I am the co-host of a weekly podcast called The Bella Buzz with  Desiree Scales, the CEO of Bella Web Design. We have great conversations about topics related to online marketing. I am posting the programs here for the Overflow audience. This is episode 68.

The New York Times article that landed on late Saturday evening was the basis of the conversation between Desiree and Joe on this episode of The Bella Buzz podcast. There are so many juicy angles to this story that we go down a variety of roads ranging from black hat seo to content farms, to brand signals impacting the search results pages.

A little background first. The New York Times published a story titled The Dirty Little Secrets of Search in which they uncovered numerous web sites that were linking JC Penney for lucrative keywords. The web sites in question had no relevance to the keywords they were linking, everything from nuclear.engineeringaddict.com to bulgariapropertyportal.com could find you a little link to words like “Evening Gowns” or “Bedding”, things that would put JC Penney on top of the rankings.  The length of time that this has been happening is unclear, but it was certainly taking place throughout the profitable 4th Quarter holiday period, and certainly had an impact on the revenues for the company.

Black Hat Tactics

The company immediately fired their SEO firm, claiming ignorance of the tactics and link buying strategies that they were using.  It raises the question of how companies should be monitoring the work being done on their behalf, and whether the offices on the upper floors understand these sophisticated techniques.

For a great analysis on the webmaster guidelines, read this article from someone formerly on the inside at Google, Vanessa Fox, who does a smart breakdown on the issue for SearchEngineLand.

Desiree has her own direct example of serious black hat techniques that really border on criminal intent.  During the early part of this decade, a competitor purchased links that were pointing to her web site, which in turn caused Google to drop her from the rankings.  This form of corporate espionage should lead to possible charges, however the question is who is the responsible party for handling and prosecuting something like this?  We cannot turn that jurisdiction over to a corporate entity like Google!

One way to determine if there might be something happening that you are unaware of, do a search for LINK: <YOURDOMAIN> to see if there are any questionable sites that you should be looking in to.

Content Farms

This New York Times story broke during a time when Google has been seeing some negative publicity regarding the “pollution” of the search results by Content Farms.  Companies are now crafting business models that follow search trends very closely and craft content that meets that query.  The content is done quickly and optimized professionally so that it will rank at the top of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

The complaint by many is that this content is of poor quality, provides no benefit to the searcher, and does not meet the standard of “the most relevant information for that search query. Google is struggling with algorithmically weeding out that content.

So, in this discussion and the JC Penney discussion, it comes to light that Google will manually manipulate the rankings according to their internal decision making.  JC Penney dropped quickly from it’s number one perch even though the links had not been removed completely, and now they are asking users to install a Chrome toolbar that will give them feedback about sites that users want excluded from their rankings.  Where does the neutrality come in?  How much control does Google get when dropping a site manually from the index?

The opposite affect of having poor search quality from Google is the gain in trustworthiness of social search.  Each user’s social graph will provide better feedback and information than the standard search engine.  This is a key time in the evolution of search!

Brand Signals

As a small to medium sized business, the only way to make sure that you can compete in this landscape is to be certain your on-site optimization is excellent.  All of the long standing efforts for good meta descriptions, nice designs, optimized images and content, and simple navigation are a solid foundation.

The off-site efforts include the many strategies we have discussed regarding content distribution via social networks, as well as an indication that Google will look at “brand signals“.  Signals would be things that a reputable company would have over the course of operating a business such as employees listed on LinkedIn, a street address in the about page and Google maps, or brand name searches indicating people are looking for that company.  These are the bits of information that compile to give a site a higher listing.

What do you think? Are we seeing a revolution in Search?

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Theme music for The Bella Buzz is Fallen by Digital Chemistry, available for download at the Podsafe Music Network.

You can subscribe to The Bella Buzz directly from ITunes by following this link, and we would be happy to receive listener feedback and ratings at The ITunes Store.

I have been co-hosting a weekly podcast called The Bella Buzz with the CEO of Bella Web Design, Desiree Scales.  We have good conversations about topics related to online marketing.  Thought I would also post the programs here for the Overflow audience.  This is episode 45.

This week on The Bella Buzz podcast, we discuss a publishing platform that provides site owners an easy to use tool for managing content, WordPress.  The platform is expected to be releasing its version 3.0 in the very near future according to information that Desiree received at the WordCamp Atlanta that took place this past January.

Desiree points out that one of the major upgrades to the platform will be the ability to manage multiple users across multiple web sites.  Currently this would require individual logins for each user on each site.  This is just one of the many additional features expected with the launch.  According to this post at Mashable, the Beta of 3.0 is now available for testing.

One of the misunderstandings about using WordPress is that it is only a “blogging” platform, when in fact it can be a wonderful way to set up a site with static pages that only need infrequent updates.  Bella Web Design recently built a new site launched on this platform at BrightClaim.com.  Looking at this site, you will see a very fresh well laid-out site that does not have the appearance of a WordPress format.

A key aspect to the use of WordPress is the open source nature of the platform.  Since the code is easily accessible many plugins have been created to expand the functionality of a WordPress site beyond its strong baseline features.  As a service to Bella Buzz listeners we have made a list of suggested plugins that you should consider, in no particular order:

Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap for stronger SEO
Share This – Let your visitors share a post/page with others
Twitter Tools – A complete integration between your WordPress and Twitter, passing links to posts via your tweet stream.
WordPress Database Backup – On-demand backup of your WordPress database.
Powerpress – The plugin gives you everything you need in one easy plugin to use WordPress for Podcasting.
Akismet – Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not (Comes pre-populated in WordPress & is a valuable tool).
Dagon Form Mailer – easily customizable contact form
All In One SEO – this plugin helps you to optimize all of the critical aspects of site design to achieve better ranking results.
WP Super Cache – this is a very efficient way for a site to load faster. Indications are that Google is looking a site load time as a factor in ranking, and this should help that requirement.

We should note that there are other options to consider when deciding on a content management system and we would at least call attention to Typepad and Squarespace, Joomla and Tumblr as other potential platforms.

As a guide for learning how to use WordPress, there are great resources that you can Google, but there is a site called WP Beginner that can be a big help.

There is also an iPhone app that allows easy access to the platform for managing posts.

Theme music for The Bella Buzz is Fallen by Digital Chemistry, available for download at the Podsafe Music Network.

You can subscribe to The Bella Buzz directly from ITunes by following this link, and we would be happy to receive listener feedback and ratings at The ITunes Store.

The impetus for this week’s Overflow Podcast was a conversation with a potential client who had some misconceptions about the way in which organic rankings are achieved.  It is a conversation that has happened numerous times in the past so we felt like it was a great topic for a podcast.

Of course, these notions are easy to understand in the general population because for years anyone who was building a web presence heard about the importance of Keywords.

Well as times and algorithms changed, and the tactic of keyword stuffing became a worn out practice, alternative ways of working up the SERPs became more important.  With the changes taking place during 2009, site development must be geared towards the development of quality content.

There is no one better than Bruce Clay of Bruce Clay Inc. to explain where the algorithms are headed and what will rise up as the best practices for a web site  owner, so here is a conversation with Mike McDonald of WebPro News: 

For a site owner intending to develop their site with an eye toward the new paradigm for ranking and more importantly, converting traffic, what should they be concerned about if not Keywords (and inbound links by the way)?

Sites that are developed with rich media content incorporated as part of the overall strategy, with a complimentary social media campaign to assist with generating traffic, will lead towards better rankings and higher conversion rates.

The content is geared towards appearing where Universal Search is pulling in results for queries from numerous sources.  Video, audio, photos, and other forms of content will deliver better results for a web site than a static model.  Simultaneous to helping to get discovered via search results, this type of content has been proven to help convert site visitors once they have arrived at the site.

In the old days, traffic to a site was considered to be the best measure of success for search marketing, now the metrics are much more elaborate but give a clearer picture of site interaction.  Things such as Bounce Rate, Time on Site, and Number of Pages viewed are more critical to getting conversions.  With rich media and social networking campaigns you will see visitors spend much more time on the site, interacting with the content that is created and ultimately responding to the call to action.

Make sure to take advantage of alternative methods of distributing your rich media content such as TubeMogul versus just a singular location of YouTube.  Seek out Blog Networks that have sites that are related to your topic so that their traffic can discover your content.

As we have mentioned in the past, this all leads to a quality discussion about creative content.  Once rich media content has leveled out across most web sites and no longer acts as a differentiator for being discovered and converting, the next level revolves around producing better quality content that is more likely to achieve the intended results.

One company called Holophone has taken the approach of producing better quality audio on the web and has released 5.1 surround sound enabled video podcasts.  This is the type of advancement and initiative that we will continue to see as convergence takes place throughout our surfing experience.

Are you focused on developing content that will help you appear in the search results ahead of your competitors? Have you put the keyword concerns on the back burner in your overall strategy?