Article Base Before

Article Base Now

Go figure! Guess I needn’t worry about that typo after all, heh!

And now its showing as a server error, mmm, is Article Base about to be pulled, makes you wonder.

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As, most readers of this blog are aware I rarely ever post about SEO nowadays, preferring to steer the blog to an overall search marketing genre. I love people, and being a person who is fascinated yet forever disengaged with the physical aspect of social engagement throws myself into a conundrum.

I’ll put it down to my age but the remote idea of sitting within a group and talking dribble alienates myself, literally. I’m a one-on-one person, its where I excel. In group mode, there are far too many wanting to be heard, liked or just to be noticed. Its a false commodity and because the person who is usually the loudest gets heard becomes the focus of attention throws my eyebrows to droop over my eyes even more. Being loud is my pet hate, except when drunk, possibly why I hate myself being drunk. But, the thought of those that manically go out of their way to be noticed in this way is disengaging to say the least.

Any ways, getting back to my point of being totally focused on what pages are being propelled into the high positions for your search queries has continually been an obsession of mine especially when a client is involved.

Any time you have ever copied a high ranking sites links have you ever really studied its back link analysis? Did you ever wonder of the page the link was within was even featured in Google’s cache? If so, when was it last cached? Or, how many links were pointing to the site that hosted the link? If you have went this far then you’ll also check the sites linking to your proposed link drop. What I’m getting at is do you just take that link for granted, that’s what helping the page your checking out to rank, or do you pull it aside and examine it more privately, find out if the noise / signal level is all that its cracked up to be?

But this is where it really gets me! People who call you telling you its just the links I’m interested in - “show me your link building costs!”, they proclaim. Hell, the majority of the time they could rank so much better with on-page management that link building is just a by-product of how their site could become successful. If they were just to focus on getting their site tuned to its most prominent strength they would see success in their original ranking / traffic. To me link building is important but its not the be all and end all that some people think is required to gain those much sorted seeds without sorting out their own on-site problems first.

Trying to explain this to potential clients that SEO is like a sour plume sweety - meaning its a joyous hell - that you may have to endure for many months before your site is flavour of the month with Google’s taste buds is a non-starter in many instances. Get them interested in On-Page as well as Off-Page you have a greater chance of success quicker.

I’m not only the only one batting the drum to clients explaining that SEO is just one of a few strategies to be used online to help them gain more visibility and thus sales / conversions. Clients need to be aware that there are other routes worth looking at to help promote themselves online. Primarily, focussing on SEO (both on-page and off-page) is a great way to introduce them to all the other flavours that exist in your shop instead of just getting them to suck on a bitter sweet sweetie for the rest of their online days.

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However, before I could suck my last Twitteresque breath, some micro-blogging-evangelist leant before myself and began to chant “plurk, Plurk, PlurK, PLURK …” then my world greyed and became finally focussed on a headless something, I think it’s a pig but that debate is still open for argument.

So, what the hell does Plurk have to offer to an SEO … honestly, dunno, ask me when I’m sober, in fact score that don’t ask me at all. Because this is micro-blogging, its the time to get comfortable with each other, gain friends, listen and learn, show-off when called to do so, talk when no-one is listening, be yourself … which I find most encouraging of all social media sites.

There is no gain in gaming sites like Plurk or Twitter not in the long run anyway its about belonging, becoming and most of all being there. That’s it, just being in amongst a crowd,not really adding to or taking away from but your there sharing a laugh, a thought, a moment … just being sums up micro-blogging for me in a nutshell.

There are guys out there, like James who pick-apart expertly these social platforms, draw rock-solid conclusions and like to analyse these platforms for what they are really worth in terms of engagement. Me, I’m not engaged enough to make those calls but rather see it like a call-back to when I used to hang, nothing important was said much, nothing was ever really decided, but man we had fun just being together.

And that’s it, that’s Plurk, that’s its message or it should be … just here right now having a laugh, enjoying what you say but not really too interested, just me being me, just you being you, just plurking along and killing another few seconds of my time on this planet.

By the way you can follow me on Plurk at the following : http://www.plurk.com/user/northsouthmedia for all the good it will do you

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So what do I mean by “hidden cables”? We’ll to take a quick insight of my thinking I want to draw on a few heatable discussions that have taken centre stage this year in the search world. Please, be aware that I’m not mud-raking, merely using examples to illustrate my point.

The first and most famous was Lyndon’s global link bait that not only split your sides with laughing at the sheer absurdity of it all but also split a community into groups decrying each other in a scale unknown to the search community before or since. Many undercurrent thoughts went to play on this escapade myself included. So, looking back what made myself pick-up Lyndon’s torch and help fight his corner, go public with my thoughts, cut social media ties that will strain to be the same again.

What causes myself to defend an individual that I have never met. What causes others to wipe him from their friends list on social media sites. I mean in all honesty we’re talking about a website here that published a funny story not something that put a person in front of danger or was the cause for mass battles in the streets. Bur there I was standing in the digital horizon, binary sword in hand, ready, waiting, to defend Lyndon’s name. And the hidden cables tugged ever more so.

Rand Fishkin was another, a man on the other side of the world. A man prominent in the blog radar, a man who was caught up in the paid links war via a blog post about StumbleUpon. I thought it was wrong as did many others, majority rule, then the denouncements started, after that I was clutching the flag of Rand and willingly waved it where need shown. Cables tugging at my every move, making me do this and thinking that.

There has been other spats, Danny and Wired, Black Hat SMX or Advanced SEO, Google in general, SEO famous wannabes to name a few. Each draw their own lines, each act as further sub-divisions, each propell the protagonist to a new, heady height. Each connected with their ability to tear apart.

But within them all and so many more there is one common denominator that shines. That of the individual to inform, touch and interact with the many. It’s what makes myself so proud to be called a blogger. To go to that spot and hang your thoughts out there, see them blow freely in the wind then watch as it gets tugged, pulled and twisted from the cable that holds it. This is interaction, communication, the focus of modern thought. This is where the cables hang … the question is, how long will they let you hang there with them?

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In my somewhat excited state I pinged Tim and stated that there is a process that I had termed as ‘Ghost Submissions’ that could negatetively kill your traffic no matter how many thumbs-up or reviews you would receive. Tim in his polite manner, kindly pointed myself to one his earlier posts – StumbleUpon Graveyard.

Tim informed myself that this behaviour had been covered by that great online search commentator Andy Beard as well. So, I’d thought I might as well regurgitate the information (although, perhaps Lyndoman might suss what I’m doing here, perhaps not!)

The set-up is easy. The outcome is awful. To kill, yes strong words but that is exactly what happens, your competitors StumbleUpon traffic all that is required is a dodgy account and a few (one will do) friends. Heck you could build both and hide your dirty trail via a proxy. Then, wait until your competitor has submitted their latest offering, click the ‘Send To’ icon in your SU Toolbar and select your zombie friend. The site will show as being stumbled as a Ghost Submission (it has no member associated as a valid vote on the right-hand side of the submission page) and will struggle to gain much traction within StumbleUpon and thus no real traffic.

My own thoughts is this is StumbleUpon’s own self-defence mechanism to help protect itself from those looking to self-promote. But with about 10 minutes sign-up time, a vigilant eye on your competitors contributions, you could easily kill their site within StumbleUpon.

Counteraction possibilities include pinging friends prior to submission and letting them know exactly when your post is going live to get a proper, if not natural selection vote.

Ghost submissions in StumbleUpon are devestating when you have tasted the power of tens-of-thousands of people visiting your site from SU and also the natural links that feed and point to your content that this garners. Then, suddenly, to feel the reverse of that wave of SU traffic and have your content killed by a ghost submission in SU is frightening to say the least.

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According to Google there is nothing to worry about because they have it covered. Somehow, I’m not feeling all warm and fuzzy on that statement. I do concede that in the majority of cases G gets it right but I have witnessed damage by duplicate content not once but twice on sites recently.

In both cases the sites literally dropped from Google’s search engine ranking positions like a stone through water. I was contacted to help figure out the problem and find a solution.

Site 1 was easy to remedy, although time-consuming, I just rewrote the full sites content again from scratch in some instances and messed with the paragraph layout of other less-weighted pages then submited a re-inclusion request to Google – it worked a treat and the site enjoys healthy rankings to this day.

On site 2 I had some work to do because I had no access to the site at all. It was one of those funny set-ups where the web design company hordes the access codes and denies entry to even the site owner. Site 2 had been scraped badly and TBH if it wasn’t for Yahoo and MSN driving traffic it would have been a ghost-site. A carefully worded re-inclusion request (it took about 5 drafts to get right) to Google did the trick and it was released from the duplicate contents filter clutches and ranking well again. Although, for the bigger keywords where it had a history of traffic its still in no-man’s land.

The main theme here is that although Google is great at spotting whose the original source and whose is the scraped source there are still cases where innocent sites are being penalised heavily. By contacting Google on each individual case helped rectify the problem in just a few weeks. But the site owners on both seperate occasions were caused undue stress as their business took a nosedive thanks to the duplicate content filter (penalty).

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Me : Hi Patrick, can you please tell us a little about yourself, your company and how you got into digital media?

Patrick : The best way to describe my role is “digital media producer”, but with titles like “VP Technology & Platforms”, “COO” and “Director of Production”, it is easy to see why my mother has no clue what I do. So I just say, “I put things on screens.” It seems to satisfy her, or she at least says, “Oh, I see.” and walks off muttering to herself.

I started out wanting to be a Computer Science major, then when I was failing out of Calculus with a 33% average, decided it was time for a career shift, and went into film school. I wanted to be a director, and the girls were FAR hotter than the ones in the computer labs.

However, upon graduating and working at various post houses, the advent of Avid and Photoshop / After Effects meant I was much more effective on the computer as a producer than behind a camera. I quickly started producing for a number of clients who wanted expensive looking production, but could not afford the higher end stuff.

Today, I am VP Technology and Platforms for Participant Media, a media company specializing in creating entertainment that inspires and creates social change. Our movies include “An Inconvenient Truth” and “Syriana”, among others.

Me : What advice could you offer to someone looking to get into a similar position as yourself?

Patrick : Everyone who wants to be in the film business wants to be the director. No one is looking for a director. You won’t find Warner Bros putting an ad in “Variety” seeking a director for their next Batman movie. You’ll never get in the door that way. Instead, discover what they REALLY need and be darn good at THAT. Once you’re in the door, you’re in. You can go anywhere from there.

If you know Flash, be a great Flash artist and make sure the Creative Directors in every studio knows your work. Do a little freelance for them, and if it works out, these often evolve into full-time once you become ingrained into the team. Then, once you’re in, volunteer to shoot some video shorts for the site, etc. and suddenly, you’re directing for a Hollywood Studio. Go play softball for the company team and walk the head of Theatrical Production to first. Take it from there.

Me : Over the years we have seen the internet expand in terms of delivering information to the people browsing websites. Long gone are the days of flat html files riddled by dodgy animated gif images. What would you describe as the defining moment in the digital evolution? Also did you ever think it would evolve this fast?

Patrick : There are a series of defining moments, all of which involve bringing what was formerly an exclusive capability for big companies, into an affordable means for the average person. Democratizing Big Media has been the biggest game-changer in this industry. Two in particular come to mind…

Processing power and RAM becoming fast and cheap. I remember hocking a $5K engagement ring for 16MB of RAM for my Mac IIsi. It was worth it. Today on my laptop, I have Final Cut Pro, which has ten times the RAM and four times the hard drive storage as the $150K Avid rig I worked on circa 1992.

Affordable broadband reaches mass-market. When I worked for MediaOne, managing content and services for their Western US broadband rollout, I had very smart studio executives scoff at the notion that a consumer would ever pay $40/month for a broadband connection when they have perfectly good dialup access for $20. Those same studio execs are now sweating bullets and whining to the lawyers about Bittorrent screwing up their movie release windows. I certainly know they never expected it to evolve this fast, and both record labels and movie studios got caught with their pants down - but not without plenty of advance warning of exactly where things were going.

Me : I have been highly tempted to produce my own podcasts purely for enjoyment purposes mixed in with a little search marketing banter. Could you give me any tips to make my ideas audio?

Patrick : I would suggest picking a theme you enjoy and making that the focus of the podcast. If you have another theme, make a second show all about it. A frustrating thing about my show (for my listeners as well) is I don’t produce the shows on a regular schedule - rather when I feel I have enough to say about a topic to make a complete show. The other frustration is not being able to talk about much of the things I am working on, as it would violate the NDAs I’m under. So I try to keep the work-related stuff only to what is publicly-released knowledge, while all the cutting-edge things have to stay under wraps.

Before investing in tons of equipment and software, use the built-in mic and any of the multitude of free programs available. I am now using Garageband and a pro microphone.

Me : What is your whole take on social media and its importance in ‘getting the word out there’ ?

Patrick : The idea of interactive media being a participatory experience is one that many traditional content creators and providers are just now getting used to. Their bread and butter is based on being in complete control of the entire experience and brand. When you open that experience up to interpretation, manipulation and sharing, it becomes something new and (either intentionally or unfortunately) outside the control of the creatives. The lawyers especially have a tough time dealing with this reality, as it requires them to be ambiguous on the rights retained by the initial experience creator, and the law hates ambiguity.

Still, when done right, the power of end-user created context is awesome. It can blossom into a completely unintended thing that is often more interesting than the original. (See “The Grey Album“)

Me : Its obvious you are a man who is passionate about his work what pieces are you most proud of and what motivates you to create?

Patrick : I do what I do not to be the best of what’s out there, but to try to set the bar or push the envelope of what is possible. George Lucas doesn’t make the best movies out there, but he sets the bar. Same type of thing, only without Jar-Jar.

Me : Finally, Patrick, what level do you feel that podcasting sits in terms of advertising as in say against online video, blogging or social media?

Partick : Right now, there is a growing need for standardization in terms of audience metrics and measurement. Particularly with podcasting, as the nature of it involves downloading a piece of media to your computer, where it may or may not be synced to a portable device, played once, six times, or never. You also have no idea if the media file is shared, played halfway and deleted, or a particular section has been played repeatedly.

With online streaming video, you can count the streams (with streaming podcasts you can do this as well), with blogs, you have more standardized means of measuring page views, referring links and clickthroughs. Advertisers are looking for quantifiable performance based on the CPM being charged, and these other forms of online media give more tangible and trackable results.

Still, that’s not to dismiss the value of a large podcast audience. Whether that comes in the form of a GoDaddy sponsorship and show-related calls to action/discounts, or the value is more in brand expansion and audience building for a parent organization, like WineLibrary.TV - there is room to experiment. Watching “old media” bumble around in the space while the smaller, faster, less “legally encumbered” brands like Diggnation enjoy wild success is always inspirational. It proves that success in a new medium is not guaranteed to established brands in traditional media.

Patrick runs PJK Podcast and you can also follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/pjk.

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And like its predecessor it’s another chance to dress the most talked about seo / search marketers in spandex and give them ultimate superhero powers.

These heroes of seo / search may not be the first thought in your head to call when the world needs saving but once they pull on their alter-ego costumes there can be only one outcome - we’re all doomed.

Jeff Quipp
Hero Name	Doctor Octupus
Strengths	A social media demi god : so many fingers in so many social media sites
Weaknesses	Don’t ask him what time it is - he forgets which arm he put his watch on.

Stoney De Geyter
Hero Name	Green Arrow
Strengths	Straight talker who tells it like it is and always hits the target.
Weaknesses	Lying on pool tables and upsetting the flow of the game.

Link Moses
Hero Name	Flash Gordon
Strengths	True Story : Trace the history of link building back to the first ever link it belonged to Eric.
Weaknesses	Carbon daing tests show that Eric was not building links before the Internet was borne.

Dan Thies
Hero Name	Sandman
Strengths	One email from this man and your hooked - master of marketing.
Weaknesses	Beaches and little kids trying to build castles and plank flags in his head.

Hamlet Batista
Hero Name	The Hulk
Strengths	Wonderous individual with an appealing scientific approach to his industry.
Weaknesses	Don’t get him angry about automated SEO, seriously, don’t, you won’t like him when he’s angry.

Joost de Valk
Hero Name	Green Lantern
Strengths	Can develop a plugin to show you which plugin you require.
Weaknesses	Plugins

Graywolf
Hero Name	Silver Surfer
Strengths	Leader of a pack or confident alone — alpha male.
Weaknesses	Just for Men is just not strong enough for those silver shards.

Lee Odden
Hero Name	The Rhino
Strengths	Powerful online marketing voice and force.
Weaknesses	Aint got NSM in his top blog posts.

Lisa Barone
Hero Name	Catwoman
Strengths	Do not get shouted down by this woman - she brings a new sense to an online roasting.
Weaknesses	Finds it hard to relax and blog in all that tight gear - hence the smackdowns.

Shaun Anderson
Hero Name	Mister Fantastic
Strengths	Fantastic usability and accessible SEO
Weaknesses	Stretches too many hours into a working day also supports Celtic

David Harry
Hero Name	Joker
Strengths	Worldy wise and a belly full of laughs Dave puts the smile into social media.
Weaknesses	Deals with bad karma with humour but read between the lines to see Dave aint laughing.

Andrew Girdwood
Hero Name	Wolverine
Strengths	Great communicator always one to test and try new devices.
Weaknesses	Secretly yearns for Scotland and a deep fried mars bar for his lunch instead of all that healthy european food.

Where is the evil despots I hear you cry. We’ll TBH nothing much has changed in that respect DrEvil and Mini Me are still spinning the same ol’ bait. So, if they can’t be bothered changing the tune ne’er can I.

My next seo / search post is deemed for xmas and I have already slotted places for Superman, Spiderman, Venom and Wonder Woman. Even Matt Cutts has been powered up to deem lycra for this one

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We are going to be running a selection of video clips on our 404 page from now on – it’ll include music videos young and old, comedy sketches, film snippets and who would have guessed seo / search marketing tutorial tips.

We’ll even have an archive for our 404 selection. So, no longer plain, boring ‘Whoops page not found’ message but more in relation to web 2.0 practices.

What do I reckon will be the outcome of this : perhaps no more than a lost individual might get a peep of some social interaction rather than a page that instructs instead of performs. Heck, its a changing environment right enough and even some irrational changes like this might, and I repeat might, catch on.

Anyways Dare to Be Different : 404 Error Page

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I know there are a lot more out there that I haven’t added, so it would be good to see similar lists growing and perhaps we can gather a universal poll of our favourite social media sites.

Ranking Factors

I split the ranking process into 4 main segments each important to the overall score of each social media site judged. They are as follows:

Traffic : This speaks for itself how much traffic is a site capable of sending no matter if a submission goes hot or whimpers and dies lonely in some corner.

Community : Just how easy / difficult is it for a newcomer to make friends within the social media site. Is there a vibrant community willing to help or is the site tinged with cliques or worse is there a community that isn’t really social at all.

Linking Attributes : Are links nice and clean or nofollowed? Do they help with ranking factors? Does the actual submission rank highly itself?

Usability : What is the interface like, is it straightforward or loaded with tons of features to help you gain the maximum from the site. Is there a browser toolbar? Just how much thought has went into the development process to help the contributor add content to the site?

So, without further ado, I bring you …

Top Ten Favourite Social Media Sites

		Traffic
		Community
		Link Attributes
	faves	Usability

		Traffic
		Community
		Link Attributes
	blogging zoom	Usability

		Traffic
		Community
		Link Attributes
	mister wong	Usability

		Traffic
		Community
		Link Attributes
	mixx	Usability

		Traffic
		Community
		Link Attributes
	propeller	Usability

		Traffic
		Community
		Link Attributes
	reddit	Usability

		Traffic
		Community
		Link Attributes
	nowpublic	Usability

		Traffic
		Community
		Link Attributes
	sphinn	Usability

		Traffic
		Community
		Link Attributes
	digg	Usability

		Traffic
		Community
		Link Attributes
	stumbleupon	Usability

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