By Peter Wood, The Wall, 26th January 2012

Social media has clunked its way through many evolutions over the years. The past four has seen the digital world settle into a social rhythm. Facebook being the daddy of them all, Twitter is the cooler, younger kid on the block, and LinkedIn taking the lead as the place to hang out to talk serious stuff. The commonality with all of those platforms is they are essentially for everyone. The barriers to entry are extremely low. Most tech savvy people will generally have those three, even if they’re not active in all three (I bet everyone who reads this has all three).

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By Duncan Parry, Search Engine Watch, 27th January 2012

After a year’s delay, Microsoft adCenter will start to power the PPC results on Yahoo UK in Q2 of 2012. Discussion of its potential for success aside, here are some useful links and an action plan for preparing UK campaigns.

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By Gareth Owen, Search Engine Watch, 18 January 2012

One area that search engines have made a number of significant advancements in recent years is in how they evaluate content on a website. So what does a perfectly optimised page look like in 2012? Let’s look at 10 elements.

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By Peter Wood, The Wall, January 13th 2012 

Facebook insights. Dear oh dear. I’ve got to come out and say it – I’ve found their new and “improved” suite of analytics entirely perplexing, lacking in usefulness and extremely complex to explain, aggregate and apply to the real world.

I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one in the industry who has been using the old Insights page to report back successes to clients. I’ve been living in hope that they’ll never switch it off , but the time has come – the old insights page is still an option, but it’s not recording new data. I haven’t felt this down since I said goodbye to my Bebo account…

What are my gripes about the new Insights page and why do they matter? [Read more →]

By Duncan Parry, Search Engine Watch, January 6th 2012

Predictions are popping up everywhere as the New Year begins. Instead of producing another list of things that are likely to happen, here are the five things I’d like to see happen in 2012 but in reality probably won’t.

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By Gareth Owen, Search Engine Watch,  October 26th, 2011

I am not usually one for a conspiracy theory, unless it’s contained within a decent yarn like the Da Vinci code… but over the last year in particular, I am becoming increasingly convinced that Google wants rid of natural search results – to the point where I would really like them to make a statement of some kind and put people out of their misery.

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Leon Wong, Paid Search Strategist, Steak

We know what you’re thinking: How can I spend more time on social networks?  Surely that question was buzzing around the Googleplex this year, as the internet monolith prepped for its fourth foray into social networking. The result was something – regardless of Google+ success – that will forever up the bar in social networking tools (a la Circles, Hangouts and Sparks) – and more importantly, monetize social data.

With more than 10 million users in its first two weeks, and  more than 20 million in its first three, Google+ may accumulate over 3 percent of Facebook’s 750 million users in its first month by the end of July. Sure, one month is a blip when testing massive roll outs like a social network, but it’s a sign that – after many tries – Google may finally have its star in social.

As search marketers, we often need to figure out consumer’s intentions (don’t ask us about the guy on the corner though).  Now we’re taking our lens to Google’s to determine its intentions with its social arm, its implications on the public – and of course, on search.

Here to shed light on Google+ is Steak’s paid search strategist Leon Wong. With three years of search marketing experience with Fortune 500 clients, Wong shares his thoughts after touring what could reinvent online sharing, if not social networking altogether.

Google...plus you.

What’s in a Name?

As confusing as Google Plus sounds, the idea is quite simple. The search giant’s latest effort to integrate social media with search may be the next big thing – or perhaps, a revisit. Google Buzz, the predecessor of Google Plus, launched in February only to halt over complaints of security concerns and information leaks.  Since then, the buzz around Google’s social media was crickets – until now.

The new and improved social media integration will attempt to dazzle you with a bunch of features, such as the Circles, Instant Upload, Hangout, Huddle and Sparks.  At launch date, this buzz made me want to play in the sandbox with the rest of the exclusive invitees. Now, that elusive “invite” is more common than Lindsay Lohan mug shots.  Google+ is stretching its legs.

Let’s face it: Google has hundreds of millions of users, the vast majority of whom trust the company. Some may believe if they can’t find something on Google, it probably doesn’t exist.  It’s a wonder, though, how the search king with over $30 billion in annual revenue and 28,000 employees worldwide found itself chasing the coattails of Facebook.

But here we are. Google knows that it must fill the void of marrying people with data: something that if they don’t fill, someone else will — and win the Web, admitted Google insiders.

People love Gmail; they love YouTube; they love search. And now with Circles, Google has fixed something that Facebook unwittingly failed to do. Instead of mashing all your contacts into a single feed, you can now organize your contacts into a hierarchy.  It allows you to “follow” people, not necessarily request them (like Twitter meets the anti-Facebook), so anyone can be in your circles — family, friends, coworkers, hobby groups, even celebrities. You can create a circle of those you don’t know, but want to follow.

The buzz is there, the ‘wow’ factor is there. But the next big question is why now?

Google Plus Features: Circles, Hangouts, Instant Upload, Sparks, Huddle

Data=Dollars

Up till now Google has been an algorithmic company. But they have come to realize – after many failures – that consumer behavior is inherently irrational and can not be anticipated through pure metrics.  At its core this is a data play in that Google wants to understand consumers’ behavior in the here and now, but it also may answer how to monetize social.

If Google can marry its massive search data with its equally massive display data alongside topics that you and your friends like – nicely self-organized by interest – Google can learn your interests based on what your friends have (or want to have), and start presenting hyper- targeted ads against that.

For example, Google knows that I have searched for fly fishing equipment, have viewed fly fishing videos on YouTube, and clicked on display ads related to fly fishing.  That’s the old Google.

The new Google now knows that I have a group of friends that I “circled” as Fly Fishing Buddies.  They saw a “spark” related to fly fishing, and they can now mine my posts about fly fishing.  They can now serve me relevant ads across the web (through their display network and beyond) that are related to fly fishing, providing me specific brands that my friends already purchased, or specific locations where I’ve expressed a desire to fish, etc.

Google has the advertising inventory that Facebook doesn’t have.  Google also has years’ worth of prior search and display data that the recent Facebook-Microsoft Bing alliance doesn’t have.  If Google can convince people that aggregating all this data is not a privacy problem, it could deliver something special.  This is search targeting + contextual targeting + audience targeting + social network targeting.  Viola, instant monetization of social!

Show Them the (Ad) Money

Google+ Sparks, a personal-interest stream feature

Well, I’m sure all the advertisers are curious as to how Google+ will impact search, particularly paid search. While taking the tour, I couldn’t help but notice the Sparks feature. Initially, I thought it was a place for people to meet. However after a few clicks through, I soon realized that it’s actually a search bar, which allows you to look up items of your interest. Google’s algorithm will automatically sort and group articles that it predicts your likes into a drop down menu, and allow you to bookmark your interests.

Having the ability to create a personal space where you could indulge at leisure is very attractive. The bottom line is if there is a place to implement sponsored ads, I will not be surprised to see a few banner or text ads around that area.

The ad value is amplified when you start sharing your articles and bookmarked searches with a specific person, circle, group of circles or the general public that you might find the articles intriguing as well.  Though I can hear the news organizations grumbling already…

More Toys

What about Hangouts, Instant Upload or Huddle?  If these features look familiar, they should: they’re derived from other platforms or social media sites like Facebook. Hangouts will let you virtually hangout with up to 10 contacts via Skype-like video chat, while Instant Upload allows you to upload pictures from your mobile phone “instantly” (duh!). Huddle is just simply a group chat with your friends (well, hello again, AOL chat rooms!).

All of this translates into one goal: to gather social behavior data. By building an integrated platform for you to manage your friends and interactions, Google can now collect information about you and how people interact with you. This type of data can only be harvested from an integrated social media platform – thus Google Plus!

World Domination?

Google+ Circles, a group contact organizer

So the development of Google Plus is not just another one of Google’s plans to take over the world, but rather to own another piece of real estate in the social media space. Creating another channel to collect data and serve relevant ads to a particular group or individual is more logical and the right path for it start breathing down Facebook’s neck, especially considering the cozy partnership Facebook has with Bing. (See Steak’s opinion on the Facebook-Bing partnership, 5/17/11)

After all, paid search is still Google’s bread and butter. It helps the search giant make more than $33 billion dollars in revenue per year. Features such as Circles, Hangout, and Sparks are just few examples of how Google plans to garner user data in this space. Whether Google is trying to steal the social media crown or just simply create a new channel to collect information, I know my Steak comrades and I will be dissecting its every move.  I sure am glad I found that dang invite.

By Duncan Parry, Search Engine Watch,  July 20, 2011

Friends. Followers. Contacts. Circles. Social networks can be fun and productive for work or pleasure.

But social networks are also time consuming – more than most of us probably care to admit. With the average person reported to have 130 friends and growing on Facebook alone, the continuous flow of updates from individuals and organizations is overwhelming. From that page you liked on Facebook, to that industry pundit you follow on Twitter, and many others in between, everybody is updating, tweeting, posting, liking, checking in, sharing, +1ing…

Here’s the thing. It’s too much. Admit it. You’re overwhelmed.

I’ve declared a few times on Facebook and Twitter my plans to carry out a cull. A few people or pages get dropped. But…what if that person notices? What if that ex-colleague goes to work somewhere interesting? What if I miss that industry announcement or insider tip? Better not be too harsh, better stay connected.

I’m now on five social networks – four public ones and one closed network for work (Yammer). This week I’ve faced the truth: it’s too much. Time for a cull. But where to start?

Facebook

I know instinctively that Facebook is my personal space – it’s where friends and family share photos and post personal updates. It’s where I go to get away from work – not to blend the personal and professional.

Step one: un-friend work-only contacts and pages. Step two: move them to LinkedIn or Twitter depending on their social media activity; do I want to only keep in contact with them (LinkedIn) or read what they have to say (Twitter)?

Twitter

I maintain several accounts for myself and work, and the work accounts have clear objectives and strategies. My own, I freely admit, doesn’t. It’s a collection of personal and work interests, and I’m a generous follower.

Time for a change. This is the worrying bit – do I follow my instinct, and cull anybody I don’t regularly find useful? Will I miss out? What will happen to my follower volume? Should I care?

I’ve decide to not rush in here – analyzing hundreds of followers and then making bulk changes, whether un-following or adding them to lists, isn’t particularly easy and I’ve yet to find a tool with all the functionality I want to speed this up. Instead, I’m removing accounts I don’t find useful when I see messages from them – cleaning up my Twitter stream as I go.

LinkedIn & Yammer

LinkedIn is the easiest to keep under control – I’m cautious of adding anybody who approaches me (especially recruiters). Yammer, as a B2B network, is even easier to keep relevant – I have 100 percent control over groups and who I follow (OK, so I’m an admin, which helps.)

Google Plus

Now that’s a blank canvas. So how will I avoid repeating the mistakes I’ve drifted into on Facebook and Twitter?

Circles. I’ve immediately setup three – Work, Family & Friends and Acquaintances. I know I’ll add a further one for “Hobbies & Sports” when businesses and organizations have official pages. I might split my work circle up in future – but I’m keeping them small, and have already started consciously ignoring some followers who I don’t want in my circles.

Social Media Relevancy

If I used to be your friend on Facebook, or I no longer mutually follow you on Twitter, sorry. Relevancy has been one of the underpinning characteristics of the biggest success story of digital – search – and the same applies to social media.

Life’s too short, too busy, and too rushed for the irrelevant. For that attitude, I won’t apologize.

¿Hablas SEO?  We metro-ites in New York may think the buck stops here, but the real world (of which 95% exists outside the United States, thank you) stretches far beyond. Steak’s little answer to this microcosmic conundrum? Jesus Mendez.

Ladies and gents: Meet Steak’s Spanish-speaking SEO pro, here to solve all your Spanish search problems (well, almost).  Today we’re talking optimizing websites in a foreign language, or more specifically, Spanish-speaking markets.

Influential Hispanic Americans

1. Before we get into the whole so how do you do it sermón, let’s make one thing clear: This population is no joke.  As this study shows, with 136 million Spanish-speaking Internet users worldwide, Spanish ranks third worldwide in both content and users on the Web, just behind Chinese’s 383 million users and English’s 478 million.  The Association of Spanish Language Academies also found that by 2050, 10% of the world will speak Spanish, with the largest Spanish-speaking country none other than … the United States.

So how exactly do you optimize foreign language sites?  Relax, niño. The answer to all your problems is in this little blog post.

2. Why would a company optimize its website for Spanish?

JM: Two reasons why a company would add Spanish content are: 1) if they are opening properties around the world in say, Latin America or Spain or 2) because the Spanish population in the U.S. is growing exponentially.  There is a huge market and money to be made by advertising in the native language of a population.  A lot of Spanish speakers in the U.S. are not fluent in English.

3. To optimize a site for Spanish, you have many choices to target, right?

Google Mexico Search Engine

JM: Right, you have:

• English websites with a Spanish component, if companies create a section and optimize (see below).
• Spanish companies with English-Spanish sites. You’d apply the same SEO practices here, but with caution of translator programs because they miss many nuances and often get things wrong (see below, again).
• Straight foreign language sites: sites based in foreign countries vying to rank on Google’s 100+ foreign-language or -dialect search engines like Google Mexico, Google Argentina, Google Columbia.

4. So, SEO for Google’s 100+ foreign language search engines: same practices?

JM: Yes, same SEO principles, just translate correctly.  Culture plays a huge role though. In Mexican Spanish, we’re taught formal Spanish but the majority of Spanish speakers use informal Spanish—especially in search: Keyword research proves it.

For example, tu (informal “you”) is used instead of usted (formal “you”), so keywords need to target informal Spanish because that’s what people use to search.  Even a five-star hotel should target informal Spanish.  But while users don’t use formal Spanish … online translation programs do.

Yahoo! Babel Fish Translator

5. Why else wouldn’t online translation programs work?

JM: Translator programs give you proper Spanish. They don’t take into consideration different dialect.  There’s definitely a human factor to building strategies for different countries.

If you have to use a translator program like Google Translate, Babel Fish (Yahoo translator) due to budget constraints, you would get some benefits but the terms could be misleading.  It wouldn’t be optimal.

6. According to Google, it has 681 million pages in Spanish, which ranks Spanish just behind 806 million in Chinesez and 9,890 million in English (see “Spanish on the Internet” study). Along those lines…

Do these foreign sites have less SEO competition with fewer websites in their language?

JM: They actually have it harder because they still compete with English sites in search engines. For example, Google.com.mx (Mexico) still lists plenty of American sites targeted to Spanish speakers.

Pastel de tres leches

7. How do dialects affect Spanish SEO?

JM: Well, in Mexican Spanish we call cake “pastel” but in the Dominican Republic, it’s “bizcocho.” Pastel in the DR is not a pastry at all; it’s a different kind of food.  Without a human translator, you may not convey the right message or hit the right keyword for the Dominican Republic.

Translating between Castilian (dialect in Spain) and Latin American Spanish would just have an added component. You would have to look up dialects for Mexico and Spain, but also know the cultural and formal-use differences, which no online translation program could give you directly.

8. Do you think foreign language sites are up to par in SEO practices?

JM: They’re definitely not as up-to-date as we are in the U.S. The number of skilled SEO pros and SEO as an industry elsewhere is not as advanced as we are here.  The biggest reason is that SEO originated in the United States, and it takes time to get that knowledge out to remaining countries.

9. You’ve worked in SEO and digital marketing for five years, with some major clients and considerable budgets.  Have you seen more clients optimizing for foreign languages?

JM: I’ve worked both in-house and on the agency side, and I haven’t seen much focus on optimizing for foreign languages.

The thing is you don’t need a whole separate website. You can have a Spanish section, a Spanish subdomain, and that would benefit your English pages too.

What’s an example of this?

JM: Well, let’s say an English-speaking company creates a Spanish section on its website for its Spanish-speaking clients.  But they never optimize that Spanish section because it’s not part of the overall strategy.  That Spanish component could have 2,000 visitors a month, while the main site has 50,000 visitors a month.  Creation without optimizing equals failure.

There are good business opportunities here.  You’re not necessarily fighting for rank on Google Mexico because there’s huge Spanish-speaking population in the U.S. too.  For example, typing in “abogado” (lawyer) would pull up mostly English and Spanish sites.

10. Any last tips on optimizing SEO for Spanish websites?

JM: A lot of companies don’t appreciate that Latin American countries speak different dialects. So you have to create and optimize sites for each, but you don’t need a different strategy for each Latin American country.

There are similarities between South America, the Caribbean and Mexico. If you group by region, you can facilitate an optimization strategy.

Spanish websites optimized for SEO

Mark Schwartz, Managing Director, Steak

Yesterday’s announcement that Bing is incorporating Facebook data into its results queries represents the latest salvo in the ongoing search wars.  This time, the firepower has powerful repercussions.

So, last night Bing announced the next stage of tapping into Facebook data – this time bringing Facebook friends’ recommendations into the Bing SERPs.  You can read a great summary at Mashable, but here’s the gist: Bing will now include Facebook friends’ recommendations into the search results.  Microsoft is calling this the “Friend Effect” – an effort to add the value of your trusted network into the social search experience.

A user will see this in the following ways:

• “Liked” Result Presentation – search results will incorporate your “Liked” stories and items of yours and your friends on Facebook.
• Personalized Result Pages – buried SERP results may now move up based on your or your friends’ Facebook preferences.
• Social Messages Integration – relevant posts from brands you “liked” on Facebook will show in search results.
• Expanded Facebook Profile Search –Facebook profiles will show directly in Bing’s search results.
• Shared Shopping Lists – now share your favorite items, travel and deals with friends directly from the Bing result pages into Facebook.

A video from Bing about its new Facebook integration (1:36):

The implication of this is significant.  Facebook represents a database that Google can never get a hold of – and it’s a very powerful signal set.  Accessing the thought and opinions of a user’s most trusted network will likely have a high degree of influence in how that user interacts with Bing’s results, leading to even more data collection and further enhancements.  Furthermore, Bing can also now use that aggregated information to inform advertisers and agencies on consumer behaviors – and perhaps even use it to inform bid pricing on the AdCenter side.

As much as Google continues to innovate in the social graph, including the recent +1 launch, they can never hope to compile the same sort of feature-rich, trusted network that is represented by Facebook’s 600 million worldwide users.  On Facebook, users happily share brand preferences, travel plans, personal data and so much more.  Now all that data will inform and define your Bing search results.

One rich question remains:  Even if Microsoft creates a richer and more personalized experience, will people move away from Google’s search and start using Bing?  If even a small percentage of users make the switch, it represents millions of dollars in ad inventory.  And that’s what Microsoft is betting heavily on.

Your move, Google.