Master one internet marketing discipline in 90 days by training online with the bestselling authors, authorities, and top speakers in each discipline. You will:

* Master one internet marketing discipline
* Boost your value to your organization
* Empower your marketing team
* Make authoritative marketing decisions
* Get the industry recognition you deserve

Select from individual or group courses in SEO, Social Media, PPC, Landing Page Conversion or Web Analytics that are 100% online* and include:

* Graded projects and assignments
* Final dissertation defense for certification
* On-demand streaming video lessons
* Weekly interactive training webinars
* Direct, anytime Q&A with the faculty

Enroll now and take control of your online marketing.
Choose Your Online Course Now >>

* Courses are 100% online, with regular instructor interaction. Login 24×7 to master the latest techniques in internet marketing from the convenience of your own desk.

Here’s a list of my favorite topics for your previewing pleasure:

• 12 Link Types and How to Get Them
• 17 Top Local Search Ranking Factors - Todd Malicoat & David Mihm
• 18 Top Search Engine Ranking Factors - Todd Malicoat & Rand Fishkin
• Competitive Research and KOB Analysis - Todd Malicoat
• Dueling Toolboxes with Todd Malicoat and Bryan Eisenberg
• A Guide to Getting Links: Part 1
• A Guide to Getting Links: Part 2
• A Guide to Getting Links: Part 3
• 20 Things You Can Teach a HIPPO to Make Your Website Better: Part 1
• 20 Things You Can Teach a HIPPO to Make Your Website Better: Part 2
• A Brief History of SEO
• A Guide to SEOMoz Tools - Todd Malicoat
• A Guided Tour Of Free SEO Tools
• SEO Fundamentals & Best Practices
• Information Architecture for SEO - Part 1
• Information Architecture for SEO - Part 2
• Cracking the Google Algorithm with Todd Malicoat and Ted Ulle
• Duplicate Content: Understanding & Fixing the Problem - Todd Malicoat
• How to Sell Social Media Marketing for In House SEOs - Todd Malicoat
• 7 Steps to Linkbaiting Success: The Linkbaiting Playbook - Todd Malicoat
• Introduction to Local Search - Todd Malicoat & David Mihm
• A Brief History of SEO, Part 1 - Todd Malicoat, Greg Boser, & Marshall Simmonds
• A Brief History of SEO, Part 2 - Todd Malicoat, Greg Boser, & Marshall Simmonds
• SEO for CEOs - Todd Malicoat
• SEO for CXOs - Todd Malicoat
• International SEO
• Site Architecture and Taxonomy - Todd Malicoat
• Tips and Tools from Majestic SEO, Part 1

More information about SEO Master Certification, as well as the signup form

Checkout the SEO Curriculum here

I have been a lurker in domain and affiliate communities for years. I think it’s time to point out some of the domainer myths as the world’s of SEO’s and domainers start to collide, and the best domainers realize they need to actually develop their properties to continue to reap the rewards of their investments. Seeing "potential" through to fruition is both rewarding and extremely challenging (for a bit of credibility at this point, I invested, helped develop, and ultimately exited from CollegeDegree.com just over 3 years ago to help fund future projects.)

A perfect storm is brewing from the climate of need from marketers needing top domains and domainers needing marketing talent. It takes a lot to build a great site - so you might as well do it on a domain that people will remember when you finally put it in front of them. Landing page revenues are decreasing, and users are a bit more saavy, so many of the smart domainers are doing their best to at least develop sites on their domains to hedge their bets on big ticket domain valuations with some base level website monetization. It will definitely only continue to be more difficult to capture the "free traffic" of organic search, only as the myth that it should have ever been "free" in the first place is finally being dispelled.

We are FINALLY seeing tools to project the value of a site’s organic search traffic (like SEMRush, SpyFu, and Aaron’s awesome competitive analysis tool) to properly quantify at least a ball park range of the value of "free organic traffic", and make projections of bottom line revenue based on these projections accordingly. The really sharp domainers, have been reaching out to folks in the SEO community, and have been attempting to learn about development and driving more traffic. To properly understand the myths, I think we must first take a look at how I appraise potential domain names (primarily for the intention of development).

1. Search term value (cost per click)
2. Exact match search term volume
3. Overall query diversity (is there longtail from the exact match that is valuable?)
4. Brand-ability (how easy is it to remember and type in)
5. Domain top level extension (.net/.orgs are still a great deal worth 10 - 20% of .com value - everything else is 2nd tier)
6. Potential type in traffic (only for very top level keyword.coms in select verticals, and really mainly good for branding)
7. Ease of future development (How easy is it to realize the "potential" of a brandable domain creating content, software, etc?)
8. Ease of monetization (is the market liquid, or does it have a high barrier to entry?)

There’s probably some others to add, but these 8 factors pretty much sum up most of the important areas up for consideration when looking at if you can earn a return from purchasing a domain name. For a more in depth guide to website valuation as a whole, you can see my older post on the subject - How to appraise a website - Website Value 101.

Bargain domains has a good handle on what is important using cpc, volume, competition, ease of monetization. Doing business development for a site that does not have existing affiliate programs is among the most difficult barriers to entry for creating a successful site in a given space, and where a lot of errors from the below myths comes into play. I think a lot of domainers are discounting a lot of their domains - with little or no clue why, other than trying to cover costs. I’ve definitely snagged my fair share of nice ones in what seems to be a pretty good buyer’s market in the right places. I’ve also got a lot of garbage from mistakes like domaining after drinking;) To make the right buys, you definitely can’t fall for the top 11 myths domainers find themselves falling victim to:

1. Myth of the Type in.

Type in traffic occurs at a very small level that is constantly diminishing. I make no argument that some percentage of people type in Cameras.com when thinking about purchasing a digital camera. However, the impact of this type of traffic, overall is quite minimal. Type in traffic comes through google, bing, yahoo, and your Internet Service Provider. If your ISP decides to serve a 404 page for the domain or country code it will render to their landing page. Richard Kershaw has more about the dangers of the type in traffic myth based on some data he dug up from Sedo, so I’ll defer to his better post to explain this one further:

"… 0.001% of domains parked with Sedo get double digit per day traffic. Or to put it another way, 99.999% of domains parked with Sedo don’t hit double digits daily."

Even Kevin Ham’s genius .CM wildcard tld strategy isn’t really working in most places anymore. What really perpetuates this myth is repeat visitors and DIRECT NAVIGATION. Direct navigation is much different from type in traffic. Direct navigation can easily come from other media sources and many times very easily owe it’s true attribution to a specific campaign or general "brand equity" which will likely always remain a somewhat vague metric for analysis and accountability.

2. Myth of the 1 Word .com

Just because it’s generic, doesn’t mean it’s good Crap.com is still crap. Yes, you can make an argument, that it is "brandable", but so is Suudl.com or some other random character string of constants and vowels. There’s dozens of startups in Silicon Valley trying to build an awesome product on a garbage domain. Sometimes it actually works (Yoodle to go on and be better things.) Do you know how much money it costs to BUILD a true brand that people actually recognize?

Sharp entrepreneurs like domainshane.com have some solid 4 and 5 letter domains for web 2.0 startups, but there’s a difference between selling a few domains for 3 figures, and creating a full blown startup company. I will say that I do think any 4 and 5 letter .com value will only continue to rise. There are only a limited number of these and they will often be held by large corporations. A good four letter .com is HIGHLY brandable since it takes up less space for more traditional advertising (print/ radio/ tv).

The biggest myth with EVERY entrepreneur falls victim to is that it’s easy to build a company. Murphy’s law definitely applies to you, even though you think you’re the exception. You always hear the success stories of Mint.com and the like, but you miss the other 9 startups for every 1 that actually even gets a 2nd round of funding (as well as the thousands that failed to get to that point). You also miss the decades of misery endured by the executives and founders. I can count on less than two hands the number of successful entrepreneurs I know that have maintained their integrity. Any idea how hard it is to get the first round? 3 words: Tech Bubble, Recession

Having 20 or 30 single word domains may prove to be more of a blessing than a curse to either sell or develop when you look at how much money a startup has to raise to take a company to the next level past several rounds of venture funding, or the difficulty of creating a company that will sustain through a public offering.

3. Myth of the "Category Killer"

The underestimation of what it actually takes to build a real site that delivers value to real end users, and makes real revenue will be the common thread in most of these points. It’s real easy to say that you understand how to do it, and that you can do it. Even if you did it as a consultant, doesn’t mean you can do it all yourself and successfully pull it off (believe me, I fell victim to this myth for quite some time.)

Banca.com was a steal in a recent auction, but just because you own Bank.org, doesn’t mean you can build or run one and actualize the potential of such a domain.

4. Myth of "Revshare"

This begins with the fallacy that you’ll attract good people by offering them a revenue share of the project. Unfortunately, smart people realize it’s very difficult to craft these agreements, and setting expectations on the same page is a rare commodity. As a consultant, I’ve had lots of "rev-share" offers. Normally, building a long term working relationship works in a handful of ways through smaller projects.

The person who builds the house isn’t always happy to lease the land it’s built on, even if they get to share in the profits. Normally, they’d prefer to buy some less expensive land, and maintain complete control of the project, until they can be the master developer.

There are ultimately a few questions that get asked from both sides:

Domainer:

We would like to develop a site that makes millions from my genius idea of buying high quality domains in 1994.

Consultant: Did you live in Vancouver or nearby?

D: No, but I have been to some conferences around that area.

C: Cool - the domainer community fascinates me, and I’m a lurker there. I do a bit of domaining myself for myself as well.

So tell me about your site.

D: Elaborate beautiful description of properties and potential. Insert unrealistic expectations of marketing miracles.

C: screenshare examples of success.

D: More qualification of websites awesomeness.

C: More examples of wins, and answers to questions.

D: Sounds awesome, we’ll be in touch.

C: Okay cool. Have a good one.

The conversations sometimes go a few phone calls longer. The truth is, the cost of creating an amicable agreement, or in building the trust takes so much efforts, that both sides generally fall flat. The trust needed for such an arragement is generally too big of a gap to bridge in a few phone calls. The domainer opts for the cheap work with less than impressive results, and the consultant continues to consult and develop sites. Generally the domainers learn from the conversation and realize they should continue to further their search and social media marketing understanding.

A few examples:

Example #1http://www.namecake.com/venture-partners/
Some of our names experience a large volume of natural daily traffic. Couple this with their brandability and you have a powerful combination to immediately compete in your chosen field. All that’s needed to turn these domains into successful online destinations is a strong partner with the right resources.

…our ideal partners will likely have the resources to execute an entire business plan around developing the domain property. All aspects of the business will be the responsibility of the partner. While the preferred relationship is to partner with experienced companies/individuals on these projects, an outright sale of the domain name will also be considered.

A strong project manager with years of experience will likely always buy the domain outright (or find an alternative to use).

I understand that the core competency here is acquiring top level domains, but I’m wondering how many properties they have successfully built out to claim just how "easy" it is to immediately compete and make money with a top level domain. I have certainly heard the question before myself of "If you’re so good at this, why don’t you do it for yourself?" In fact, I heard it enough times that I decided I must build my own properties to disprove the naysayers. I’m sure the guys at namecake are super smart, and have made lots of money - but it if it DID come from underestimating the workload, and doing what was easy - they were extremely lucky.

Example #2 Reinvent, Marchex, and other companies have some amazing domain names, but each individual domain nearly warrants it’s own entire dedicated team to build out properly. I’m not sure some of these domainers have the true knack for creating gameplans for actual site development and launch that actualize the "potential" the domain names hold. Even though some of their large holdings are generic domains - the value in ranking for these phrases (and the business plan and development for monetizing them) often doesn’t justify the effort unfortunately. There are a handful of winners, and a lot of losers still left in these large, diverse portfolios. Focusing on one or two big areas could really do well, but trying to split the workload between a very large and diverse portfolio is spreading the resources very thin on some of the really GOOD domains they have like carfinancing.com, creditrating.com, or cheaptravel.com. By the time they realize this, the barrier to entry to start in these areas may well be much much higher.

Example #3
http://www.bigticketdomains.com/
Treatmentcenters.com – great site (doesn’t work in ff for mac), and awesome domain with the ability to create a great geo based lead generation campaign. Focus on the one site, and sell the others if you can to fund the development.

Focus on Brideloan.com, Tradeshows.com, NewYork.net, and develop StockMarket.com and MutualFunds.com. Those 4 domains could easily be enough for a lifetime. The rest might sell to an enlightened soul in one of their respective industries for fairly reasonable prices. I don’t imagine it takes lots of homeruns, and offering GOOD reasonable financing deals is a good step towards doing biz dev with saavy individuals and agencies.

5. Myth of Interlinking sites

The lesson in learned when a large group of sites is wiped off the map in terms of search traffic. This is generally the point where they search around for someone to fix the problem, and claim they did nothing wrong. At the very least - interlinking your domains is NOT doing you any favors. Start splitting them off now, and quit convincing yourself that you’re Barry Diller and you own IAC. His sites have entire enterprise level teams to "co-brand" and "cross-promote) his sites. Until your parent company is worth a billion dollars, you’re still just cross linking (with little to no benefit, and potentially a lot of detriment)

6. Myth of Parking pages (slowly dissolving value)

I bet it was awesome getting a 40% rip from the overture feed when type in traffic and search traffic was high for high value phrase .coms with little content and a phoney link profile. It’s a shame that things went down hill and everyone had to start working for a living. If it makes you feel better, SEO’s are providing an increasingly more commoditized service whose value at most levels is dimishing as well, and good folks are looking for better opportunities to monetize a skillset that is still not completely easy to build despite all the advances in search marketing training in the last three or four years.

7. Myth of Not Identifying and Underestimating Search and Social Strategy Value

Search marketing can help build direct cashflow. The tools to project the value of search marketing are still just starting to grow to a point of decent accuracy. 4 years ago before Google Analytics became great, no one had PPC data. It’s hard to understand SEO if you haven’t done PPC. Their are important economic systems in play on both that affect bottom line business. Search marketing is at the core of consumer intent.

8. Myth of Low Value Services Providing High Value

Amazingly willing to spend xxx,xxx on domains, but not more than $x,xxx per month on development. A good strategy should probably spend anywhere from 10 - 30% of the budget on the domain. Depending on the project this can seem excessive to some - but I definitely strongly agree with the high value in good domain names. The trouble is that you can only develop a few (not 100’s or 1000’s). I find that I’ve been able to develop about 10 - 12 sites per year at various qualities. That’s about one per month - with about 2-5 coming out very good at the end of a year. This is with a very strong desire to sit at the computer for 40 - 60 hrs per week consistently, and work at your maximum mental capacity.

9. Myth of Hype and Community Publicity

Woohoo! Joe the domainer launched motorcyclehelmets.com - It’s sure to be a category killer! I’m not a huge hater, but I’ve seen people fall into the same trap within the SEO and internet marketing community. Just because you’re a big deal in your little niche community does not mean you’ll make money, or that anyone else anywhere will actually care if you do. Most the successful people I know that have maintained their humanity tend to have a great deal of humility (and try to minimize the hype). The hater in me comes from my self loathe of blogging and enjoying using things like foursquare and twitter. For a circle jerk of publicity and drama in a small pondof life, there are many forums and blogs to visit, but perhaps the rise of the fall for the seo community came with Threadwatch.org (I think because it was like a giant sewing circle). It is only by spending time in such a place that you have an appreciation of just how information on the web truly travels (and just how little most things really mean).

10. Myth of second tier top level domain extensions

I bought into .info’s too. I feel your pain. I think I even have some .travel, .us, .mobi and some other second tier garbage. Firstly, they’ll never gain acceptance. Secondly, they’ll never rank for anything. Thirdly, no one will remember your extension (and they’ll type in .com), and you’ll lose most of the "type-ins" you were hoping for. Lastly, remember how much it costs to build a brand? It costs even more to get your .com AFTER the fact. The cost of GREAT .coms /.nets /.orgs on the other hand continues to see growth.

11. Myth that development is EASY

The owners of MutualFunds.com have a retail price of $5 Million listed. How much more likely are your odds for success buying Mutualfunds.net for $100k, and spending the other $4.9M on product development and marketing? For that matter, why not buy a $6 domain, and redirect it later? Even if you DO have a $10M budget, does it ever really make sense to make this type of purchase? Sure it’s an amazing domain name - no question, but your domain is only one function of your marketing budget. I am a large fan of big ticket domains, but if you are top heavy in terms of percentage of your budget being spent on your domain, and neglect your product and marketing, you will be clamoring about the "potential" until the point your domain goes up to foreclosure auction, and someone else gets it at the price it likely originally should have sold for (far less than you paid).

So why is it domainers (and most entrepreurs for that matter) underestimate the cost of development?

The number one reason this happens is because business goals aren’t developed before the project starts. One of the most exclusive problems to a business that fails online is a lack of understanding in execution the marketing and business development strategies. Underestimating the true nature of the project is a realization that nearly always occurs at the end of a failed businesses’ lifecycle.

In terms of one and two word keyword domains, domainers often forget that while there is a benefit in having an exact match keyword domain, it is still only easy to rank for that single term in the short term. Ranking for all the long tail phrases or other important phrases is an entirely different story. Even ranking for the exact match of a domain can be very difficult if the domain is in a already highly developed industry. To truly understand how difficult it is to rank for something, you must be able to do some competitive intelligence in a search result, and identify:

• how many links will you need?
• how much content will you need?
• what will it take for development of the great ideas you will use to retain users?
• will you be able to create content that will engage users, or is it highly specialized?

How many links you will need is often the critical underestimation. While you CAN go out and buy links, there is certainly a level of risk that comes along with this to your precious investment.

So what’s the moral of the story?

1. Don’t believe the hype (least of all your own)
2. No one will buy "potential" $1 worth of revenue is worth more than $100 in potential.
3. Build a business model first
4. Spend more money on engineering and strong development than hype and potential.
5. Cut losses on a project that doesn’t succeed

I think this is most important. If you REALLY want to make money on the web - follow these rules. Start working in one small corner of a competitive marketplace, and prove to yourself you can make a living at it. Most of the money is made from: 1. telling people how to make money 2. telling people how to improve themselves 3. telling people how to find things 4. comparing things for people in high dollar areas. 5. lead generation in the above mentioned topics with massive scaleable solutions (generally aggregations and user generated content plays).

I understand that with writing this post, I will likely ostracize myself from a bit of the domainer community, but it is only out of watching and understanding a bit from the fringes that I understand some of the domainer "community" that I have been able to form these observations. It is with a great deal of respect that I have done so, and that I offer my constructive criticism. As mentioned above - I think most good domainers are among the smartest and luckiest folks I’ve ever heard about. I hope some day I get to catch up with some cool domainer folks and swap stories over boat drinks. If you want to train teams in the meantime - I’ll give a shameless promotion for MarketMotive - it’s a great place to train your teams on holistic goals with an understanding of business goals. If you got through this whole post, and got a little upset with some of the observations -it’s probably a great place to start, and I remind you that I criticize with the utmost respect.

More sites and references:

• Free website valuation - Trustworthy evaluations from one of the gentleman at Quiet Light Brokerage
• Top domain purchases of 2009 that are still parked.
• Category killer domains explanation
• More from Richard K on the mistakes domainers make in negotiation

Domainer sites I like watching:

• Domaining.com
• EliotsBlog
• Chef Patrick
• Seven Mile
• Rick’s Blog
• Rick Latona
• Bruce Marler
• Conceptualist
• Morgan Linton
• Dot Weekly
• Name Talent
• DN Journal
• Domain Name Wire
• Domain Name News
• Whatever Monte Says

Master one internet marketing discipline in 90 days by training online with the bestselling authors, authorities, and top speakers in each discipline. You will:

* Master one internet marketing discipline
* Boost your value to your organization
* Empower your marketing team
* Make authoritative marketing decisions
* Get the industry recognition you deserve

Select from individual or group courses in SEO, Social Media, PPC, Landing Page Conversion or Web Analytics that are 100% online* and include:

* Graded projects and assignments
* Final dissertation defense for certification
* On-demand streaming video lessons
* Weekly interactive training webinars
* Direct, anytime Q&A with the faculty

Enroll now and take control of your online marketing.
Choose Your Online Course Now >>

* Courses are 100% online, with regular instructor interaction. Login 24×7 to master the latest techniques in internet marketing from the convenience of your own desk.

More information about SEO Master Certification, as well as the signup form

Checkout the SEO Curriculum here

MarketMotive, is allowing each faculty member to award a scholarship for certification courses valued at $3500 for the upcoming semester which starts on April 15th. All-star faculty members teach the certification courses: Dave Szetela, Matt Bailey (Fundamentals), Jennifer Laycock (Social Media), John Marshall (Web Analytics), Avinash Kaushik (Web Analytics), Greg Jarboe/Jamie O’Donnell (Online PR and Video marketing), Bryan Eisenberg (Conversion Optimization), Michael Stebbins (Email Marketing) and nailing down PPC Advertising. The goal of the scholarship is to help deserving folks (like you!) to help us in creating something great for a non-profit marketing group. If you already work at a non-profit, feel free to pull double duty, and tell me how you would continue to improve your site, or even someone elses. If you’re already a marketing pro - you’re welcome to enter as well, and donate your prize to the person you deem most worthy. Our goal is to help some deserving folks (like you) attain master certification in their field, and provide a valuable service to non-profit marketers everywhere.

If you would like to win a scholarship to earn certification in any of the offered topics, pick one non-profit web site of your choice and submit a short SEO marketing plan that you think would help improve the campaign results for your chosen charity. You can choose to publish it on your website and let me know about it, or email to me (todd at this site name.com).

At the end, each winner gets a complimentary $3,500 course to earn certification. If you are already an expert in SEO, you can donate the course to whoever you feel is most qualified. In addition, each faculty member will link to the plans submitted by other finalists and winners – the sum of which will form a wealth of of information for nonprofit marketers.

Rules: Submitting a plan means contestants agree that their plan may be be posted (with attribution) and/or sent to the charity. Plans may be edited before being posted at blog owner’s discretion. Winning plan (s)will be selected at the discretion of MarketMotive faculty chairs. All entries must be submitted before 12:01 am PST on April 1st, 2010, and the winners will be announced on April 5th.

So what’s all this hoopla about?

Avinash and I decided to do a video on how to make a website better. Fortunately Mr. Kaushik is wonderfully eloquent and makes me look really smart. He is a master of disseminating data, and is helping to dissolve the myths involved with SEO by quantifying potential and results. To me, this is extremely exciting since I have always been a “gut feel” marketer, developing strong instincts that can be occasionally proved wrong with testing and data. Both approaches certainly have merit, but I have to say I love coming up with a hypothesis and seeing Avinash prove or disprove it based on quantifiable data points.

The topics (of things you can do to make your website better) in the videos include:

1. Improve the site design (without sacrificing content)
2. Credibility matters (add credibility indicators)
3. Research keywords that matter to your site
4. People can’t read computer (make your urls human and bot friendly)
5. Improve Time on Site (unless you’re a directory)
6. Reduce Bounce Rate
7. Improve the site Usability
8. Don’t hide content from your users (don’t move stuff!) & don’t hide links from search engines!
9. Get a better web host (site speed MATTERS)
10. Organize your information better
(IA matters – don’t give too many choices means no choice)
11. Make it easy to contact you
12. Make it easy to find out about your company
13. Anchor text is important
(internal and external – you are what your links say you are)
14. Attract citations (links) is critical (linking thinking)
15. Social media is not your normal user (but can create links)
16. Selectively deliver content (block duplicate content from search engines)
(robots and humans are unique and your site index quality matters)
17. Organic Search traffic converts (and is 8x higher than PPC)
18. Encourage (or even incentivize) positive off site sentiment
(degree and kind of engagement)
19. Exact match micro sites for head terms
20. Do we need subdomains or subdirectories?

We discuss how to take ACTION on these subjects using an understanding of:

• Clickstream
• Multiple outcomes
• Experimentation and testing
• Voice of customers
• Competitive intelligence
• Insights
• Foundation

Your world is one of continuous actions (that is, surveys testing, behavior targeting, keyword optimization) and continuous improvements, where customers not HiPPOS, rule. Enjoy the videos, and definitely let me know if you have an questions, and please comment on anything we missed or you’d like to see in the future.

Normally, MM videos are for members only, but we liked these videos so much we wanted the world to see them. Hope you enjoy! Part I: Teaching HiPPOS about Better Websites Part I and Part II: 10 More things You can Teach HiPPOS about Building Better Websites.

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.