Google Traffic – Confusing Love and Money Graywolf's SEO Blog |
| Google Traffic – Confusing Love and Money Posted: 07 Apr 2011 07:27 AM PDT
I recently came across an article that was bemoaning the fact that the travel blogging space has become overrun with low level search intended writing, and the actual feet on the ground, first hand, personal travel experiences are disappearing from the web. IMHO this author has confused love and money, a common complaint in the web publishing world. The question you need to ask yourself is whether you are in the game for love or money … cause you can’t have both … To be honest, most of us will agree that the first hand, personal experience type of writing that someone does because they truly enjoy the subject is of a better quality and is what we really want to read and learn from. But it’s also more likely to be long winded, harder to digest, filled with flowery, non-keyword-focused adjectives and stuck on a site with a completely un-navigable site architecture. Search engine optimizers know how to organize and put content into the “language” a search engine can understand. Most travel writers, unless they have played with SEO, throw their hands in the air in frustration and wonder why Google can’t just figure it out. Let’s take a look at another issue. Recently the Food 52 had an article about how Google’s new recipe algorithm was biased towards large sites that had IT staff who could republish their entire site with recipe meta data so Google could understand it. The writer also made the argument that larger sites with the budgets to do calorie computations would receive an unfair advantage. …I do know the economics of advertising and production will choose the winner … If you read further into the article, you’ll notice what’s really lurking under the surface is the author’s personal bias against fast and easy low calories recipes. In the article, she uses an example, an extremely complicated French recipe called a “cassoulet”. Now we’re confusing someone’s love of haute cuisine with the reality that most people simply don’t want to cook on a daily basis. There’s a reason Rachel Ray will sell more 30 minute meal cook books than David Chang’s Momofuku. It’s not that her food tastes better; it’s that her recipes and cooking style are much more accessible to most people than David Chang’s. Some of his recipes take days to prepare–trust me, I’ve tried. But back to the recipe argument. Iis there some truth to her assertion? Yes. For example, Aaron Chronister, creator of the Bacon Explosion, showed me how he doesn’t rank for a recipe he created.  Bacon Explosion Recipe Search In this case Google got it wrong, and they are partially to blame because they changed the rules in the middle of the game without realizing that not everyone will be able to update to the new format so quickly. Some people are in the game because they love to cook and, for them, it’s not about the money. We are at a disruptive time in the publishing world. The barriers to publish are so low they are non existent (see Cognitive Surplus Review by Clay Shirky). Google’s adsense allows anyone to monetize a website via adsense without needing a sales or accounting team. Large publishers have scaled creation costs so low that content is a commodity just to wrap advertising around . The New York Times is trying to find a balance between setting information free and charging for access and failing miserably at it. I can’t tell you where we are going to end up, but I do know the economics of advertising and production will choose the winner. The question you need to ask yourself is whether you are in the game for love or money … cause you can’t have both.  Related posts:
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This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review. |
| Why Google’s +1 Needs an On Page Component Posted: 06 Apr 2011 08:18 AM PDT
Last week Google announced a new addition to the search engine results page: the +1 button. While there was a huge amount of press surrounding the launch, after playing with it for a few days, I don’t think it’s going to work unless it has an on page component … soon. Let”s talk about what Google got right. The button is easy to use, unlike sidewiki or the privacy invading Google buzz. They also mimicked the Facebook link button closely enough that the average user will get the concept pretty readily. The “your friends also liked this” functionality also closely mimics Facebook. If you think this wasn’t intentional, you are a bit naive.  Facebook Friends  Google +1 Friends That said, what Google got wrong was the omission of a button on the landing page. At the time this post was written, there is no button that publishers can put on their website pages. You can only get on the mailing list to be notified when one becomes available. IMHO this is a huge mistake. For the like button to “work” as it currently stands, one of two things have to happen:
IMHO neither of these scenarios seems very likely, and it shows that Google really doesn’t understand how or why customers really use social media. Businesses “think” people “like” them out of a sense of loyalty; while that may be true for some, many are just looking for “sales”, “discounts” or “promo codes”. Let’s be honest–the most likely reason that someone would fan Williams Sonoma on Facebook is to get a discount and to see new recipes. There are hundreds of other little reasons, but those two are the biggest “value adds” to the end user. No one REALLY wants to be friends with a company. If Google really wants people to use the +1 button, they are going to need to make it REALLY easy to use. They are also going to have to create some way for the customer to get something from using the +1 button. Without those two factors, the only reason people will use the +1 button is if a marketer incentivizes it with cash or free samples. The eggheads in the Google ivory tower may think people will work for free to make the world (and the Google index) a better place, but in the real world people will work harder on the things that bring more cash into their own lives, not into someone else’s. Related posts:
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This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review. |
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