The Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide

In the wild west of Search Engine Optimization, the range of SEO expertise, experience, competency, ability, productivity, and (yes) humility is wide and remarkable. As the number of websites worldwide continues to soar, and Google punishes spammers and poor content sites with Panda, Penguin and other dangerous virtual beast attacks, the need for good SEO knowledge, capability and practice becomes more and more important.

The Google SEO Guide: Helping with SERP

Google has a great tool to help us achieve SEO success, and possibly reach SERP "Search Engine Nirvana" where our webpages dominate our competitors. I am happy to say that many, many of the webpages I am responsible for are thriving and in a state of "SEO bliss", happily and brutally crushing most competitor webpages for key search term rankings in organic search. But this is where objective humility becomes so important. I take nothing for granted, absolutely nothing! Today's success in SEO can be tomorrow's defeat if the steps in the Google SEO guide are not followed diligently.

The Google SEO guide won't give away top secrets which automatically rank your site first for queries in Google. This is no surprise. However, following the best practices in the guide make it easier for search engines to crawl, index and understand your website and its content.

This statement from Google SEO Guide really sums up the formula for success with SEO:

"Search engine optimization is often about making small modifications to parts of your website. When viewed individually, these changes might seem like incremental improvements, but when combined with other optimizations, they could have a noticeable impact on your site's user experience and performance in organic search results." 

In other words, successful SEO takes dedication, knowledge, skill, education, work ethic, talent, desire, patience, perseverance, objective humility and more. Make sure you and your SEO team have these key attributes in abundance. Then get going!

Download the Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide.

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Young Scientist Builds a Better Search Engine

Seventeen-year-old Nicholas Schiefer is on his way to developing the next Google search engine for the social-media world. The Intel Foundation Young Scientist Award winner sits down with the WSJ to explain. This kid is obviously very intelligent, and listening to him talk about his idea reminds one of Jobs, Gates, Brin, Zuckerberg, and so many others who helped drive the highly creative and disruptive tech and internet revolution and change the world.
Be prepared for a short discussion on the Markov Chain, a mathematical system that undergoes transitions from one state to another, between a finite or countable number of possible states. Watch this space, and watch the young Mr. Nicholas Schiefer in the coming years!
Connect with Erik Holladay on Linkedin.

Inside a Google Search Engine Meeting - Video

Google offers a real-life glimpse into a Search Engine Meeting inside the Mountain View HQ. You might recognize some of the attendees... Matt Cutts, for example. 

Lights, Camera, SERP: Google Quality Launch Review Meeting

The meeting occurred on December 1, 2011 at a weekly Google “Quality Launch Review” meeting.
Meeting participants gathered in Mountain View and joined on videoconference from Moscow, New York, Zurich, Seoul, Haifa, Tokyo, and other locations.

Obviously, Google released this video because there are no hidden, amazing, newly revealed algorithm secrets to encourage black-hat spammers and all SEO practitioners to 'game' the system. But this is still a remarkable, if transitory, lifting of the Google curtain of secrecy. I very much enjoyed watching this..... talented Google denizens coming to life.

Why do I feel like I'm a fly on the wall of a secretive Federal Reserve Open Market Committee meeting? LOL.

A very special thanks to Brandignity for bringing this to my attention!

You can watch this Google Video at:
http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/03/video-search-quality-meeting-uncut.html

Connect with Erik Holladay on Linkedin.

Monitoring Kids' Usage of Social Media

Alternative Social Media Sites enjoy growth as kids try to avoid Mom on Facebook. 

Facebook has become mainstream, going way beyond its initial avant-garde college student origins. Early adoption by other young adults was then followed by teenagers and tweeners. But now with Mom and Grandma busy posting updates, photos and playing Farmville on Facebook, the 'cool' appeal has worn off for these younger demographics... Facebook has become way too inclusive for their tastes... they don't want parents and other relatives or older adults see them doing or posting things which can get them into trouble. This short video from WSJ helps explain the current trends in tweener and teenager social media usage. Learn more at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303916904577377813269480788.html

Connect with Erik Holladay on Linkedin.

Negative SEO: Search Engine War By Other Means

Here is a great video to watch for any serious SEO web-marketing manager: "Negative SEO: Myths, Realities, and Precautions - Whiteboard Friday", by Rand Fishkin, CEO & co-founder of SEOmoz. A great review of some of the darker arts of black-hat SEO, and how to protect your websites from negative SEO attack.

Connect with Erik Holladay at Linkedin.

Google Video shows 5 common mistakes in SEO - - and 6 Good Ideas

Google doesn't reveal any top secrets for SEO (why would they?), but this is great common sense and advice for everyone who is attempting to gain high organic search results on Google.

Here is the Google Webmaster Central Blog site for this very good overview SEO video. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/03/five-common-seo-mistakes-and-six-good.html

SERP Savvy Success: Number One out of 43.3 Million Pages

Focusing on organic search optimization can pay big SERP dividends. 

Thanks to precise, concise and relevant webpage content sitting in well-designed, refreshed, and maintained websites, I've been enjoying for some years many, many high search engine results page (SERP) results for many, many key search phrases... across multiple key market, service, technical and geographic niches.

Searching for SERP.

Today was a stellar example of SERP savvy success; a Google search result run today yielded an outstanding example of just how valuable effective SEO efforts can be. For a key service search phrase (three words), this specific webpage ranks number one out of 43,300,000 other webpages indexed by Google.

The search term is rather generic, which explains the 43.3 million indexed webpages. But the term has strong business value for our lead generation efforts. Because of our quality page content and additional related content on other pages in the website, along with multiple other web factors in our control and out of our control, Google's algorithm has decided our webpage was the most relevant for that particular search. Hooray!

Now it is time to put things back into a realistic perspective. One can never gloat about SEO for long. Search Engine Marketing success can never be taken for granted. You have to walk and/or run just to keep your position. Stop good SEO and you'll slide down the rankings over time.

Last week I created a new companion webpage for the superstar webpage, and the new page has had a strong debut at #10 SERP results out of 750,000 indexed pages. This is good, but not quite SERP nirvana yet. Will time and patience bring that page-rank up in the next few weeks, or do I have to revisit that page, slightly re-engineer it, tweak it, and see what happens next?

High SERP results are only part of a total SEO lead generation effort. Ranking is just a step in the process, a vital one, but just one step of many. After you have their attention with a high SERP you need to start selling. Important webpage selling features include having well-written content which your actual potential customers, not just search engine algorithims, will understand and be favorably impressed with. Having strong niche educational, feature, benefit and call-to-action content is important. Having good website usability and navigation is another plus. There is much more to consider besides SERP success.

SEO success is great, but it is wise to always look ahead and behind - - your 'aware' competitors are trying to chase you down and pass you up.

Connect with Erik Holladay on Linkedin.

Google Adwords Approaches Infinity

Adwords Account Limits now let's you add "3 Million Keywords" to your Account.

3 Million Keywords and Counting.....

I just read Google Adwords' "Account Limits" web-page and I'm impressed. Effectively, for most marketeers and reasonably sane people, Google has reached near-infinity in terms of options available.... moving beyond mere stars and galaxies and into big-bang cosmic dust clouds when it comes to how massive you want to make your Adword campaigns.

I've been successfully managing Adwords accounts and campaigns targeting global, regional, language, and niche markets and geographies since 2003. Adwords is an extremely effective way to generate leads, advertise, and brand your services and products. Paid Search (Adwords, Bing) is one of the major pillars of Search Engine Marketing, along with (of course) Organic Search Optimization.

Newly updated information on Adwords account limits is very impressive:

AdWords account limits:
These are the limits for an AdWords account:
10,000 campaigns
20,000 ad groups per campaign
5,000 keywords per ad group
4 million active or paused ads per account
3 million keywords per account
10,000 location targets
100,000 active ad extensions per account
1.3 million references to ad extensions

Google goes on to say "Most advertisers don't reach this limit". Indeed..... I hope they are right because managing such massive accounts effectively and efficiently would require a small army to run it, along with a huge spend budget. At least now you know you'll likely never run out of keyword, campaign and ad group options with Adwords!
Learn more at Adwords Account Limits.
Learn more about using negative search terms for positive effect: Negative is Positive with Google Adwords

Executives Mistakenly Avoid Social Networks - WSJ Video

How Google's New Search Works - WSJ