Professional SEO with PHP

My copy of this book by Jaimie Sirovich and Cristian Darie arrived a couple weeks ago, roughly.

This is a very good read for SEOs of intermediate and advanced levels especially. It covers a range of topics, including a couple chapters on one subject near and dear to my heart: localization (internationalization, globalization etc.). This is a matter I fell in love with back when companies dedicated to it were springing up all over in the 90s, integrating with leading enterprise content and document management platforms. I got into it enough to have a few hits and misses, and I'll say again what I told the press back then on the occasions when I'd chance to speak on it: This is a critical area still in its relative infancy.

There are still a ton of highly trafficked sites out there dealing with rudimentary issues like de-concatenation of logic for proper linguistic syntax, culturally sensitive design and information architecture, and user interfaces made for readability despite text swell as an inevitable by-product of translation.

The evolution of SEO and its dedicated best practices only adds one more twist to the Web Marketing cocktail, when juxtaposed against localization issues. These two chapters are solid reference for situations whenever the two disciplines might intersect.

  • Chapter 11 clarifies distinctions between cloaking, geo-targeting and IP delivery. It's worth a read for any site with a strategy aimed for truly going global.
  • Chapter 12 is very brief, but is a handy reference for some of the basic essentials like language and region specification.

Other, more general pros of the book include code snippets moreover available from Wrox.

Last thing I must mention is, frankly almost all my independent projects nowadays are in PHP whereas by day I tend to work on ones where .NET and AJAX are more common watchwords... but fortunately the duo also has a sister version coming out for the ASP oriented. Nice move there, dudes.

W00t!

Professional SEO with PHP

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"Wikki wikki wikki wikki!"...

"Shut up!"... "(wikki wikki wikki wikki)"...

First, props to anyone who remembers that song. Mark my words: breakdancing will be back someday.

Second, thanks to Jeannette in NYC for reminding me about this recent Wikipedia change. My POV:

Wikipedia is an awesome site, oozing with content and domain trust. Engines have always had a great appetite for it virtually since its inception, and hence for a while now, yes as a place to get links it's been coveted by SEOs and besieged by spammers.

That they've now made all their external links forced-NOFOLLOW is no shocker. Things had gotten to the point where, to counter the vigilance of their Link Nazis failed writers proudly unsupervised Deletionists splendid editors, spammers and non-spammers alike were sicking cron jobs on Wikipedia in order to make links stick (links that automagically reappear every hour/night if/when removed have a way of wearing out humans eventually... Mercilessly fresh!). :mrgreen:

However while I expect this will deter some, it won't deter the more experienced who have made a habit of trying to learn the various dialects of Googlespeak. Several seasoned SEOs believe the NOFOLLOW standard is misunderstood, being as much a social engineering move as a technical one. In other words, Google wants the world to dismiss such links as useless for natural ranking, but behind the scenes clicks on them still count towards getting good relevancy credit under certain circumstances... like when they come from users with Google Toolbar installed for example. That the West Coast G is quietly watching and applying all kinds of data via such means is 99.99% certain, as they'd be foolish not to. I recall all the way back to SES '05: Rand's eloquent take on it was "Evil, evil, evil!" 👿 and he wasn't the first to have taken that stance.

Formally Yahoo sells advertisers behavioral targeting options. Google offers users Personalized Search options, and doesn't sell advertisers behavioral targeting tools... yet. If/when they do make an official play for that turf though, what would be their competitive advantage against Yahoo's version; what would inform their product to give it an edge? Yahoo's been gathering scary gobs of data about what you, me, and everyone else on the Web does for longer than Google has. A crux of Google's brilliant strategy: Yahoo tried to be the Web's premier destination site, the cool club to hang at. Not Google, though. On their domain it's "get in, get out," but pay attention to the Web at large and it becomes obvious they're everywhere pimping ads... (BTW if anyone has any estimates on how many Adsense ads are out there for every YPN ad, please do forward). As for MSN, well they've tried to be just about everything over the years. It's part of why they're still way behind the search game.

Google gathers all kinds of data about people in many ways, for different reasons. Aside from if/when using their Toolbar, any time we're logged into Google accounts and/or have their cookies on our machines, our actions help inform their business (tiny bit by bit, cumulatively). Consider those ads popping into our Gmail - ever eerily at least somewhat on-topic for whatever a viewed thread is - to be a hint of things to come. They may not be collecting personally identifiable information but certainly the CTR they have to measure there could serve more than just setting CPCs for advertisers. Those Blogger accounts all now "upgraded" to Google accounts? Yep. Google Analytics? Fine for White Hat if one (and/or one's clients) can entrust data with Google without flinching, but a potentially fatal misstep for n00b Black Hats.

Sidebar: The idea of constantly aggregating, analyzing and leveraging data is a cornerstone for Google. They live and breathe it, culturally, strategically and tactically applying it to many parts of their operation... just like all the rest of us in the search business, and more power to them for it after all. It's not like they don't make kick-ass stuff technologically, despite how many of us have love/hate relationships with what being Googley seems to be sometimes. (For example, one hiring trick they've seemingly long used has been to consciously keep want ads posted for up to years after respective positions have been actually already filled. Enabled via auto-responders, self-running online interviews etc., the ruse is one of the ways they try to be always pinpointing who and where the world's top talent is. Their files are always getting updated in this way, in case of growth and/or departures etc.)

These details should be noted regardless of whatever Google formally offers advertisers in the coming months/years or not. Among other things, they've refined the art of making the complex look and feel simple while sprinkling in a few mindfucks along the way because they can. This is why in working with them simplicity is often a good way to look back upon their actions, through assumptions at the least, or even healthy paranoia perhaps (depending on the nature of one's projects). There are even certain Firefox extensions for SEO work that are preferred over others which have been found to leave unwanted footprints.

Despite whatever technical truths of the moment lie behind NDAs at the 'plex, Wikipedia's NOFOLLOW defense will probably quiet things down initially at least. It will not however, become a definitive silencer.

As of now are all outbound links from the english Wikipedia Site using the NOFOLLOW attribute, no exceptions. No matter where you place it, Article Page, Talk Page, User Page, Project Page, whatever. No Link will get any credit at the major search engines.
- Search Engine Journal

Meh. It was Google as opposed to a neutral entity that invented NOFOLLOW, and their market share depends on their index staying more relevant than the other guys any way it can, so reading between their lines means there's more to it than that. Bots ignoring links is one thing, credit and how to get it is another, and I doubt the two are in such a cleanly monogamous relationship. Normally, under certain conditions inbound NOFOLLOW links probably still help relevancy scoring... and even if not they sure as hell don't hurt traffic anyway!

It's the Flava, Life Sava!
Don't Believe the Hype!

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Less Bullshit, More Master Baiting

This is my New Year's Resolution. Here's why:

When blogger and former AOL/Weblogs exec Jason Calacanis reportedly pronounced "SEO is bullshit" at SES Chicago last year, it fanned the flames of the SEO scene, enough so that he had to post a follow-up explanation shortly afterward.
While it wasn't a particularly informed or informative post as much as it was a defensive one, he did admit in it that he's no SEO expert. He did make some valid points on the value of content, and valid layman's points on other items. What's especially noteworthy though was that it got him Dugg well, and other movement that gave him some infamy link love for a bit. While he got served backlash for his words, others in the industry came to his defense however (I'm tempted to say "it's all links, it's all good." If only it all were so simple!)...

Q: SEO is... what?

A: Calacanis was talking about and also indirectly referring to:

  1. how content is king, but to rule wisely means to have uniqueness, depth, breadth, relevancy, character and change frequency.
  2. core on-site best practices (crawler-friendliness) including fundamental on-page tasks like proper anchor text, linking structure, Titles and META description tags. I won't go as far as to totally agree with with Andy Hagans on his "all SEOs know META tags are dead," (META keywords tags are but META descriptions are anything but). I also won't totally concur with what sounded a little to me like light prodding of Aaron Wall's on-site SEO consulting when Shoemoney, fresh out of speaking with The New York Times himself, interviewed the man with the shadow plan, Quadzilla himself on Webmaster Radio. In spite of being sold through a stereotypically uglier-than-sin sales letter page, Aaron's book is one of the best on the market. I find that everything there is to know about on-page / on-site SEO is a lot to try to swallow in just one afternoon, especially for SEO n00bs. That's why I offer hefty, 30+ point site-side Best Practices audits that can take a day or two to turn around, so I also pass around condensed CliffsNotes-like versions of the most important items. I'm not sure SEOs selling basic on-page work as a service "really is trash" all the time, even if it's the kind of work I often advise clients learn to do for themselves as much as possible. However, I do agree on the point that charging people no more than $5K tops for some primer empowerment is a great call. So a) 😉 SEOs are routinely baiting for buzz and b) we need to keep our sights trained on getting to where we're selling more than just strategy guidance, best practices, keywords research/analysis and titles/METAs work etc. ...Much of it is SEO 101 i.e. common sense work, largely about pragmatically demystifying and simplifying what might look on the surface to be complex, and we should avoid spending most of our SEO time dicking around with the production parts of it. It's not a question of resources. It's a matter of our being capable of bigger, better, more creative, advanced and innovative things with the craft... and at experienced SEOs' rates it's the honorable thing to do. So as a vegetarian SEO I say "Teach a man to fish, but don't eat so much fish."

All client types should be at least considering organic search, hard. In worst cases, companies who don't follow it but still want considerable traffic from engines will have to simply buy it outright (SEM). PPC and/or PI will be their only options.

This is why for example, clients who plant roots in being all about pushing their brand through dazzling sensory experiences (heavy on rich media eye / ear candy but low on hypertext and hyperlinks) are never great SEO prospects, if even prospects at all. When the information worthiness of what a company is online is eclipsed by what their presence "feels" like, and/or when the level of articulation required by what they have to say is eclipsed by the requirements of how they say it, chances are good that the company isn't all that qualified a lead yet. SEOs' respective challenges include helping clients understand and navigate disciplinary trade-offs and make smart investment allocations early on. Not just for their sake, but also for ours: We must protect ourselves by preventing dangerous assumptions ahead of time ("What do you mean my site can't be optimized because it's all Flash?!?" etc.), and online marketers certainly shouldn't let them creep in by not hitting all possible Discovery angles on new accounts in particular ("You built it that way, so why didn't you tell me about that limitation before we started the project?!?"). When priests surprise parishioners with offers of baptism by fire, parishioners start thinking about leaving the church. SEO really isn't for every client / project. There's nothing wrong with that, as long as we SEOs try to never let it bite anyone below the Bible belt.

Q: What is "Master Baiting?"

A: Link Baiting done right, every time.

"Master Baiting" is a running joke in the SEO community. Whomever thought it up, just like who the Master Baiters are, depends on who you ask. As far as I know it was Quads.

Q: How delightfully juvenile. Fine, so what then is Link Baiting, already?

A:

For a long time much of SEO - aside from on-site matters and keyword research to inform content - was all about link building: getting links to one's site(s) from out on the greater Web, with both quality and quantity in mind. For example, a link from a popular page on a popular site is great, but normally hard or very hard to get (unless you rent or buy it from the site owner which IMHO somewhat misses the point of SEO, almost like cheating). On the other end of the spectrum, dropping a comment into someone's blog or signing their guestbook might let you place a link back to yourself, but by itself it might not help much. Perhaps it's being force-set to NOFOLLOW by the site owner to try to discourage spammers, and/or their site simply may not carry much relevancy and/or trust with the engines (there are many blogs and guestbooks out there that have been and are continually spammed to death, so engines are constantly working to improve their detection capabilities). With low quality links, many are needed to make impact on rankings: from thousands to millions of them depending on the competitiveness of a given subject.

Often using their own software made specifically for it, freelancers can always be found on ScriptLance and similar sites selling different kinds of link building. Like many of them, firms like iProspect do too. With or without good tools though, effective manual link building can become a bit of a PITA: time consuming, tedious, and at toughening failure ratios making it harder than ever. I've noticed SEOs in the West increasingly sending this work to contractors in India and Eastern Europe. In scaling and optimizing for profitability, SEOs are getting more fetishistic about the potential of automations and outsourcing and link building is a prime example of it.

Recent years have raised the sister concept of link baiting: The development and deployment of content made specifically to make people feel compelled to link to it, of their own volition and publicly. Think of it as the most famous form of viral SEO.

Link baiting can be done in many different ways, on just about any topic, and it's exceptionally hot right now. Blogging about link baiting is in itself link bait at the moment. Everyone and their unborn grandchildren is putting out how-to information on it, touting their "Top 20 Types of Linkbait" etc. lists (lists are the most common tactic), each with their own sets of suggested angles i.e. "hooks" (humor, contrary, attack, tools, news, etc.).

Link Baiting & Building: The Yin & Yang of SEO

Building is to baiting as pushing is to pulling. Balanced natural trafficking demands both.

Q: Why must we all start Master Baiting now?

A:

  • As SEM continues on the up and up, steadily up will go average CPCs and levels of competition. The more entry barriers develop SEM, the more clients will turn their attention toward SEO as a potential alternative, despite its comparatively greater complexity and often slower, harder-to-measure returns. The more they do, the more prepared we'll need to be with a bag of great ideas to bring to the table.
  • The notion that SEO is a squarely technical concern without very creative needs is a Web 1.0 myth. Dated = death; when it comes to being able stay in any kind of business even Black Hat is better than being Old Hat here. Embracing link baiting is an effective and fun way to keep up with where things are headed.
  • Web 2.0 poses a new level of technical challenge for SEO per all its user-generated content, rich media proliferation, and increasing adoption of AJAX which poses URL complications. As the Web gets more technical SEO gets more technical, granted... but it also gets more trained on social engineering, also sometimes more stealth. Great bait will be needed filling between areas of sites that can only be optimized so much, and it will also be needed to snag audiences numbed by and/or adverse to more traditional marketing (Note I didn't say "advertising").


Q: Next Steps?

A: Get Organized, and Get Out There.

Aggregate, evaluate and add to all the link baiting ideas feeding the space now. Core methodology, with best practices breakout for blogging and perhaps other vitals, are in progress. Be part of the process.

Great bait can be anything from widgets to video parodies to list types. The production crux is there must always some kind of element where there's some attractive machine readable content, serving as the bait itself otherwise at a minimum, the bait hook and descriptor. Title methods BTW are especially important to build out (Ex: "10 Things I Love About [SUBJECT]", "Why [SUBJECT-VERB] is a Waste of Time", etc.).

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Based out of Northern California, bl.asphemo.us is a bl.og dedicated to the advocacy and study of high-impact, data driven marketing disciplines and related concerns: Analytics and Data Mining, Marketing Automation, Integrated Advertising (targeting, retargeting), Demand Generation and Lead Nurturing, Social Media / Social Engineering (Crowd-hacking) and the new PR, Privacy, Security, CRM, SEO / SEM, CRO, ROI... more TLAs (three letter acronyms) than any sane person's daily lexicon should include.

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