A recent study showing the power-law effect on Google search ranking traffic is enough to underscore what we already know: the Zipfian distribution (aka Power-Law, Pareto Principle, or 80-20 Rule) of the information economics, nicely formulated in the book Information Rules. (Disclaimer: Hal Varian was the dean of the UC Berkeley Information School when I attended for my Masters degree.)

We at SEO Chiangmai agree with the general advice to largely ignore the Google algorithm factors for specific targeting based on the fact that Google makes more than one change per day to the search algorithm. However, as has been recently announced, some algorithm changes will make an impact on search traffic. Therefore for business, it is important to understand and to have a strategy to deal with such a dynamic system.

The Concept of Relevance for SEO

Back in my I-School days, we learned that relevance is a human, not a computer concept. That is, what is relevant is measured by humans. In particular, Information Science early days and even now in the various TREC competitions, measures relevance with use of retired Information professionals, that is: retired CIA officers. What is relevant is what experts agree upon as relevant (there is heavy use of inter-rater reliability statistics in the social sciences). Google has merely produced a computer-based system for returning relevant results based on 200+ clues of human behavior with computers, the same clues that are accessible to computers and can be used to approximate human judgement of relevance.

For SEO -- from a strategic perspective -- this means creating one's own dynamical system based on relevance to perform against that of the Google juggernaut. This does not mean re-inventing PageRank, but rather designing a checklist that can be used effectively.

SEO Chiangmai Internet Marketing Factors

We at SEO Chiangmai are the leading SEO and SEM, Internet Marketing and Ecommerce consultant in Thailand and serving Mainland Southeast Asia, the Greater Mekong Subregion. Our set of factors are part and parcel of our content+social media consulting services offering which provides excellent, measurable and affordable business results. We will present a significant number of our factors in upcoming articles on SEO Chiangmai and elsewhere on the web.

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Wrodpress and the Trailing Slash

As WordPress users, SEO Chiangmai is very interested in such suggestions as WordPress automatically adds trailing slashes to pages. Nicely, WordPress also adds the 301 (permanent redirect) and the 200 (success) codes when a page without a trailing slash is used.

PageRank and 301 Redirect Boundaries

We have witnessed cases where 301 Redirects -- at both the domain and the page level -- effectively block or somehow mitigate the flow of PageRank. This means that it is vital to include trailing slashes in link-building activities, as well as to have well-thought-out page-naming and url development in site plans.

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As from April 12th 2010, all links placed at Wikitravel.org are marked as no follow.

This action has been taken after a long debate in the community, and is designed to lessen the volume of links placed at the site purely for the purpose of search engine optimisation. Dealing with the volume of edits driven by placement of such links, has caused strain on the volunteer team who keep Wikitravel in order. This left us with little choice other than to make the site far less attractive for SEO purposes.
Wikitravel.org has always embraced the business community and will continue to do so. We welcome hotel, restaurant and other travel related listings (see: http://wikitravel.org/en/Welcome,_business_owners ), that are added for the benefit of travellers. There is no change to this policy, other than the action taken to discourage SEO-driven placements.

We would be very grateful if you circulated the news of this development throughout your organisation, and amongst your clients if appropriate.

Best regards

The Wikitravel Administration Team
http://www.wikitravel.org

Well, there you have it. The great unwashed SEO masses have ruined yet another wonderful source of SEO due to the basic tragedy of the commons problem. Although this pales next to things like Global Warming, it is yet another reminder of how the humans are likely doomed.

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It's been over 3 months since the last (December 31, 2009) PageRank update. This time, there were changes in slightly over 25% of our tracked domains.

Sensible Changes to PageRank

The changes mostly made sense. Two domains lost a page rank (both went from 4 to 3), but with obvious causes as one has been blocking traffic from three countries and another effectively lost all of its content. Another 9 domains increased by 1 PageRank, some from 3 to 4 and some from 2 to 3.

Another successful quarter for our clients and internal sites. Most of the sites which increased in PageRank had been growing content and developing links. A few had not, which always makes one wonder how much random noise there is in PageRank to try and keep it, um, sub-optimized.

Success for SEO Chiangmai and its Clients

With these PageRank increases, our current set of tactics and the underlying strategy has been vindicated again.

Content and Linkbuilding - Good

Still, it is a bit disconcerting to deal with clients who simply want to procrastinate on content and link-building, our two-part strategy.

Traffic Shaping - Bad

Another item which bothers us is playing games with content, blocking Internet traffic based on some criteria. This usually hurts the customers and therefore the business itself a lot more than it ever would help withhold information from a rival. It is best to simply be up front. Much simpler and less confusing that way.

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Dofollow + PageRank = Linkjuice

The nofollow attribute in HTML hyperlinks, along with the illustrious Google PageRank are two of the more obvious and important factors for the SEO professional. I think that for individual website owners, knowing about this is much less important.

Better is hiring (on occasion) a good SEO/SEM consultant who has your best interests at heart. Note: the PageRank algorithm worth revisiting on a regular basis to keep in mind how the bots see websites, especially if you want to get into the arcane art of PageRank sculpting.

Discovery of Dofollow

There is of course no such thing as Dofollow, but rather an absence of Nofollow combined with an ability to create links on a given site. One algorithm is something like the number of external links in relation to the number of nofollows and the number of times the word "thanks" is found on the page.

Discovery of PageRank

The use of Google to look up PageRank is not difficult, the only thing that is needed is a tool which goes through a given site (seeded by a set of sites with high SERP ranking for given keywords) and checks PageRank for Dofollow pages. This is something that the linkbuilding wizards at SEO Chiangmai have gotten wired up with local developers. Sweet.

WordPress Plugin for Dofollow (removes WordPress Nofollow)

WordPress by definition adds the "Rel=Nofollow" tag to comments. Booo. But as for most undesirable "features" or lack thereof in WordPress, there are plugins to modify or extend the default behavior.

• Semiologic's Dofollow WordPress Plugin

SEO Chiangmai is Dofollow using this plugin. We'll see how long that lasts.

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The Art of Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing can be a bit confusing as there are many moving parts. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) themselves overlap when it comes to keyword and competitor research, though there are different optimizations and activities to perform as well.

Internet Marketing Overview

For a general overview of the topic of Internet Marketing, first take a look at the Internet Marketing article on Wikipedia and work your way through the articles listed on the right hand side.

Internet Marketing Activities at SEO Chiangmai

The main Internet Marketing activities at SEO Chiangmai, Thailand include the following:

Site Instrumentation and Benchmarking

• Site analytics
• PageRank
• SERP logs and sitemap submission

Keyword and Market Research

• Backlink analysis
• Competitor analysis
• Keyword research

On-page Optimization

• Brand articulation
• Site structure
• Usability
• Metadata
  • Title
  • Description
  • H1/H2/H3
  • Anchor text
  • Anchor title
  • URL

Off-page Optimization

• Link building
• Social media content and campaigns
• Press release optimization
• Email list campaigns

Pay-per-click (PPC)

• Google AdWords and banner ads
• Banner advertising and sponsorships

Ecommerce

• Affiliates
• Markets
• Carts and catalogs
• Transaction providers

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SEO, Internet Marketing and Ecommerce popular links, linking resources, tactics and strategies

Popular Links

PageRank 8

• Magneto - Open Source Ecommerce software

PageRank 7

• Commission Junction - for SEM and affiliate marketing
• Matt Cutts - Google and SEO
• OpenX open source ad server
• Google Webmaster Central Blog
• Vertical Response - Email, postcards and survey campaigns

PageRank 6

• Paid Content - The economics of content
• SEOmoz Blog

PageRank 5

• bg Theory, LLC - Internet marketing
• Google Ranking Factors - Vaughn's 1-pagers
• Pizza SEO - The blog has lower pagerank so we link to the main site
• Search Engine Land
• Stone Temple Consulting - SEO Services blog
• Yoast - Dutch SEO Consultant - good tools and discussion

PageRank 4

• Bluehat SEO - definitely blackhat, but gives good whitehat tactics as well
• LinkSpiel - link strategy
• Onreact SEO 2.0 Blog - SEO
• SEO Gadget - excellent SEO analysis
• SEO Roundtable - Sometimes worthwhile discussion

PageRank 3

• SEOptimize Blog
• Search Engine Journal
• Bruce Clay Internet Marketing

Linking strategies and tactics - SEO Link Analysis Tools

Doing competitor backlink analysis is key.

• Yoast Link Analysis tool description and Link Analysis Tool Firefox plugin

Linking strategies and tactics - DoFollow Link Sites

First, get Yoast's Nofollow display Greasemonkey script, so you can see how the pagerank is being blocked. This leads to the following list of sites which do not use "no-follow" on links, either in main directory submissions for directory sites, or on comments for blogs and forums.

A good backlink analysis tool can make this process more automated, but it is equally important to browse the web with "nofollow" googles on.

David Naylor's Playground tool is pretty awesome for one-off site-checking.

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From Relevance to Irrelevance in Two Months

Technorati is now completely irrelevant for SEO. It took a whole two months since our post on Technorati as part of the 30 Links in 30 Days Linkbuilding Campaign (Day 8, to be exact).

PageRank Stripped from Pages

How did that happen? Since October 30, 2009 it appears that PageRank has been stripped from blog pages as well as from account pages](http://technorati.com/people/jeffmcneill).

Blog Claim Process Now Broken

Two months is not a long time to be out of date, but of course in the SEO world, two months is an eternity, with unhappy customers and potentially business-destroying revenue crashes. For this reason one shouldn't count on the quaintly out-of-date About.com network.

It turns out based on the comments that the blog claim process has been broken since around August, or perhaps earlier. We at SEO Chiangmai began testing this in early December and it is indeed broken. Blog claims simply don't happen.

Summary - No PageRank, No Way to Create Links

In sum, PageRank (the raison d'etre of linkbuilding, beyond a trickle of traffic flow) is now gone, and unless one wants to create account upon account (account creation is still possible, but blog claims are not), then there is no way to create actual links to sites (under a single account).

Boo!

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Links to Images

Studies show that people don't usually expect to find a photo or image at the end of a text link that does not refer to the link as having an image. There are a few ways (options) to handle this.

• Have a link that says: "(photo)" or "(image)" after a given description text, and link the text to the image. The disadvantage here is the anchor text becomes very generic, if it is to one of your own images in, say, Flickr.
• Have one or more thumbnails to Flickr images, using the Flickr Gallery tag, which is easily managed (add or remove images by adding/removing tags to images in Flickr). This is great for usability, and the Title can be preserved within the IMG tag.
• Have a small or medium-sized image on the page near the text (no link or link the image out to a larger image). Again, Title can be preserved and a link out to the full sized image (lightbox enabled) is possible.

Links to Content

Links are good on pages, but a small number of them are best both for user navigation of a site and for "PageRank Sculpting" tactics. Links perform several functions at the same time (for both the human and search engine). Here are some guidelines for any content creator and certain for all the bloggers and blogs/news feeds for all sites.

Page-Sized Only

Link only to content that is page-sized, and be sure to use that pages' name or something close to it. Avoid linking to sub-content within a page (e.g., Aftercare). If something is important enough, it should have its' own page, if it doesn't then it shouldn't have it's own link. This is a guideline that others may disagree with, and certainly sub-page content linking is still somewhat prevalent on the web. A better approach is a search-aware results page which highlights search terms. We feel that search is a better tool than subsection linking.

Anchor Text Length

The anchor text of a link should not be very long, from 1-5 words or so, 6-7 if you must, but must include keywords, preferably keywords to the page but also keywords to the site.

Outbound Links Important

It is just as important to link out with a few judicious links as to link within the site. Having a "Links" page is not the same thing and Google rather evaluates each individual page of a site and if all links are on a links page that page will have low value and the other pages will have no outbound links. If you can consider outbound links to things like Wikipedia pages or other forms of reference that are well known or popular (according to Google) that helps a lot.

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