“Why isn’t my site ranking for it’s brand name in Google?”

While the answer may be complicated I suspect the vast majority of people (many SEOs included!) would claim the question is fairly straightforward. Let me explain why this question is becoming virtually impossible to answer:

The First Website or the Top Result?

Consider some of these beauties we have to contend with as SEOs:

Yep - those are Google product links which Google is starting to display before the organic results. (Imagine if those were products actually sold by Google…)

Google often steals your traffic and gets there first by providing you with the answer to your question.

What about the new Google local results? You can be ‘number 1′ behind 10 links now (personally I think these new local results are much worse than the old ones but what do I know?)

Hey look, Google decided to steal my traffic with some pretty pictures! Google knows I love pretty pictures!

Porn isn’t for everyone

Yes, that’s right folks, Google knows where you live, what you eat for breakfast and even how you spend your free time. When you search while signed in with a Google account you’ll end up receiving ‘personalised results’ a lot of the time. That means that what ranks number 1 when I search might not be number one when someone else searches because Google will ‘intelligently’ determine what I’m most likely to be interested in.

Where’s Wally?

If your name is Wally where are you? And where did you search from?

There’s really two aspects to this - firstly which search engine did you use? Did you use Google.com? Google.co.uk? Google.fr? And where in the world are you located (based on your IP address)?

For example, consider someone searching using Google.fr from the UK. What results are most relevant to them? Are they going to see the same results as someone using the same search query searching Google.fr from France? (The answer is no!)

Parlez Vous Anglais?

Say what? What language is your search phrase?

Combine this with the above point regarding location and you get very muddy waters indeed. What happens if you search in Google.fr in Spanish? What if your IP address is German?

While that example might seem far-fetched (though believe me it’s more common than you think) consider someone searching Google.com in English from Canada Vs someone searching Google.fr in English from Canada. Do they want the same results? Are they looking for the same thing?

So, if you’re looking to ‘rank top of google’ then go talk to someone else. If you’re in the business of getting more traffic then why not consider our SEO services.

I’ve had a few conversations recently on the theme of ‘where art and science meet’. One of these areas, newly opened to my English graduate eyes, is Search Engine Optimisation. I was hired by Distilled as, in part, a ‘creative writer’ and have seen over the last few weeks just how essential a good command of language is for this role. For one thing, you’re always writing. Blog entries, comments, relevant content and compelling linkbait all require good writing if they are to be successful in their various aims.

However, the most important word in that particular part of the job description is ‘creative’. The Internet is so huge (and the pitfalls of duplicate content are so unappealing) that it’s a continual challenge to come up with not just interesting, but wholly original content. But that’s why so many of you guys love your job isn’t it? How do you make blenders interesting? Famously, you chuck an iphone in and await the spectacular results (no writing there, I’ll admit). The idea, as they say, is king.

So what’s my point? For too long have the subjects of art and science been separated. I often guiltily talk about my ‘inner geek’ finding solace in the various technological aspects of life- a remote control helicopter here, a download of Bridge Builder there. It goes without saying that all this exists alongside a deep and genuine love of what we in the business like to call literature. I won’t do any name dropping; safe to say 19th Century novelists rock my world. Roald Dahl wrote a fabulous short story about a machine that was able to churn out bestsellers at a rate of knots by algorithmically including a few stereotypical plot devices: a handsome hero and dainty damsel, an evil presence and a final twist. Not perfect, but a start at least. Science is artistic, and art is scientific. It’s a beautiful thing.

So why should my inner geek still be an inner geek? I love Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams ok? I also love some of the best (and, I’ll admit it, worst- any other Sparhawk fans out there?) science fiction/fantasy of the last century or so. Why do I still refuse to mainstream my geek status?

Talking to my boss about this was interesting: he argued that the need for so much well written content on the web has created a haven for the English graduate with no distinct career vocation. In my case, I never went quite so far as to tearfully say, ‘I just LOVE words’, but I always knew I wanted to do something that involved a lot of writing. So this really is my perfect job. I get to be creative and I get to write stuff. Ok, yes, you can find that job elsewhere, but where (where I ask you!) can you do all this and also make Discworld references without feeling like a social outcast?!

In the words of the great Mr Pratchett himself:

The world is made up of four elements: Earth, Air, Fire and Water. This is a fact well known even to Corporal Nobbs. It’s also wrong. There’s a fifth element, and generally it’s called Surprise.

So, for god’s sake, let’s get surprising!

The Sunday Times this week has an interesting story about online reputation management, entitled Smeared on the internet? Then call in the cleaners.

It covers some interesting ground including Kate Moss’ online reputation (looks like someone has been at work there - no mention of drugs until page 2 of Google!).

Distilled gets a mention as a UK-based company that can offer online reputation management and I get a quick quote in at the end:

It’s not about hiding it. It’s about getting the other side of the story across.

We are not in any way interested in helping someone cover up something illegal. We research all our clients thoroughly.

This is our second mention in the Sunday Times (last one here) but it’s a different journalist this time…

Ciaran just wrote about how everyone is buying Yahoo! including Nokia, the mobile handset manufacturer (something Rebecca talked about as well). We have spent time here speculating about the exact same things. The combination of this train of thought and Rand’s post on what might dethrone Google made me decide to write my thoughts about what kind of company might win in mobile search.

In my mind, there are a few possibilities:

1. an existing large search engine (Google being the obvious choice)
2. a comeback play from a smaller search engine (e.g. Ask)
3. a mobile operator (e.g. Vodafone, Verizon)
4. a mobile operating system / software player (e.g. Symbian, who make the software for Nokia handsets, or Microsoft)
5. a start-up (e.g. ?)
6. something human-powered or with a different business-model (e.g. texperts)
7. a handset manufacturer (e.g. Nokia)

I’m going to deal with my thoughts on each in turn (and then tell you my favourite) but if you want to have your say, cast your vote:

Have your say

Existing large search engine

Can Google parlay its dominance in the grown-up web into mobile dominance?

This seems relatively likely in my mind - they know how to do search, and they can certainly work out how to do mobile. They have incredibly strong branding, and association with search. They are also already doing a lot with mobile maps, mobile gmail, mobile reader etc. Finally, as handsets get more iPhone like (if that is inevitable?) more and more people will be using grown-up Google anyway.

They have a huge headstart with their index, technology, branding and manpower. But it’s not a foregone conclusion - for example, they have no particular advantage in the localisation arena or integration into the other features of the handset. Let’s look at the next possibility.

A comeback play from a smaller search engine

It seems a little unlikely to me. I don’t want to write off the smaller engines as I think there is a lot to be said for Ask’s algorithm, for example, but they just aren’t growing in any sectors at the moment. The skills and technology they would need to win at mobile aren’t that different to the skills they need to stage an online comeback. Unless we see signs that’s happening, I’m going to remain a sceptic on this possibility.

A mobile operator

We know the operators are desperate to avoid the fate of the fixed line operators, who became “just the pipe” during the explosive growth of the Internet. Remember AOL’s walled garden? That didn’t work out too well, did it?

For the same reason, walled gardens provided by the mobile operators (called ‘carriers’ in the US) have been being gradually rolled back. Consumers want to go where they want to go - they don’t just want the news and sport that the operators want to force-feed them. If it’s not going to be through the walled garden approach, then the operators need to get innovative to avoid the “just the pipe” fate. One way they might try to do this is by going after the search market.

At the moment, many of the operators have relationships with the regular search engines (see today’s T-Mobile announcement), but they might see this as an attractive game to be in. The problem is the same as broadband providers going after the search market (such as we see in some European countries - e.g. free.fr, or such as AOL attempted to do) - even if they win 100% of their users, that is still a pretty small market share compared to what a network-agnostic competitor can achieve in principle. This is enough for me to believe that it’s not going to be the answer here.

A mobile operating system / software provider

Ah. The classic ‘Microsoft’ route. Use dominance of the platform to leverage your way into a service market.

Hasn’t worked so well for Live search yet (couple of percent market share in the UK and the US despite being the default search through IE7 and the search provider for the MSN properties which are the default homepages of Internet Explorer browsers).

Having said that, the mobile market is a different beast, due to the timescales of market and technology development. For search, the first time round, the timescale looked a bit like this:

1. no-one uses search engines (no, really, we didn’t always have them)
2. search technology arrives but it sucks
3. Google creates something better
4. everyone ends up using Google

Microsoft attempted to grab this market through their desktop dominance somewhere between 3 and 4 with a sub-standard product. This is a tricky time because Google is the darling of everyone for changing their lives.

On the mobile, the timeline is a little different:

1. everyone uses search on the desktop (mainly Google!)
2. search technology mainly rocks (that’s not to say there won’t be significant improvements in coming years)
3. very few people use mobile search
4. ???

Whoever grabs market share (through branding, leverage of online presence, leverage of some kind of market power in a different sphere or however) will presumably have a search engine that works pretty well. This seems to suggest to me that there is a much greater chance of the play working in mobile than it did on the desktop.

The hindrance, of course, is that there isn’t a Microsoft of the mobile world. Microsoft isn’t a Microsoft of the mobile world. Symbian is probably the best contender and they have around 7% of the total market.

A start-up

Google was a start-up, remember, who came along and ate the lunch of the (at the time) dominant search engines. Therefore in a market that isn’t really that well-defined yet, you would be hard-pushed to bet against the guys in a garage somewhere right now. With the market the way it is, though, you have to wonder if they would be able to stay independent all the way through to dominance, or would they get bought by one of the other players identified here before they got a chance?

A human-powered solution

Texperts are solving a problem in a fantastic way, but I think it is unlikely that human-powered is going to be the answer for general mobile search in the long-run. Remember that only a tiny fraction of the world’s mobile users are using data / search at the moment - if that is going to grow in the same way as web search has (whereby search is the second most popular activity after emailing) then I reckon the winner is going to be (at least mainly) algorithmic.

A handset manufacturer

Handset manufacturers would seem not to have the expertise to own the search market on their own. They would presumably need to acquire technology. They do, however, have the route to consumer and offer significant integration capability with other handset technologies (e.g. GPS) that may not be available to other players.

Duncan and I were discussing on the train home the other night about how at first glance, Nokia buying Yahoo! is similar to Microsoft buying Yahoo!. You could argue that Nokia would be foolish to tread down this route since they would be replicating a failed strategy -i n many ways, this option looks more like the Microsoft route of using dominance to leverage growth than the Symbian example above. Having said that, the same caveats that mean Symbian could pull it off (mainly related to the timescale / technology differences) apply here as well.

Similarities between Nokia and Microsoft

• Nokia and Microsoft control platforms (the handset in Nokia’s case, Windows in Microsoft’s)(*)
• Both want a (bigger) share of the search market (Microsoft across the whole Internet, Nokia across mobile)
• Both have market share and clout (Microsoft have a well-documented monopoly on desktop operating systems and office software and Nokia have nearly 40% of the total worldwide handset market)
• Both fear irrelevance (Microsoft fear “not being part of the web revolution”, Nokia fear handsets becoming a commodity like the desktop PC)

(*) I know a better comparison would seem to be Symbian (who make the operating system for many Nokia handsets) and Microsoft, but actually, I think the market power is primarily (at the moment) with Nokia rather than Symbian - most consumers know they have a Nokia rather than knowing they are using Symbian in a similar way to the way most consumers know they use Windows but don’t know whether the box is a Dell or HP.

Having said that, there are a number of differences as well

• Microsoft is a monopoly, Nokia has a large worldwide market share (and only 5% of the US market)
• Microsoft is already doing search, while Nokia is ‘just’ doing handsets
• Microsoft has the cash pile to buy Yahoo! if it wishes, Nokia would be putting up practically its entire current assets to match the cash portion of Microsoft’s bid and its market cap is only just over half that of Microsoft

My thoughts

I personally quite like the Nokia option (though as noted above, I think it has to happen through acquisition). I don’t think they can build their own search solution from scratch, but as others have noted, they could be an attractive proposition when combined with Yahoo! Even though they don’t have the cash pile Microsoft has:

They have a market cap of 3.5 times YHOO and their shares are looking good:

The possibility of combining some of the localisation technology that Yahoo! has acquired with the direct handset integration and technology Nokia has at their disposal creates some pretty interesting possibilities, to my mind.

PS

After I had written all this, Tom pointed out that Nokia and Google are announcing closer ties. Maybe that answers that question then!

It’s that time again - another interview in our series. This time the man on the other side of the tape recorder (ok, email) is David Mihm, the web designer in Portland, Oregon (or at least he will be when he moves up the coast in a few weeks).

I got to know David through SEOmoz (SEOmoz profile and marketplace entry) - his eye-catching avatar / logo (what do you expect from a designer) and his love of basketball made him stand out. Oh, and his insightful comments, of course.

We have had a few interviews with people who focus on different areas important to SEO: Hamlet Batista on techie stuff, Dr. Pete on usability, Lyndoman (aka Cornwall SEO) on linkbait. Here David and I discuss design and small business challenges. Hope you like it:

Can you introduce yourself for our readers?

[David]: Sure. I’m David Mihm, 25 years old, currently living in the San Francisco Bay Area. I’ll soon be a new resident of Portland, Oregon, a smaller metropolitan area about 9 hours up the U.S. West Coast (3 hours south of Seattle). I started my own website design / SEO / consulting firm in 2006, after working in-house handling offline AND online marketing at a law firm for about a year.

I’m originally from a small, blue-collar farming town in Illinois about 3 hours south of Chicago & I attended college at Williams, a small school of 2,000 students near Boston. While at Williams, I studied for a semester in London, living at the south end of Islington just off Farringdon Road, so I’m a huge Anglophile & was extremely distraught to learn that England did not qualify for the Euro championship this summer.

I also started a college basketball website called Bracketography when I was at Williams, which has led to some EXTREMELY minor celebrity among NCAA Tournament aficionados, including a brief appearance on ESPN and an article in the New York Times in 2006, and a freelancing gig with NBC Sports last year.

I tried a year of graduate school in architecture but was disillusioned by the program at Ohio State and so left in 2004, before getting my degree.

I love traveling and golf, and somehow combining both of those would probably be my ideal retirement. I try to make at least one trip every two years back to Ireland or Scotland to play the world’s greatest links courses.

We share a few things in common (some of the work-related ones might lead people to think we are competitors, but luckily our industry’s friendly). You love basketball. Tell us about your local team. Do you play?

[David]: Well, first off, if people think we are competitors, it’d be an honor to be included in the company of Distilled. I’ve been following you guys since my first days on the SEOmoz blog back in the summer of 2006. The camaraderie is one of the MANY things I love about our industry. It’s so amazing to me that I have friends from all over the world (some of them in what I’d consider very high places no less!) not even two full-time years into my career. So many people have gone out of their way to give me not just practical SEO tips, but tips on growing my business, where and how to position myself, how to stay on top of all the changes in the field, etc. Rand Fishkin, Gillian Muessig & the entire SEOmoz team have been a great influence, and there are a ton of people in the San Francisco Bay Area who have been tremendous informal mentors for me: Bob Charlton, Laura Lippay, Scott Smith, Roger Montti, Lawrence Coburn to name just a few. There’s also an unnamed SEO who prefers to stay under the radar who did a great job of mentoring me at my former in-house job.

But back to your question. Not sure how it works in the UK, but my “local” team is actually the one I grew up rooting for, based near my hometown: the University of Illinois Fighting Illini. Illini fans are not having such a great season in 2008, but two years ago, our team came within a few points of winning the national championship, and our most notable recent alumnus, Deron Williams, is currently dominating the NBA as the starting point guard for the NBA’s Utah Jazz.

I’ve since moved to the West Coast & have picked up an affinity for most Pac-10 teams, particularly the Oregon Ducks, UCLA Bruins, and Arizona Wildcats. The NBA isn’t really my thing (too much isolation offense and no defense whatsoever), but I’ll root for the Portland Trailblazers, and of course the Jazz, on occasion.

I’m a TERRIBLE basketball player and have never played a competitive minute in my life. (Except for my Williams College intramural team, the Purple People Eaters, where I led the league in number of inbounds passes and fewest points per possession. I just enjoy watching other people play the game well; in particular well-coached teams executing structured plays and playing intense defense.)

You also talk about golf on your blog. I’m not a golfer (or rather, I’m a very bad, occasional golfer) but I can appreciate the mind-control needed to excel here. It’s a very different kind of pressure to the teamwork of basketball (even though that’s often about the individual as well). Are there any lessons you feel you learn from sport that apply to business?

[David]: Golf is a terrific sport for business, and it’s not just the networking. As you and Pete discussed with respect to your graduate studies in your last email, golf teaches you a number of techniques that can be applied to business, at least indirectly:

• strategic thinking (at least if you’re playing a well-designed golf course; thinking about a problem from back to front (i.e. green-to-tee, rather than tee-to-green) is a tremendous asset in our industry)
• self-discipline and focus (critical when you work for yourself like I do)
• persistence / confidence to overcome less-than-ideal situations

There are aspects of all three which can be learned from any sport, but because YOU are the only one accountable in golf, I think the benefits are amplified.

I’m also always intrigued by the business side of things. Is it just you working away over there, or are you growing a larger company (I guess this compares to the team vs. individual discussion above)? Do you have any plans that you can share on that side of things?

[David]: I really enjoy working alone, being responsible only for myself, and setting my own hours and agendas, etc. Part of that derives from the fact that I’m an only child, I suppose, but I’ve always felt more productive whether in school or in the real world when I’ve had the latitude to make decisions and control the pace of things by myself. I’m well aware that I miss out on the opportunity to bounce ideas off of other people & grow in that respect, but I think the blogosphere & communities like SEOmoz alleviate some of that downside.

Having said that, I’m well aware that I am essentially throwing away money by referring out the amount of business that I have been for the last four or five months, simply because I don’t have the bandwidth to take on so many projects. Money isn’t the main reason I’m in business, though; I’m passionate about creating great things and seeing clients succeed. But I realize that in order to grow my reputation further than I have, I’m going to have to take on some additional help for larger projects.

My expectation in 2008 is to develop partnerships with freelancers (rather than taking on the bookkeeping headache of full-time employees) to farm out some of the tasks that I either don’t enjoy doing or am not as good at. Linkbuilding is a great example. I recently had some discussions with Mike Belasco, aka Mike the Internet Guy, about doing some partnership work related to that. I would also like to find a top-class PHP programmer for some of the more tedious Wordpress slicing that I do; that person should also be great with shopping cart integration. Then there’s the paid side, which I don’t really dabble in at all. And of course a firm or individual that really knows viral marketing well. But rather than try to bring them under my umbrella, I’d rather let them operate independently & either white label it to the client or be up-front that someone else was handling that part of their marketing. Again, that’s just my philosophy that I operate best when given full latitude. It’s only fair that I would afford the same opportunity to others in similar positions. (Btw, I would love resumes & work experience from anyone reading this who fits those descriptions!)

Conversely, it was really fun for me to help Matt McGee out with The SEMMYs recently, so that may be another route I go in, farming myself out to bigger, smarter fish than I am & learning and growing my personal brand that way.

I think when I first started full-time in SEO / web design back in 2005, it was possible for one person to do it all. But even in the last three years, the field has grown at a remarkable pace, and at the same time become specialized into so many areas that it’s simply impossible for one person to be good at everything anymore. I think that’s a good thing, because it signals that the industry is reaching a certain level of maturity.

I think you at Distilled have a great business model because you’re still small enough to provide a great client experience, but you have enough people on staff to handle all (or virtually all) aspects of the online marketing space. Maybe one day I’ll get to that point, but I’d rather start with a lower-risk model like freelancing partnerships.

I love a lot of your website designs. You came into SEO from the design side of things primarily, didn’t you? That contrasts with me - I can’t design for toffee and came in through maths, statistics and probability. As a result, creativity intrigues me. How do you work? How do you come up with your designs? Do you do anything else creative or even arty?

[David]: Thanks for your kind words! I definitely got into SEO through design. I’ve been into art and design since primary school, and the opportunity to integrate great design into something that is good business (i.e. on-page SEO) just seems a perfect fit for my inclinations and skill sets. My secondary school art teacher, Steve Spangler, deserves a ton of credit for getting me where I am today, because he set up a flexible curriculum specially targeted to me and a few other classmates, that allowed me to simply experiment in the early days of Photoshop and Illustrator. I first worked on Illustrator 3 for Mac; we’re on 13 now, as you know.

(Incidentally, one of my classmates & best friends, Toby Grubb, I believe is now the lead graphic & web designer for Burton Snowboards. Another classmate is a high-end Flash designer for major record labels. There a ton of other classmates doing equally cool things in art and design. I’m one of the lower rungs on the MacArthur High School Art Alumni ladder. It’s an incredible set of people to come from such a small school in the middle of nowhere.)

Once I got to college, I took a class called “Intro to the Web” (it was actually a much tougher class than it sounds) that got me going on HTML. It was more a basic conceptual class on things like cryptography and data transfer, but needless to say, the taste of HTML coding set me on my way. One of my biggest regrets from college is that I didn’t take the follow-up class called something like “Intro to Java” because it would have made my life a whole lot easier now!

I get the most inspiration from peers around the web, to be honest. I’m always StumblingUpon & Digging cool designs (even Flash–horrors!), and my del.icio.us bookmarks are basically a completely unordered set of websites that I think look really cool. Typically at the start of a project I will ask a client to give me a set of websites he or she likes & a set that he or she doesn’t like to get an idea of his/her sensibilities. I’m blessed with a darn good photographic memory (part of that comes from studying & having a passion for art and architectural history) so usually I can recall a number of different techniques & the sites that use them. I’ll then try to blend those in a way that makes sense for each client & industry. I suppose that makes me a Post-Modernist (at least what is considered Post-Modern in the field of architecture) that way.

Before I touch Photoshop, though, I’ll almost always (and by that I mean 99% of the time) sketch out a series of rough thematics for the layout of the homepage, product pages, etc. These are often doodled on napkins or coasters during trips to my local watering hole.

I’m still REALLY into architecture & may get back into it at some point down the road, but I’ve curtailed outlet for my creativity for the last couple of years.

We have a lot of discussion in our office about the optimum computer set-up for designers, developers and everyone else. Duncan and I have pretty much subscribed to the view that it’s worth spending money for more screen real estate (though we aren’t up to shoemoney levels yet). I run two 19″ monitors (as does our web developer), Duncan and our graphic designer have 24″ iMacs (whenever they’re not being stolen!), and we have a mixture of linux, Mac OS X and Windows around the office (only linux on the servers though). What do you run? Are you an evangelist for anything in particular?

[David]: Yeah, I was really bummed to hear about your break-in! Hopefully insurance covered everything.

I’m not an evangelist for anything in particular, having learned on a Mac at school, but using a PC at home. I do use the right mouse button an awful lot, though, so for years the PC had an advantage there. Although Macs look absolutely gorgeous these days & I hear are way more reliable, all of my files are in PC format, and I’ve kind of adjusted to life on Windows. I’m waiting for whatever’s coming after Vista before I buy another OS, though…XP is working fine for me right now & I am not about to upset that delicate balance.

You might be shocked to learn that I only have a 1280px Dell Inspiron laptop. Part of that is me being stingy & keeping my overhead low, but part of it is a desire to design within a space that most people will view my work in. I might upgrade to a 19″ or 21″ monitor when I move to Portland in a couple months, but 24″ just seems unnecessary. I’d be much more likely to spend money on a system with a ton of RAM than on a fancy monitor. I love being able to take my laptop & work anywhere, including at clients’ offices. I think it’s great that you guys are doing well enough to afford all of your high-end equipment, I’m just not ready to take that leap yet

I don’t host any of my own websites, but I do love mySQL and PHP (as opposed to ASP / Windows servers). And I’m a HUGE Wordpress and Firefox evangelist, as I’m sure is every designer.

On a similar note, one of our interview questions for web dev roles is about preferred development environment (notepad, vim, emacs, textmate, dreamweaver(ugh)). What do you use?

[David]: I write 99% of my code by hand these days, but I used to do everything in the WYSIWYG of Dreamweaver, back before I knew a lot of code. So I still use the text editor in DW because it highlights tags in various colors & makes it easy to glance at a piece of code and see content vs structure. But you’re right, anything that Dreamweaver “writes” for you tends to be pretty messy, and the WYSIWYG never seems to display CSS-styled documents properly.

Getting back away from work stuff, you mentioned on your blog that you don’t drink coffee - is that because (a) you don’t like the taste, (b) you don’t like the effects of caffeine, or (c) you drink vodka at your desk?

[David]: It’s so nice to know that people actually read my blog, even if it’s the posts that are just for fun! The answer is mostly (a) and (c). I don’t drink a ton, except when I go to conferences, but I do enjoy a nice Greyhound or G&T every now and again at the end of a long day. I used to drink a lot of RedBull, but these days I am into a “natural” energy supplement called Zenergize which apparently isn’t as bad for you as Taurine or Caffeine. I do find myself getting a little addicted to it, which is bothersome, but I sleep a lot as it is (8.5 hrs most nights) and I just think my body is wired such that I would sleep 10 or 11 hours without some kind of boost.

The success Pat Sexton is having with SEOish is making me strongly consider microbrews as my breakfast beverage, however.

Staying with the alcohol theme, what will you be drinking at SMX West, so we know what to buy you if we beat you to the bar?

[David]: Hard to know because my preferences change on a weekly basis, but I’ve recently been enjoying dirty martinis. Basically anything dry and not sugary will probably be a welcome concoction.

The one thing I’d tell you to stay away from is a Long Island Iced Tea. Apparently bartenders in the San Jose area simply don’t know how to make a good one. You’ll have to ask Rebecca when you see her about the one she ordered at SES last year, but needless to say I finished it for her & regretted it on two separate occasions the next morning.

Finally, to bring the interview slightly back on-topic and end with a bit of geekiness, what’s your favourite html tag, and have you ever found a real need for definition lists (dl / dt)?

[David]: My favorite HTML tag. Wow. That’s a good one. As a designer, I’d say the <link rel=”stylesheet”> meta tag, and as an SEO, without a doubt, the <title> tag!

I have NOT ever used DL’s or DT’s & would submit those tags could probably be deprecated without a major outcry from web designers everywhere

I’ve been a fan of Stumble Upon for quite some time and really like the interface and it’s probably the only social media site which I actually browse for pleasure as well as work (although Reddit has been providing some amusement too recently). Given all that, I’m currently on 999 pages liked:

Point me in the direction of some good sites and the most convincing comment gets my 1000th thumbs up! Feel free to post live links in the comments, most of them will get stumbled anyway with my 1001, 1002, 1003rd stumbles

If anyone wants to friend me on SU you can find me here.

Edit: Suzi from Suzical wins my 1000th stumble for finding me somewhere to live! Thanks Suzi

While digging around a little bit into the various mobile versions of Google (and other large sites), I found their iPhone version. They also have a version at google.co.uk.

Now, I don’t have an iPhone but I have changed my user agent to mimic the iPhone and done a few searches on there. It appears that the UK version isn’t doing any geo-targeting (but this might be because I’m not really using an iPhone so it can’t work out where I am).

I searched for [ebay] (and a few other major brands) on the UK version of iPhone Google and the results were all related to the US websites (unlike the results under most mobile versions of Google).

Localisation is even more important than normal with mobile search, so this surprised me a little. Does anyone have a UK iPhone? Can you verify my results?

Hello all. Some of you keen beans may have noticed a new addition to the Distilled team.

My name’s Lucy and I’m as new to SEO as my 3 day old nephew is new to the world. Well, actually, that’s not strictly true. I’ve been SEO-ing now for a grand total of 7 days.

I’ll pursue the analogy: thrust into the world of SEO (without all the screaming and accompanying drama you’ll be glad to hear), I spent the first few days of my new life looking at everything in quite an advanced state of bewilderment. Just like a new-born, everything I apprehended was quite blurry and difficult to understand. Babies apparently see only black and white for the first few days of their lives and it was like that for me. With a few more days learning under my belt I am starting to appreciate the various nuances out there: the differences between a ‘trusted’ page and a ‘relevant’ page, for example. Social interaction comes next and I quickly learnt to tell my Digg from my Del.icio.us, my Boing Boing from my StumpleUpon.

Alongside a couple of inspirational introductions from Duncan (with beautiful illustrations and diagrams) and many helpful pointers from Will and Tom, I’ve been reading as widely as possibly through the resources out there. Top of the list was Aaron Wall’s excellent ‘Seobook‘. This works well as both an introduction and a more complex guide to what’s worth thinking about as a newby. I’ll admit it though, I haven’t quite managed to finish it. Yet.

Next on the list was Seomoz’s Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization. What I most appreciated about this guide was just how understandable it was- so thanks Rand! Even quite complex ideas (bearing in mind it’s a beginner’s guide) were both palatable and approachable. It also provided some great links to other starter guides.

Having tested the water, it was time to leave the safety of the paddling pool. This was definitely a mutual decision. I am in no way implying that Distilled snuck up and pushed me into the grown-up pool when I wasn’t looking. How many blogs are there on SEO?! Google Reader newly installed I started to read all the blogs in Tom’s ‘11 (and a half) SEO Feeds to which All Beginners Should Subscribe‘ and plenty of others that were recommended. I haven’t quite surfaced yet but I’ll get there! You guys sure have a lot to talk about.

In all seriousness though, I’ve found the blogs really useful as both a resource and a reassurance that seo is not all keyword research and link building (see how I just threw those in there?). And, what’s more, it’s funny, interesting and challenging more often than not. Can I for one say ‘phew’! That could have been an expensive move to London Lucy…

Introducing, ladies, gentlemen and digg-citizens our next interview with Lyndon Antcliff. I’m sure Lyndon (aka Lyndoman on most social media sites) needs very little introduction but here’s the background anyway. I first stumbled upon (hahaha ha.. ha… ahem) Lyndon’s blog about a year ago when I was looking for some advice on how to excel at writing and submitting linkbait. Since then, I would say his blog is the only one in my Google Reader which has a CTR of 100%. Why? Because he writes killer headlines which you can’t help but click on. Originally I’d put a few examples here but they’re so appealing that I thought they were too distracting so I’ve put them further down the page!

As well as writing killer headlines though, I’ve learned a LOT from reading his blog and also watching how he uses the social media sites (yes Lyndon, I stalk you. Might as well get that out in the open!).

I found the interview very insightful and there’s some great responses in there so hope you enjoy it and if you’re in the market to hire a master linkbaiter then give Lyndon a call.

On to the questions!

Firstly, can you introduce yourself both professionally and personally to our readers.

[Lyndon]: Certainly, my name is Lyndon Antcliff and I am a professional linkbaiter. Sounds odd when written out doesn’t it, like professional Monopoly player. Probably because there are so many amateur linkbaiters around these days who produce excellent stuff- but I am getting ahead of myself. By professional I mean I earn my crust by writing compelling content for the World Wide Web which is then disseminated through social media.

I am someone who accidentally tripped up the kerb, whilst crossing Oxford St and ended up in the strange world of getting-people-to-go-to-a-website-and-making-money-from-them, over ten years ago. It wasn’t the call of the geek or anything, more a need to cease the bohemian life I had created for myself and make some serious money. I’ve now carved out a snug little niche for myself as a social media consultant and linkbaiter.

Talk us through your entry into the world of search marketing. From what I’ve gathered you’ve worked in many different fields before settling on SEO/Social media - is that right? Name a few of the most interesting!

[Lyndon]:Well, started out setting up and running a fantasy, celebrity, stock market game. It was fun, a wild ride and I learned a lot about communities and how users of a system can take advantages of its weaknesses. I had a couple of niche content sites associated with our stock market game site and they took off like a mad man in an avalance. Before I even knew what seo was I was getting 30k a day in uniques, mainly by taking advantage of the long tail and predictive seo.

It was fun whilst it lasted, then over a year ago Google decided I had way too much fun and I now had to work for a living. The plug was pulled on my site and it was sent into the outer darkness. It wasn’t blackhat, but I was certainly pushing the envelope.

I’m actually quite interested in black hat techniques, but I’m no programmer and do not have the frame of mind to make it really work.

Whilst we are here, a word on seo ethics. I don’t apply ethics to seo, for me, if it works it works and I’m not going to let a search engine decide how I view actions morally. Too many seo’s allow themselves to be locked into an agenda set by multi-million pound corporations, but back to the interview.

And you’re a one man band at the moment is that right? Do you plan on keeping it that way or do you plan on expanding into a social media consulting firm and hiring staff?

[Lyndon]: You know, I ask myself that question a lot. I like the idea of an office, with minions running around churning out linkbait on an industrial scale, but it’s really not who I am or where I want to go. I’m basically a writer, with a writers mentality. I love working on my own and crafting linkbait in a very up close and personal way, sure it’s not like writing a novel or winning the Booker prize, but it’s a lot better paid.

Although I do outsource some aspects of the business I don’t think I am going to be interviewing staff anytime soon.

Within the SEO community you’re known and respected as a social media geek (in the nicest possible way ) how did you get that reputation and what does it involve?

[Lyndon]: Am I? I’ve never heard that before, “social media geek”. I like it. Well, the first thing it involves is a lot of time, time spent reading everything there is on the subject. Which when I started was possible. I don’t think you can do it now as there are so many “social media” blogs out there you can physically never get through them all. And of course they all seem to be on the same level, maybe we can talk about this later.

Reputation is an interesting thing. Because I do not what happens in other peoples heads, I can only hypothesise on the process which leads a person to respect another. I say this because although I am a confident and somewhat brash individual, yet I am surprised at the level of positive comments about my work. At first I thought people were talking about someone else or that they wanted to borrow money.

I mean, I know I’m brilliant, but for other people to think that too, they’re crazy. lol

To be honest I did set out to build a rep within the space. It involves looking at what people want and then giving it to them. It’s relatively easy when you have been in the trenches for many years to simply pop your head up and make a bit of a name for yourself. I definitely think you have to put in the hours though, there are no overnight successes in this business.

You’ve mentioned before how important you think the avatar is in social media and how it brands you online. If you were forced to change avatars, how much of a blow do you think that would be to your social media profiles?

[Lyndon]: A change in anything like an avatar can be leveraged into links. In fact I have just had a thought, I’ve wanted to get rid of the red skinhead avatar for a while. As I am not a skinhead or red. It wouldn’t be a blow at all as I would make it into an event and make sure people knew who I morphed into. Actually on digg I am represented by Iggle Piggle.

So I don’t think it would be a blow at all, it’s not what happens that’s important, it’s the perception of others that is the focus. In other words, it’s not what you say, but what people think you say. So any change in avatar would be inconsequential, it will be what people think about the change which is important and of course that can be influenced.

How much time do you spend on digg/SU/reddit each day? Are there any other social media sites you spend a lot of time on?

[Lyndon]: Pretty much most of my waking hours, other than those hours where I am pinned down by my kids and forced to play “lets squash daddy”. It would be fine except they are both in their 20’s.

Actually that’s not true they are 2 and 3 years old.

But, I am constantly checking social media sites, even when writing linkbait, as it helps to keep me anchored. It’s important to remind myself of the audience I am writing for.

I remember when I started down the social media route and I would spend so much time on them I would have dreams about digg, now that’s sad. But I spend more time writing now.

Do you use any tools to help you find and submit stories? (social media for FireFox for example)

[Lyndon]: Yes I use that and a right click to digg the page I’m on, can’t remember what it’s called. My FireFox browser is jam packed with extensions, I use SEO for Firefox a lot too. I’m also in the process of putting together a bunch of tools for my clients to use.

How do you see the face of social media changing over the next 6 - 12 months? Everyone (myself included!) seems to be raving about SU these days, do you see them gaining more of a market share? Do you see the social media market diversifying or do you see only a few big players being left standing?

[Lyndon]: It’s interesting, SU came up on my radar by sending traffic to one of my sites in 2005. SU is great because it’s hard to game and is a great community, unlike at digg which seems to be packed full of people too insane to be prescribed Prozac. But, the problem is at SU is a lot of short term marketers who care little for branding and the long term are throwing as much crap at it as possible and of course this creates a backlash and non spammy seo’s can get caught up in and at times it can be nasty.

My advice when trying to utilise a social media site for financial reasons is stay under the radar and blend with the natives.

It’s impossible for anyone to predict what the social media scene will be like in a years time, that’s what makes this sector interesting. It also means you have to keep on your toes to keep up with developments, I mean if you’re not plugged into what is happening at digg right now it could be very confusing.

But back to SU, yes they are definitely doing things right over there and are growing. I don’t see fewer players, I see a continuing flux of players. Like Mixx is the new kid on the block, problem is, he’s the new kid and has no friends. Thing I hate about Mixx is you have to do stuff to make it work, at digg, they do all the work for you, now this may appeal to the tinkerers out there, but I don’t have time to tinker with organising my feeds or whatever they call it, I think they may take the Propeller spot, which is spamola city right now. Plus the fact that Propeller banned my site because….actually I don’t know why they have banned my site, digg has too.

Amazing, banning a site that sells services to help people pay their way to the front page, who would have thought Actually what makes me laugh are the sites that offer to get people to the front page of digg and then complain that they get buried. Well duh!

Being a high profile social media consultant you must get approached by many SEO firms and SEO bloggers wanting to book you for some linkbait. Do you accept these requests? Does that cause you any difficulties with conflicts of interest? Are there any markets you won’t work in?

[Lyndon]: About 50% of my clients are seo’s and seo firms, it makes sense to outsource, I have seen some of the efforts by big shot seo companies and they are pathetic. An seo is naturally a linkbaiter like a tabby cat is a Tiger. They are extremely different mind sets, especially blackhat seo, which is why you get a lot of big time seo’s slagging off digg whilst those who know how to carefully milk the beast have our buckets overflowing with milk.

I have had a few clients who are in the same sector, however, my work tends to be individually suited to the client. Each linkbait is a new creation, I do not use the same techniques over and over, rather I develop new ones, the format may be similar with some but the ideas they represent are unique.

I wouldn’t work in porn or anything illegal or something like booze and tobacco. There are certain publishers I would not work for and…… actually, thinking about it there are quite a few clients I would not work for, but I am trying to keep this as short as possible,

Do you find some industries to be much tougher than others? Do you enjoy linkbaiting some sites more than others?

[Lyndon]: Oh yes, it’s not that the subject is hard, it’s that the hard subjects tend to be boring and run by people who don’t understand that including “sex” for example, in the title will mean it will get noticed more. Not that any of my linkbait has ever had sex in the title come to think of it. But, there is a sensational nature which lends itself to linkbait which can scare off some of my more sedate clients.

I relish linkbaiting the hard ones, it makes me think more, and I find that it’s the thinking of the idea which takes the most work. To be honest, it’s not really the industry as you can tickle any sector into a juicy idea.

One thing you’ve taught me is that headline writing is extremely important. Your posts always have incredible headlines I can’t help but click through on. Where did you learn to write headlines so well? And how would you recommend people learn to write headlines in today’s environment?

[Lyndon]: Read.

That’s the short answer, the long answer - First ask the question, “Am I really the person to write the headline”, I say this because not everyone has a natural talent for this and it’s much more efficient to outsource. There are plenty of books and websites that offer a good grounding in copy writing.

I don’t really know where I learned, sure I read a bunch of copy writing book, but they can only teach you technique. I think it’s been drip fed me over the years. Actually, thinking about it now, I will tell you who taught me headline writing, Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog, Slaine, all characters from a comic called 2000AD. You look at a comic and you consider the amount of space each speech bubble has, each utterance is a headline. It has to convey the most meaning in the shortest possible time.

I would like to give the intellectual answer and say Poetry taught me, but it’s probably comics. I’m a big fan of the screenplay writer William Goldman, huge fan. For years I toyed with the idea of getting into the movie buisness as a writer but it’s a shockingly bad industry for the artist and I ended up writing scripts which I only showed to friends. But, writing those screenplays taught me to compress meaning into a sentence using the fewest amount of words and to make it feel like honey.

So I guess the answer to your question is spend your childhood reading comics, your teens writing poety (great for picking up girls) and your 20’s writing screenplays, then spent ten years in online marketing and after that should be easy.

Either that or just pinch what works on digg

Do you have any experience of writing headlines for offline media (or offline advertising). Can you share any tips about the differences between online and offline headline writing

[Lyndon]: Nope, absolutely none. I did think about becoming a copywriter but the linkbait took off before I had chance to give it a shot. I would love to write one of those long, psychologically crafted sales letters you see around. Dying to write, “But wait, there’s more.”

With your headline writing skills, have you ever thought about branching out into PPC advert writing?

[Lyndon]: Yes and no. I think PPC gives such quick feedback you don’t have to have great headline writing skills, you can pretty much follow a formula and test test test.

If you could have the chance to submit an event from the last century (like the moon landings) to digg, which would you choose and what would your headline be?

[Lyndon]: This is a tricky question as we could discuss this all day. I think I would go for “Hitler Dead”, but there are so many. It also raises the question about what digg is, is it a place to get breaking news? How would it have handled 9/11 and so on.

You mentioned a little while ago you were writing an ebook on linkbaiting and social media. How is that coming along? When do you see that being released?

[Lyndon]: The ebook idea is dead, I actually don’t like the ebook format as a way of teaching people social media marketing, the space moves so fast and people want such different things that an ebook would be of little use except as a primer and as there are so many blogs out there it’s not hard to get up to speed.

Although, I’m glad you asked. I do feel a need to help people with their linkbait and social media marketing campaigns, so I am putting together a little something for my clients and a few other people. It’s more of a social media marketing mastermind group. which I will personally coach and provide advice, ideas and consult in a closed forum.

In fact, I am pretty much going to give up offering to linkbait to clients and instead devoting most of my time to the mastermind group. It makes much more sense to do it this way than an ebook. You get to talk to the expert and ask questions.

At present it’s invite only, and I will announce developments through my blog and email newsletter.

You also mentioned that it would be marketed in a truly innovative way which I am very much looking forward to! Can you tell us any more about this?

[Lyndon]: See above

Aside from the blog, your ebook and client work - are there any other projects you’re working on? Do you have any personal sites you linkbait for (aside from your blog)?

[Lyndon]: See above

Something we’ve been discussing in the office recently - when you launch a piece of linkbait how do you define a success and how do you report on that to clients? Do you simply report on number of links or do you factor in visits as well?

[Lyndon]: Well a lot of people seem to think that success is only getting a front page digg, but that is only a part of the whole process. Ultimately you want to acquire those natural high pr links within the clients niche, social media sites like digg represent an efficient way to deliver potential linkerati to the clients site. I would like to see each of my clients get at least 40 natural, dofollow links from sites within their niche. But some clients simply want the traffic or the branding or even to attract new rss subscribers.

At the end of the day the client is really the only one who can judge the success.

What’s been your greatest linkbaiting success story? Not necessarily in terms of results, but in terms of the piece you were most proud of?

[Lyndon]: It’s an interesting, because I have sweated every linkbaiting job I have had. I’m notorious for late delivery as I like to get very into the job and end up throwing away a lot of ideas, even after working on them for a day or two. So I look at all of them with a sense of pride, but I did like the Google Maps Mash up I did of the most isolated popular islands, that was fun to research and was pleased with the results. Funny thing was, that was in the early days when I was selling at £250, now it’s £1,000 a pop.

Aside from social media and seo, what do you enjoy getting up to, what are your hobbies? You’ve mentioned in the past script writing, poetry and all manner of creative ideas (which you can only expect from a master linkbaiter!) - do you have any of these on the go at the moment?

[Lyndon]: Between family time and the linkbaiting there is little fun time. My non linkbait related book on the go at the moment is Barbarians, by Terry Jones, very much interested in history. Although saying that, did you know that Archimedes invented the ray gun? Something I intend to use as linkbait someday, or if your readers want to use it go for it.

Mostly these days it’s watching DVD’s with my significant other. West Wing, 24, Heroes, but my fav DVD at the moment is the complete Larry David collection, I love Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Thanks for the interview, hopefully it entertained your readers and gave them something to think about. I know it took a while to secure the interview Tom, but I got there in the end. bye.

Thanks for doing the interview Lyndon - some great responses in there!

As promised at the start of the post, in case you need any more eivdence of the genius of this man here’s a few examples of his headlines which just FORCE you to click them. Go on, I DARE you not to click on them…

How to blog the SEO fishbowl

Stick your linkbuilding strategy on crack

ʎ11ıs ʇsnظ sı uʍop ǝpısdn buıʇıɹʍ

Title Tags and the secret story of the hairy golf ball

She is Excited and gives her link freely

I’m not going to go into depth on the news that Microsoft has bid $44.6 billion as it will be covered (to death) in a million and one places (and I don’t really have time to write any kind of blog post as I have two interviews this afternoon, a report to write and a load of calls to return).

I just wanted to make a few observations:

1. as I’m sure other people have noted the valuation put on Yahoo! is almost exactly 3 times the crazy extrapolated Facebook valuation
2. the half-cash / half-shares offer uses more than half of Microsoft’s total cash pile - which I think has to be a good thing in terms of proving that they are putting their money where their mouth is (mouths are?) about being serious that they are going to compete with Google
3. this isn’t just about search. It’s easy to think it is from within the SEO world, but remember that Yahoo! is more than a search engine (thankfully!) and presumably Microsoft has plans for pretty much all of it.

I’m going to end with a graph of (rebased) share prices for MSFT, YHOO and GOOG over the last year. I’m not sure exactly what implications to draw from it (I’m not a corporate finance specialist) but I think it’s interesting: