The Web is a Social Medium
By: Aaron M. Wall
Mechanical SEO is Dead
• Google has filters for … – Duplicate content – Excessive reciprocal links – Excessive low quality links – Anchor text abuse • Google does not want to filter… – Great information and conversation – Real brands recommended by real people • Easier to succeed giving Google what it wants
– Sustainable SEO revolves around spreading ideas
The Tipping Point
• Buy Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point today • Mavens – Share because they love to learn and share. – Know their industry better than anyone. • Connectors – Good at promoting others. – Much like public relations. – Lee Odden is always helping someone out. • Salesmen – Turn ideas into profit. – Really get people to believe in something. – Customers, brand evangelists, affiliates, etc.
Cumulative Advantage
• Just being popular makes you more popular – More subscribers see your story faster – More subscribers link to your stories quickly – High authority & more links = quicker indexing and higher rankings – More comments on your blog – Social proof of value also makes others more likely to trust you • Read more on cumulative advantage
Publishing Models
• Some people only talk about themselves – Eventually they lose market momentum from participatory narcissism. • Popular sites with sustainable growth are platforms – Highlight other people & brands – Offline Paris Hilton is a good example of this • Gawker does not pay much per pageview – Author needs many pageviews. – Creates rapid fire posts. – Need to be first with the news (or have a contrarian view) to make that model work sustainably. – If you know what they like, it is easier to get referenced than you think.
Example of Knowing Link Target
• I sent a 10 second email to ValleyWag about Mahalo publishing a spammy page
– They posted it right away, even though they screwed up my name!
– They didn’t know me, but I knew what topics they liked
50,000+ SEOs?
• But probably less than 1,000 read the Google documents that were leaked
– All SEOs who read it have an advantage over those who did not. – Those who took the time to read it could relate it to the broader market.
Predicting Trends From Past Markets
• Del.icio.us popular list • Digg homepage • Blogger’s old content
– Subscribe to blogs and learn their biases – A few years back I read so many SEO blogs I could virtually predict who would link at something, and write specifically for their link
Bias
• We are more receptive of reinforcing communications • People who subscribe to your site often share your biases (at least on some level) • We are all really interested in ourselves – Advertise on sites you want to be related with – Hire people who you want to be related with – Interview and promote each other (connectors) – Ask for help from those you helped when you do a big launch
Best Photographers EVER!!!
• Awards work!!! • But this guy screwed it up
Political Blogs
http://research.microsoft.com/projects/blew s/blews.aspx http://www.blogpulse.com/papers/2005/Ad amicGlanceBlogWWW.pdf
What Happened to the Dollar?
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