Jeff Woelker : Chicago SEO, SEM, and Online Marketing Consultant

Last week, I was priveleged enough to be able to attend Google’s Reaction B2B Summit. Overall, it was an amazing experience. Google’s campus is something to behold, if you’ve never been. A full service dining hall, cafe’s in each building, outdoor work areas, lecture halls, exercise equipment, a volleyball court, bike’s you can ride wherever you’d like, haircuts on site, dry cleaning on site, wireless everywhere - pretty much everything a geek could desire and that’s only the handful of buildings I was able to see.

Unfortunately, upon arriving, we were asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement, which is completely understandable. I’ll just say that the speakers were fantastic, I was able to meet several really smart, interesting people who I’d to meet up with again very soon if they are in Chicago (@socialjulio and @ryandeshazer, amongst others) and that I’ll definitely be going back next year, if my gracious hosts once again extend the invitation. I’m definitely disappointed that I missed day two, but I had my own fun with rescheduling flights and hanging out in airports all day.

Check out some of the pics I was able to snap during my visit below.
Did you attend? How did you think it went?

Created with flickrSLiDR.

So I saw this video this morning from TechCrunch and it shows a new search interface that Google is testing out more widely. I remember hearing about this last year and thought, I’d rather not. Seeing it again still kind of leaves me with that opinion. Here are my hesitations:

1. User Interface - Please don’t do this to the current interface. It’s kind of ugly. The reason I go to Digg is because I expect this kind of nuttiness. I go to Google because I want information, not a bunch of buttons to push.
2. Politics - There is a lot of competition out there for top search results. I’m assuming that if this is fully rolled out that voting up and down will only be a marginal part of the search ranking, or if you vote up or down or add/remove results, that it will only effect your ranking views when you are logged into Google.

My gut tells me that this is just another product team project that won’t make it all the way to the homepage. Only time will tell though.

Update: I received an email from Dan Lewis, an employee of Wikia Search, and he said that Wikia Search has been doing a lot of this stuff for a while now. Check them out when you have a second.

So recently I’ve been really getting into microblogging (aka lifestreaming or twittering). I briefly tried out Twitter a few months ago, but didn’t really get into it. I didn’t see the value aside from letting people know I was going to grocery store or reading a book. Since then though, I’ve seen the light. Now granted, it has a lot of uses, but be forewarned, once you put your toe into the twitter pond, it can quickly become a deluge of data, a inundation of information, a massive amount of media, a…well, you get the point.

These tools are great ways to stay on top of those conversations and still maintain some sanity and keep your job. Let’s go through some of the tools that I use every day:

Ping.fm:
First, Ping is fantastic! If you don’t already have an account, sign up today. There have been a few other status updating services, but this one is by far the best. It allows you to update as many statuses as you want, at once. The one caveat to this though is that it’s really good for saving time, but if you tailor your message to each individual community, it’s still probably best to visit each site individually. (i.e. I post stuff to Twitter and Friendfeed that I would not necessarily post to LinkedIn.)

Friendfeed
Friendfeed, if you’re not already familiar, is a social media aggregator. You supply feeds from your social media universe (Flickr, Twitter, LinkedIn, Netflix, Vimeo, YouTube, etc. etc. etc.) and it pulls in all of your activity, as well as anyone else who you want to follow on Friendfeed (ala Twitter functionality). Beyond just following, Friendfeed also has intelligent suggestions built in, whereby if I am following say Jeremiah Owyang or Adam Ostrow, it will also show me what their friends are doing as well. I’m assuming this is done based on these people I’m following, interacting with their friends in some manner, which tells Friendfeed to also suggest this content. If someone has a better idea, I’d love to know. Maybe Bret knows.

Plurk:
Plurk is another Twitter clone and there’s been much back and forth as to whether Twitter is better or whether Plurk is better. At the end of the day, Twitter is better because of two factors. First to market and lack of “karma”. Karma is a fun idea that Plurk tried to implement, but which has a divisive effect.  You either love it and stick around, or hate it and leave quickly. I was of the latter camp and didn’t bother to come back. Now, I still update Plurk as part of Ping.fm settings, but it doesn’t go beyond that. It’s again, mostly a content redistribution channel with some Friendfeed functionality. The one thing I will give them credit for is an interesting take of the time stream interface. I also like their quirky graphic design sense and built in user incentive chotchkies.

Adobe Air
Ok, so maybe this isn’t an official twitter application, but since it’s launch, I’ve seen some fantastic implementations of the Adobe Air platform which enable applications to make the jump from the web to the desktop. I’m currently running Pandora Desktop, Tweet Deck, Twhirl, and a few others currently.

Twhirl
I actually installed Tweet Deck first and then Twhirl, but I wanted to feature this one first, as it’s become my default Twitter and Friendfeed status monitors. The only thing I would like to see next is a Ping.fm feature incorporated into Twhirl, so I can update each site at once directly from the Twhirl interface. If anyone knows if or when this is coming, let me know.

Tweet Deck
I installed Tweet Deck to see if it was any better/worse than Twhirl. Well, it’s pretty much the same, but without the Friendfeed feature. So I still have it, but don’t use it that often.

Summize:
Summize is great in that it provides better filtering and search functionality than Twitter itself. Actually, scratch that, as those are now one in the same. Guess Twitter caught on to what was needed.

So what’s been my experience and how does it translate into professional/business use?
Well, so far, I can’t say enough good things about it. I’ve seen my attention stream steadily dwindling from email, to blogs, and now microblogging. It provides quick informational segments, which I can digest quickly and easily, while still maintaining my productivity. By installing Twhirl, Twitter and Friendfeed updates come directly to my desktop, instead of having to go back to each respective website and refresh, refresh, refresh. Now, what does that mean for a monetization model for each of these companies? Well, it’s going to come down to either subscription models or some kind of advertising either integrated into the platform itself or each feed.

Granted, there is a lot of noise that occurs on a daily basis, so you have to be cognizant of that. However, it also offers a pulse about the industry and where people’s foci’s are for any given day. Take the last few days for example, when you couldn’t take two breaths before someone was talking about 3G or iPhone apps.

If you’re looking to network with industry leaders, find additional informational resources, learn about industry opinions, or get some quick feedback - these are fantastic tools. But as always, remember to respect the community you are interacting with and interact often. Even if you are not a rockstar today, everyone has to start somewhere.

Saw this earlier today as part of Robert Scoble’s visit to Microsoft for the Pro Photo Summit. It’s a search engine called TinEye. The concept behind it is that TinEye uses a sophisticated algorithm to find “photo footprints”. I already signed up for a free trial, and the results are pretty cool. The way it works is, you upload a photo or provide a URL for an image, let’s say the Eiffel tower. TinEye takes that image and compares it to images it has already indexed and provides matches. The cool part though is that these matches don’t have to be identical copies, they can also be partials. So you might get images of the Eiffel tower that are not color matched, there is copy over the Eiffel tower, the Eiffel tower is distorted in some way, or the the Eiffel tower is only in the background, cropped, and only partially seen.

TinEye says that it’s picture index is extremely limited at this point, but I think if they can hook into the likes of some of the larger photo warehouses (Getty, iStock, Flickr, etc.) this could really become a powerful tool. If nothing else, than to enforce copyright infringement for professional photographers who are constantly having their work reused online without their consent.

Check out the video below for more info:

Just a few links I found from around the ‘net this week:

• Social thing - organize all your social media websites into one lifestream. Signed up for private beta, looking forward to an account so I can explore this a little further.
• Google Trends for Websites - Now you can view Google Trends for websites. Really nice information, but I’m not sure competitors are going to appreciate this. I’ll have to see what I was doing last June - take that Sempo
  
• Google continues it’s uptick in search market share - Not surprising, but Yahoo also increased. I’m assuming this is due to their recent press associated with the Microsoft (non)deal. Microsoft dropped, which is again, not surprising.
• MySpace underwent a redesign - Not sure if it will stop the slide in global traffic, but once these things start in the world of online, users are usually quick to jump ship for “the new hot thing”.

Check these lyrics out:

So you’ve been working for months (or years) and now you’re #1 for that keyword you’ve been trying to rank highly for in Google (and any other search engines). Congratulations! You tell the client, you tell your friends, and everything is coming up roses. Then all of a sudden, the client says “Well, I guess we won’t be needing your services anymore.”

You: Uh…..I…..oh damn.

Here are five tips you can use to prove your worth to your client, beyond just gaining rankings:

1. Additional keyword optimization.
   This is pretty obvious, but just because you are #1 for “yellow widget” doesn’t necessarily mean you are #1 for “yellow widgets“. Make sure to continuously research additional keyword opportunities for your clients so you can have them on hand when they ask for them.
2. Competitive Analysis and Intelligence.
   Just because you are #1 today, doesn’t mean you will be tomorrow. Google is finicky about their search algorithm and likes to change things up every few years, just so everyone has as a fair shake (and so they can make a few extra dollars from their own services). Put yourself forth as providing competitive intelligence to both fend off and outmaneuver your clients competitors.
3. Optimizing additional media.
   Maybe you were just optimizing pages on your clients website. Maybe you were only doing press releases. Regardless, there’s always another opportunity out there to optimize something else your client didn’t think to put on their website. Maybe they have some corporate PDF’s laying around on their intranet, which their customers would love. Maybe they have some old corporate videos that are both informative and ridiculously campy. Put them on YouTube and see if you can get some viral traffic going.
4. Reputation Management.
   Your client may appreciate ranking well for “widgets in Chicago”, but they probably don’t appreciate the fact that they also rank well for “worst company in Chicago”. Let them know you can give them a hand with that as well using SEO as PR, SEM, social media optimization, and other techniques to present their side of the story.
5. Internal Education.
   Although, some SEO’s might feel like this is like giving away the keys to the kingdom, in most cases, your client doesn’t have the time, manpower, or technical knowledge to do this on their own, that’s why they hired you in the first place. So reaching out to them and offering to train their internal personnel on best practices for optimizing a press release or webpage isn’t going to take away your next paycheck. In most cases, it will actually provide you with additional opportunities, as those personnel go home and tell other co-workers, their friends, or their spouses about “the great stuff they learned today and how it can help their company.” That co-worker/friend/spouse turns around and tells their boss, and voila, you have additional leads coming in for more work.

In any case, as a good marketer, you should always have something else on the table beyond just gaining search engine rankings.

I discovered a site today called CrowdSpring, which is a fantastic community based design site based right here in Chicago. The concept behind Crowdspring is this:

1. I have a project I want designed (logo, website, t-shirt, etc.)
2. I post it to Crowdspring with some information about my project and a prize. Most of the prizes I saw were around a few hundred dollars.
3. Designers submit their designs and the community and myself (the buyer) choose the winner.

The designs that I saw were pretty amazing for $150. I really like the site and wish them well. I think they have enough of a first to market advantage to get some steam.

No, I don’t actually agree with the title of this post, but apparently that is the idea that Fred Wilson has put forth in regards to the future of social media:

every single human being posting their thoughts and experiences in any number of ways to the Internet.

Arrington rebuts that the future of social media is tying all of this disparate information together using data portability and integrating sites with each other via API’s and SaaS in order to enhance user interaction and integration.

The future of social media, I hope, isn’t in more tools to help us spew more content. Instead, we need ideas and technology that can leverage all this available online content (including status and activity streams) to enhance real world social interactions.

I wholeheartedly agree. There will always be a need for additional content on the web. The key to the future of social media is sharing this information across platforms simultaneously and unlocking the interface so that users don’t have to switch between platforms in order to perform a single task, or eliminating the need to duplicate content across platforms.

He also mentions mobile devices as the center of this content universe to both publish as well as consume content, which again, I totally agree. And again, much like social media, we need to get the big boys (Sprint, Verizon, AT&T, etc.) to come to a consensus on operating systems, user interfaces, and how they integrate with the web in order to provide easy-to-use, reliable, and consistent experiences.

It’s a painfully slow and frustrating process, but it’ll get there sooner or later.

I’m still kind of in shock from this news, but apparently, according to comScore numbers Yahoo! Buzz’s traffic numbers were higher than Digg’s for April. Seriously? Kind of hard for me to believe, but I guess unless we hear from Digg and Buzz as to their exact traffic numbers, it’s the best we have to go on.

I’ve been seeing more and more that marketers and regular users on Digg have been saying “it’s impossible to get on to the homepage of Digg” and that “digg is broken“. But this is really surprising news for such a young site. I’m thinking that the marketing team at Yahoo! Buzz should be given several gold stars for pulling off this feat. Either that, or marketers have discovered a way to exploit Buzz for everything it’s worth.

I haven’t checked it out yet, but I definitely will now. Does anyone have any experience with Buzz? Easier to use than Digg? Better information? What’s the reason for someone to jump from Digg to Buzz or vice versa?