Understanding and assessing the competition are a HUGE part of SEO, but when the competition also turns out to be a “conference buddy”, the lines sometimes get blurred. It’s still nice to have some ways to creatively discover what the other team is up to. I haven’t worked in too many highly competitive industries myself but the concepts of “SEO counterintelligence” is definitely fascinating no matter if you are the ONLY person in a niche industry (sooner or later you’ll have some competition).
There are new website designers and developers every day who decide that they want to be search engine optimizers. This is very similar to the way that seven or so years ago everyone decided they wanted to design or develop a web site. I was myself a wannabe designer once. I may have even stuck with it if I didn’t suck so badly at design, and could create a site concept that I liked in less than half my lifetime.
With new and intelligent folks constantly joining the ranks of existing SEO’s, the marketplace gets increasingly overcrowded and competitive. The best SEO’s realize that the changes that G, Y, and M make to their algorithms that screw most people are actually helpful to them because they increase the demand for extensive SEO knowledge.
Many SEO’s that are good businesspeople realize that at this point there is still plenty of room for “cooperative competition”. Margins are quite high and it is beneficial to find ways that you can cooperate with your competition to become bigger and stronger.
This post is mainly inspired by a pair of posts by Jake in the WmW supporter’s forum a while back that I’ve been meaning to regurgitate - Dissecting Competitor’s SEO Work
A few ideas for analyzing the competition competition:
- Check out their robots.txt - see what you can see that they don’t want you to
- Look for quality CSS-P - If important elements are positioned to the top of the page and the text/code ratio is very good - you’re probably dealing with a pretty savvy SEO
- Sift through their backlinks using the “linkdomain:” and “link:” commands on yahoo
Counter-intelligence tactics:
Thanks again Jake
- Selectively deliver your robots.txt to only known SE IP’s - keep competitors from sniffing
- Selectively deliver content to folks coming in on “SEO queries” using things like link:www.yoursite.com, inurl:www.yoursite.com, allinanchor:www.yoursite.com cache:www.yoursite.com etc. Normal people don’t use these queries, and it’ll probably be fun to have your competition see a message pop up that says…”hey, quit sniffin’ around my site!”
I personally don’t spend a lot of time on “selectively delivering content”, but I do see the value, and how it will increase as the marketplace shrinks a bit. Probably be a while, but my guess is that those with the most information and ability to use it wisely will win.
Search is a funny industry that relies almost entirely on information. It makes sense that disinformation will become increasingly more important. Here is another thread from Brett T about search bait that is pretty insightful, and might get your gears grinding about interesting ways to attract users and confuse the competition.
Okay, all the links in this post are to WmW supporter’s forum, but hey, it’s a great resource where I’ve learned a lot. I’ll make the reader’s a deal…if you subscribe to WmW, and you drop me a line, I’ll send you my list of favorite supporter’s forum posts from the last year two years or so. Definitely worth your while…and hey then you can even read the links from this post. If you’re already a member you’re probably a competitor also…so no deal for you!
Tag: WebmasterWorld
Link development is one of the best and worst parts of SEO. When you know you’ve found a killer link for a bargain price (free is always nicest), it is a great achievment. Link development can be quite tedious as well. Techniques and tools are what seperate the best link assassins from link hunters. Mr. Ploppy is an assassin. Here’s a bit of his list:
Linkadage is a great way to learn the fairmarket value of text links
Mr. Ploppy sez: Presell Pages are the favorite link of link assassins everywhere.
Mr. Ploppy’s quote of the week:
“How do you ask for a link? Asking for a link is about asking if you can do business with somebody. Links are much like currency on the web: If you don’t have a value proposition then don’t bother asking for a link. If you do have a value proposition but still don’t know how to ask for a link… you may wish to consider very early retirement.” - Mike Grehan
Filed under: General, Google, Industry Stuff by Stuntdubl SEO at 5:23 am, 3/16/2005
Google dorks has been around for quite awhile, and is rather disturbing. Essentially, it’s a list of queries on Google that can be used to reveal unsecured networks, personal information, and all sorts of other information that should definitely not be publicly available on the internet.
I’ve been wanting to mention this site for a while, as it is quite interesting (as well as disturbing). I think it is VERY cool that someone is creative enough to come up with these incredible queries that result in some very specific information that is exactly what they are looking for. Yes, it is a shame that they are wasting such creativity on potentially harmful activity though.
This site also brings up a very interesting debate. Should Google be held at all responsible for allowing these types of queries to work? I know when they were the media darling that all SEO’s and early adopters would have said no, but now that they are a large mega-corp, do we still have the same tolerance of the types of things that should be able to slide by?
The people whose information are turned up by these types of queries are quite stupid. They may also have their lives extensively damaged by identity theft or other malfeasance It is a shame that there are so many stupid people in the world, but defending the other side of this debate, I don’t think we have the obligation to rectify people’s stupidity. I also don’t think we want to keep it easy for criminals to commit evil deeds.
One other reason this comes up, is that last night on SEO Rockstars, BakedJake mentioned a query (which eludes me - it was a fairly “evil” query regarding user cookies) that consistently produced an error result. This is quite odd for Google, but a bit admirable. It seems G is also becoming more effective at detecting automated queries and shutting them down. As an SEO this makes life a bit more difficult, but again, is somewhat admirable.
My question is…how hard would it REALLY be for G to shut all these queries down? Put them on a “blacklist” perhaps? Why not create a database of “evil” phrases that could ONLY be used for evil and ban them. If I buy something from a website online, and the server administrator is a bit slow…I’m not real excited about someone being able to find my information through Google. If some moron server administrator leaves a foothold open someplace where I’ve done business, I will be the one to be paying the consequences. The answer unfortunately is that someone would have to constantly decide which phrases were evil (on a manual level), and this would probably employ too high of a level of censhorship which would also raise hell. The manual manipulation of serps will always be an issue with the SE’s, and I highly doubt we’ll see much transparency in this arena anytime soon.
The total answer: Don’t be stupid. Employ personal responsibility and don’t allow Google to find information on your systems. As a consumer…be careful who you do business with, and make sure their credible and qualified to be running whatever type of system they are running. If you’re a server admin, and your sites come up for any of the queries on Google dorks…quit your day job and go back to school…it’s time to hang ‘em up.
Tag:Google
The rumor that spilled and started yesterday was that MSN will be announcing their new pay per click service very soon. While this is not a big surprise in itself since they have been recruiting for the positions associated with the new service for quite a while, it does bring up some interesting questions.
How will the existing relationship with Overture be handled?
From what I understand, the contract extends to some time in 2006, and I don’t imagine that was a very cheap contract. My guess is that M$ will continue to use Overture inventory until they have built up a strong enough user base to support themselves.
Can I get cheap nickle/dime clicks on incredible keywords?
As mentioned above, it’s pretty doubtful, but the idea of bidding on “search engine optimization consultant” for a dime sure has my motor running. Even if quick-to-adopt internet marketer’s don’t get nickle and dime clicks on highly competitive phrases, there still has to be some “sweet spots” between the cut off point of Overture inventory and Microsoft’s new inventory.
How ’bout some affiliate arbitrage?
With the above mentioned question in mind…can I bid low and sell the traffic high? Time to dig out some of those old affiliate username/ passes.
Will there be coupons at conferences?
MSN…if you’re reading this…you can make up for the shaft that you gave me and others when you turned us away at the door. Learn from G…break out some nice big PPC coupons and be sure to look the other way when we come up to your booth to grab a handful of them.
What will Google do?
This move puts the spotlight on the former media darling in my opinion. With both MSN and Yahoo (with their soon to be announced contextual advertising publishers program) going after G’s cash cows what are they going to come up with to continue their projected growth levels?
What will Yahoo do? (oh right, the contextual advertising thing)?
This has still gotta be a pretty hefty hit to Yahoo revenue when this one slides away. Not real sure what the “experts” say MSN market share is, but I know what it is in my stats, and a lot of times it seems fairly close to the ‘hoo. Since a very substantial portion of revenue/profit comes from paid search ads and Y is losing 20, 30, 40%(?) of their paid search distrubution…well…I think you can do the math.
I think ultimately, the same as a 3rd organic SE, the competition will be positive and will fuel positive growth in the industry. Perhaps, MSN will even take a stronger stance on click fraud and take more responsbility for aiding publishers with monitoring fraud levels. Hopefully we will also see some other nice services and tools evolve out of the competition that will make life as an internet marketing consultant a bit easier.
Discussions:
Discussion at Webmasterworld.com
WMW Supporter’s forum discussion
Post at Threadwatch.org
Tag:MSN PPC
Filed under: General, LSI/LSA, Mr. Ploppy, Tools by Mr. Ploppy at 10:32 am, 3/13/2005
So I have a section of this site that is for tools, and I have a ton of tools in my bookmarks. Creative use of tools, afterall, is one of the aspects that makes for a good SEO. I figured I’d make a weekly SEO/ Internet marketing tool post, and list a few of my favorite online tools each week for others to play with. So here goes…volume I of the Monday Tool List.
If you have some good tools you’d like to share with Mr. Ploppy, be sure to drop Mr. Ploppy a line.
*command originates from a member at WMW.
Tag:SEO Tools
While at SES, I actually met three hedgefund investors. This is more than I’ve actually met in my entire life. I guess from what little I understand of financial analysis and what not, that their purpose for being there was to research which public companies may be successful, and which would fail miserably (so they could “short” the stock).
Meeting these folks made me realize I needed to write a bit of my thoughts on the valuation of the seo/sem industry in general and how things will shake out. Right now, there are a TON of SEO companies, and more coming into the market all the time. Some are dedicating their time and efforts to SEO/ SEM, while others just offer it as a value-added service. The point is, that there are probably way more than there needs to be for the extended future. The industry is still in the growth period, but in my mind has to be nearing a rolloff point of oversaturation similar to the way the web design industry became. So what will differentiate the GREAT companies from those that will wither away?
Firstly, I will say that I think there is potential for a lot of players in the industry, as SEO/SEM firms will really become similar to, or roll into traditional marketing agencies (which there are TONS of). Similar to the traditional marketing agencies, SEO/SEM firms may be large corporate entities or small one to two person operations. There is a need for both. The demand will be placed demonstratable performance based ROI. If you can get results and prove this to prospective clients, you just might last.
As for the larger companies, here’s my take on what creates value for a SEO/SEM company
(taken from this discussion):
- Human resources/ intellectual property (good people)
- Technology - Quality of Analytics/ Automation of systems
- “Network” reach (content, ad inventory…think about.com)
- Client base (great portfolios are the only way to attract the best clients, and long term committments look good on paper)
- Vision (good management)
- Process (Is the campaign methodology scalable and dynamic?)
SEOs/Internet Marketers are the new media PR people, and will be around for a long time. The question is which agencies will stick around and why.
Tag: seo companies
Well, I had a different topic to write on this morning when I sat down with my cup of coffee to write. Then I took a quick glance at my list of sites that keep me in the know on things (now using bloglines which is a fantastic tool), and I see Aaron’s post about Pre-Sell pages (which we had discussed a bit at SES). Since the cat’s already out of the bag on this one, I figured I’d comment on this, since I think it is a great technique worth mentioning, and I had been wanting to write more an this anyhow.
So far, I’ve already heard this method referred to as: content pages, content exchange, content links page, and interactive PR. I’m sure there will be many more creative descriptions for these, but essentially, it is striving for the perfect link. The question posed to SEO’s is, “what type of link will be MOST valuable, for the LONGEST amount of time?” The answer is a pre-sell page, and the rationale for them being closer to link value perfection will follow the description of what they actually are.
Former run of site text link strategy with example site: www.seosite.com:
1.Three words in anchor text (search engine optimization) on the bottom page of a large, high link pop (*cough* PR*), authority site across 10k pages (for demo purposes: www.bigsite.com)
2. All 10k pages link to www.seosite.com - in a month they have 10k backlinks with their targeted anchor text, and high probability for good rankings (depending on competition of course). Rinse and repeat until rankings are achieved.
The big G monster (fortunately not Y and M yet), caught on to this little technique and have relatively devalued it, or at the very least changed the rules for doing it. Evolve or be invisible.
Pre-sell page strategy (finally) defined:
1. 3 word anchor text on www.bigsite.com - search engine optimization
2. 10k pages link to www.bigsite.com/seosite.htm
2. Create a page of unique content with 5 - 7 paragraphs (use a good ontology tool for finding a few phrases of the same theme), for bigsite.com/seosite.com:
- seo services
- ppc services
- affiliate management
- big widgets
- fuzzy wodgets
Each paragraph will have an embedded link deeplinked to the corresponding area of www.seosite.com
Benefits: So why is this so great you may be asking? With the evolution of new search algorithm technologies (namely the advent of local rank, only valueing links from unique domains/ IP addresses, and whatever the hell else is devaluing ROS text links), context is a huge part of the value of a link. Think about the variables that used to be valuable to on-page SEO, and apply those to your partners links pages. You probably don’t have to send the host of your pre-sell page a web position gold report, but you can optimize those on-page factors before you send the page to them. www.bigsite.com/seosite.htm should have good on-page SEO.
There are a lot of things that SE’s can determine from a page (what elements are the content region, navigation/template and/or duplicate content most importantly - these are SMART folks remember), and this is one of the reasons internal anchor text was devalued at some point. What they most likely WON’T be able to “strip out” and devalue, is links embedded inside the meaty unique content that they so desperately need to cache from all the little webmaster’s sites. “On-theme” pre-sell pages should be highly valuable for as long as search engine’s are based on link analysis.
SEO evolves again. Strive for perfection.
Database of presell pages at presellpageman.com
Pre Sell Pages - a Better Way to Rent Sitewide Links : SEO Book.com
Discussion at Threadwatch.org on Pre-sell pages
A Positive Step Forward in Link Strategies
LinkAdage - Content Pages for Text Link Ads
Dan Theis had this figured out a couple years ago - “Trade Content not Links”
