In my last but one blog post I talked about online reputation, about what people find when they run a search of your business name and how you appear in the search engines. There is however a flip side to the reputation coin, and that is your reputation with Google itself, what they themselves think of you rather than what various online posters think. There is a misconception I’ve heard repeated in the seo trade that there is only one off-page factor, namely backlinks. But this is far from the truth. Google has a much more holistic view of businesses than some people imagine, and they evaluate other things besides just backlinks. In fact, listening to Matt Cutts speaking in 2009, it is quite obvious that Google have been running other metrics besides Page Rank, (the aggregation of incoming backlinks), for quite some time.

Now although Matt Cutts doesn’t elaborate on what these metrics are, he plainly spells out that Page Rank is just one of several factors, “trust, authority, (page rank), reputation, high quality”, considered by Google. Increasingly I am starting to hear seo practitioners these days talking about Trust Rank in opposition to Page Rank, which is a recognition of the fact that Page Rank is not the be all and end all it once was….(there are still seo practioners around – presumably they were cryogenically frozen in 2008 – who tell us backlinks are 80% of the ranking factors). So, the next question must be, if Trust Rank exists, what is it or what might it be? Well, it is comprised of a mixture of on and off page factors, but predominantly off page. Reviews, mentions, (in good and bad places), indexation, industry awards, transparency, business protocols…..there are lots of ways in which Google can put it’s ear to the ground. Since they are an independent news outlet in their own right, it is not as if they should be starved of up-to-date topical information, (Google as a matter of fact had a data sharing arrangement with twitter until mid 2011). If you want a simple distinction between Page Rank and Trust Rank, here is one: If a thousand people backlink to a Company, using generic anchor text, (like say, “professional accountancy firm”), that is a clear example of how backlinks are building Page Rank. Now, conversely, if a thousand people start talking about your Company by name, but without actually using backlinks, (e.g. “Thomas, Scruton and Wellbeck helped me sort out my vat returns”), there is no Page Rank being built because there is no backlinking involved. However…….Google is listening, and all these mentions of your Company, (Brand), are building up your Trust Rank.

It’s All About The Brands These Days

Ok, so Matt Cutts says that Google doesn’t think in terms of brands as such, (primarily because he wants to disassociate Google from being seen as the friend of big brands), but it is quite clear that when we talk about trust, authority, reputation, and high quality, what we are really talking about is brand values. So for me personally, what some seo’s call Trust Rank I prefer to call “Brand Rank”. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, publicly stated in 2008 that:

“The internet is fast becoming a cesspool where false information thrives…. brands are increasingly important signals that content can be trusted. Brands are the solution, not the problem. Brands are how you sort out the cesspool. Brand affinity is clearly hard wired, it is so fundamental to human existence that it’s not going away. It must have a genetic component.”

Secondly, since the Vince update, Google has been seen to be valuing big brands more; and finally, Google have now created Brand/Business Pages on Google+ .

Brand minus Page Rank equals SERP Rank?

I saw the power of branding recently illustrated in my own niche. I cannot make a case study because the site has now climbed to Page Rank 2, but for a while the site was PR 0. Not only was it PR 0, it was a very new site, (under 1 year old), and it had a very ordinary set of backlinks. The site however was ranking very high for some difficult keywords; notably it was ranking 18 for “seo services”, (Google UK), which is a highly competitive seo keyword. I don’t want to overstate the case for this site, because it did have some backlinks, but in my opinion it was punching well above its weight. So I investigated it and found out that this particular seo Company was the offshoot of pre-existent Company which had split its business in 2, and chosen to run its seo service under a URL which is a hyphenated version of their brand name.

What then appeared to be happening was that the site was ranking well because of the Company’s well established overall reputation, or “Brand Rank”.  (I guess for the purists I should run an experiment by trying to rank a site with zero backlinks to validate my suppositions).

There is nothing particularly ground-breaking in this supposition, and I suspect many people in the seo industry would concur with me, but it does illustrate signally the way seo has changed in the last two years. Even now, I don’t know of any professional seo tool that could have told me that this Company has a strong “Brand Rank”, and that this is the causal factor behind their very high ranking.

Brand is becoming more and more important with Google……

When you boil it all down, branding is really an extra layer in Google’s taxonomy. Branding acts as a buffer for Google between itself and the undifferentiated elements of the web. Typically, when Google sees you as a trusted brand, it will list your website with sitelists. When this happens, it means you’ve entered the club….you’ve graduated. You’ve passed your Google internship; in short, they trust your brand.

When you rank well in Google, you are not just getting the largest piece of the pie, the first port of call for those searching, you are also gaining exposure as a trusted brand. People use Google because they trust Google’s results, and when you rank high in Google, there is an implied endorsement of your brand taking place. 5 years ago less so, and 10 years ago, absolutely not; there was of course a time when Google’s results threw up a complete hotch-potch of the cooked, the raw and the inedible. These days quite the converse. Google’s results tend to be pretty consistent. Because Google is consistently improving their metrics, and getting increasingly expert at picking good fits for search queries, the branding value of being at the top increases. We know, whether or not we articulate it to ourselves, that Google’s top rankings are a lot more trustworthy than they once were. As the dross finds it increasingly difficult to sneak into the top rankings, we become increasingly more trusting of Google’s rankings, and hence subconsciously associate top ranking sites with quality. Added to that, all the various tweaks and subtle identifiers that Google is adding reflect their view of your brand. And good branding means trust, and trust means conversions….

What does all this mean for companies employing seo services?

Well in short, it should mean that the days are numbered for fly by night seo Companies who use cheap tricks for rankings. In fact, it has a host of implications for the way seo Companies practice and the way seo is performed.

In Part 2 I will explain some of the ramifications of the way Google is now carrying out their metrics, and implementing brand rank; in the meantime, if you have any SEO questions, or have some interesting SEO insights to share, why not join me at my SEO Q & A’s ….. on my Google+ Brand Page, of course.

Branding these days is surely harder than it ever was. The internet pulsates like a busy Saturday on Oxford street, and with so many options, well, to be frank, if you don’t catch the eye, you really can get submerged by the throng.

Names are of course integral to branding. Company names need to be memorable, and if they have a meaning, they need to correlate in some way to what you represent. One of the hardest things about being an seo business is actually finding a Company name. Well, not the hardest, but by no means the most straightforward either. Because there are so many seo Companies out there, you’ll probably be on a wild goose chase if you go for something descriptive. “Top Ranking”, “Apogee Marketing”, most of these names are long gone. And besides, they all sound rather hackneyed these days, not to mention the assumed affront to the trades description act. No search engine agency can guarantee top rankings, and calling yourself something like that has the fishy twang of a second hand car salesman calling himself “Honest Dave”. If you try for something more circumspect, you are in danger of ending up with something dull, verbose, cumbersome, or all three. “Online Business Promotions”, “The Online Visibility Company” – yawn. Moving on…

Finding Inspiration

I live these days in Devizes, Wiltshire, which happens to have the Kennet And Avon Canal running through it. I don’t fish or run a canal boat, but I do enjoy walking along the canal, and I suspect that, if I felt I could get away with it, I would abandon writing internet marketing blog posts altogether, and write instead about the history of the canal, and study and document the wildlife instead. Does that sound terrible? Well, to be honest, how many articles can you write about marketing and seo? Lots I am sure, but it does get endlessly repetitive hearing about meta tags, header tags, and quality content….

I suppose you could say that the canals were as central to the Industrial Revolution as Google is to the Information Revolution…(would that make Apple the trains?)

During a recent walk I was treated to a glide past by a magnificent game of swans. (Game is the collective noun for swans). Nature is really incredibly eloquent and expressive. Well, before I post some pictures, let me just say, if I hadn’t called myself Orange Whale Ltd, it might have been Swan Seo, or even……keep that thought. Because that’s ideally what seo should achieve….your site should glide serenely along at the top of Google, whilst under the surface, clever boffins  (US-en: geeks) are working away furiously to achieve those results…well, something like that.

Anyhow, here are some nice pictures……right, I’m off for a walk.

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The Wild West (sort of)

The internet information superhighway may not be a pile-up, but it certainly can be something of a demolition derby. Whether we are talking internet viruses, gratuitous voyeurism, cyber-bullying, or flame wars, (to name a few), there are all sorts of destructive elements online. Set against this of course there are all sorts of productive and worthwhile online pursuits, from the simply social and interest based, through to the business end of the spectrum.

Tarnished, dented and damaged? Your reputation that is.......

The problem for the internet of course is that it can be a force for good or bad in extreme measure. Just as at one end of the spectrum Facebook can be used to trigger mass rioting, at the other end it can be leveraged to find a missing child. Just as the internet itself can allow businesses to flourish spectacularly, at the other end of the spectrum it can allow something like the Stuxnet virus to literally send a nuclear plant into total meltdown. The underlying issue here of course is that policing the internet is extremely thorny for all sorts of reasons, and this has a ton of implications, of which the ones I wish to talk about are those affecting the world of commerce, because, notwithstanding that things are belatedly starting to tighten up, it still remains a pretty lawless place.
 
 

Its Dangerous Out There

Managing your brand these days, whether it be a Corporate entity, or your own person, is very fraught with hazards and obstacles. The list of potential stumbling blocks is extensive; at one level it can be about getting sacked from a job for an off-colour remark on Facebook, (or even just being on Facebook when you are feeling off-colour), or not getting a job because your employer is one of the 70% who vets social media properties to get an insight into your personality. At another level, it can be a matter of a few negative comments about your Company on someone’s blog, or it can be an orchestrated all-out assault by a competitor. There is just so much that can go wrong online; leaving aside the comment or picture on Facebook from 3 years ago that somehow surfaces to indict you, there is just so much traffic out there jostling about, and very little in the way of a traffic control officer. That means people can say pretty much what they want about you, usually under the cloak of anonymity, and with very little in the way of repercussions. All businesses are essentially soft targets. There is nothing to stop a disgruntled customer or slighted ex-employee going online and waging war; let’s face it, all they need to do is create a few pseudonyms, and then create a trial of mayhem. The opportunities afforded online are simply much greater, and one of the biggest obstacles faced by a victim of such an attack is in actually unmasking the perpetrator. Yes, it is possible to get a court order, but then that requires the perpetrator to be promulgating lies and slander, and the victim to have the means and the determination to end it. In most cases, the attacks will be stealthy, and can take a number of forms, many of them hard to really pin down. All in all it can turn into a demolition derby out there – that is if there are no rules of the road, or if people chose to drive aggressively recklessly.

It’s not complete anarchy (but it’s probably best to view it as such)

Now in mitigation of all this, it is quite clear that Google are trying to create a white web, (as white web is to white hat), through Google+ by creating a deeply contextual, stratified and hierarchical web, with a much greater level of personal accountability through their recently implemented authorship controls, and this could partially alleviate some of the wild wild west aspects of the online world. How things develop over the next five years will certainly be interesting. It may even be in time that for any statement to have any online authenticity, it must link back to a person’s online ID card, their Google author page. That is a distinct possibility, but in the meantime, the web is still pretty fast and loose.

For that reason, all companies need a proper brand management strategy, and the corollary to that is that they may also need a reputation management campaign if things start to go awry. Brand Management is essentially about monitoring everything that is said about you on the web. Reputation Management is essentially all about defusing and dismantling any online bombs that strafe your path….

There are all sorts of online attack that can beset a business; a typical one is where a competitor sets out to besmirch your name, and a worst case scenario might be when you Google your business name, and the first page of Google has multiple results referring to some kind of mischief; e.g. Company Name Ltd + fraud, or Company Name Ltd + useless. Those kinds of results will of course seriously impact the health and well-being of your business…….

The solution in such an instance would be to debunk the offending items to at least the second page of Google by promoting some other material through the use of seo, over and above the offending material. That is just one example of what a reputation management campaign could look like. Of course, prevention is better than cure, so having a good brand management strategy from the outset is a significant step that any business ought to consider taking.

What are your reputation management experiences?

Do you have any experiences of online hate campaigns designed to discredit a person or business? If so, how did they play out? What actions did the victims take? We would love to hear your stories, so feel free to comment below.

Orange Whale Ltd are seo specialists who can help in any brand or reputation management campaign.

As in life, so also in Seo

So, I suppose, when you have a track-record for corporate trend-bucking and general eccentricity, what better way to launch your largest new product ever in 15 years of existence than to just quietly slip it onto the shelves one morning, as if it was nothing more noteworthy than a Supermarket white label can of baked beans. That was how Google+ appeared to me at least. No great fanfare, no red carpet, no lengthy advertising campaign. In that sense, it was more akin to the second coming. Blink. Whoosh. Google+ is amongst us now.

But do not be deceived. Regardless of how low-key its entrance was, Google+ is the mother of all social networks, and signals the death of Seo 2.0 and the birth of Seo 3.0. We are now truly entering the age of authorship, authority, accountability and connectivity at warp speed, and whether we like it or not, Google+ is the mothership.

And yet the Seo community seems strangely oblivious and impervious to the radical shape of things imminent, which is somewhat ironic, since whenever Google has periodically updated their ranking factors, the air has turned blue with Seo practitioners bemoaning the catastrophic effects of Farmer, Panda, Koala, Locust, or whichever name the latest change goes under.

The truth is though that while these updates have often been greeted by the somewhat inward-looking search community like magnitude 8.0 earthquakes on the Richter scale, in all honesty, they have usually been little more than gentle tremors. For sure, some updates have knocked down a few buildings, but by and large Google’s modifications have been pretty benign, unless you happen to have been scamming the rankings, or just got a dose of bad luck. But 2011 marks a watershed in SEO; or to borrow some SEO community hyperbole, this truly is ‘the big one’, a truly earth-shattering event, as seismic as all the previous updates put together, and then some more. Perhaps in fact this is less of an earthquake, to continue the metaphor, and more of a meteorite event. Perhaps 2011 is a Tungaska Event in Seo terms.

The reason why everything has changed overnight is quite simply this. I will use a metaphor to make it easier. Seo for the last 15 years has revolved around backlinks. Backlinks have been like currency. An ordinary backlink is like a few pence, and a really awesome backlink from say Wikipedia is like £50. Initially that worked, because you could say, ‘My site has 100 backlinks with a combined value of £1000, so I am considered quite favourably by the search engines. Jack has some amazing backlinks, and his site is worth £10,000.’ But as people have gamed the system, particularly through the use of automated backlinking tools, the numbers have gone into hyperspace. People are backlinking by the hundreds of thousands, and all these backlinks are artificial. My £1000 worth of backlinks is now worthless. It has no market value any more. So the only way to cure the inflation is to tether the currency to a gold standard. The gold standard that Google has introduced is Google+. From now on impersonal automated synthetic backlinks are like paper hot off the presses. Worthless. You need greenbacks now. You need backlinks that are anchored, that are real.

Google+ makes this possible, because the Google+ network is tethered to Google accounts and Google profiles. Creating bogus profiles will be, if Google have set things up properly, not so easy. Yes, it will be possible to purchase Google+ recommendations, but Google will be able to monitor patterns of behaviour closely. Because Google control the whole network, they can set in place all sorts of checks, filters, balances and alerts to pick out anomalous and excessive patterns.

Seo has changed overnight. The new key factors are quality content, authenticity, and social reach.

And the winners and losers? There are no real clear winners and losers yet. However, failure to adjust over the coming months could definitely be terminal. I suppose if I had to pick a loser, I would say anybody who has just spent $2000 on a 2011, 2nd quarter, backlinking course……but I may be wrong….we shall see.

for more information on how to get top rankings for your site, click here: seo services

It's been a busy few weeks personally, and a much busier few weeks for the world. I guess events in my personal realm have somehow been mirroring what is going on in the wider world; whilst the FTSE crashed wiping billions off stock portfolios, my website crashed, (deleting data I hadn't even had time to backup), and when London erupted into anarchy, my personal life simultaneously managed to achieve a level of random chaos that I had not exactly foreseen. In the midst of all the stockbrokers developing alopecia overnight and running out of deodorant, and various parts of London exploding, it was hard to imagine where all of this would end. Fortunately now things seem to have stabilized, assuming that is that Irene doesn't close down Wall Street for a month, or something similarly earth-shattering. Anyhow I digress, however bad the stock market crash was, Apple remains the world's largest Company, and I don't suppose Blackberry is doing too badly; their elevation to gadget of choice for anti-social media purposes may not necessarily be bad publicity either…. Anyhow, I know my title sounds pretty apocalyptic. It's meant to be. I did it for a purpose. Words taken in isolation, without a proper context, can be not merely ambiguous, but can end up as the polar opposite of what was intended. I chose my title, Blackberry and Apple Crumble, partly because it is quite an ambiguous construct. Add a bit of cream, and its not so problematic. Throw in a Nokia reference, and we all know where we stand. For many years the world of SEO has repeated the mantra, "content is king", but maybe that is about to change. Maybe the new mantra will soon be "context is king". What do I mean? Well in many ways I believe Google has started contextualizing the web. One prime example of this is in the way it now likes to attribute content to sources. It is doing this through the use of authorship formats, which encourage writers to effectively sign their works, like painters, so that the human and the unique can be discerned in an age of digital mechanical reproduction. The way that Google now intends to collate a lot of information, like the aforesaid information on authors, is through the use of what is called structured data. Structured data is nothing new, and many webmasters have been using it for a long time, but it is now becoming more of a sine qua non, so let me say a few elementary things about it. The easiest way to think of structured data is as a form of annotation to a main body of text, however the annotations are intended for search engine bots rather than any reader. This means in effect that you can signpost any material you create so that it is readily intelligible to the bots. Going back to my title, 'Blackberry and Apple Crumble', taken in total isolation, it would be unclear to a bot whether I was talking about sunday lunch or a seismic event on the world markets. Of course Google doesn't view things in isolation, and even without any other qualification of the title, the bot would read a whole page of text and, should the rest of the page involve skillets, saucepans and spatulas, then it would adduce that this was a culinary reference; I guess unless this was from the Lawson family blog page, there wouldn't be too much confusion. But we can make it much easier for the bots, by signposting content.

How do we signpost content then?

You can signpost content with what is called markup language. There are three markup language conventions that are in use, Microformats, RDFa and Microdata respectively. Microformats are considered the easiest to use, RDFa the more complicated, and Microdata somewhere in between. Given that Google Yahoo and Bing have recently agreed the adoption of Microdata as the search engine industry standard, then I think it is a no-brainer to say Microdata is the safest bet, unless there is some technical ramification or usability factor I am overlooking. Whichever markup language you opt to use, the salient consideration is consistency, meaning that you use only that one language on any one website. Perhaps in later blog posts I will discuss authorship, and how to use markup language to manage rich snippets. But for now, here is a blackberry and apple crumble, served with a topping of microdata, (my seo recipe if you like). Right click and 'view page source' to see what is going on under the bonnet.

Around four years ago I was working with a web design Company, doing their marketing. Four years is a long time in marketing. Back in 2007 I conscientiously made 6 hours of phone calls every day, presumably annoying local business owners at a rate of about one every five minutes. Back in 2007 cold calling believe it or not actually worked; out of the thousands of calls I made, I generated a few leads, and we brought in some excellent clients. Although I enjoy talking to people, often to the detriment of actually doing business, and while overall, in spite of the slammed doors and onerous nature of cold calling, I quite enjoyed the work, I was beset by feelings of uneasiness at continually bothering and interrupting strangers, as well as concerns over the changing legislation in regards to cold-calling. Above all else, I realised that I was only cold-calling because I hadn’t mastered the art of inbound marketing.

Mobiles: The next big thing

Over the last year or two I have read a lot of articles telling me that mobile marketing is the next big wave. With around 6 billion mobile users in the world compared to 1.5 computer users, and of course with the emergence of the hand-held PC, (aka smartphone or Ipad – did you know that 1% of internet searches are now done on Ipads?), plus technologies like QR codes, and geo location platforms like foursquare, it is just a matter of time before we are walking around town getting time and location sensitive messages delivered to us telling us where to eat drink or shop, and how to snap up the bargain de jour. Mobile marketing is the next big thing….

Only this morning I felt distinctly out of kilter with mobile marketing. Having been working all night, (the life of a self-employed businessman, eh), I put my head down for a few hours sleep when just as I was happily nodding off, my mobile phone went off. “Unknown” caller. Before you ask, the reason why recently I haven’t been turning my phone off when I turn in is that I have an ill relative who may need to contact me, so for that reason I have been forced to leave it on. So the phone rings, and it is an unknown caller. Over the last few weeks, I have had several of these unknown caller calls, all from some call centre somewhere chasing up power meter readings, or something I have no idea what. Having politely explained to them several times that they need to delist me from their database, (which they verbally agreed to do), and that there are several businesses using our office, and I am not the power decision maker, (in either sense), I am afraid this morning I told them to stop disturbing my sleep, and get my business off their database, (only not quite so politely). Two more similar calls followed, each managing to derail my sleep. By the time the third call came, I was resigned to silence.

So anyway, it just struck me as strange, and funny, in a non-comical sort of way, that while marketing has evolved so rapidly over the last few years, that there are still companies out there involved in the utterly pointless, disruptive, financially nonsensical, spiritually barren business of getting teams of unfortunate people to bother and annoy other people who are simply trying get on with their day. (Mind you it is not just desperate energy companies doing this, I had a similar call recently from the Yellow Pages).

Who is kidding who?

So why would companies still use cold calling techniques? Either they have a product they are desperate to sell, or they haven’t got the patience to work with slow burner techniques like seo I guess. But from my point of view, it just seems as jaded and worthless a method as getting people on the streets to harry passers-by for charities. Whilst I myself may be in no doubt about the power of inbound marketing, and the best ways to harness internet technologies to reach an engaged audience, am I wrong to assume that most other businesses think likewise? Not according to the stats. Most businesses these days are fully aware that they need to engage with buyers through blogs, search and social media, so I probably just have to put down this morning’s tele onslaught to a maniacal database and some crazy price war between the energy companies, something along the lines of ‘which company can lose the least amount of money trying to capture new clients’.

As I started to fall back asleep, I became beset with worry. What if one of these poor people I had shouted at were to go online and bad-mouth my business….after all, it only takes one bad review or blog conversation to make a mockery of years of hard work. When they woke me up, they didn’t wake my business up, they woke me up! I wasn’t thinking logically….. I found the irony of the situation, (maybe there is something to be said for old-fashioned outbound marketing after all), unsettling. Some wretched cold calling campaign could wreck my business because, when half asleep, I had shouted at someone…….I guess I will just have to keep a careful eye on things in Google’s Reputation Manager, (if I can find where they hide it). I am not an angry person, I just really don’t like being lied to, and I don’t like being woken up on the whim of an automated database. Anyway, to conclude, not all of my posts are technical discussions. This is just a casual ‘day in the life’ really.

Oh, and an afterthought: When I drive into town, there is small board in the grass by the traffic lights that says:

“Stuck in a rut in your present job, looking for an opportunity to earn 25K a year”

I googled the site a few weeks ago, and it was, you guessed it, an advert for a local cold call centre…stuck in a rut…..who are they trying to kid.

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Orange Whale are a professional seo services Company, run by normal calm rational people, honest!

Coming to SEO relatively recently, I have a certain scepticism when it comes to the whole merry-go-round of link building. With off-page factors accounting for an estimated 45% of the ranking quotient, (some people say 80% but this is not a verified figure), external links/off-page factors are generally regarded as the most important consideration when it comes to SEO. Consequently there seems to be both a wide variety of schemes and a virulent trade which all work to generate these all-important links, a lot of which flies directly in the face of Google’s guidelines.

And this is why I am so sceptical. If we know that Google so vehemently dislikes inorganic backlinks, it seems to me a kind of brinkmanship to be nurturing them. Google themselves have this to say on the matter:

“Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results. ”

“Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighbourhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links”.

Its a crazy world out there, but Google are trying to make sense of it

Quite simply, Google views manufactured links as illicit links. They do penalize people for being in contravention of their guidelines, but it is a very hit or miss affair. Since it is extremely easy to throw a mass of low quality links at a competitor’s site and make that site appear like a bad guy, Google seems to be, anecdotally at least, fairly cagey about actually penalizing synthetic link building. Because punitive measures are relatively scarce, and the rewards seem to outweigh the risks, synthetic backlinking has therefore become a wholesale SEO practice, as a result of which people have come to confuse toleration of a certain malpractice with acceptance.

If we cast ourselves back in time, to around 2003, we might remember the rationale behind what in effect made Google the dominant search engine. Search engines at that time were relatively simplistic, and to get a high ranking for a certain keyword, it was often enough just to plaster a page with the aforesaid keyword. Furthermore sites optimized promiscuously for keywords that were totally unrelated to their subject matter, simply to bolster their traffic. Google consequently hit on the idea that a better way to measure the inherent meaning and value of a site was through cross-referencing. So, if 5 different websites contained a backlink to your site on pigeon fancying, and they all linked back with anchor text relevant to pigeon fancying, then that was a strong indicator to Google that your site a) was actually about pigeon fancying, and b) had some intrinsic merit, insofar as people were willing to vouch for you with a link reference. All well and good so far. Backlinks quickly became the reserve currency of Seo, and have remained so more or less to this day. However, with so many automated systems for creating backlinks, and people trading them like wildfire, they have actually become pretty meaningless and unfit for their assigned purpose as a defining factor in website quality. For precisely the same reason that Google eschewed on-page factors in 2003, it is now, as far as I can discern, in the process of eschewing many of the conventional types of backlinks people arduously, (or not so arduously in the case of automated links), go about harvesting. If it is not yet so apparent that Google are doing this, I will try and make this clearer.

Going back to 2003, it is worth remembering the rationale behind Google’s backlink agenda. They were introduced by Google as a measure of site value in the absence of any proper way to efficiently measure on-page content. That means that, at that time, the data that could be gleaned from backlinks was much more informative to Google than the data that could be extracted from actual webpages. Whether that still holds true in 2011 is quite another matter. Since backlinks have been so devalued by the practice of synthetic backlinking, and since Google has greatly advanced their tools for understanding content, it is open to conjecture whether the conditions which prevailed in 2003 are still in force.

In my opinion, (although this is purely my opinion), one holy grail of search engines is to be able to evaluate websites without any dependency on third party input. I.E. to be able to read and evaluate content, without needing to use external reference points (such as backlinks) to validate the genuiness of a site’s content. If search engines can achieve this, then they no longer need to have results filtered and mediated, and that way they obviate the opportunity for people to falsify the importance of a site through synthetic backlinks. Or, put another way, Google has used backlinks to evaluate sites not out of design, but out of necessity; by design I believe Google would far rather be able to evaluate sites purely on content.

Organic Chains Versus Synthetic Links

That of course is not the whole picture. Backlinking itself has been altering significantly over the last two years as social factors come into play. Google now keeps tabs on various social networks, and sees backlinks in a much wider and deeper context than they did previously. Or, to put it another way, they see links as part of chains.

This means that it has become very significant who mentions who to whom, and how that mention reverberates through the web. For example, if I mention a brand, and that mention gets repeated several times, Google now picks up on the resonance of that mention. If for instance I was a young composer, and several leading musicians mentioned me in their social networks, and my initial mention got passed around, that would have a very strong resonance in Google’s ears. And it wouldn’t necessarily have to be in the form of a link, it can be a straightforward mention of a name or a business name.

These kinds of chains of communication, where a brand or a name or a domain name, for instance, get passed around, and which can be broadly termed as ‘social signals’, are very much the new backlinks. Or to be more exact, they are the off-page factors that Google is now taking into consideration.

These kinds of external references are far more likely to be organic in nature, since it is considerably harder to fake widespread social enthusiasm than it is to fake a backlink. Furthermore, Google has its own social platform, and the tools to corroborate what is real rather than ersatz social noise. Since Google is monitoring any kind of reference, we should really be calling this ‘social referencing‘ or ‘social referral‘ rather than backlinking.

Although we all know Google has been monitoring social noise for some considerable time, I think the main things to point out here are:

1. How Google is quietly creating their own social nexus which joins up all the dots. We are fast entering a phase where they will have very clear demarcations of people’s social and professional status, and will be able to build an authority map which will serve as a touchstone in identifying quality content.
2. In this context, I really see many conventional backlinking schemes as well past their sell-by date, and wonder why anybody would want to bother with what look to me very tired methods.

The future of SEO

So what is the future of SEO? I started off by alluding to the fact that Google and other search engines may be working towards powerful semantic tools, and then have gone off at an apparent tangent on the way conventional backlinks may be dying, and a new social referral system is taking its place.

The overarching point is that as Google becomes much more efficient in the way it processes information, SEO becomes much less of an artificial process, based around doing things, and much more of a natural process, based around being authentic, producing authentic content, and networking that content.

Of course, we kind of all know this already. Maybe right now the conventional backlinking methods still pack a punch, and maybe they will have some residual value for quite some time, (who knows), but my overall feeling is that Google is “on the move”.

In a landscape of rapidly evolving technologies, every internet marketing and SEO professional not only is obliged to prove everything through ongoing testing to ensure that their methods maintain applicability, they also need to send regular doves out to test the waters, to see exactly where the future is shaping up to head, and thereby keep ahead of change. They need to actively pre-empt change, because trends happen so thick and fast in this industry, that by the time change is occurring, the next change is incipient, and simply following the coat-tails of trends will leave you lagging in hugely competitive markets. Change is an absolute constant in this world, and no SEO professional would be foolish enough to predict the terrain in 5 years time, or even that they will still be in a job…..

In light of this, the battle for Google to scrabble up and join the Facebook goat high on the scree of the social media mountain, has been one to follow. Recently Google has had some comparative flops with Google Buzz, and Google Wave, social initiatives that came out in a fanfare of glory to rival Facebook et al, and sloped away in ignominy, but the latest phase of Google’s social program strikes me as something a little more judicious, and in fact one that could, if all goes to plan, redefine the search market, and beyond. [That is not say that Google doesn't have other products out which can shake things up, e.g. rich snippets, but I really see Google Plus One as having the potential to radically alter search and the mechanics of SEO.]

The Merchant Eavesdroppers

How shall we define Google Plus One?

We need to be careful here, because a lazy definition can really short circuit the power of an idea. Apparently GPO is Google’s competitive alternative to the Facebook ‘like’ button. I.E. It is a social bookmarking tool, designed to take the wind out of Facebook’s sails a bit. But I see it slightly differently.

The Facebook ‘like’ button really started life as a ‘share’ button, both as a form of endorsement, and as a way to disseminate information through peer group approval. The GPO button I think works in a different modality altogether. I think of it as Google’s Community policeman alongside the established force. What do I mean exactly?

GPOB, (Google Plus One Button), will appear in two specific places, in the search engine results and on pages of sites. To use it, you will need to be logged in to your Google account. When we break this information down, I think there are several things to assimilate here. Firstly, why is Google putting the GPOB on the search results page? Well, (leaving the fact that it will be on Adwords adverts aside), I think the main thing we are seeing here is Google branding this product. They are familiarising and conditioning us to seeing the button. Many of us now use Web Of Trust as an essential add-on for web security, and site authenticity, so seeing the Button in that place, where we see the WOT swirl, is a way of telling us, ‘this button is important’. Since in general we don’t approve things before viewing them, I can’t see that Google is really anticipating us clicking on the button, when it is placed in the SERPS. I suspect, as I say, that they are just branding the button, exposing us to it, and maybe in time we will see a different iteration of it in the SERPS.

The irony packaged in the name Google Plus One is that the Plus One refers, without of course naming and bestowing kudos, to Facebook. The power play lies in the concept behind the name. Google are not anymore moving into Social Media as such, they are instead integrating Social Media into the Search space. Subtle change of emphasis. Google plus the new kid on the block, social connectivity. In this sense Google Plus One is a consummate piece of branding, both acknowledging and relegating Facebook in the same breath, implying that it is not Facebook who is the Emperor, with Google trying to muscle in on their social empire, but the converse, that Google is the search King, and Facebook has merely changed the landscape somewhat. (The bottom line being that Google remains King.)

Beyond the branding of the button, we get to the concept of the button, and how it will work on pages; I think here we get to the nub of the matter. As I said before, the Facebook like button is a repackaged share button, where liking is conducted in a social milieu, I.E. where we tend to like things as a part of socialised behaviour. E.G. we often ‘like’ someone’s dress or haircut, or a song or a band, because it is socially normative to do so, not because that is what we really believe, or that we have particularly considered the matter. In this environment ‘liking’ is a very noncommittal process, in fact, I think about 90% of Facebook ‘likes’ involve the subject making the like never returning to the page they have liked, ever again. In this sense the ‘like’ is diametrically opposed to a Bookmark, in its purest sense.

Bookmarking is all about identifying things of real value, and returning to them at a later point. Although some personal bookmarks tend to be a bit prophylactic, (against the eventuality of having to search for ages for something in the future), many of them are active, whereby we bookmark something, and return to it and use it at a later time. If GPO mimics our real personal bookmarking habits more accurately than Social Bookmarking, then I think it is already at a huge advantage, because we will be creating a list based on what we genuinely use and find value in, not on what is convenient to nod approval to at a certain time.

Beyond this it goes without saying that Google is manoeuvring at a deeper level. The GPOB will be tied to our Google Accounts, and, in case you are not aware, Google holds a fantastic amount of information about us all, and I suspect anybody looking to game the system by falsifying Google accounts will be on a hiding to nothing. Firstly I think Google will expect natural bookmarking; once you start using the GPO button more than say 100 times a week, I think they will flag you. Then the only way to game the system will be to create multiple Google accounts, but that sounds like it will be a lot of hassle to be honest. Again, Google has metrics that interpret our Google accounts, which is why they can place adwords ads in our email accounts. Their analytics will sniff out bogus accounts quicker than we can say ‘Heath Robinson”. I think gaming this system will require a lot of ingenuity – probably more ingenuity in the long run than it is worth.

Furthermore, I think Google is in truth creating a much more hierarchical social society than Facebook. If Facebook is rooted in adolescent fads and crushes, then Google Plus One is a structured society, where inevitably people will be stratified according to perceived importance. A social search status will evolve, (ideally in Google’s eyes), akin to professional reputability. E.G. a GPO from Carlos Ghosn would have serious GPO gravitas, (GPOG?), whereas a like from your average Facebook user, with no offence intended to the average FB user, would be of considerably less clout. Obviously the system is unlikely to be totally rigid in its stratification, but overall, we will definitely see people with different levels, and maybe nuanced levels, of GPO gravitas.

Without over-egging the importance of SEO, there may even come a time where misuse of your social search, (GPO), gravitas could be viewed as a form of general unprofessionalism. (Ok, we can take our SEO hats off now).

Overall whatever Google is doing with GPO may be part of some bigger social roll-out, ‘Emerald Sea’ according to those in the know…(or on the ‘knol’, no reference to JFK intended). If that is the case then we are looking at a fragment of a bigger picture. As and when that comes to market, we will maybe have to re-evaluate GPO. We have taken a look at it in isolation, but should it be the herald of a larger initiative, we will need to re-appraise our evaluation. Personally we believe Facebook is just far too big and amorphous a construct to really survive in its present form. We expect it to fragment, and smaller social networks to spring up, which allow people to group together under different focal points, with for instance greater restrictions on disclosure of personal information. It would make more sense for Google to tuck in its wings and align with one or two of these networks than go head to head with Facebook, in the social sphere. But that is just an opinion, hence the comments section below.

How Soon Will GPO Come Into Effect?

A final consideration, comes in the form of an note of caution. We hear lots of people down-playing GPO, and telling us to kick back, because none of this is coming into force overnight. Really?!!

Whatever you hear in the internet space, we agree, it is always worth going away and sleeping on it, and weighing it up. It is very easy these days to sip from the Scylla and Charybdis cups of consensual torpitude on one side, and information hysteria on the other. But that aside, we see no reason not to plan and implement for the future.

Addendum (02.06.11):

Google has now introduced the Plus One Button for pages. Here is how to add it to your site:

Adding GPO