1) Was I linkbaiting? No. Telling the truth as I see it even when it is unpopular is not necessarily linkbaiting. I do have a small gift for provocative titles though.

2) Do I really believe what I said? Yes, every word. Some people seem to find it stunning that I would actually believe what I wrote. Trust me when I say I do believe it.

3) Do I know what I am talking about? You can be the judge of that. I have been pretty successful selling online for ten years though.

4) Can a small company actually brand themselves? Yes, and if you keep reading, I will tell you how.

If you are a store that sells other brands and are currently depending on SEO, you are probably in deep trouble. I don’t care how spider-friendly and organized your site is or how many metatags you add, articles you write, or inbound links you barter for. Products come and go, and while in the past, you could achieve SEO for new products quickly, those days are almost gone. My guess is that most companies with this business model have seen decreased sales and profits over the past three years.

I know this to be true because I have watched what has happened to that part of our business, and I have talked to numerous other companies in the same boat. In the past, watching for other brands to become popular and then capitalizing on their success worked. Today, it still works but not nearly as well, and the trend is getting worse every year.

If, on the other hand, you spend time branding your company, or if possible, your actual products, you are going to be immune to this trend. Is it more difficult to do? Yes. Is the initial cashflow as good? Of course not. But if you change your focus from SEO to branding, within a few years, when all the SEO-dependent stores are out of business, you are going to be in much better shape.

Three years ago, when I recognized the trend, I made a decision to use the great cashflow we had from SEO-driven business to start building the Vitabase brand. Over the past three years, I have watched the SEO-driven business shrink and our business built on our brand grow exponentially.

Branding is normally associated with expensive media campaigns that try to get a brand drilled into the consumers’ heads. That approach is out of reach for most small companies and is not the way we brand either.

Here is a 3-step branding process for a small business:

1) Develop a USP (unique selling position). I know–this is advice that you have heard before. However, I cannot tell you how difficult it is to have a USP in internet retail–very few internet retailers have one. We have struggled with this issue for years and are constantly refining what our USP is. “Great customer service” and such things are not USPs.
2) Improve every part of our business to the point at which customers are loyal and refer others to you. We like to call every way a customer interacts with us a touchpoint. Phone calls, emails, packaging, products, and such are all touchpoints that need to be in a constant state of improvement.
3) Incentivize customers to talk about you and your USP. You can call this viral marketing or word of mouth marketing or any number of things.

If you are successful with these three steps, your branding will improve. Also, since many customer conversations take place online, your inbound link profile will improve as will your traffic and conversion rate. And by the way, so will your SEO.

Now, I am not saying that these three steps are easy. In fact, they are very hard. But they are also within the reach of a normal small business. If you can do these things very well, the outcome is quite predictable–you will grow. I am not as optimistic about a small company growing online if they just follow the typical advice of the SEO industry.

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<Google Overload>

Google held its annual shareholders meeting yesterday and discussed lots of topics. Here are the Pilgrim’s CliffsNotes:

Yahoo: "Excited to be working with them…They were under a hostile attack and we wanted to make sure they had as many options as possible."

YouTube: New ad products in development that are neither pre-roll or post-roll.

Microsoft: "Microsoft is a very large competitor across all facets of Google for many reasons. Applications. Search. Advertising, display. Microsoft is well-funded, clever, smart, and they have a lot of advantages nobody else has."

Microsoft/Yahoo Deal: "Obviously we’re happy it didn’t happen..Had the merger gone through, we would actually have had to have a meeting about it… have a campaign against the merger."

Clearwire/WiMax Investment: "Having more competition in that space is good. And having more end-user services that need high-speed."

Economy: "There’s been no change in the impact of the economy on our business."

Finding New CFO: "…usually takes a year…we’re picky."

Shareholder Proposals: voted down regarding censorship on the Internet and human-rights issues in countries that Google does business in. Co-founder Sergey Brin abstained from voting on the proposals, saying he agreed with their spirit. "Directionally, the two proposals are correct," Brin told 200 shareholders in the audience.

</Google Overload>

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• Don’t worry, this one has pretty pictures. You know, if regression lines and scatterplots count as pretty. Why Don’t We Read on the Web?
• Google says goodbye, you say, “Hello? What was that?” Picasa’s photo sharing service, to be discontinued on the 15th.
• Poor Stacey. Once upon a time, she had all the guys going after her. Yeah, well, you know what happens with you have a crush on every boy: “Where have all of Yahoo’s Plan Bs gone?” AOL, MySpace and possibly even Google may not be interested now that Brad Microsoft’s not.
• In case you were wondering: How To Get Your Images Out Of Google’s SafeSearch Filter. Please use your powers for good, or for awesome—but never for evil.
• Sad but true: Facebook has all of our personal data and they still can’t show us a decent ad. (No, Facebook, seeing as I’ve told you that am a married woman, I do not want to meet singles!) Of course, if they really used those powers for awesome, we’d all complain about them invading our privacy by actually, y’know, looking at all that data that we’ve freely given them.

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MySpace has launched the Data Availability initiative which can make MySpace your home base for profiles. With this new initiative you’ll be able to integrate elements of your MySpace profile on partner sites that so far include Twitter, eBay, Yahoo! Instant Messenger, and Photobucket.

So if you have a MySpace account you could easily add information from your profile onto other sites and control what information you want to share. This will enhance what’s available on your eBay and Twitter profiles. For example, Twitter only gives you space for a small picture, your location, and URL. Oh, and you can customize the background image and colors on your profile page.

Your MySpace profile can be your home base. You update your MySpace page and it will update the other sites automatically. They become your profile host and life will be more simple for you. For social network addicts this could make signing up for yet another site much easier. Hopefully other sites will join the partnership (I’m not holding my breath for Facebook to since this is an attempt to compete against them).

It’s a similar idea to Google’s OpenSocial network, which MySpace is a part of. That group sets standards so developers can build applications for social networking sites that will work across many different sites. However, this is not sharing between sites as much as sharing information from MySpace to other sites, and not the other way around.

Glue Pages are specialized pages that contain an enhanced visual search result page, for select search queries. The search results that trigger the special “Glue Pages” run across searches in health, sports, entertainment, travel, technology, and finance categories.

The new pages are not quite equivalent with Google’s Universal Search blended SERPs, as the various types of information are broken out into separate columns. Instead the results more closely resemble those of Ask3D.

The exact layout of the pages and content of the columns vary with the query. The columns I’ve seen include everything from sponsored results to news to images to video to music to Wikipedia & other online encyclopedias to Yahoo Answers excerpts. Below is a screencap of a search for diabetes:

Compare that with the glue pages for for Queen, Queen Elizabeth. The Queen’s page layout is even significantly different from that of Albert Einstein.

On Glue pages, Yahoo features a popup explanation of what Glue pages are:

If you don’t care for Glue pages, classic search results are a tabbed alternative available below the search box.

While the information comes from other sources, it appears that a fair amount of “hand programming” has gone into this to select the most appropriate page layouts and information sources for each query. Which does raise the question: will it scale? Obviously, longer and more specific searches will probably never have Glue pages.

Obviously, this is a pretty cool advance for Yahoo. It looks as though with this improvement they’re acknowledging that search engines are where people go to find answers—and if Yahoo can provide the answers themselves without sending users to other sites, they’ll keep and hopefully gain more eyeballs.

On the other hand, search engines are not a destination. But could Glue pages change that? Let’s start the blog pool: when will we see these on Yahoo’s main site?

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In the deal, the social network has agreed to develop age verification technology, send warning messages when an under-18 user may be giving personal information to an unknown adult, restrict the ability for people to change their ages on the site, and keep abreast of inappropriate content and harassment on the site.

When MySpace and the AGs inked the “Principles of Social Networking” (which I still say should have been named “Principles of Privacy for Minors in Social Networking”) guidelines earlier this year,

And yes, that one last state is still Texas. Oddly enough, however, Texas AG Greg Abbott (who, I’m sure, has a bunch of other things to worry about these days) had initially protested the guidelines because he felt they didn’t go far enough (emphasis added):

Although we believe that MySpace.com, along with other state attorneys general, is working to protect social-network users, we cannot endorse any initiative that fails to implement a reliable age verification system. Doing so would give Texas parents and their children a false sense of security.

At the time, MySpace’s Chief Security Officer Hemanshu Nigam said “that more research and development is necessary” on the age verification technology. I noted this weakness in MySpace’s original arrangement by pointing out that my minor sister’s MySpace profile says she’s 100 (though Facebook has her real age already).

However, as Facebook signs on to the guidelines, they have pledged to work on that very technology. MySpace seems to have gotten off easy here.

The new features in Facebook compliance will apply internationally which is kind of interesting, considering that the legal age of majority varies around the world, ranging from 14 (American Samoa, Puerto Rico, Uzbekistan) to 21 (Monaco, Argentina, Mississippi, to name a few. And yeah, seriously. Mississippi.). Most states and countries, however, do use 18 as the legal age of adulthood.

Facebook apps will also be required to comply with the new guidelines. For the full text of the guidelines, see TechCrunch.

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First, understand that the only reason SEO has ever worked is because search engines were not advanced enough to always show relevant information. I remember when I started selling online. At the time, I had only a few competitors in my industry and it was easy to beat them in the SEO game. It took only a few metatags and such, and within weeks, I was dominant.

That went on for years. Back in those days, a monkey could have dominated search engines rankings. We moved from metatags to inbound links with the right anchor text and continued our domination. How easy was it? I basically knew during that period how many inbound links we needed to achieve top three rankings, and the results were uncannily consistent.

Eventually, the search engines got smarter, and ended the concept of guaranteed SEO dominance. Some people are still in denial. I still have SEO snake oil salesmen calling me trying to sell me link trading services.

Here is why SEO as we know it is going to continue its death spiral. Search engines are too smart and they have a different agenda. They do not want to reward crummy companies that play SEO games–they want to give the top listings to the best companies. And they are quickly gaining access to the information they need to do exactly that. They will use traffic and buying stats to figure out who the top companies are.

Take my industry of health supplements. Do you think Google wants to reward the SEO contortions of unknown companies and affiliates with lots of free business? Of course not–they want to send their visitors to the top supplement sites in the industry.

Within a year or two, they will be good at it. I can predict what supplement companies will be showing on the first page of Google soon. They will be the companies that have strong brands and lots of business. If you are not in the top ten of your industry, you had better find a way to get there in a hurry if you want to be on the first page of Google.

Yes, this means that the rich will get richer and the poor will starve for SEO traffic. If you are not in the first category, you had better find a way to get there quick. The middle class is about to disappear.

In my last article, I wrote about the importance of branding on the conversion rate. If you want a long term SEO strategy, guess where your focus should be? Yes, your branding. Forget the typical SEO tricks; focus instead on building your brand to a position where Google WANTS you on the front page of results.

If you absolutely have to hire an SEO expert, hire one that understands this truth. I think, however, that you would be better served by largely forgetting about SEO and focusing instead on building your brand.

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Take a look at today’s Picks and let me know what jumps out at ya.

• Inside Facebook has details of the upcoming Facebook profile redesign.
• News Corp. is backtracking on the "very agressive projections" it made for 2008.
• David Alston guests at Online Marketing Blog and shares his 10 reasons for monitoring your online reputation. So read them, then head here.
• Microsoft and Yahoo may have stolen the limelight from Google the past few months, but AP explains why Google has its groove back.
• Could it be? Google might run banner ads alongside its image searches?

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"Facebook users willing to let employers see profiles"

Reuters looks at a new report on Canadian Facebook users and pretty much declares that they are now happy to let employers see their profiles.

But look at the data:

Almost half of 1,200 people questioned in an online survey said they would be comfortable sharing their personal profile with their current employer, while two in five would consider letting prospective employers look at their Facebook account in addition to their resume.

Huh? "Almost half" would share with their "current" employer? Only 20% would share their Facebook profile with a "prospective" employer?

How does that match-up with the headline? Maybe Reuters was influenced by the report’s author who says, "The days of getting drunk and getting all your pictures posted online, that’s gone."

Since when? Last time I checked, even responsible school teachers are posting content that could cost them their job.

While I believe social networking users are starting to realize their profiles can have a negative impact on their reputation–and careers–we’re certainly not at the point where everyone has the message.

Reuters is normally such a reliable news source for me, but I just can’t stop shaking my head over this gaff.

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According to sources close to the company, for example, Microsoft’s bankers had been putting out subtle signals to Facebook to see if it would be open to a full buyout.

Wow! What do you say about a rumor of that magnitude?

"On the rebound" comes to mind.

Remember when you were 13 years old–some of us need to think hard–and you had a crush on someone? It felt like a love that would never, ever go away. Then two days later, you had a new obsession.

Yeah, Microsoft’s that 13 year old looking for love.

I know, I know. I just flew back from Redmond, so you’d think I’d cut Microsoft some slack–and I will before I end this post–but, if true, how can you not compare the company to a teenager with puppy-love angst?

Facebook is already wearing Microsoft’s ring–the company recently invested $240 million in the social network–but the timing is just too strange. Ten minutes ago, Yahoo was the company that was going to solve all Microsoft’s problems. Now it’s Facebook?

OK, a reminder. This is just a rumor, and Microsoft has promised us it plans on staying single for the near future.

Despite my own personal sense that Facebook has already peaked, Microsoft could at least earn some "cool" points by acquiring the company. And Facebook–by selling a share to MSFT already–has shown that it at least feels some synergy with the company.

What do you think? Would a Facebook acquisition be a good move?

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The new features will improve search results in a Google custom search engine for your site if you utilize sitemaps:

Custom Search is built on top of the Google index. This means that all pages that are available on Google.com are also available to your search engine. We’re now maintaining a CSE-specific index in addition to the Google.com index for enhancing the performance of search on your site. If you submit a Sitemap, it’s likely that we will crawl those pages and include them in the additional index we build.

Additionally, AdSense for Search will now be powered by Google Custom Search. As part of this integration, Google says that “you can take advantage of CSE’s most popular features without having to leave your AdSense account.” If you’re new to Google CSE, features of the integration include:

• Site Search
• Improved indexing of your pages
• Vertical search
• Tuning search results and ads with keywords
• Selecting ad location
• Quick and easy updates

Google explains the changes further in a short video:

Now, I know what you’re thinking—and so does Matt Cutts. He’s already posted this caveat on his blog:

this is not a backdoor way to get more pages in Google’s index or to improve your search ranking. The official blog post mentions that. But I think this is a win for webmasters all around. If you use AdSense for search, the product is now better and more tweakable. And if you provide a sitemap, your custom search can get much better as those urls are incorporated into a CSE-specific index.

One drawback: right now it looks as though existing CSE users may have to recreate their custom search engines in AdSense to take advantage of the new AdSense for Search integration. But other than that (or despite it), is this more likely to make you want to jump on board?

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Here’s how the Google Analytics team recently defined SEO:

OK, there are one of three things going on here:

1. Google’s trying to throw you off the scent deliberately, because they don’t want you to "adjust" your links.
2. It’s just an oversight. The point was to explain the difference between SEO and "website optimization," not provide a detailed definition.
3. Google needs to hire me immediately, so I can train them on SEO.

Which gets your vote?

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Being a bit of an Internet history buff, I cringed to read such a powerful figure in the world of computing being quoted as effectively saying that the Internet has been operating since 1998.

Since I started my first Internet job in 1996, I was pretty sure Bill was wrong.

The word Internet was first coined in 1974, the first respectable network which could be called “the Internet” was created in 1983, and the opening of the Internet to the commercial world occurred in 1988. Of course, all these dates push the history of the Internet well beyond Bill’s 10 year time line.

I really don’t think that Bill Gates thinks the Internet has been operating since 1998.

I can imagine that Bill or a speech writer really liked the idea of saying that in the next 10 years the Internet will be very different than in the last 10 years. Perhaps, fact gave way to anecdote, and before you know it the Associated Press is quoting the misstatement in an article.

There are lessons here for Internet marketers and reputation managers.

Think before you write. Verify before you publish. Prepare before you speak.

Chances are you are operating in a world of constant content creation. New ad creative, landing pages, blog posts, tweets, and press releases are no doubt streaming out of your organization every day. In this furor of new content, make sure you have the checks and balances in place to verify that the content you’re creating is accurate and consistent with the brand you’re trying to build.

In addition to embarrassing misquotes, you may be vulnerable to legal issues like trademark infringement or regulatory issues regarding your industry.

This is one of those publishing / speaking 101 issues that gets overlooked from time-to-time. Luckily there will be no shortage of missteps by others to help us remember to keep an eye on what’s being said.

Google is also increasingly becoming a would-be Apple competitor, making Schmidt’s membership on Apple’s board awkward, if not ultimately untenable. Concerns over a potential conflict of interest have surfaced in the tech blogosphere in the past, but the potential for rivalry takes on added urgency as Apple prepares to launch the next version of its iPhone while Google partners ready cell phones that run Google’s operating system.

Sorry, I’m just not buying the idea that these two huge companies didn’t already know–prior to Schmidt’s appointment–that they’d soon start competing in similar industries. We all knew Apple and Google had aspirations for the mobile market. And so did they.

And, in light of the complexities of having Schmidt as a board member–he already recuses himself from any iPhone discussions–there must be some furtive reason why Schmidt remains on Apple’s board.

The CEO of a (potentially) rival firm sits on your board and invites questions about his fiduciary responsibility, yet he’s still welcomed?

Mark my words, Apple and Google are up to something.

Eric Schmidt didn’t join Apple’s board just because it would "look good on his resume." He didn’t take on the additional SEC headaches, just because he happens to like the iPhone. Nope, there’s something more here than meets the eye. A joint product? A merger? We’ll have to wait and see what plays out.

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He said the company put "a lot of effort" in the talks with Yahoo and has decided they should pursue "our independent paths." "Now at this point Microsoft is focused on its independent strategy," Mr. Gates told reporters.

While you should keep in mind that the WSJ had to piece together a few tasty sound bites, in order to back up its angle–there’s no explicit "we’re not going to buy anyone, period" statement–you should also consider that Gates could be just plain lying.

After all, it was only a few months ago that we heard these words from CEO Steve Ballmer…

“If at some point it makes sense, maybe then it makes sense. But that’s not where we are going. We are driving in an independent direction,” said Ballmer in a question-and-answer session.

Back on the ole independent direction/path again. At least until the next acquisition comes along.

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This is in direct contrast to claims by Steve Ballmer and Microsoft’s advisers, that stated that the bid was pulled due to Yahoo’s unwillingness to counter, and Mr. Yang and his board’s decision to settle on a price of $37 a share their ultimate refusal to budge.

“They chose to walk away after we put a price on the table, and they didn’t want to negotiate,” Mr. Yang said. “From my perspective, we were open all along to selling to Microsoft. We just feel Yahoo, either stand-alone or with Microsoft, is worth more than what they put on the table.”

Mr. Yang and Roy Bostock, Yahoo’s chairman, made it very clear in their tale of the Microhoo affair, that they were more than open to the merger of the two tech companies.

“I feel like we now have the task to continue to build shareholder value,” he said. “This is just creating another set of challenges we have to overcome as a company. We have to show the world the opportunity that we have been talking about for the last three months.”

The people they really need to show are the Yahoo shareholders who are incensed to the point of litigation.

“I am extremely angry at Jerry Yang and at the so-called independent board,” said Gordon Crawford, portfolio manager for Capital Research Global Investors, a company whose parent owns 16 percent of Yahoo, making them the companies largest shareholder.

“I’m hoping that there is such an outpouring of outrage that the board is embarrassed into revisiting this thing,” Mr. Crawford added, “but I’m not optimistic about that.”

Now Yahoo is looking at a marriage of paid search products that could catapult its biggest competitor to an even larger market share. There have also been rumors about Yahoo getting involved with AOL and Myspace, neither of which would solve the companies search monetization issues.

Silicon Alley Insider believes that all of this talk is less about setting the record straight, as much as it is about letting Microsoft know that they are now willing to budge.

From Silicon Alley Insider:

And so much for Yahoo’s previous position that Microsoft’s bid “substantially undervalued” the company. If Microsoft was at $33 and $37 was just a number Yahoo tossed out there to get the negotiations started, it seems the “substantial undervaluation” amounted to about a dollar a share.

Having gotten its fanny spanked, Yahoo seems to finally be getting religion. Jerry, for example, has told Reuters that he’s open to new Microsoft talks: “If they have anything new to say… I am more than willing to listen.”

Yahoo’s unofficial asking price is now not $37 but about $34. It will be interesting to see how much more punishment Jerry and the board will take before Jerry goes from being “willing to listen” to picking up the phone and calling Steve.

It seems highly unlikely that Ballmer’s repeal of the bid is the final note in the Microhoo opera. Market analysts were likely on point about their perception that Ballmer’s move was intended to drive the Yahoo shares down in an attempt to soften the board’s viewpoint of a competitive bid.

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The funny part is how quickly he got on Facebook and started sharing the news. Like the COO hire, this is a strategic hire for Facebook as they try to follow in Google’s stock price footsteps. If enough early stage Google employees go to Facebook they just might be able to recreate that early Google startup feel.

Schrage will report to COO Sheryl Sandberg, another exec who recently left Google. Add Ben Ling (marketing) and Ethan Beard (biz dev) to the list of the departed, and it looks like people are craving that startup culture that used to be Google.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s memo to Facebook employees, written from India, started his email this way: Hey Everyone–

Then he went on to say:

“Elliot will direct our efforts to work with users, media, governments and other entities around the world to ensure that Facebook’s policies are transparent, responsive, effective and are recognized as being those things.” Translate: he will hopefully save us from bad press we’ve gotten over our privacy policies and other controversies.

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• Don’t get me wrong. I’ll bag on Wikipedia all the live long day, but I used to be a very active editor and I still go there for lots of little factoids. But . . . why: Wikipedia Gets Published?
• Google News gets Related Searches. For kicks, I wanted to see what the related searches for “yahoo” were: online advertising, google, jerry yang, microsoft, aol, and yahoo mail.
• And if you’re looking for somber-looking pictures of said Mr. Yang, look no further than the New York Times (Microsoft Was the Stubborn One) and Silicon Alley Insider (Yahoo: Overplayed Our Hand; Open To New Microsoft Talks). Oh, I guess the pictures fit the tones of the articles. Yeah, okay.

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Yahoo will now display warnings on SERPs to indicate that some of the sites listed in their results may not be entirely safe. Yahoo’s SearchScan feature will be a new default for SERPs served to the US, Canada, the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and Spain. Potentially dangerous sites will feature a highly visible red warning tag under the page title.

The advisories in action:

The advisories even specify what kind of dangers might lurk in the pages to come.

Yahoo’s new advisories are based on McAfee’s Site Advisor findings and are used to denote sites that may feature dangerous downloads (including dangerous downloads disguised as or packaged with legitimate downloads) and unsolicited email harvesters.

Even more encouraging, however, is what Yahoo says about sites using browser exploits (emphasis added):

These are sites that can stealthily harm a user’s computer or install malware simply by visiting the site. Beginning today, any such sites or pages included in McAfee’s data will be removed from search results automatically.

SearchScan will also feature the ability, in your Yahoo Preferences, to block all sites that would receive advisories from your search engine results pages.

The safety of search engine results has been a hot issue for a while now. Google has featured warnings (I finally saw one!), but their warnings are the same color as the result title and could be hard to miss. On the other hand, they vouch that their results are 98.7% safe.

Just two months ago, a Virus Bulletin survey indicated that 85% believed that search engines should be doing more about malicious results. While Yahoo certainly could have made these improvements sooner, this seems like a step in the right direction—at least it should to that 85%.

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What do you think? A superficial facelift to win some pride after backing out from Yahoo or perhaps a sign of renewed effort from Microsoft?

UPDATE: The Live Search team explain the details of the new design.

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