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SES San Jose Foosball Smackdown Results!

8/25/2008 by 1 Comment

Last week at SES San Jose we held an event we dubbed the Search Engine Foosball Smackdown. This was a heated event between foosers from Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!. Each search engine sent some of its best foosers to see who would be the dominant search engine in the market (well the foosball market at least).

It is easy to see why, as the winner got the chance to take home the coveted Stonetemple Cup. Here is John Biundo of STC holding that rare beauty:

Stonetemple Cup Photo

The elimination round knocked out Microsoft, although they put up a valiant fight. This left Google and Yahoo for the finals. Here is a look at the intensity of the players:

Yahoo vs. Google Foosball 1

All photos were taken by Kelsey Jarboe of SEO-PR.

The Yahoo team of Daniel Wong and Jake Rosenberg took home the cup after a tough finals match. You can see a photo of the happy winners over on the Google Webmaster Central blog.

Fun was had by all. In fact, Nathan Johns and Jan Backes of Google got more than just a second place finish. They also scored the best against John Biundo and I in our Beat the Pros challenge. They in factg scored a major first. They were the first team to actually beat us in the challenge. (OK, but pride forces me to point out that we beat them in the rematch!).

For that indiscretion (beating us that is), they each won an iPod Touch. Sweet!

Filed Under: Google, Yahoo

Latest Interview: Google’s Maile Ohye

8/24/2008 by 3 Comments

As is my normal policy, no interview was published last week, as many in the industry have way too much to deal with when there is a major search industry trade show taking place, such as SES San Jose. However, this week I have the pleasure of publishing my recent interview with Maile Ohye, a Senior Support Engineer at Google.

Our conversation including quite a bit of semi-advanced stuff on Google Webmaster Tools, and also a discussion of the recent indexing improvements that Google has made with regard to Flash. Once you have read it, do use the space below to ask any questions or make any comments.

Filed Under: Google, SEO, Webmaster Tools

SES San Jose 2008

8/15/2008 by 2 Comments

Thousands of people are going to make their way out to Search Engine Strategies San Jose and those of us at Stone Temple Consulting are no exception. Both Eric Enge (me) and John Biundo will be there.

As announced yesterday on the Search Engine Watch blog, we have organized a search engine foosball smackdown. This is a challenge match between Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft (we hope MS is in, Nate! Let us know!). The energy should be high, and search engine pride is at stake.

We are also running our usual Beat the Pros challenge. The team that scores the most points against us (or that beats us by the biggest score!) will win a pair of iPod Touchs. SWEET! In addition, I will be speaking on the Best Secrets of Search panel on Thursday at 1:30 PM ET. Come by and say hi. We have some great speakers, and great presentations being made on that panel.

Overall, I expect that SES San Jose will be a great event. Tuesday has a landmark event, with Danny Sullivan, Matt Cutts, and Robert Scoble headlining an Orion Keynote Panel on Tuesday at 1:30.

This is one of many great sessions that you can see at the event. Hope to see you there!

Filed Under: Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Strategies, SEO

Spreading the Field

8/14/2008 by 1 Comment

Aaron Wall recently wrote a post on Search Engine Land titled How To Get New Web Sites To Rank Quickly. It’s a good post with good advice in it, and worth a read. Of course, I did not start this post just to tell you that …

I really like the ideas of going after long tail terms, and less competitive terms. It certainly makes sense when you are thinking about how to enter a competitive market space. However, let’s expand on the concept a bit.

Let’s assume a couple of things:

  1. You want to play to win the big bucks
  2. You are willing to be patient

Assuming both of those things are true, then you can take Aaron’s advice, but not give up on the big terms either. I refer to the concept as “spreading the field”. Yes you implement a long tail strategy, and you implement some less competitive terms as well. But, you should also go after the big terms.

Think of it as a continuum, ranging from head terms (very difficult to compete for) to long tail terms (easy to compete for). You want to have a strategy that addresses all parts of the continuum. You should implement:

  1. Content that will address lots of long tail terms
  2. Content for not so long tail terms
  3. Pages to get medium tail terms
  4. ….
  5. Pages and content for hard to win on “head” terms

Use the long tail terms to fund your site in the short term. Then the not so long tail terms to fund the next stage, and so forth. The idea is to play to win the big boys game, but make some money in the short term to keep cash coming in so you can keep investing in and growing your site. It’s the best of both worlds.

Filed Under: Content Development, SEO

Latest Interview: EveryZing’s Tom Wilde

8/11/2008 by Leave a Comment

This week’s interview is with EveryZing’s Tom Wilde. Tom is a long time industry veteran, having worked at NameMedia, Miva, and Terra Lycos. Our conversation focused on Video SEO. You can make any comments you may have on the interview below.

Filed Under: SEO

Risk Management: Transitioning Away From Paid Links

8/5/2008 by 3 Comments

It’s well known that we do not buy links when we do link building for our clients. However, there are many times when we take on a client that has been buying links for some time, and they want to transition away from buying links. So should they stop cold turkey?

We usually advise that they don’t stop cold turkey. Google has an interesting problem. They don’t really want to ban a site for buying links, unless the site is really egregious about it. This leaves them in the position of discounting the paid links they detect, and leaving the rest alone.

I can’t tell you what percentage of paid links that Google succeeds in detecting, whether it be algorithmically, human review (as perhaps spawned by an algorithmic flag), or due to a paid links report in Webmaster Tools. There is way too much evidence out there that it is not 100% of paid links.

Search on any hyper-cometitive term, and you will see sites that are winning through paid links, hit counters, sponsored WordPress templates, and more. That said, my opinion remains that this is a short term game, and one best avoided. You can’t win with these strategies forever, simply because your visibility will increase over time.

The bottom line is that if you are buying links today, and you want to transition away from that to improve the long term risk profile of your site, you need a transition plan. Don’t simply drop all your paid links at once. Phase them our over time as you replace them with organic links earned based on the merit of your content or tools.

Unlike addictive drugs, such as heroin, you do have options other than going cold turkey. Nonetheless, it takes a lot of discipline to make this type of transition. It’s still the best thing you can do for the long term health of your site. Just do it intelligently, and you can transition from the risky approach you may be taking now, to an approach that is more secure for the long term.

PS: None of this works unless you have great content or tools to earn those natural links, so you need to have that in place before you start this process as well.

Filed Under: linkbuilding, SEO
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Yahoo vs. Google Foosball 1