Former newspaper colleagues always ask me: Why should we do Search Engine Optimization? We heard of this online marketing method – isn’t it kind of sleazy? And isn’t that a threat to our journalistic integrity?

I usually ask back: Well, doesn’t your marketing department promote your newspaper in ads, TV commercials and on billboards? Are you sure that’s well spent money in the digital age? And why shouldn’t you spend your advertising money where the eyeballs of your readers are – the world wide web? (more…)

Tags: Internet, newspaper, seo

Getting into the holiday spirit, I decided to use Google Universal Search in order to find any indication if Los Angeles – the town I live – has the slightest chance against infamous christmas-y New York.

Like many others who love L.A. I get shocked when December approaches and I become aware that this city doesn’t have a official Christmas tree. But one can still hope…

Google’s universal search (meaning the inclusion of any keyword-related results, such as pictures, books, news stories etc.) for “New York Christmas” not only lists nice pictures of Christmas trees in the “Big Apple”, but also news stories about Billy Joel’s anti-war Christmas single.

And some New York residents actually OBJECTING a public Christmas tree!

What about the “Los Angeles Christmas”? Oh my, the search results paint a sad, sad picture. No L.A. related Christmas photos, no YouTube videos, no relevant books. Nothing. Zilch.

The only Lala Land relevant Christmas ‘universal’ search result is a news article about “24″ TV star Kiefer Sutherland who will spend Xmas in prison for his second arrest for drunk-driving!

Depressing – but so L.A.!!

Tags: google, Search, seo

RightReading applies the science of search engine algorithms to the world of literature and tries to figure out what the page ranks of some historical celebrities might have been. He explains:

As a measure of a page’s popularity, Google assigns it a page rank (PR). Inbound links (IBLs) from pages with high PRs will raise a page’s own rank (the page has, in effect, been graced by the magic touch of a prom king or queen, bestowing a fraction of their popularity upon it). Not surprisingly, this system has been subject to a fair bit of abuse, with avaricious quarterbacks and cheerleaders selling their blessings to viagra and smut peddlers and the like.

And that’s how the celebs would have fared in this system:PR0: Emily DickinsonPR2: ShakespearePR4: Carolus LinneausPR6: Leonardo da VinciPR8: Niccolo MachievelliPR10: The Buddha I especially like the explanations for the PR 10 for The Buddha:

The Buddha’s IBLs would be of the prized kind that Google calls “natural.” And he would have a lot of them, because many of his messages would resonate with the on-line community, such as:- The essence of SEO is suffering- All traffic is transitory- There is a rank beyond page rank- No ban is permanent — all pages get reborn.

Tags: Internet, pagerank, seo

Optimizing a site for the top 4 percent of search queries will improve site search results for half of all searchers, according to a study by the Patricia Seybold Group using anonymous data from WebSideStory’s clients.

According to the data, just 4 percent of all unique search queries made up more than half of all site searches. For e-commerce sites, the number of unique queries fell to just 2 percent. (…) “Marketers should be thinking about site search with the ‘80/20 rule’ in mind, and pay attention to the areas where they’ll get the most bang for their buck,” Steve Kusmer, senior VP and general manager of WebSideStory’s search and content solutions division, told ClickZ. “They should address site search tuning by looking at the top keywords first.” (…)The site search box itself is a tremendous gift to you from your customers: they are telling you exactly what they want, in their own words,” writes Aldrich, who provides a five-step plan for site search improvement in her report.The importance of guiding site search users is magnified because those searchers are 2.7 times as likely to convert than the average site visitor, according to Kusmer. That is in part due to the nature of site search users, who are in effect pre-qualifying themselves as users interested in finding something very specific on a site. A well directed user experience created by good site search results also leads to increased conversions, he added.(Via ClickZ) 

Tags: Search, seo