Google apparently wants to dominate the social media as well as search, ads, the airwaves and, well, the world as we know it. I mentioned in my recent post Is Google’s Master Plan to Dominate Google SERPs? that it appears that in order to do well in the Google rankings, you’ll need to join the Google “social network” of sites. Considering Google’s force feeding of Universal and Personalized Search to the unsuspecting masses, your pictures, videos, news, maps, HTML pages and so forth stand a much better chance of ranking well if they are part of the Google network of sites like YouTube.com, Google News, etc.

Unfortunately, Google’s getting off to a rocky start with their continued drive to social media dominance. Take their latest, uh, innovation. Google recently rolled out a feature that allows Google Reader users to share what they’ve been reading with friends. Here’s what you see in a pop-up window when you first log into Google Reader:

That’s scary. This pop-up even makes it look like sharing is turned on automatically.

Naturally, since Google assumed everyone you talk to on Google Talk is a friend, they automatically assumed you wanted to share your Google Reader discoveries with all of your friends. All your communications on Google Talk is between friends, right?

Wrong! For example, what if you’re considering a divorce and you’ve been reading a lot of “How to get a divorce without really trying” content lately. You share it so that your attorney can read it. But, wait! Your wife is in your Google Talk list, too. Oops!

The problem with Google’s roll out of this “feature” is that there was no opt-in involved. They just assumed you WANT everyone you know in Google Talk to share your discoveries.

Google does a LOT of assuming. They rolled out Personalized Search assuming we want them to assume we’re looking for the same stuff over and over so they’ll dish that same frequently searched for stuff out at the top of our personalized results.

Google assumes it’s OK to track searches for marketing purposes. The problem with that assumption is that the vast majority of searchers don’t even know they are being tracked. Can we assume that Google is going to tell them?

Clearly, they blew it on this one.

Yes, you can click Share and Unshare on the toolbar at the bottom of each post (see below).

Problem is, that will share the post with EVERYBODY in your Google Talk list.

Can we assume Google will get the message and will make sharing more selective and opt-in?

Will Google’s behavioral targeting become just as annoying as telemarketers calling at dinnertime?

I dunno. Lately I’m finding that if I notice that I’m still logged into Google that I rush to sign out. It just creeps me out to know that everywhere I go on the web if I’m signed in, Google is following me.

It reminds me of when Caller ID first came to California in the mid-90s. Paranoia was rampant. I had moved to Palm Springs from Texas where I had Caller ID and and used it to screen telemarketing calls. If it wasn’t a name or number I knew or, if they had their Caller ID blocked, I let it go to voice mail. In fact, it became so obvious that 95% of those blocking Caller ID were trying to sell me something at dinner time, that I set it up so that those who blocked got a message telling them that I didn’t accept calls from blocked numbers. Worked like a charm…

…until I got to California. I was rudely awakened to the fact that 95 per cent of Californians were paranoid about ANYONE seeing their name and number come up on that little screen and they blocked their Caller ID. That meant NONE of them could call me. I had to disable that feature so that I could get any phone calls. Of course, that meant those dinnertime telemarketing calls came pouring back in, too.

That was then. Now, Google’s ability to track what you do and where you go on the web makes Caller ID seem so . . . primitive. Google doesn’t use phone numbers and a screen. It tracks by IP addresses. That’s what their roll out of Personalized Search was all about. When you are logged into your Google account, every stop you make on the web is recorded and can affect what you see when you run searches while logged in. The search results can be based on your search history and be totally different from what those who are not logged in will see.

If the purchase of Doubleclick by Google goes through, the search giant will also be able to track by ad cookies, meaning that they can follow you around the web by info that’s dumped into cookies from sites displaying their graphic ads.

Picture this possible scenario. You are shopping online for something, say penny loafers. You go to several sites, browse around, click on a banner add or two, but don’t find what you want and move on to something else. As you work your way around the web, you start noticing ads for shoes showing up on every web site you go to. You open your e-mail and find advertisements for shoes and penny loafers there, too. Your mobile phone chirps and you find a text message advertising penny loafers on sale.

Google’s version of telemarketers calling at dinnertime?

Ick!

And here’s the really creepy part. Currently, Google can follow you only if you are logged into your Google account to use any of their services like Gmail or Google Reader. If Google buys Doubleclick, you won’t need to be logged in. Google will find you through any of the sites you visit with their cookie-dropping banner ads.

Yes, you could disable cookies, but then you’d be in the same boat I was in with Caller ID. Your ability to “call” on other web sites would be seriously hampered.

Don’t get me wrong. Google doesn’t need Doubleclick to do behavioral tracking. It can do a really thorough job by itself. Owning Doubleclick is just icing on the cake and keeps Google from coming up with that particular technology on its own.

So, if you are using Gmail, Google Reader, Google Docs or any of the free services offered by Google, you are being tracked. Love all those stats that you get with Google Analytics? Guess what? Google knows more about your site traffic than you do.

Even creepier is the fact that most web surfers are completely unaware that their movements are being harvested for marketing purposes. As search marketers, this is old news to us, but average Joe or Jane Surfer hasn’t got a clue. And, since they don’t know, they don’t care, at least for now.

At what point will the citizens of this planet decide that privacy is more important than free e-mail? It’s bound to happen. It’s just a matter of time.

And then there are those Google Street View trucks going around major cities taking pictures of anyone and everyone without permission. But, that’s another story.

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is not rocket science, but it is complex and it is an ongoing process that changes almost daily. There is no such thing as a permanent “fix” to magically send you to the top of the rankings for good. But here are some of the basics to look for when optimizing your site for the first time.

1. Title Tag
This one is very important. Among the first things the spiders will crawl on your page is the Title Tag at the very top of your HTML code. This is what you see in the blue bar at the top of your browser when you land on a page. Using unique text in this tag on each page is absolutely essential. I have seen huge sites with thousands of pages all using the same content in the Title Tag of each page, frequently the name of the company as the only text. Not only will you NOT rank for anything but what is in that tag for your entire site (Do you want every page on your site to rank for nothing but your company name? I don’t think so.), but you run the risk of most of your pages not appearing in search results at all. You must have a unique Title Tag related to the unique subject matter of each page throughout your website (10 to 15 words, 80 characters maximum).

2. Internal Navigation
There was a time when the search engine crawlers choked on javascript links and database driven web pages that looked something like http://www.widgets.com/product.php?categoryid=1&productid=10, but they are better at reading them these days. However, you still need to make your links as digestible to the spiders as you can. As much as possible, you should make your links through plain text and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Javascript and image map links should be avoided as well as session IDs and variables in dynamic pages. Avoid using frames like the plague! These can all still give spiders a fit. Also, use an HTML page sitemap (a page with a list of your page links, not a Sitemap - see below) with text links to not only help visitors find what they are looking for, but to direct the spiders to all of your internal pages.

You’re better off letting your pages be found naturally by the spiders. Good global navigation and linking will serve you much better than relying on an XML Sitemap, which is a file that is uploaded to a search engine with a list of your page URLs.

3. Make Your Site Unique
They say that imitation is the highest form of flattery, but that’s a big no-no on the web. Do not copy someone else. Make your site as unique as possible with information that no one else has. In other words, don’t steal content off of someone else’s site. Not only can that be copyright infringement, but it can put you and the site you copied from in hot water with the search engines for duplicate content (see Duplicate Content below). Creating a buzz about something unique is great link bait. Which leads us to:

4. Content
Content is King. Content is spider food. The search engines are looking for the foremost authority on a keyword or phrase. Do your keyword research and make sure your site has plenty of keyword rich content high on the page that is useful to the visitor as well as digestible to the spiders. Make use of H1, H2 and H3 headlines that contain your keywords. Make sure your prose is natural and easy to read.

Don’t go overboard and make every other word on the page the keyword you want to rank the page for. Stuffing the page with keywords is considered a form of spam.

Focus on search phrases, not single keywords, and put your location in your text (“our Palm Springs showroom” not “our showroom”) to help you get found in local searches.

Having terrific content will not only be great for your visitors and spiders, but it’s wonderful link bait, too (see Links below). A blog is a great way to create fresh, new content (for the spiders and for visitors) and attract inbound links. The more good content you put on a blog, the bigger the blog gets. The bigger the blog, the more relevant it will become to the search engines. For some, a blog can completely take the place of a standard web site.

Also, use Flash animation and images sparingly. Spiders can read text, not Flash nor pictures. A sure way to kill any chance of ranking well is to create a site that is all Flash or mostly images.

5. Duplicate Content
Let’s say you have a site that sells a thousand different types of widgets and the pages are all built from the same template with the same text and the only difference is the model of widget on the page. What could happen is that the search engines will not see enough difference in the pages to consider them unique and will rank what it considers the best single page and dump the rest.

To avoid duplicate content issues, make sure all of your pages have unique Title Tags, Meta Tags (see below) and text, in this case probably in the form of product description text.

And, if you are writing articles for distribution to the various article sites for mass distribution (a great way to get back links), be sure to publish the article on your own site first and give the spiders a chance to crawl it. That identifies you as the originator of the content. Then push the article out for distribution across the web, making sure you have a link back to your site in the article content.

6. Code Bloat
Between you, your web designer and web programmer, it’s real easy to wind up with a page that is full of internal code that not only impedes spiders, but causes your pages to load at a snail’s pace. Be very careful with this. Too much code will send both the spiders and the visitors away and can knock the meat of your pages down to the bottom. It’s best to have your spider-friendly content as high in your code as possible, so when you can, place javascript (if you absolutely MUST use it) and CSS in external files that can be called with a single line of code from each page.

For instance, one site I worked with had so much javascript going on that the first 200 lines of code after the Title and Meta Tags were javascript, knocking the rest of the content down and making the page load size huge. I was able to move the javascript into external files, each simply called by a single line of code. This made every page on the site smaller in size and brought the spider-friendly content up higher in the code by 199 lines.

For example, you could put your all 100 lines of your CSS on each and every one of your 300 site pages or you could call your CSS from an external file called style.css with one single line of code on each page like:

Having a single file for your CSS or javascript also means you only need to edit one file when changes need to be made, too.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’ll need to ask your web developer or learn a bit about HTML.

7. Tweak and Test
Make one change at a time and evaluate. Changing too many things at once can confuse things to the point where you don’t know which change you made did what. For instance, let’s say you changed your content on a page as well as the linking structure and Meta Tags at the same time and the page dropped in the rankings a few days later. How would you know which to point to as the problem?

Try one tweak at a time and give the search engines time to digest it before moving on to the next.

8. Meta Tags
The only Meta Tag that carries any weight at all as far as SEO is the description, and it doesn’t have the influence it once had. It basically has no effect on rankings these days. Still, it’s a good idea to make it keyword rich and include what you want to show up in the SERPs (search engine result pages) as your description. Yes, this is what frequently comes up describing your site in the results, so be sure it says what you want it to say. A good description can definitely have influence on clickthrough traffic. What makes a good meta description?

a. Target the description to the individual page using the keyword focus for the page.
b. Describe the page in human-readable text.
c. A list of keywords just won’t cut it. Use a snippet of text that accurately describes the page.

The keyword tag has very little influence on rankings anymore, practically none, but it can’t hurt to include it. Just don’t stuff if with a thousand words. Ten or so should be enough for any page. As of this writing, Yahoo appears to be the only major search engine to actually find words included in the keyword meta tag.

9. Links
If Content is King, then Links are Queen. Search engines look at links pointing to your site as verification that you are an important authority site. It’s not just the quantity of links but the quality that counts. You can have thousands of links pointing to you, but if they are all from link farms or spammy sites, they won’t do you any good. Try to get back links from quality sites. If you have good content, a lot of links will come your way naturally, but if you want to speed things up, you’ll need to actively pursue those links. One way is to contact theme related, non-competitive authority sites and request a link. The acid test for a potential link is if there is a natural, logical reason for that site to link to you. If not, then you don’t want the link.

And, you want the links back to your site to use your keyword text in them. This is extremely important. If the keyword you are targeting is “widget” then you want the link back to your widget page to use that text and not “click here” or something like that.

Another way to use your content to get back links is by submitting articles to other sites for publication (A blog and RSS feed are great for this). Just be sure the content includes links to your site. Press releases are also great for generating interest and backlinks, but take care and only submit press releases to sites like PRWeb when you really have news.

Having a blog and RSS feed have an added advantage - an open door to the various social search sites. If you place easy link buttons or links (click here to Digg this article, etc.) on your blog articles and posts, visitors will save them to the various social bookmarking sites, creating instant backlinks and the potential of being found by other visitors to those social sites.

Submitting to trusted directories is also a good place to start. Most of the best require a fee for a listing, but they can be a great first step in your link building campaign.

There’s no simple, easy one-step way to build links. It’s really about networking and relationships and your useful content is the key.

10. Competition
Keep track of your competition by searching for your primary keywords and study what they are doing. Don’t copy them, but you can analyze what they are doing right and you are doing wrong. See who is linking to them and investigate getting your own link. If you are a new site, you’ll be playing catch up for a while, but have faith. That guy in the #1 spot had to start from scratch at some point, too.

11. Training & Support
If you are on a shoestring budget and don’t have money to hire an SEO, you’ll have to do it all yourself. SEO changes daily and if you think all you have to do is tweak Meta Tags, you’re several years behind and have a LOT of catching up to do. You’ll be learning as you go. You’ll probably want to invest in some SEO training. I give search engine optimization workshops and do site critiques, so check my blog, The Web Optimist, for information.

You can get ideas, updates and recommendations from my blog and from S E O forums and blogs online. Don’t rely on the forums as a solution for all of your website problems, but as a place to go for advice from S E Os and others who are also asking questions.

12. Analysis & Statistics
Sounds boring, but all of your hard work is worthless if you don’t know how you are doing. Chances are your hosting company will have some sort of web statistics feature where you can check basics such as unique visitors, where your traffic is coming from (referrals), page not found errors, etc. One mistake newbies make is to consider “hits” as the number of visitors they are getting. In actuality, “hits” are useless information. Hits are simply server pulls. As an example, if you have ten images on a page each time the page is loaded each image results in a server pull or “hit.” What you really want to look at is the number of “unique visitors” to your site, not hits, as an indication of your traffic.

If you are an e-commerce site, you’ll also want a way to track conversions, which will require something more than your basic hosting stats. Google offers free web analytics that could be adequate for many site owners, but there are also commercial applications available that offer greater functionality.

Whatever you do, don’t leave the site on autopilot. Check your stats frequently. You’d be surprised at the little things you’ll see that will help you bring in more traffic.

13. History
There is evidence that the search engines actually look at your domain history in their ranking algorithms (How long the domain has been up, how many years you’ve renewed for, if you’ve changed IP addresses frequently, etc.). The more stable you are the more they consider you a trusted site.

If you’re in it for the long haul, renew your domain for several years at a time (not just annually) and get a dedicated IP address and keep it. The best situation is to have a dedicated web server, but not all of us can afford that. The next best thing is to pay for a dedicated IP address with your host so that you are no longer sharing the hosted IP block. It usually doesn’t cost that much. Not only will the search engines see you as stable, you don’t run the risk of the IP being banned if one of your shared hosting neighbors is naughty. Although Google claims that a shared address is fine, if you are serious about your business, why take chances?

Don’t bounce from host to host because that screams SPAMMER to the search engines. Find a good hosting company and stay there. Also, be aware that by using services that block domain ownership information when you register a domain, Google might see you as a potential spammer.

This article will be updated periodically.

See my related S E O 101 posts .

Paid links may be taboo, but there’s a new way to leave a cash tip when you like what you read.

You might notice the large orange “Are You in My Top Spots” box in the upper right of my blog, The Web Optimist. That, my friend, is a new take on paid links.

No, it’s not something that Google will frown upon. It’s in javascript, so there’s no direct passing of link juice. And, the owner of this neat little widget says that to make Google really happy, they included no-follow in the actual link.

What makes this any different from other paid links? It’s the concept behind it.

This little widget is called ScratchBack and it’s really a tip jar (as in cash money), just like those little cans you see next to the register at Starbucks or wherever. Visitors to your site can leave a tip, currently $1 on my blog, and get a link to their site or blog. It basically takes those Make A Donation boxes through PayPal to a whole new level. In exchange for the donation, you get a link acknowledgment of it. The way I have mine set up is that as donations are made, that person is in the top spot. The next person to leave a $1 tip gets that top spot and pushes others down.

And, yes, it requires a PayPal account.

Do I expect to make money with this? No, especially not at my introductory price of $1. As I write this the widget has been up for several days and no one has left a tip.

But, I think the timing of this concept was fortunate. It should make Google happy.

So, Google, wanna make me happy? Leave a tip!

Content theft is a problem on the web. First you catch them, then . . .

Every web site owner or blogger will face the issue of content stolen from them and posted on another site. Whether it’s scrapers who use software to “scrape” text off of web sites for use on spammy made-for-Adsense sites or an S E O-wannabe copying that article you worked so hard on and posting it on his blog as his own creation, content theft is an unfortunate fact on the web these days.

For instance, content from The Web Optimist is permitted for use on any of the iEntry network of sites, including WebProNews and SearchNewz (See WebOptimist.com becomes iEntry Blog Partner). I also submit many of my articles to article directories where they can be used on other sites or blogs with the condition that my byline and bio be included.

So, I don’t have a problem sharing my content. I do, however, have a problem with idiots who take the articles, cut any mention of the original author and post the piece to their blog. This has happened to me more than once. Most recently, a blogger claiming to be a senior
S E O in India pulled the 40 Quick S E O Tips, Part One from WebProNews, removed my byline and bio and posted it to his Blogger.com blog.

First, Blogger.com is a nice place to start, but a serious SEO would quickly be annoyed by the limitations of a blog service and move on to a self-hosted system like WordPress. This guy might just be playing with Blogger.com because there were only two posts on the blog (including my stolen article).

Second, that’s still my article!

The unfortunate thing (other than having your content swiped) is that it can be very difficult to do anything about it. Complaining to the web service provider or search engine might not do it. For instance, Blogger.com states in their Terms of Service:

Please note that Blogger is not in a position to arbitrate issues regarding ownership of content; however, Blogger does comply with the United States Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

They then lead you to a Google page of information for filing a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) violation. Reading that page is like reading the info page that comes with a prescription drug. After reading about all of the possible side effects, you don’t know if you want to take that pill or not. Such is the DMCA pill, which is supposed to be our prescription against content theft.

This is typical of how the major search engines handle stolen content complaints.

So, what’s a blogger to do?

First you have to catch them.

If you are running a WordPress blog, check the backlinks that show up by default in the control panel. It is under Incoming Links and shows the most recent links back to your WordPress blog. Check those every day. I have caught more than one culprit who thought he had removed all of the links back to me, but only cut out the anchor text, leaving the link code in the raw HTML. That’s enough for the link back to you to be reported.

Second, sign up for Google Alerts for your main keywords, domain name and site name. Every day Google will send you a notice of the latest mentions of any of those that it has discovered to your e-mail box. I caught that latest infraction from the guy in India through Google Alerts. This so-called senior S E O also stripped out the anchor text, but left the link code to my blog in his raw HTML. Duh…

Another simple way to track down your content is to simply take a phrase from your article, say a dozen words, and do a search with the phrase in quotes. You’ll get a search page listing all sites where that exact phrase shows up that you can check through for theft.

Now, contact the perpetrators by e-mail or through a comment on their blog and let them know they’ve been caught stealing. Most of the time they’ll respond with a “Gee, sorry. I didn’t mean to…” and either remove the content from their blog or site or add your bio and backlink.

No response? You could try sending them a letter from an attorney. I’m not a lawyer, but that would get my attention!

If that doesn’t work, well, then you move on to the DMCA filing. Yes, it’s a hassle and requires a lot of information, including your original posting date, proof of ownership, where and when the perpetrator posted your stolen content, etc. which has to be signed and submitted by regular mail. As far as I am concerned, it’s your final option, but it can and (frequently) does work.