I’m really excited to announce a video that I got a chance to record with Ted, an good friend from WebmasterWorld.com for years who I refer to as "my google oracle". The video has been dubbed "Cracking the Google Algorithm", and deals with the the influential search patents the search engines have released. If you don’t know Tedster, you better get to know Ted Ulle, because there are few folks around that understand search algos at such a high level, and can create actionable strategy from this understanding. I was really thrilled with how both this and the video came out. Ted is in a very elite group of people who I hold in the highest regard with regards to their opinions on search algos.

What were the top 5 most significant algorithm changes in the last 5 years?

1. 1. The Jagger Update and the Big Daddy infrastructure that it prepared the way for was a major watershed. When this happened near the end of 2005, everflux began to show in the SERPs. Rather than once a month ranking updates, the ranking shuffle became continual.
      

      Monthly Google History: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3801699.htm

   2. Google’s war on paid links that began as far back as 2005 raised quite a ruckus. At first Google’s negative actions were taken manually and then algorithmically. Algorithmic false positives began to confuse things even more, and I wish they would have just stopped with showing false PageRank on the toolbar.
   3. Phrase-based indexing, as described in the 2006 patents, brought a deeper level of semantic intelligence to the search results. This power continues to grow today. One big effect - it makes over-emphasis on keywords, especially in anchor text, a problem when it used to be an asset. But there was a major advantage for the content writer who could now throw off the rigidity to major degree and vary their vocabulary in a more natural way.
      

      reference: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3247207.htm

   4. Geo-located results began to create different rankings even for various areas of the same US and UK city somewhere around 2005 or so. Anyone who was still chasing raw rankings as their only metric should have quickly learned that the time for a change was long overdue.
   5. Google’s user "intention engine" has had a major effect, and that rolled out in a big way in 2009. This was coupled with a kind of automated taxonomy of query terms. Now, sometimes a certain kind of site will just never rank for a certain keyword, no matter what they try. The site’s taxonomy has to line up with the taxonomy of the query term.
      

      reference: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3980481.htm

2. Which will be the top 5 changes in the next 5 years?
   1. Google will improve their algorithm that tries to identify "bad", or manipulative, links. They can already nullify links at the level of the site, the page, or even the individual link, and the heuristics will get more precise going forward. It’s also hard for webmasters to reverse engineer this approach, because there is no major symptom that stands out, like there is with a penalty.
   2. So "bad" link nullification becomes a kind of stealth action for Google. Many have noticed that PR on the whole seems to be harder to get. Sites that used to have a home page PR 8 may now be a PR 6, for instance. This is partly due to the bad-link wipeout that Google is already rolling with.
   3. The beginnings of sentiment analysis may begin to show up in the next few years. I expect to see it first on the level of rating for where content falls on a fact-to-opinion spectrum. Full sentiment analysis (rating content on a "favorable-to-critical" opinion spectrum) is already in use for some social media monitoring, but that is probably too big a technical challenge to expect Google to go with it in the general search results. For example, how can an algorithm recognize irony, where the author is writing words with the opposite of their true meaning?

      However, Google will be rolling with sentiment analysis in some areas. For example, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it employed in Adwords Quality Scores at some point within five years.

   4. Another place Google might experiment with sentiment analysis is in their experimental "real time" search - Twitter integration and so on. However, the pitfall with sentiment analysis is that Google would also begin to INFLUENCE opinions, rather than just making them findable. In areas like politics this could be a very slippery slope.
   5. Finally, there’s one area where Google may legally need to integrate some sentiment analysis, and that’s in the Search Suggestions that tempt the search user with ideas as they type. Google lost a court case in France in 2010 and they were required to remove the word "scam" from on brand’s search suggestions.

      Those search suggestions are easily spammed, especially on brand names, and Google needs to find a good algorithm to limit their exposure for slander and libel. Sentiment Analysis could be at least part of the answer.
      reference: http://www.bigmouthmedia.com/live/articles/google-scam-suggestion-condemned-by-high-court.asp/6680/

   6. Additionally, site speed will be included as a factor over this coming year, and will be refined going forward. This might give a ranking advantage to sites that can afford a Content Delivery Network (CDN).

      However, you don’t have to fork over the big bucks for Akamai and the like any more, just to gain a speed advantage and overcome latency on the web. There are a number of solid peer-to-peer CDN options these days. In fact, the CDN industry may be a strong growth area as this new ranking factor takes root. Google has a vision for what the web SHOULD be like, and they are pushing it quite actively.

      Caffeine will have a major effect in the speed of processing updates to the rankings. A lot of the factors that Google has been mentioning in patents, such as Historical Factors or Phrase Based Indexing, sound good but don’t seem to be very active right now. With new and speedy Caffeine infrastructure, a lot of those become computationally more feasible, and will be updated more frequently.

      The wild card for me is HTML 5. Google is leading that charge, and how they will treat early adopters will be very interesting to watch. There are many features of HTML 5 that will allow a web author to send VERY clear signals about the page, what’s the content, what’s the menu, what’s just auxiliary information, and so on.

      reference: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/06/html-5-cheat-sheet-pdf/

Which penalties, filters, or bannings are most pervasive?

Keyword stuffed anchor text (internal and external) and backlink manipulation penalties are the most common. Links have long been Google’s ticklish underbelly, and if you mess around too much in there, they will scratch you right back.

What are 4 caveats to tripping filters or incurring penalties?

reference: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3336435.htm

What are some filters that can be easily identified and overcome and how?

Backlink manipulations, whether paid links or merely strategic alliances, usually result in very obvious ranking drops. This jumps out for a site owner because page 1 rankings fall to page 5 overnight. The cure is to back out of it, and submit a reconsideration request where you come clean.

Overdoing it on internal anchor text is another dramatic re-ranking. You can fall from page 1 to deep in the SERPs overnight. Again, the fix is just to back off, but in this case you don’t need to submit the request. As soon as the threshold violations are recalculated you should pop out of trouble. The phrase-based patents, again, detail the way these thresholds are calculated.
     
Sometimes a ranking loss is just a gradual slide because you’re not getting any new, fresh link juice. If that’s the case, put on your marketing hat and let the world know what you’ve got.
     

What factors most impact sitelinks?

Today, I’d say the single biggest factor is traffic. In the beginning sitelinks had more to do with your menu structure and internal linking. But now we see Google surfacing the popular sections of the site into sitelinks, whether they are on the main menu or not.

For some sites, a steady flow of fresh content into a section also seems to be a factor. But it’s hard to isolate the freshness factor from the influence of traffic — the two just go together.

Which people at WebmasterWorld (or elsewhere) were the most influential in you becoming the Google prognosticator and successful consultant that you have become today?

It’s difficult to single anyone out - because really it’s been the whole community. I was influenced early on by people like Brett Tabke, Dave Naylor, Greg Boser (webguerilla), Shakil Khan, Todd Friesen, and Bob Jordan - but there are many others.

It was Nick Wilson, for instance, who kicked my butt into learning CSS. Since then, using source ordered content has been a big, long-term win for me. Edward Lewis (pageoneresults) got me serious about taming the IIS server. Without that knowledge, I would be unable to work with many major corporate clients.

In terms of consulting, I really owe Neil Marshall in a big way, because he set me straight early on about valuing my knowledge and being willing to put an appropriate price tag on it.

If you could tell every webmaster one thing they shouldn’t miss out on doing for their site, what would it be?  

Build an Information Architecture that supports your marketing objectives. That is, build the site template from your market’s point of view rather than your company’s internal point of view. And having done that market research and gained a solid understanding, then be sure your site architecture makes it clear and easy for the visitor to take the actions you most want to see.

Said another way, conversions start with the page template - and there’s a great deal of accumulated wisdom out there to tap into. Having taken your best shot at launch, then you can refine it with A/B or multivariate testing. And from there your off into analytics land. It’s a long and happy trip, but it all starts with the IA.

Thanks Ted for taking the time, and being so wonderfully open and helpful, and for doing such great things at Webmasterworld. You are the type of person in this community that makes me proud to be a part of the search optimizer and webmaster community. For more great insights from Ted, check out the google forum at WebmasterWorld (the awesome community where I learned so much of what I know), or the full video interview on "Cracking the Google Algorithm" here.

Through the reflection of writing this post, and months of pondering the subject, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ve been doing online business management consulting for years anyhow. SEO impacts every aspect of a company’s marketing strategy, and we’ve all seen it make or break many company’s success in the past. How a site is developed will impact the rankings, and the rankings will very strongly impact the bottom line profit on a company’s balance sheet. Good search marketing comes from teams working together on a project cohesively. I’ve always agreed with Tedster, that SEO is really just good project management.

Over the last few years through self-taught trial and error, I’ve learned to run my own successful consultancy, develop several of my own web properties, and help to create a full blown SEO training curriculum with the help of the fine gents at MarketMotive. During this tenure at MarketMotive, I’ve realized that despite having a different starting perspective on creating websites than Bryan Eisenberg, John Marshall, Michael Stebbins, Greg Jarboe, Matt Bailey and Avinash Kaushik, we all had very similar priorities on what was important in the execution of a site strategy, and the end goals (Avinash and I have a video coming up discussing using analytics data to backup your “gut feel” SEO recommendations with tangible analytics information that I think should be REALLY awesome) . None of them ever claimed to be optimizers, but our actionable recommendations seem to always come out looking pretty similar.

 “Life moves pretty fast. You don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” – Ferris Bueller

At the end of any year, we have a nice opportunity to reflect on the year before us, and the year that has passed.  I would like to encourage other SEO folks to consider that now is the time to start rebranding yourselves, if you haven’t started already.  SEO is definitely not dead, but it is changing, and becoming a mainstream skillset quite quickly. You don’t want your skills to become a commodity.

Personalized and realtime search aren’t helping matters any. Anyone informed can’t claim they didn’t see it coming. No longer will there be such an awesome opportunity for a single person to “make it rain” in a few months time with amazing returns on investment through top search rankings.  In a few years time, most good developers worth their salt will have their mind completely wrapped around the fundamental aspects of SEO for web developers (or they too will be out of a job).  Even the Scobelizer is trying to rename SEO to “OM”, (and in proving his points also demonstrates the sustainable nature of SEO) to which Danny responds in his normal eloquent and rational style.

“I came away from this conversations thinking that SEO is getting dramatically less important and that SEM should be renamed to “OM” for “Online Marketing” since small businesses need to take a much more holistic approach to marketing than just worrying about search results.”

The Oilman 5% Rule
There will always be an additional 5% advantage that true SEO’s bring to the table. This advantage, however, is better used in creating your own sites or helping clients than it is being blogged about for your 5MB of pseudo-internet fame.  This 5% is your unique advantage in a dynamic information based economy that is constantly pitching and rolling like a hatteras hunting halibut in a hurricane.  It’s tough to stay on board, and keep up on the scholarly aspects of search algos. It’s even tougher to create sites that succeed in a timely and budget conscience fashion, and take advantage of an understanding of the extra 5%.   This won’t die, but it won’t likely get any easier as the winds of change bear down upon those of us who try to do all three.

So what’s changed in the last few years, and what will continue to change?

Here’s a brief snapshot of the History.

Barriers to entry
I talked about the rising barriers to entry several years ago, and I think the barriers continue to rise.  Large corporations are becoming more competitive with their understanding of search marketing, and are executing real live strategies that work now.  Link popularity is becoming more difficult to increase with fickle webmasters who are now all aware of the true value of link popularity.  The importance of link popularity is constantly decreasing now that user data can be incorporated into algorithms with much less likelihood of being manipulated (the argument that google won’t incorporate user data because it didn’t work for directhit no longer holds any water).

The sum total of these barriers results in a wall that will take world-class mountain climbers to scale (or just millions of dollars to market).  The glory days of creating sites from scratch by work-at-homers is being replaced by corporate budgets, long-term timelines, spreadsheets, timelines, and large scale data mining of keyword data.  Everyone is quickly figuring out what the keywords are worth, and more and more people are now all trying to rank for credit cards and online education, because they see the giant revenues these terms can bring in. 

While we maintain competitive advantages for ranking in the search results due to years of hands on experience with the algorithms, this experience only goes so far against giant budgets when corporations start to execute on the understanding of these same concepts (and here we thought they’d never listen!). There will always be opportunities for those grass roots marketers who do things faster and smarter, but I doubt these opportunities will be large enough to drive large dumptrucks full of cash through like the opportunists of the last decade have been doing.

The Algorithm is a Capitalist (and I think it’s from Mountain View and not Jersey)
According to the SEOMoz.org Search Ranking Factors:

·  24% Trust/Authority of the Host Domain
·  22% Link Popularity of the Specific Page
·  20% Anchor Text of External Links
·  15% On-Page Keyword Usage
·  7% Traffic and Click-Through Data
·  6% Social Graph Metrics
·  5% Registration and Hosting Data

If you’ve followed the algorithms over the years, you can already see how they’ve changed.  In the near years ahead, I think the distribution of importance will look a little something more like this:

·  25% Trust/Authority of the Host Domain
·  24% Traffic and Click-Through Data
·  20% Social Graph Metrics
·  12% Link Popularity of the Specific Page
·  10% Anchor Text of External Links
·  7% On-Page Keyword Usage
·  2% Registration and Hosting Data

These variables become a whole lot harder to game for small operation, and therefore are ultimately much more effective with creating search relevance (aka reducing search “spam”)  It’s a whole lot more difficult to create a successful viral marketing campaign for improving your social graph metrics than it is to go and buy a bunch of text links. I don’t know if this is good or bad for those who have been doing it for years (if you evolve with change it is neither), but it certainly changes the expectations and strategy that you will need to employ for success. Taking a site from nothing to top ten rankings for highly competitive phrases will become much less of a reality.  That being said, the game will switch to taking sites in the top 100 (or 1000) for a competitive phrase to the top of the charts.  Let the land grab for sites in the top 1000 begin! Since I’m a big fan of hunting for sites, website appraisal and valuation, and negotiating acquisitions, I’m really looking forward to the rush:)

Ad Agencies
My favorite SEO liars. The ad agencies that were complete morons that hated and didn’t understand SEO’s throughout this decade, have now fully adopted search marketing as an important school of thought, and have the budgets at their disposal to buy the last 5% FTW!    They also have the credibility of having impressive large client rosters to use as case studies and dispel the myths of “SEO Voodoo” to properly set expectations during the sales process.  Ad agencies have always known how to market themselves, and charge top dollar for outsourced services.  Marketing professionals have always optimized media, and are fully embracing anything that will deliver value add to the rest of the services (print, media, etc.) that are declining in value. SEO complements traditional media extremely well when it is adopted into marketing company culture, and this adoption is now well under way.

Large Corporations
The corporations finally get it (well some at least), and are fully embracing search.  My friends and search industry veterans Marshall Simmonds and Matthew Brown (the most patient SEOs on the planet), even talked the New York Times into dropping the guarded wall to enjoy the benefits of search traffic! Now that everyone finally has analytics incorporated, and understands exactly what the traffic is worth, the land grab can commence.  The discrepancy between spends on PPC and SEO must balance out at some point, likely with the top ad agencies getting the budgets for the top corporations as they always have.  Despite only understanding 2 or 3% of the fabled 5% of SEO, ad agencies have a whole lot more resources to delegate on the execution of SEO strategies, and can consider optimization best practices in their other endeavors. One bit of great news for 2010 is the very high likelihood that spending on SEO services will increase (See prediction #6 from Mr. Moz)

Google
Oh the Goog.  I remember when you were just a little search spider with grandiose ideals forming your little garage band.  Now you are a super-group on an epic multi-country tour trying to rule the world with your siren’s song promising access to the world’s knowledgebase in less than milliseconds.  You have assimilated even the most paranoid anti-google tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorists into google gospel preaching fanboys, or at minimum, ambivalent late-adopters who can’t resist the lure of your free and wonderful web applications that save us all thousands of dollars per year. I really hope I’m around to see the “behind the music” special one day after John Connor sees to your demise. 

Unfortunately I don’t think “Don’t be evil” holds up against billion dollar market caps, foreign policy, privacy issues, data mining, stock prices, and investor pressures.  While most folks I’ve met that work at google are absolutely wonderful people with very strongly held ideals, I don’t think the corporation is always the sum of its parts.  The algorithm and the need for more ad dollars and growth have set google on an inevitable path based on the capitalist model that demands growth and more money.  As arguably the most influential company of all time, it could also easily become the most destructive (I hope my googler friends understand the important responsibilities of their roles in organizing aka controlling the world’s information). I haven’t decided who I will root for when the Goog squares off against the government, and it is a commonly held belief that G probably IS better than uncle sam. When the algorithm becomes self aware, I for one, welcome our new silicon based intelligence multi-colored "don’t be evil" overlords. Your logic is undeniable like that of VIKI from I, Robot.

Public opinion
The public opinion of both google and of SEO’s will continue to affect our craft.  Search is “good enough”, and I doubt bing will be swinging huge market shares anytime soon in the US. 
I think the public pretty much despises SEO.  We get blamed for nearly as much as email spammers by the mainstream media.  Even my own brothers halfway joke that I’m busy ruining the web all the time. I suppose with some of the things that go on with negative billing, malware, blog spam, and other shady tactics they’re probably quite right (*note, I’ve never partaken in any of these things)  It’s very unfortunate.  The SEO folks I know are wonderful people, and work hard to make an honest living.  Most of them have really awesome success stories of how they fell into the rabbit hole that is SEO, and how it changed their life for the better. Sure, some should probably be set out to sea never to return, but it’s a shame that their the ones who have gotten the credit for "being SEO’s"

What Will Change?
I am with Rand on this one – probably not much. Nothing earth shifting is going to destroy your career unless you don’t keep up with the changes.  The skillsets you’ve developed as SEO’s will lead you into a career that few will get to enjoy. Unfortunately, you are doing yourself a disservice if you brand yourself as an SEO. Whatever you call it, the process stays the same, and stems from an understanding of the top ranking factors:

1. Make pages accessible
2. Target with keywords that searchers employ
3. Build content that users will find useful and valuable
4. Earn editorial links from good sources

So What Do We Do?
I think the answer is different for everyone.  For myself, I will move towards offering online business management consulting services that will be remarkably similar to the SEO services I’ve always provided.  If we can learn anything from the marketers that have come before us, it is that packaging and perception is hugely important.
I tend to look to guys like Lee Odden, Neil Patel, Chris Winfield, Brent Csutoras, and others like them who (at least in my mind) are SEO’s at heart, but have branded themselves as much more than that to create very successful companies and careers through using an “optimizer’s mentality” towards everything they do. 

There are only a few folks (Rand Fishkin, Aaron Wall, Danny Sullivan) who have fully embraced being SEO’s and have really had great success with it.  I’ve always found it odd how many SEO’s (who are excellent marketers) have faced this branding challenge of being SEO’s.  As a group, I doubt it’s something that will be solved, due to the parasitic nature of those jumping on the bandwagon to offer shady services with the same name that we hold so dear. To all my respectable SEO brethren, I hope you have a wonderful 2010, and find new and exciting ways to adapt to the changes this wonderful career will throw at us.

A few more links (just in case you didn’t get your fill):

• http://www.toprankblog.com/2009/12/emarketer-predictions-2010/
• http://www.toprankblog.com/2009/12/internet-marketing-tips-for-2010/
• http://www.seomoz.org/blog/8-predictions-for-seo-in-2010
• http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/10_ways_social_media_will_change_in_2010.php
• http://www.10e20.com/blog/2009/12/28/design-predictions-for-2010/
• http://www.searchenginejournal.com/2010-a-new-age-for-search-marketers/15711/
• http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/david-lavenda/whatever-it-takes/10-marketing-predictions-2010
• http://www.marketingcharts.com/interactive/top-10-wireless-predictions-for-2010-11375/
• http://searchengineland.com/five-search-marketing-predictions-for-2010-32014

See who was right about the predictions from last year:
http://searchengineland.com/big-list-2009-marketing-predictions-16009

How have I done on my predictions?

• 2005
• 2006
• 2007

This Thursday, December 17th, 2009, at Noon Pacific time, I’ll be doing a free live webinar to perform competitive backlink analysis on a variety of sites to demonstrate some of this skillset that I have discovered to be one of the unique traits consistent in the best SEO folks I know. I’ll share tools, and more importantly, discuss the critical variables that determine just how valuable individual links are to a site’s rankings.

Join me for some competitive link analysis at MarketMotive, and help spread the word to any site owners who are trying to gather a better understanding of why their site ranks the way it does in search engines, and how to improve upon these rankings with a better gameplan for improving their backlink profile in comparison to their competitors.

Some of the subjects we’ll cover:

1. Identifying key indicators for the difficult of ranking for your phrases (opposition score)
2. Assessing and categorizing the types of links on any site (using 12 link types).
3. Assessing and categorizing your own link profile versus competitors
4. Identifing common links between competitors
5. Finding the strategic alliances and unnatural link patterns of your competitors
6. Building a list for link development opportunities
7. Training your team to “think links” with other marketing initiatives

Most calls for MarketMotive are members only, but we’re starting up another SEO Master Certification program in a few weeks, and want to give people a look how MM trains folks to be better at search engine optimization through our interactive program which includes over 50 videos and presentations on the most important aspects of SEO developed over the past 3 years.

If you can’t find and buy a good aftermarket domain and get creative - you need some marketing classes

2. Don’t skimp on hosting

Such a painful expensive lesson to learn.

3. Respect contractors, but don’t overpay

Don’t ever talk down to anyone you work with, but don’t allow people to tell you how smart they are without them proving it.

4. Always pay on time

Evereyone always appreciates this, and you will lose contractors respect if you don’t.

5. Pay attention to cashflow

See above. If you can’t balance cashflow and production, you will cut corners and build a house with cheap parts.

6. Price services for yourself - not for your clients

If you do consulting to pay the bills, make sure you take ample time for both, and charge on the value you provide, and provide the value you charge.

7. Take time for yourself

If you don’t take time off when you need it, you will end up taking surprisingly more time off than you originally intended.

8. Stay unflinchingly positive

When you doubt yourself you lose. Confidence in failure and humility in success is a trait that exemplifies most true heros, role models, and success stories that I’m aware of.

9. Stick with winners, fold the losers

While you’re being positive, maintain enough realism to be a critic and know when you’re beat or have a bad hand.

10. Stay well organized

You can never be too organized.

11. Set goals

1 hour, 1 sitting, 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, 1 year, 2 year, 5 year are generally good.

12. Track yourself

This is why keyword reports and QBtimer ARE a good idea. Adjust your goals as necessary based on your results.

I almost never live by this one, but I’d be smarter if I did.

13. Take lots of notes

I’ve pretty much never thought to myself "self, I wish I had taken less notes during that meeting." When you have a good idea, take a note about it.

14. Only consume news media 10 - 20% of the time (once you figure it out)

Only consume media and information at a high rate while you’re trying diligently to learn a new skill. Otherwise, it is pretty fruitless and will burn you out if it is beyond your capacity for input.

15. Focus on execution, not research

Do something instead of writing another blog post:) That’s why this one has taken quite a while. Build links, write content, learn perl, python, linux, apache, mysql, php, social media, seo, or web design, but don’t sit too long reading about it before you DO it. Do something today, instead of learning, researching, or whining about why you can’t.

16. Be upfront and honest

Don’t bullshit people. Lies will follow you a lot farther than the truth ever will.

IM Charity Party

IM Charity Party.com

Donate to drink and have a good time. Don’t miss it, or I’ll remember that you hate sick kids and puppies.

Affiliate Summit East ‘09

Social Media Marketing for Affiliates at Affiliate Summit East, and SES San Jose in the next two weeks. Details listed below.

• Neil Patel, Co-Founder, KISSmetrics (Twitter @neilpatel) (Moderator)
• Brent Csutoras, Social Media Consultant, Brent Csutoras, Inc. (Twitter @brentcsutoras)
• Chris Winfield, President, 10e20 (Twitter @chriswinfield)

Search Engine Strategies - San Jose, California

Organic Track
Advanced SEO Roundtable: What is it Really? And Where is it Going?
It’s been said that you stand a better chance of getting two SEOs to share a toothbrush than to agree on a common definition. If that’s so, what really qualifies someone as an advanced SEO expert and how should “the next level” of SEO be defined? Don’t miss what is sure to be a spirited debate as we try to separate “the art” from “the science” and figure out what actually constitutes an Advanced SEO.

* Moderator:
Richard Zwicky
Founder & CEO, Enquisite
* Speakers:
Matthew Bailey
SES Advisory Board & President, Site Logic Marketing, Marketmotive faculty
Bruce Clay, President, Bruce Clay, Inc.
Mike Grehan, SES Advisory Board Co-Chair
Todd Friesen, VP Search, Position Technologies

The original ticket price is 5.000 euros, and the 15 tickets were sold out after only 20 minutes!

15 International Online-Marketing Experts, 15 Attendees, and 10 former Playmates - one conference - one big Party!

Here´s what´s happening at SEOktoberfest:

Tuesday, 22nd of September:
10 a.m - 4 p.m. - SEOktoberfest Conference
4 p.m. - 10 p.m. - Oktoberfest at famous Käfer Wiesn-Schnänke
open end - After Party at P1 Club

Wednesday, 23rd of September:
11 a.m. - 8 p.m. - We got a whole luxurious Spa completly rented out for everybody. 6 massage therapists etc. will get you fit again!
8 p.m. - open end - Friends & Family Dinner at Munich´s No.1 Wine-Restaurant Die blaue Donau

Thursday, 24th of September
10 a.m. - 4 p.m. - SEOktoberfest Conference
4. p.m. - 10 p.m. - Oktoberfest at Schützen-Festhalle
open end - After Party at a secret location

What´s included in the price?
Everything!
Every Attendee gets a whole Oktoberfest Outfit - Shoes, Lederhosen, Shirt etc., and everything you eat and / or drink, as well as all the transfers etc. - everything´s included!

Who are the Online Marketing Experts?

* Todd Malicoat
* Chris Winfield
* Bob Rains
* Johannes Beus
* Brent Csutoras
* Sickness
* RSnake
* Greg Boser
* Barbara Boser
* Todd Friesen
* Marcus Tandler
* Quadszilla
* Frank Watson

The proceeds from this charity auction go to the AMAZONICA Foundation!

There is a misnomer in search marketing and SEO that things change all the time. I think I stopped consuming SEO blogs and news sites on a daily basis about 2 or 3 years ago when I decided enter full time consultancy with no one else’s safety net. There was no extra time for anything accept a low information consumption diet. I had to develop unflinching confidence in the work I was doing to execute on various strategies based on my understanding of how search engines have historically worked, and the assumption that they will continue to function in basically the same manner for some time to come.

This is from a conclusion that there have only been a handful of changes that affected how I conducted my business. I learned from both blackhats and search engineers both to come up with a strategy that fit my ethical code while indulging my competitive nature and hunger for success. I am convinced that the cat/mouse dynamic between blackhats and engineers has helped to form the current state of information retrieval based on strong needs to stay relevant in certain areas that were exploited solely for capitalistic monetary gain.

I’ve found some great posts and articles about search history and how search engines have evolved over time, but not many mentions of how search optimizers have changed their strategies over time. There are a few good resources listed below, but none quite summed up the changes that affected what I like to refer to as the “SEO mentality”. I’m hoping to create a fairly comprehensive document for Market Motive Internet Marketing Training (where I’ll be discussing this shortly with legendary SEO’s Greg Boser and Marshall Simmonds, to help add to the increasingly comprehensive body of SEO training we’ve developed over the past two years (Over 40 Videos now!).

I learned what SEO was in about 2002 - shortly after offpage factors started to strongly determine relevance. I spent several years and thousands of hours on forums reading, learning, an interacting and teaching to figure out how search engines worked. When I made the choice to work for myself at home after another great year of learning and consulting at We Build Pages (with Jim Boykin - one of the sharpest SEO’s I’ve ever known), I decided it was time to start doing. I built sites, and strategies for myself, using consulting money to fund development of website projects, and parlaying to thinks like being able to even afford the insane cost of living in the SF Bay area. It was based on the unwritten understanding of the changes that are mentioned below, and not listening to a lot of the SEO garbage that is spewed all over on the interwebs.

When I started doing - I realized that not much changes with SEO in terms of strategic execution. It is a pretty logical art and science of determining risk to reward ratios, and implementing strategies in a sequential fashion following certain established rules based on intended outcome. I’ve developed a playbook and these SEO rulesets by understanding the HISTORICAL GAMECHANGERS in SEO. Feel free to add some on twitter with #seogamechangers

I’ve been taking a mental inventory of these game changes for a few months, and here is what I have them broke down to:

1. Onpage factors (1995 – 1999)
2. Offpage factors (2000)
3. Florida update (2003)
4. Fresh Crawl/ Everflux (2004)
5. Sandbox effect (2005)
6. Duplicate content filtering (2006)
7. Human editorial (2006)
8. Onebox/ Universal Search (2007)
9. Paid linking handling (2007)
10. No follow (2008)
11. User data validation and segmentation (2009)
12. Brand Mentions (update Vince - 2009)

Some of my dates may be a bit off, but for the most part these are the major factors that affect my actionable SEO Strategies. These are the major changes that contribute to the hurdles, filters, and challenges of ranking a site on a search engine.

I’d love to hear from other folks on the things that you think should be included in the list. There are MANY minor things that full under these categories, but after revisiting most and asking twitter, I think this is pretty comprehensive, as things like local search 10 pack, personalization, geotargetting all fall under one of these other areas (even if the dates aren’t exact). Please let me know if you can think of anything I missed. I’ll try to watch the comments on the post closely for once:) Please post any great resources, or suggestions for adding/updating to the list.

Resources

• Brett Tabke
• Danny Sullivan
• Aaron Wall’s extensive writing on SE history
• Jim Boykin
• James Svoboda
• Rand Fishkin
• Mark Knowles
• Funny from Pat