Ask the SEO Guru

                                                                     If you think Education is expensive – you should try ignorance

As I promised a couple of weeks ago, I’m going to attempt pull back the shroud of mystery that is so often associated with highly complex mathematical concepts to a point that even marketers and Canadians can understand them.

I learned long ago that sometimes simple concepts the human mind can conceive, turn into a VERY complicated programs when turning that concept into an actual working algorithm. If you are not a scientist involved with Information Retrieval, (IR), then reading the patents and white papers can leave you feeling confused and intimidated.

So, what I do is read the text of those white papers and patents, (skipping all the math formulas and illustrations), read what some others whom I respect say about those papers, then devise my own testing process derived from I THINK I understand and try it out. Once I prove to myself that I have the “gist” of the concept as it applies to what is important to me, (usually organic, relevant traffic generation),  I’m satisfied that I understand the concept well enough to capitalize and profit from it. It’s not as hard as some might have you believe.

Today, the "Dumb It Down" anti seo-SEO Guru will de-mystify:

Latent Semantic Indexing

LSI has been around for much longer than you’d think. In fact, LSA, (latent semantic analysis), was patented in 1988. But I became aware of it from a man I was lucky enough to call a friend. A very smart man and one of those IR scientist guys I mentioned earlier. He was VERY involved in LSI research and application and he was the one who helped me understand it at a high level and then apply it at a low level. In my experience, when you can learn it high and apply it low, it usually means $.

His name is Edel Garcia. I haven’t seen him around in a while so I’ve kind of lost touch with him but he still has a great site covering this and related topics and while possibly a little dated, it is still very good foundation kind of info.

http://www.miislita.com/information-retrieval-tutorial/svd-lsi-tutorial-4-lsi-how-to-calculations.html  

Ok, let’s get started.

One of my favorite sites about LSI is http://www.knowledgesearch.org/lsi/lsa_definition.htm

let's say we use LSI to index our collection of mathematical articles. If the words n-dimensional, manifold and topology appear together in enough articles, the search algorithm will notice that the three terms are semantically close. A search for n-dimensional manifolds will therefore return a set of articles containing that phrase (the same result we would get with a regular search), but also articles that contain just the word topology. The search engine understands nothing about mathematics, but examining a sufficient number of documents teaches it that the three terms are related. It then uses that information to provide an expanded set of results with better recall than a plain keyword search.

Ignorance is Bliss

Before we discuss the theoretical underpinnings of LSI, it's worth citing a few actual searches from some sample document collections.

• In an AP news wire database, a search for Saddam Hussein returns articles on the Gulf War, UN sanctions, the oil embargo, and documents on Iraq that do not contain the Iraqi president's name at all.
• Looking for articles about Tiger Woods in the same database brings up many stories about the golfer, followed by articles about major golf tournaments that don't mention his name. Constraining the search to days when no articles were written about Tiger Woods still brings up stories about golf tournaments and well-known players.
• In an image database that uses LSI indexing, a search on Normandy invasion shows images of the Bayeux tapestry - the famous tapestry depicting the Norman invasion of England in 1066, the town of Bayeux, followed by photographs of the English invasion of Normandy in 1944.

Cool ? Not too long of a stretch to grasp huh? BUT what does that tell you about how to build your pages so that you start generating converting traffic from organic results?

I’m going to give you several links at the end of this post that displays a wide variety of explanations, definitions and opinions that all give you as much depth and insight into the topic as you want to dig for. But when you start looking for what all those definitions mean as it applies to making your competitors suck SERP wind, the list gets pretty short. That’s what I’m trying to help with.

I’ve read most of them, as painful as many are, and I can save the majority of readers a lot of time and teeth grinding. Boiling all the information down into workable solutions is the key and to do that you don’t need to be a scientist or mathematician. You just have to use your common sense and realize that all these papers were written too satisfy some personal agenda of the author and we can all be pretty sure that agenda had little to do with OUR success.

So, bottom line, what does all the self serving information tell us as online marketers?

STAY ON MESSAGE!

That’s right. Perhaps millions of words online describing a pretty basic process and it all comes down to 3 words. Stay on message.

I understand how difficult it is to plan out an entire site for the long term. Things change and experience is what we get when we were expecting something else. So even though I am a big supporter of planning and developing objectives and strategies, I’m making it even easier than that. You can do it on a page by page basis and simply spend five minutes thinking about what the new page is about, what is it’s purpose what words best serve that purpose and then stay on message.

It is really not that different than talking to a few people at the same time. If you had the attention of say half a dozen people for 10 minutes and your objective was to get them to buy a couple of raffle tickets, you may spend a little time talking about the charity you were pitching, maybe a little time talking about yourself to establish trust but the majority of the time you would spend talking about the benefits of them buying the tickets. Why? So they associate the benefits with the product. ASSOCIATE. That’s a big word when it comes to LSI.

Assuming someone in the group raised their hand and asked a question about some other charity? Would you talk about THAT charity and their benefits? Why would you want to point out the benefits of a different charity? It would confuse the people you just convinced about the benefits of YOUR charity.

Would you talk about the other charity trying to make them look bad? Again, buy talking about them instead of you, you risk someone disagreeing with you and you lose affinity with them.

So what is the best route? STAY ON MESSAGE.

It’s the same with web pages and online content. The only difference is you are not using a vocal medium, you are using a textual and graphical medium.

So you use the alt tags for graphics to associate words to serve your purpose. You use heading tags, titles, anchor text in links both interior and exterior. You think about what words you want to be put together by the search engine and by the humans reading the words and     STAY ON MESSAGE. If you are talking about plastic surgery, don’t start talking about plastic car parts. Use medical terms, use anatomical terms, use common words and phrases that paint a mental picture of the target topic.

The next page you build you can talk about anything else you want but on that page, again, talk only about one thing. Use as many words as you like,(the less words you use to get the message clear in the readers mind the better BTW), but only talk about that one thing.

That’s it. I could elaborate but there is really no need. If you don’t understand staying on topic or if you suffer from ADD or some other affliction that hinders your concentration or focus, then you should seek professional help, but for the mast vajority of us wanting to make a buck online, just focus and stay on message.

Peach Y’all

The Anti-seo SEO Guru

References

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latent_semantic_analysis

www.knowledgesearch.org/lsi/lsa_definition.htm

lsa.colorado.edu/papers/dp1.LSAintro.pdf

www.freshpatents.com/Scalable-probabilistic-latent-semantic-analysis-dt20071011ptan20070239431.php

Don’t eat your lunch before you get to school. You won’t have anything to trade for something better and you’ll go hungry!

                                                      Find the courage to embrace change and fear mediocrity

Definitions of misnomer on the Web:

• an incorrect or unsuitable name
  wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
• A misnomer is a term which suggests an interpretation that is known to be untrue. Such incorrect terms sometimes derived their names because of the form, action, or origin of the subject—becoming named popularly or widely referenced—long before their true natures were known. ...
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misnomer
• A use of a term asserted to be misleading; A term asserted to be widely used incorrectly; A term whose sense in common usage conflicts with a ...
  en.wiktionary.org/wiki/misnomer
• An error regarding a name.
  www.shortnorthhomes.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/terms.list/letter/M/contentid/F5173BFB-A6F8-42EA-AEA212F205B1BE9E
• a misapplied or inappropriate name or designation.
  blog.myspace.com/index.cfm
•  

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Can You Define SEO? Well, can you? Yeah I thought it would be tough on ya. Don't worry about it, neither can anyone else.

If you threatened to take away my plate, I guess I would have to say, while there is really no definition for any misnomer, conventional wisdom would likely dictate that SEO generally means actions taken to ensure a webpage secures superior placement in the organic results of a search engine's returned results page for a specific searched term or phrase. If you don't agree, feel free to leave your definition in the comments,(or anywhere you else you care to).

So my question is ---- Are you SURE that is really all you want?

What about sales? traffic? Conversions? Changing people's minds to compliment your own biases? 

Perhaps it's a truism that just being #1 for a keyword is enough to generate traffic, but I would disagree. I used to see a lot of results on search engines at #1 that I didn't click on. Results with title tags like:
HOTEL. CHEAP HOTEL. CHEAP HOTEL IN LAS VEGAS

So perhaps the commonly accepted definition should be more like Webpage Title Optimization, WTO.

But don't we juice up titles with nice ad copy because traffic is more important than placement? Sooooo doesn't that make us more like traffic generation optimizers? TGO?

I've got some 17 people in production whose primary purpose is to generate traffic from a pretty wide variety of tactics, some having little if anything to do with search engines. I suppose they would almost HAVE to be called TGOs.

So what happens when those TGOs DO generate traffic but clients cancel because we did what they said they wanted but they are losing money?

We have 3 people whose primary function is to analyze logs and develop strategies to be given to production, (the TGOs), to alter negative trends. So I guess those are trend analysis for strategy optimization. TASOs.

We also built a very simple, yet powerful tool that:

 #1. tracks only referrers that actually get hit and points to the ones that don't at a glance. Why waste time and bandwidth, (which are expenses), when what we really need to know is what is getting hit? Number 1 doesn't matter if it does not generate traffic.

 #2. allows you to deliver highly targeted dynamic content on the fly for increased conversions. So --- this is a content delivery optimization tool? CDO?

But once the strategy is optimized what do we say to make sure the negative trends identified by the TASOs are reversed? What do you say to whom and where?

We have 5 fulltime copy writers whose primary function is to write content that incites an emotional response from a human being that results in that human taking a desired action. Content Response Optimizers. CROs 

And that doesn't even include the research factions of this entire process. So which part of that process is seo and not simply everyday, run of the mill internet marketing?

I doubt any of my offered acronyms will ever catch on. Probably because they actually describe the actions being taken. Also, please note, out of all of that, we do not have a single resource devoted to optimizing,(or doing anything else to), any search engine. SEO.

My point is that if all you really want is placement then seo may be a viable option BUT the fee should not reflect a total solution. Search engine placement, traffic generation, marketing research, metrics analysis, ad content delivery, etc. all those things are NOT about search engines, they are about people! Human beings capable of an emotional response. THAT is a total solution.

Traffic generation is certainly one aspect of a total solution but the rates are not inline with the actual value in a lot of cases.

Search Engine Spam White Paper

Almost a decade ago, a certain Alan Perkins wrote what he termed a White Paper called The Classification of Search Engine Spam

In spite of the fact that the “white paper” was totally unsubstantiated, unproven, unendorsed and quite frankly in my opinion, trite, it still gained a fairly sizeable degree of acceptance online. The gist of the article was, “any technique used that would NOT be used if search engines did not exist is search engine spam”.

While I never accepted this self-aggrandizing rant as a “white paper”, there is a valid point if it was only worded a little differently.

Bear in mind, I do not believe there is any such thing as search engine spam other than what search engines themselves promote to place the blame for their own lack of efficiency onto third parties they like to portray as an evil nemesis of fair and unbiased results,(what a load of crap! If you think results are fair and unbiased, you are either blind or crazy).

BUT, if the gist of “white paper” was more like, “search engines are only a tool and all that really matters is people”, now THAT statement I could wholeheartedly endorse.

As an illustration I’d like to share an email I received 2 days ago from an online marketer of note in his own right. He happens to be a client of mine and the email he sent me is a very good example of how to do business online without relying on search engine placement directly and instead relying on that human emotional response thing.

It is the :

SECRET TO GETTING HI-POWERED LINKS WITHOUT HAVING TO PAY FOR THEM.

 I have a very strict policy that we NEVER reveal our clients, their clients, their placements or what techniques we used to get those placements without the client giving me written permission to do so. You’ll see in this letter from Eric Werner of Atlanta Click Advisor that I have such permission. I’ve changed nothing in the letter and it is displayed as it was offered to me.

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Please take this and use it however you’d like. When I wrote it I was thinking that you might like to make it a blog post or part of a blog post, but feel free to add to it, subtract from it, cut it up or not cut it up and use it in any way you’d like or don’t use it at all if it’s not a good fit.

If you’d like to link to my blog in the last paragraph you can use the anchor text ‘adwords marketing’ and point it to www.Atlantaclickadvisor.com although I won’t be slighted in the least if you decide not to.

Every part of this is true and I really wanted to thank you and your staff for everything.

I’ve also attached a version in word format.

Bob,

I just wanted to take a moment to let you know what an impact you've made over the course of the last year. Choosing to use your SEO (Valuable Traffic Generation) services has aided in our tremendous success this year and I can say I honestly don't know what I would have done without the help of your staff. They have been responsive, flexible, and have definitely demonstrated the ability to get the job done.

One of the best case studies I have is for one of the clients you have helped us with. I wanted to share some of the results with you and your readers in case anyone had any question about the quality of real results that you provide.

A couple weeks ago when Google Analytics introduced advanced segmentation I decided to create a segment showing how non-brand related organic traffic has grown throughout the year. I think that the non-brand related traffic is telling because almost all of it is attributable to the work your team did.

Remarkable in itself, of course it begs the question:

Does this traffic convert into new business? I developed this second report which shows that the conversion rate remained steadily positive throughout. The orange line is the conversion rate from non brand related traffic. In my opinion this demonstrates the inarguable value of the service and reinforces your statement about producing valuable traffic rather than just rankings.

Beyond all of that I wanted to point out that the personal advice you've given me on multiple occasions has helped to shape my professional development and the way I think about my personal web presence and the web as a whole. Everything you've suggested has paid off more than I would have imagined and I really believe that the web would be a much better place if more people brought the integrity to their work that you bring to yours.

I hope that you continue to be wildly successful this year and continue spread that success to everyone you touch. It has been a great adjunct to my Adwords marketing efforts and I hope that you will turn to me any time you need a referral or a recommendation because I couldn't be happier with the way your services continue to improve.

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THAT is an emotional response! So what is the secret?

THERE IS NO SECRET.  Anyone can do it and it really has very little to do with SEO. It has to do with exceeding the customers’ expectations. It has to do with hard work, commitment to excellence and living the Do Philosophy.

Do the best job you can do

Be proud of what you do

Do what you say you will do

And charge accordingly

Is that SEO or is that online marketing?

So, did any of that help you to define SEO?

Peach Y’all

The ask the anti-seo seo guru

Never hide your dirty picture books under the bed. That’s always the first place they look!