build professional reputation, and even have a little fun with blogging. If a blog is too commercial, some blogging sites (e.g., Blogger) will remove access to the blog.
Business blogs can contain anecdotes from Customer service, for example; or outlandish uses for their products; even personal stories about holidays and parties. There is no law that says a business blog has to be all business.
With Universal Search, all these articles will have much more significance.

It's not all that new, really
When you think about it, Universal Search is not a new concept. Google and other search engines have always counted links from YouTube videos, blogs, and their other search engines in the Relevancy calculation. Universal Search is only making that fact obvious.
In doing so, Google is giving those who use the Web community an advantage - and encouraging others to become more community minded. Google is taking a leadership position in defining the relevancy of a website (or blog).
Google's commitment to Relevancy is laudable. My gut reaction is to applaud, in fact. But my head makes me look again at what it may mean to business.

The comments in this article are based on a well-established assumption: That search users will choose from the first 1- 3 or 4-6 of the SERPs. With many new media represented in the SERPs, will that assumption hold true? There will be images, blog articles, and videos mixed in with web pages. Will that cause natural search results to become increasingly irrelevant to business?
If so, will the PPC (Sponsored Links) become far more important and expensive?

Google is taking a leadership role in defining the Web community and Relevance, as it always has. But is Universal Search is a gamble in many ways.

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey. Sphere: Related Content

Blogger's (Google's really) Link Widget

I have been remiss. This blog hasn't had the attention it deserves for too long.
In an effort to try to make up for this sad state, I decided to pull up the Blogger Layout and add some of the blogs and websites I read and use for insight, information and perspective. Not just in Australia, but around the world, there are at least 50 or so.
Happily tracking back through the Bookmarks on three browsers, Bloglines feeds, and the saved links on Google docs, .. It was getting a little tiring even for Sunday afternoon busy work.

Then I noticed something.
I'd set the number of links to show to 8. The whole list was approaching 50 or so, and more to come, so I decided it was time to save my work and see what the blog looked like. Sure enough, only 8 were listed.
Considering the importance of inbound links in the Google eye, how does that work?
Do all the links count? They are listed, after all. Or does Gooogle only count those listed links? Are invisible links still a measure of relevance?
This deserves a little more research. I'll have to send an email to my friends at Blogger and see what they have to say.
Stay tuned.

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey. Sphere: Related Content

Success,.. sorta

Just a raw plug for my first SEO clients:
Short Cut Computers belongs to Steve Trim, a friend who actually paid me to learn this stuff and put it to work for him.
And Steve Trim's other business, Barcode Solutions., which will be my second project.

I use the excerpt above as part of my signature on this experimental blog to help generate temporal links to Steve's company sites. It's an experiment to see how the rankings are affected.

Steve's main site, Shortcut Computers, had been designed to be easily modified by him and his staff using FrontPage(tm). It had been up for nearly a year when he became interested in what was happening there. -- Nothing.
The site registered about 35 visitors in a year; most of which were probably Steve himself. It was there for him to say he had a website.

After reading a few books on SEO/SEM, we redid the site.
First, it needed to be more dynamic and easier to use. Still experimenting with options, we mistakenly chose PostNuke for the CMS. PostNuke made some things easier, but overall is a programmers' CMS.
Then the overall appearance was reconfigured. The present homepage reflects this step.
It is at least dynamic, but too many of the pages are lost behind long URLs.
Small problems.

During this process, I began researching SEO/SEM.
First step: Wade through a few books.
Second step: Find the resources needed in Australia.
Third step: Apply those resources to accomplish the goals of the business.

I began "internet marketing" back when AltaVista and Lycos were the search engine paradigms. Google and Yahoo in those days didn't exist. The key to internet marketing was, and still is, LINKS!
Step two was an eye-opener. There simply weren't that many directories and search engines. Two industries, tourism and mining, were well represented. Business listings were made on government or telecom sites. The Yellow Pages in Australia had spawned three different access sites; all of whom charged for listings.

Step three was the real challenge though.
The small company's service area was a number of suburbs on the southeast side of Melbourne. Although this area comprised over 1 million residents, it sat on the bleeding edge of broadband availability. Most of his customers were condemned to dial up Internet access.
(Click the 'Melbourne' tab on the iBurst availability map. There are other similar maps - and more timely - but this one tracks very closely and illustrate the point. Then enter 'Dandenong' to see the availability in the company's service area.)

This company, like 90% of small business in Australia, didn't want to market nationally or even citywide.
Links from search engines were good for natural rankings -- "roamers" in SEM-speak -- but to increase business, we needed visitors -- "convertibles" SEM-speak -- who could take use the services. For that, we needed to target a region not commonly defined: PPC advertising.
For Melbournians, the "southeast suburbs" is easily understood. For Google-Aus and Yahoo7, it means nothing.

We established a blog for the company to demonstrate expertise in depth, and to keep up with changes in the business climate of the service area. Fortunately, the changes came fast and furious in the media. Rupert Murdoch announced on a visit that "Internet service in Australia is abysmal." Optus went public with plans to form G-9, excluding Telstra. Then the bubble-heads in Parliament passed archaic copyright law amendments.
Nothing drives Internet traffic like other media.

Avoiding any more of the details, we managed to get 70-90 visitors per day to the site within 3 months. Page ranks from Google (2), and Alexa(about 260,000) gained over 6 months or so. The site rose quickly to SERP positions 1-4 in most of the service area. The blog is cited regularly on other blogs. We even saw visits on the blog from Canberra.

While I was away in Hawaii, things were neglected. The number of visitors held pretty solid because of the natural search. PPC campaigns were abandoned though, and 'convertibles' waned.

Overall, a success. With the caveat that it can only improve with more attention
What was found and learned about SEO/SEM in Australia was to be applied to another of Steve's enterprises: Barcode Solutions. This has to be easier. Its market is national and international. (Hope springs eternal. It wasn't...) Sphere: Related Content

Latest figures just like the first...

Hitwise reiterates the search figures for Australia. These numbers seem to hardly change.
Yes, Google-Aus and Google dominate the search engine traffic with more than 84%. (Google-Aus: 68.45%, Google: 14.81%). If anything, Google has increased its dominance in the last year.

Yahoo7 (Yahoo-Aus and TV channel 7) are really pulling out all the stops to try to gain more interest in their offerings, but for the highly profitable SERP numbers (Yahoo-Aus: 3.03%); they've only managed to fall behind their pricey competitors at NineMSN (8.20%).
For anyone looking to market a website to Australia, Google is pretty much the whole ball game - Or is it?
The sophistication of Google's search algorithm is lost in the shallow Australian market (more on this later), but the power of being the icon of Internet search is overwhelming to the raw Australian user. Ever heard anyone say: "I Yahoo'd it."?

MSN has taken the perspective of becoming the high priced spread to maximize profits from its marginal position. Makes sense. This is really Microsoft, after all.
I don't hate Microsoft. They've made too many smart moves not to respect them. I just wish more people would learn about Linux, and make the whole software marketplace more reasonable.
But pricing an ad on MSN at $20,000 a month is ridiculous in Australia. It limits MSN to only big business in a country where 96.4% of registered businesses are small (under $2M gross with less than 5 employees, as defined by the Finance Minister.)

Lead by an Internet-phobic government, you have to wonder when the Australian public will suss this stuff out. The entrepreneurial search engine industry is already beginning to diminish. No one knows how to interpret the regressive copyright laws, and that has scared many out of the market.
Even some university projects have changed their focus from setting up a search engine to producing the software.

Just a raw plug for some SEO/SEM clients:
Short Cut Computers belongs to Steve Trim, a friend who actually paid me to learn this stuff and put it to work for him.
And Steve Trim's other business, Barcode Solutions., which will be my second project. Sphere: Related Content

Fresh SEM in OZ

Fresh SEM in Oz
by Paul Donley

When I started looking into SEO and SEM, I roamed the Net a little to see what the buzz was all about, then - after realizing that I was lost in acronyms and neologisms again - checked out a couple of books from my online reference library and settled down in front of the computer with a strong cup of coffee for some reading.
It didn't take a long time before I realized that I was looking at some grreeeat stuff -- but it didn't pertain to the Land of OZ.

Fresh in Oz
Australia took to the Internet faster, person by person (per capita), than any other country in the world. In 2000-2001, fewer than 10% of Australian households had access to the Net. Last year, 2005, 35% of all Australian households had access; and slightly more, 41%, of Australian businesses - mostly small businesses.
Of those, 65% were using broadband access of one form or the other.
It's been predicted in 2010 that 70% of small businesses in Australia will be on the Net. The Internet will be the most important advertising resource for small business. And Australia has a lot of small, regional and local businesses.

Googled
At this point, however, Australia is new to the Net - and computers.
There have already been a few marketing surges as Australians moved first to replace their older P1 and P2 systems with P4's in order to run XP, then Celeron made a splash, and the next surge is already underway with the dual-core hardware. Households no longer have just one computer. There is usually a desktop and a couple of laptops in most households these days.

All those new computers need access to the Internet, so .. wireless networking is popular. For most households, the first network they'll see will be wireless - at the home or office.

But all this hardware doesn't mean everyone has instantly acquired computer skills. Far from it.
Driven by their children, who see the latest hardware and software in the schools - because both Victoria and NSW are constantly upgrading the school to fulfill campaign promises - households have spent thousands over the past 5 years to acquire computers that no one seems to really know what to do with.
Even the teachers who are running around with those hot new laptops are a little confused. But they sure look impressive!

Let me use the major search engines to illustrate what I mean.
Internationally, Google and Yahoo are neck and neck when it comes to searches. The last figures I saw put Google at 40% and Yahoo! at 43% of all searches. Google, because its name has become synonymous with "search on the Net"; and Yahoo! because they are the best established portal to the Net.
The International figures look something like this. (I made this chart using an online service for school children called Create a Graph from the National Institute for Educational Statistics. It's a free online service.)



Australia is a little different. Since the aussies are new to the Net, they're more susceptible to the buzzwords. They "google" for things.
While Yahoo! and Google pretty much split the International pie; in Australia, Google-Australia has 65% of the searches.
Since the aussies are new kids on the block, many don't realize there is a Google-Australia. About 13% use the original Google site. -- In Australia, Google commands nearly 80% of all online searches.
That is a commanding position.

If, for example, I want to build Internet presence and recognition for a website - based on keywords - by putting their services before 70% of the web, all I need is Google. They command nearly 80%. I can accomplish my goal easily with a Google PPC (point per click) campaign.

Aussies suss it out
As the aussies suss out the Internet, that will change.



Australians follow the trends from America, especially on the Net. It's reasonable to assume that they'll be moving more towards the International market split for searches soon.

Local Directories
Australian governments have spent to provide every large town and region with its own Community Guide - a local directory of business and events. Even local townships and suburbs have their own Community Guides.
Telstra (with vast government subsidies) has developed the Yellow and White pages, then linked both to a national advertising campaign for Sensis.

There are also a number of entrepreneurial search engines and directories that have sprung up.
Although all this activity will not supplant the dominance of Google Australia and Yahoo! Australia, it will serve to nudge the aussies along to suss out the way to search the Net.
Aussies are pretty clewy.
eBay is going to help, too, over the Christmas shopping season. Australians go to eBay for things almost as much as they do to the search engines. A shopper can have a bit of fun with eBay. If they find something on eBay, but want to see the (approximate) price in Australian dollars, all they have to do is add ".au" to the URL - and the price in Australian dollars appears!

How long is it??
This long!
Aussies are moving fast on the Net. But the question for any Internet Marketing campaign is: How long will it be before they are searching like the rest of the world?
A number of factors come into play here quickly. Aussies are notoriously brand loyal. It takes a tsunami or a good hit of dynamite to make them move from something. Then again, there is that pressure to be like the US and UK, which sorta balances it all out.

We can have a bit of a play with another figure, the loyalty numbers, and fuzzy logic to make a good guess.
Google commands a 74% loyalty. Yahoo! gets only about 47%. Neither bad numbers really.
And remember, MSN already has 13% of the searches within Australia through its affiliation with NineMSN.

Let's see what happens to Google.
We start with 65% - the portion of searches Google had in 2005 - and estimate their portion in 2006 to be 74% of 65%, or -- 48%. That leaves a bigger slice of the pie for Yahoo! Australia and NineMSN, along with all those local and regional directories.
If people know what kind of business or service they want, they will learn to turn to local directories because it's quicker. Aussies are very community minded.
Now, if you assume that the searches done on Google US are gonna stay about the same because those folks are looking for something outside Australia, then Google will enjoy about a (48 + 13) 61% share of the searches in 2006. (I gotta wonder how close I'm gonna be. The figures will be out soon.)

Do the same thing for 2007, and the number doesn't track. 74% of 48 plus 13 is .. 35 percent. In order to track with the 2005 International figures, Google will have to pick up a few from somewhere - probably Yahoo!, which can only keep the loyalty of less than half (47%) of its searches.
But the guesstimate still works. It'll take the aussies about two years to suss out the search options on the Net, which sounds about right.
By the end of 2007, aussies will be searching along like the rest of the world.
Where the community directories and entrepreneurs will come into the mix, we'll have to look into in another article.




If the stuff in this blog makes sense to you, visit my website at AEmeritus Relevant Training
because that's where it's all gonna be put in motion.
Just a raw plug for my first SEO clients:
Short Cut Computers belongs to Steve Trim, a friend who actually paid me to learn this stuff and put it to work for him.
And Steve Trim's other business, Barcode Solutions., which will be my second project. Sphere: Related Content

The debate continues about relevant links

A short lament.
It used to be so easy, even if it didn't seem like it at the time. If your business couldn't afford the big budget banner ads on huge portals, to generate links you signed up for an link exchange (which was usually a portal of sorts), webring, and got your site registered on as many directories and search engines as the freebie registration sites could muster. Then started exchanging links.
You did a little research to find complementary services, and sent those sites a letter asking for a link on their site if you'd put one on yours. This was often the fun part.
Because one of the common rules was that 70% of the purchases were from companies and sites that were physically within 70 miles of your company, it became a sort of social program. You had a reason to meet all sorts of people near you!
You exchanged links with them, and made new friends.

While that rule still applies, more and more buyers are willing to purchase from anywhere off the Net. Some significant percentage of buyers only purchase locally still.
You worked this guerrilla style until you made enough money to buy a big banner ad. And usually by then it wasn't traffic and links you were after, it was "transactional visitors", or .. buyers.
Anyway, that's enough of the lament.
Things still work that way. Sorta.

Developments
In the great hunt for links, an changed link with complementary business sites are invaluable but webrings and link exchanges have fallen into disfavor. There is a great debate going on that could cause a lot of change to the Web economy. Not just for webrings and link exchanges, but all affiliate programs.
Affiliate programs traditionally work one of two ways:

• The affiliate network places your ad on either targeted or non-specific sites that are also members of the network that go through their server then are redirected to your site;
• or you set up your own affiliate program, called a "network specific linking network".

Click- throughs are counted, and commissions paid. With an affiliate network running the show, you don't get any link count advantage for your page rank. Their server gets linked from thousands or even tens of thousands of sites.
If you run your own affiliate network though, you end up with many links to your site - and have to pay your own commissions. It's just harder because you have to administer your own program.

Newer Affiliate Networks
Newer affiliate networks have software, called an "affiliate management" application, that you install on your server to direct the click-through to your site. The program is often sold as much on this capability as on the number of links the network can provide. But if the company doesn't emphasize how their network works, ask. And ask your SEO people to watch for these networks. They can usually tell just by checking the links to the affiliate servers and a couple of their clients.

Google in its infinite wisdom has become aware of repititious wording in links. Google watches how quickly links to a site accumulate in order to avoid search engine spam. Since you submit an ad to a link exchange, often for a fee, the same ad ends up repeated all over the Net. If too many links appear in a short time, Google may penalize or even ban your site.
Google has even gone so far as to make a patent filing.

Google now watches to see if too many links appear with identical anchor text, then checks to see if the links disappear quickly. Affiliate networks are automated inserted text and code which expose your link with others in a round table fashion. If you were to join an affiliate network, the number of links to your site would increase dramatically. But the links will appear, then disappear, from a site within a few minutes.
Since Google is doing this sort of thing, you can expect other search engines to adopt the same practice soon.

Complementary business sites
Sending out requests for links is one of the fundamental functions of marketing on the Net. Will this sort of activity trigger Google's anti-spamming defenses? Search engine marketers will have to be careful of the anchor text.

Another consideration is how stringently Google will enforce its rules against linking to banned sites. If another site in the affiliate network has been identified as using spamming tactics, you don't want a link to or from that site. But how will you - as the owner of a site - or your marketing agenty know?
There is a list of banned sites, of course. It's huge. But that is part of the reason you would hire an agent: to make the right decisions for you.

Interesting bit
This was an interesting thing to find. Recently, when one of my clients was setting up her new site and blog, she accidentally entered her site name into the search window. She entered "www.potsandpans.com". (not her site)
What came back was a surprise. There were 14 links to her site! - But her site wasn't finished and had not been submitted to any directories or search engines. In fact, the link to her domain only showed a non-functional page.
Checking later, there were only 4, then 5 links to her site in the same search.
All of the sites appeared to be different, but they contained the same segment of text from her blog, which included anchor text: "..only quality pots and pans are what we want .." (This is only an example. If it actually is a live link, it's an accident.)
It turned out that someone had set up a number of domains about kitchenware, kitchens, and pots, and pointed them to blogs. The made up pages which only contained a Google Adsense ad, and a little nonsense text.

Every link that showed had been modified as if it were generated by PHP. For example, instead of "http://www.kittykitchens.com", the linked page was "http://www.kittykitchens.com/?goop=nonsense". That last bit might be used to track a session.
If you've ever wondered what happens when a page is generated by a content management program, that's it. The server makes an identical page on the server. The page is called "http://www.kittykitchens.com/?goop=nonsense", but it's only there for a short while.
That's how she found 14 links, and later there were only 4, then 5.
There were literally hundreds of these blogs, with about 70 pages on each. The software just looped through the sites - There were at least 85 of them at my count. - and tried to generate a fake page for every page. (at least 85 X 70 = 5950!)
This was automated blog spamming in a big way!
No wonder Google has become concerned.

Link Quality, not Quantity
Not many people think about it, but many ads on a webpage dilute the relevancy of the content. In the example above, because the webpages contained only random snippets other than the Google ads, there was no relevant content other than the snippet injected into the page to generate the link!
The old days system couldn't help but produce relevant links since there weren't so many ways to produce irrelevant links.

Webrings are usually targeted within an industry or interest. But you don't hear much about webrings any more.
Affiliate networks are still a good source of links, there's no reason to bail out of them just yet. Like all things in business, you just have to know what you're dealing with and steer clear of the dangerous stuff.

Industry effects
Google will find some resistance in being too stringent about these new rules since Ad Words and AdSense are simply a new way of working affiliate networks in the final analysis. The same can be argued for all PPC (pay per click) services.

Google may find itself having to explain why it is trying to run the only affiliate network on the Net.

If the stuff in this blog makes sense to you, visit my website at AEmeritus Relevant Training because that's where it's all gonna be put in motion.
Just a raw plug for my first SEO clients:
Short Cut Computers belongs to Steve Trim, a friend who actually paid me to learn this stuff and put it to work for him.
And Steve Trim's other business, Barcode Solutions., which will be my second project. Sphere: Related Content