theEweekly Wrap

Download the cheerleader, download the world

US drama series Heroes is the most popular television programme amongst illegal file-sharers according to research from an American web firm.

The investigation by US company Big Champagne examined the most downloaded videos from file-sharing sites such as The Pirate Bay and Mininova. The enquiry found that in 2009, the NBC network drama Heroes was downloaded 54.6 million times by users across the globe.

Heroes, which follows the adventures of ordinary people with superhuman abilities, recorded 3.5 million more downloads than the second most popular programme, Lost. The ABC network drama about the survivors of a plane crash achieved over 51.1 million downloads in 2009.

The research also revealed the cult superhero film Watchmen as the most illegally watched film in 2009. The movie was downloaded 16.9 million times.

Eric Garland, Big Champagne’s chief executive, said that illegally downloading television programmes is considered acceptable behaviour among users.

"Millions of television viewers now access free, unauthorized versions of favorite shows at least some of the time. This is a socially acceptable form of casual piracy - and it is replacing viewing hours."

View to a till

Google has introduced its Street View application in local map listings. Users clicking a local business marker in Google Maps now have the opportunity to see the shop front of a chosen company (depending on the availability of Street View in a particular area).

Companies are now marked on the Google Street View service

Matt McGee, contributor to popular SEO blog Search Engine Land, said the steps would have an effect on certain businesses:

"Street View can have a powerful, if somewhat under-appreciated marketing impact. It offers visitors a first impression of local businesses, and that first impression might determine the choice of a restaurant or hotel, for example."

Internet Biel

American actress Jessica Biel has been named as the celebrity most likely to infect your computer with malicious software.

Research from internet security firm McAfee found that search results for the 27-year-old had a one-in-five chance of returning websites which hosted online threats such as spyware or viruses.

"Cybercriminals are star watchers too - they latch onto popular celebrities to encourage the download of malicious software in disguise," McAfee's Jeff Green said.

"Every day, cybercriminals use celebrities' names and images, like Kim Kardashian and Rihanna, to lure surfers searching for the latest stories, screen savers and ringtones to sites offering free downloads laden with malware," he added.

Searches for the singer Beyonce Knowles, ex-Friends actress Jennifer Aniston and popular teenage celebrity Miley Cyrus also returned potentially dangerous website results.

Free as a bird

Social networking company Twitter has failed in its bid to trademark the word 'tweet'. The popular microblogging service had applied for ownership of the name, given to updates posted by its users, last month.

The request was denied by the US patent and trademark office on the grounds that other companies had applied for similar trademarks.

Earlier this month, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said that he was keen to establish legal protection for the company’s branding.

"We have applied to trademark tweet because it is clearly attached to Twitter from a brand perspective but we have no intention of 'going after' the wonderful applications and services that use the word in their name when associated with Twitter," he said.

Buyouts signal new era of targeted social media

It has been a remarkable period of consolidation in the social media world. Digital marketers have been playing catch-up as takeover announcements tumbled one after another, sometimes with little or no forewarning.

At the tail-end of July 2009, Yahoo revealed it had bought photo-management tool Xoopit for a reported £12.35 million. Then IT business services specialist brightsolid got in on the act with a £25 million takeover of the Friends Reunited Group, just days before Facebook bought social media coordination service FriendFeed for a rumoured £30.89 million.

So what is really going on? Let’s look at those deals one at a time.

Yahoo and Xoopit

Yahoo Mail seems to be positioning itself as a repository for photo sharing. The technology giant has just announced that Xoopit’s technology will shortly be used to power a new My Photos application, which automatically scans all users’ emails for attached or shared photos. These will be collected into a virtual scrapbook that can be re-jigged, edited and sent directly to friends. Simultaneously, Yahoo Mail will more than double its photo attachment limit from 10MB to 25MB.

Facebook and FriendFeed

Facebook’s latest acquisition is also getting tongues wagging in the marketing world. FriendFeed is a one-stop service that enables you to manage all your social media accounts from Twitter and YouTube to Flickr and indeed Facebook. Under the terms of the deal, every engineer and developer at the startup will now join the world’s largest networking portal. They will undoubtedly try to replicate the FriendFeed formula by establishing their new home as the go-to site for all social media, not just Facebook.



Friends Reunited Group and brightsolid

Friends Reunited may be the group’s star brand with 21 million members but perhaps the more significant acquisition is sister website Genes Reunited and its 9 million global users. Since brightsolid already owns findmypast.com, it means the IT services provider now operates the largest genealogy specialist in the country.

Chris van der Kuyl, CEO of brighstolid, even hinted at consolidating Genes Reunited and findmypast.com after wrapping up the deal. “This marks another step forward in the future strategy of brightsolid, widening its offering to the consumer marketplace, in particular by creating Britain’s leading genealogy business,” he said.

The consolidation of social media

There is little doubt among marketing experts that social media is undergoing a period of dramatic transformation. Consolidation is the name of the game and each company is trying to corner a different demographic. Yahoo is enticing email users who regularly share photos with friends, while Facebook wants to become the go-to hub for all social media content and brightsolid has targeted those with an interest in tracing family histories.

This is an important step for social media marketers. Each company is trying to forge a distinct user profile and, of course, unique demographics are far more attractive to advertisers. Thanks to these takeovers, digital marketers may soon be able to target adspend more accurately than ever before.

Richard Frost

Using rich media to enhance a website

Nowadays, users expect more from their online experience. Web 2.0 has made individuals greedy for multimedia content, social media integration and personal interaction. SEO copywriting employee Tom Mason breaks down the four key tools for those aiming to harness rich media for their own aims.

Video

Visual content is not for every website. Used in the right context though, a short clip or promotional video can greatly enhance a user’s experience. A simple embedded link from YouTube or Google Video adds a new level of interaction to a page.

According to research, 83 per cent of all individuals learn visually. Using an appropriate video can help sell a brand, an idea, or merely break up a long stretch of text.

Social Media

In the right hands, Twitter can be a scarily effective marketing tool. The service breaks down the barriers between customer and company – individuals can directly communicate to their favourite brand relaying opinions, thoughts and, heaven forefend, complaints. Considering the relatively low overhead costs, the service can be very profitable.

Dell made $1 million in sales from a social marketing campaign on Twitter

Still, there is a negative side to the application, as I’m sure the various ex-marketing employees of Skittles and Habitat can explain.

User-generated content

Users want to know a company is paying attention to their views and concerns. Allowing individuals the opportunity to comment on a service or review a product is a chance for a business to get instant feedback on their goods and reputation.

A few months ago, theEword attended the Ecommerce Expo North at The Hilton Hotel. One of the speakers, Gina Deeble - the Head of Interactive Content at QVC, was giving a talk about the benefits of user-generated content. She explained that QVC had recently integrated user content; customer reviews for the millions of products the shopping channel provides.

QVC user reviews

Deeble went on to say that this function had created a community – a group of dedicated QVC visitors who actively promoted the brand and its products to other members. She revealed that sales of reviewed items had risen by up to 20 per cent based solely on these comments.

Images

A picture tells a thousand words. Images, graphs and charts are not only useful for illustrating a point, but also can be used to keep a user’s attention. A visually arresting photograph can inspire a reader to continue through a page or click through to another part of the site. The BBC News site uses this tactic in the ‘Big Picture’ section – users are encouraged to click through to a photograph by way of an ambiguous image link on the site.

The search repercussions of Bing's Wolfram Alpha linkup

Bing has apparently been given permission to use structured data from Wolfram Alpha, which could prove highly significant in its bid to challenge Google's stranglehold of UK search.

Microsoft, owner of the search engine, has been locked in negotiations with senior figures at the “computational knowledge engine” for months and now a licensing agreement has finally been put in place, according to internet news portal TechCrunch. Although terms of the deal have not been made public, a linkup between two of the web’s hottest properties could have significant repercussions for SEO marketers.

What is Wolfram Alpha?

Wolfram Alpha was launched amid much fanfare on May 15th 2009 with developers promising it would eventually provide definitive answers to factual queries across a wide range of subject matters from science and maths to music and weather. What makes it stand apart from traditional search engines such as Google, Ask and indeed Bing is that these answers are drawn from an internal knowledge base.



In other words, it uses structured data instead of simply trawling the internet for links.

Wolfram Alpha’s profile has dropped

Despite critical acclaim – it featured alongside Twitter and Spotify on the Time list of 50 best websites in 2009 – initial excitement surrounding the knowledge engine has largely died down and it is not making significant inroads into Google’s dominant query resolution position.

Recently, founder Stephen Wolfram posted an official blog outlining the measures developers have taken to improve the platform that bears his name. He revealed that the Wolfram Alpha codebase has grown 52 per cent and the number of queries that cannot be resolved has dropped ten per cent over the first few months. However, the service has been criticised for concentrating on performance while neglecting user-friendliness.

What Bing’s move means for search

The proposed linkup with Microsoft could be a turning point – both for Wolfram Alpha and Bing. Some search industry commentators have suggested Bing’s main advantage over Google is its superior layout – so Wolfram Alpha could potentially also give it an edge in relation to query resolution.

On paper at least, combining Bing’s style with Wolfram Alpha’s substance is a dream ticket that could prove decisive in winning over disaffected Google users. And where eyeballs go, search marketers are sure to follow.

Richard Frost

Hollywood reveals blueprint for Twitter marketing

The effect of social media tools like Twitter is notoriously difficult to quantify but Hollywood may just have provided a compelling case study.

The tweeter

Lindsay Wailes, a cook and coffee shop assistant from Westminster, Maryland, is one of a growing number of movie buffs that are engaging in C2C marketing thanks to the micro-blogging tool. She advised her Twitter followers to steer clear of this summer’s blockbuster G.I. Joe if they wanted to watch a film with clever plotting or scientific realism, according to the Baltimore Sun.

“Almost every time after I go out [to a movie], I’ll tweet about it,” she explained. As well as offering trend-setting updates, she was also persuaded to skip the new Sacha Baron Cohen film Bruno because of a string of negative reviews from fellow tweeple.

The Twitter effect

Both films were marketed heavily using traditional methods and both experienced an unexpectedly quick drop in box office takings – Bruno recorded an unprecedented 39 per cent drop from Friday to Saturday in the US. Many industry experts are pointing the finger at Twitter and, specifically, users like Ms Wailes who tweet their displeasure to hundreds of followers within minutes of leaving the cinema.

However, Stephen Bruno, senior director of marketing at independent film studio the Weinstein Company, said companies should embrace Twitter rather than fearing its capacity to damage. “I think Twitter can’t be stopped,” he said. “Now you have to see it as an addition to the campaign of any movie. People want real-time news and suddenly a studio can give it to them in a first-person way.”

The Twitter fight back

In terms of best practice, the Weinstein Company may have shown marketers how to regain control of the conversation using Twitter. Despite a string of negative reviews from professional critics, Inglourious Basterds accrued worldwide box office takings of £39.7 million on the opening weekend – director Quentin Tarantino’s largest ever figure.

A Twitter-focused marketing campaign may have turned things around.



The Weinstein Company cleverly distributed tickets to a preview screening on Twitter, which attracted a high number of Tarantino fans who then spread positive tweets about the film. It also arranged what it dubbed the “first ever Red Carpet Twitter meet-up” during the premiere, where celebrities including Sarah Silverman and Tony Hawks were encouraged to tweet their reviews.

The opportunity for Twitter marketers

Of course, word-of-mouth marketing is nothing new. Tweets merely enhance the ability of consumers to pass on their thoughts to like-minded people in real time. However, businesses like the Weinstein Company that spend heavily on social media marketing can use Twitter to reframe the debate in new and exciting ways.

Richard Frost

theEweekly Wrap

Growth mail

Official figures have revealed that Gmail, the email service from Google, is the third largest mail client in the United States.

A study from online research group ComScore stated that Gmail had overtaken the AOL email service in terms of unique visitors. Gmail recorded 37 million visitors compared to the 36.3 million clocked by AOL in July. Over the past eight months, Gmail posted a 25 per cent growth in unique visitors.

Hotmail and Yahoo Mail remain the most popular email sites in the United States.

America’s Next Top Lawsuit

Blogger.com has been ordered to reveal the identity of a user who criticised a New York fashion model on the service. Joan Madden, a New York state Supreme Court judge, ruled model Liskula Cohen was entitled to sue an anonymous blogger for defamation after a series of accusations were posted online.

Liskula Cohen to sue blogger

The ruling comes after the UK newspaper The Times won a landmark case to reveal the identity of the creator of the popular NightJack blog.

Enquiry set to Phorm an opinion

The legality of behavioural targeting firm Phorm is to be questioned in an enquiry by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT). The OFT is set to investigate the legitimacy of using personal data for online advertising.

A spokesman from the OFT said the study would focus on the use of behavioural advertising.

"We may look at behavioural advertising where information on a consumer’s online activity is used to target the internet advertising they see. We may also examine the practice of tailoring prices to individual consumers on the basis of their personal data."

The share price of Phorm fell by more than 20 per cent after the enquiry was announced.

Cutts to the chase

Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s Webspam team, has responded to the criticism surrounding UK search results. The state of UK SERPs has been a contentious topic in the SEO community after websites from New Zealand, Australia and Germany began appearing in local searches.

Cutts offered a number of explanations for the anomaly and said that he would look into specific queries.

He commented:

"If people want to point out examples of off-topic .coms that I’ve missed, I’m happy to poke/prod the appropriate folks at Google though. Feel free to leave comments like "For the query [red widgets] on google.co.uk, redwidgets.com shouldn’t show up because they don’t really provide red widgets to the UK." Then I’ll ask the appropriate team to check out the comments."

The Great Google UK SERPs Debate

Google joins row over irrelevant SERPs

The quality of Google search engine results pages (SERPs) has come in for fierce criticism recently from across the SEO spectrum. Now, Google itself has finally joined the discussion.

Concern centres on an apparent drop-off in the geographical relevance of many UK-based keyword searches. For example, enter a term such as ‘family homes Kent’ into Google.co.uk and the top three results are for properties in US towns called Kent instead of the UK county. Similarly, criticism has been levelled at irrelevant returns on keywords like ‘London safes’, ‘SEO’, ‘SEO Manchester’, ‘flowers’ and ‘web hosting’.

The glitch that won’t go away

This problem was first reported on the blogosphere in early June 2009 but complaints are still flooding in more than two months later. This week finally brought an official response, which was posted on the Google Webmaster Central Channel on YouTube. Matt Cutts, head of Google’s webspam team, was asked why irrelevant non-UK sites from the US, Australia and New Zealand are ranking higher on Google.co.uk.

“As we get better, we’re more willing to show .coms if we think they’re relevant to a specific country. If the best result for a British searcher is something that ends in .com, we still want to show that. That is probably a change that we’re not going to revert.”

Missing the point

However, industry commentators have attacked Google for fudging the issue. The problem is not that .com sites are appearing in UK searches but that irrelevant .coms are appearing.

Take ‘flowers’ for instance:



Sites such as 800florals.com and 1800flowers.com are popping up on the second page ahead of recognised UK brands such as NetFlora.co.uk, and DebenhamsFlowers.co.uk. Bearing in mind neither .com site offers UK deliveries or even UK prices, it’s hard to believe British searchers are flocking to these florists but their rankings just aren’t nosediving as you’d expect.

Add the fact that some British results are even returning Australian and New Zealand domain names and it’s clear there’s an SEO problem.

Causes and conspiracy theories

So what’s going on? As ever, Google is refusing to give away any search engine secrets but it seems as if it has introduced a major update with some unwanted side effects. Perhaps there is simply a glitch in the algorithm. But with it taking so long to fix, could there also be more fundamental problems like crawl/index issues? Or could it just be that the company’s engineers are preoccupied with the Caffeine upgrade?

Whatever the truth, Google must be cautious now Bing is up and running. Microsoft’s promise of a more intuitive search engine is ringing in the ears of users disillusioned by irrelevant Google SERPs.

Richard Frost

theEword Academy - Using Google Local

theEword marketing assistant Holly O'Boyle examines how a business can use Google Local to increase traffic.

Setting up a Google Local account is a relatively simple process which can have huge benefits. The system allows companies to increase or improve their online presence by giving their business better exposure to large groups of conversion-likely users - those individuals searching for specific products or services.

Users carrying out localised searches on Google Maps are presented with a range of red markers over a specific area. Each red marker represents a unique business related to that query.


Take this search for instance:




Each dot represents a business featured in the Google Local directory. Each listing can be expanded to show various details, such as address, phone number and website.



The benefits of using this type of listing are obvious – companies have the opportunity to significantly increase their online presence for specific product or service-related keywords. And the geographical link allows them to identify themselves as offering those services in a particular area, making it easier for users searching from that vicinity to find them.

In fact, Google couldn’t make it any easier for potential customers to garner information about companies – users can expand each listing to be given extended snippets of information, while directions, photographs and the Street View service (where available) can all be accessed in a single click.

A few months ago, Google updated its search engine results pages – placing more prominence on local search results. Users who search with a local term such as ‘Manchester’ or ‘Leeds’ are immediately presented with the top ten local business results for that query.



As with traditional Google search pages, the competition to feature in this list is fierce. Recent studies have shown that Google places more weight on businesses which have a strong digital presence - companies with an optimised website which includes SEO content, a good keyword spread and plenty of strong inbound links. These sites are ranked higher in Google Local as well as in search engine results pages.

TOP TIP: There are a number of steps businesses can take in order to optimise for a Google Local ranking. These include using keywords in the Google Local listing or ensuring that they register in the most accurate and specific category possible.

Read more guides on theEword SEO Manchester website.

theEweekly Wrap

Google Blend

Google has revealed plans to upgrade its search engine software. The company is set to roll out the update - codenamed Google Caffeine - over the coming months. Head of Webspam Matt Cutts said that Google Caffeine would increase the speed and accuracy of search results.

Writing in his official blog, Cutts noted:

“The Caffeine update isn’t about making some UI [user interface] changes here or there. Currently, even power users won’t notice much of a difference at all. This update is primarily under the hood: we’re rewriting the foundation of some of our infrastructure.”

Google has released the beta version of the update and has invited users to submit feedback.

The Facebook diet

Facebook has revealed a new ‘diet’ version of its social networking service. Facebook Lite is a stripped-down version of the popular social site which is intended for use in countries with limited internet service.

Facebook Lite, currently being trialled in India, is billed as a faster, simpler version of the site. It is thought that it will offer smaller pictures and lower resolution video clips in order to decrease loading times.

Facebook Lite

An official statement from Facebook said:

“Facebook Lite is a fast-loading, simplified version of Facebook that enables people to make comments, accept Friend requests, write on people's Walls, and look at photos and Status updates. We are currently testing Facebook Lite in countries where we are seeing lots of new users coming to Facebook for the first time and are looking to start off with a more simple experience.”

In other news, it has been discovered that eight per cent of US companies have sacked employees because of their use of social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. A study by Proofpoint, an American internet security firm, found the number of employees dismissed for their use of social media sites at work had doubled from 12 months previously.

Other stats included:

• 17 per cent of companies with over 1,000 members of staff reported having problems with its employees' use of social media portals.
  
  
• 15 per cent of companies have disciplined an employee for violating multimedia sharing/posting policies.
  
  
• 13 per cent of companies conducted an investigation into an employee’s use of a mobile phone or web messaging service, such as MSN Messenger.
  

Growth is good for Bing

Microsoft search engine Bing received some encouraging news this week as it was revealed its paid click share had substantially increased over the past month.
Research from online marketing group Efficient Frontier discovered that the search engine’s paid click share had increase by 44 per cent in the first week of August, compared to results in the previous month.

Bing queries for Trade and Finance subjects gained an 11 per cent and 22 per cent click share respectively.

News in 140 characters:

• UK Twitter users rallied around the NHS after it was criticised by various US media. Gordon and Sarah Brown also tweeted in its support.
  
  
• China has retreated over its controversial Green Dam internet filter. The state “respected the choice of individuals who do not install it.”
  
  
• Sara Williams – wife to Twitter boss Evan – became the first to use the service during birth. Tweets included: “Epidural, yes please”
  
  

Search space race kicks off

theEword SEO copywriter Tom Mason highlights the growing shift towards real-time search.

Real-time search is becoming an increasingly important focus for the digital industry. Twitter – for all its foibles and technical errors – is the market leader. The site allows users to instantly communicate with each other; breaking news, discussing topics, interacting with any of its six million users (Including theEword).

The success (in terms of users, rather than revenue) of Twitter – a simple, real-time search engine – has provoked a race for the instant search crown. Sites, from search engines to social networking, want to establish themselves as the leading portal for instant news. It’s a virtual space race. A competition between technical teams across the globe to find a way to monetise social space.

Recent moves by rival social networking site Facebook has highlighted the growing importance companies are placing on the rapid proliferation of search information.

Yesterday, Facebook rolled out a new search feature which allows users to hunt for keywords and phrases. This search tool allows individuals to search for keywords or phrases among their friends and the site’s entire user base (or at least those users who have public profiles). The search function crawls the previous 30 days of news feed information – searching status updates, links, videos and photographs.

Facebook’s recent purchase of FriendFeed – a rival social site – also demonstrates their commitment to the real-time movement. With this deal, Facebook has acquired the tools and man power (all of FriendFeed’s employees will now work for Facebook) of one of the leading social media sites. The move not only highlights Facebook’s unrelenting intentions to take Twitter on at its own game, but also the importance now being placed on instant search.

The founder of FriendFeed, Paul Buchheit, wrote in 2008 that real-time search – provided by a mass database of users - may be more valuable than the link data provided by search engines.

Indeed, the proliferation of users to instant search is a growing concern for Google. To highlight the recent coverage of Michael Jackson’s death: It look 1 hour and 20 minutes for Google to feature the article on its news feed after the story was first posted on Twitter. This lag did not go unnoticed by the SEO community.

Indeed, Google founder Larry Page has admitted his company has fallen behind real time services:

"People really want to do stuff real time and I think they (Twitter) have done a great job.

"We've done a relatively poor job of doing things that work on a per second basis," he said in May.

But Google has never been a company to rest on its laurels. Its staff are smart enough to realise the important of real-time data and act accordingly. The recent revealing of Google Caffeine – the new engine under the hood of the search giant – is an attempt to cash in on real-time search. The new design is thought to able to crawl pages quicker and offer a more comprehensive user experience.

Whether or not it can match up to the real-time application of Twitter is another matter entirely.

theEweekly Wrap

Sites under siege

Experts believe a coordinated attack from hackers was responsible for affecting dozens of websites on Thursday 7th August. Micro-blogging site Twitter, social networking portal Facebook, the blog tool Live Journal and the computer game service Xbox Live all experienced technical problems as a result of the attack.

The issue was caused by a distributed denial of service (DOS) - where thousands of virus-infected computers simultaneously log onto certain websites - resulting in their failure.

It is thought the disruption to the sites was the result of a coordinated attempt to silence a European blogger critical of last year’s conflict between Georgia and Russia.

Max Kelly, Facebook’s chief security officer, confirmed that the attack was aimed at the blogger. Kelly commented:

“It was a simultaneous attack across a number of properties targeting him to keep his voice from being heard.”

The one where ITV sold the website

ITV has sold the social media site Friends Reunited. The networking portal was purchased by Brightsolid for £25 million. The sale cost £10 million more than analysts had initially predicted.

Michael Grade, executive chairman of ITV, said the site no longer fitted into ITV’s digital plans.

“The game has changed. Friends Reunited does not fit our strategy,” he said.

The television company purchased Friends Reunited in 2005 for £120 million. ITV is thought to have made a £150 million loss on the project. When questioned by reporters, Grade defended the initial purchase of the site.

“It was regarded at the time as a good price. But the market has changed dramatically. You may have noticed but there's a recession on.

Comment isn’t free

Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch has confirmed that he plans to charge users to access all News Corporation websites by summer, 2010. The strategy will include UK papers, the Times, the Sun and the News of the World.

“Quality journalism is not cheap,” Murdoch said. “The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive distribution channels but it has not made content free. We intend to charge for all our news websites.”

It is not yet clear what form the charge will take.

SEO copywriting: What’s changed since 2006?

My SEO career began in the summer of 2006. I spent 15 months writing news content for a range of clients, working to boost their performance on search engine results pages (SERPs). Then I took time out to get my NCTJ qualifications before returning to copywriting in 2009 at theEword.

So three years on, has anything changed in SEO copywriting?

Google, SERPs and keywords – a familiar story

On the surface, not much. In 2006, the big story in SEO was Google’s growing dominance of the search market. Fast-forward to 2009 and the company has continued to take over – it accounts for 65 per cent of US searches and more than 90 per cent of the UK market.

Indeed, many clients are still asking for the same thing they did back in 2006 – page one on Google. As the old saying goes, first is first and second is nowhere.

Keywords also remain an integral part of SEO. Long gone are the old Fleet Street days where writers and sub-editors got back-slaps for peppering their stories with witticisms. Until search engines develop a sense of humour, targeted keywords are vital.

Plenty of similarities then, but are there any differences?

Realism, keyword stuffing and conversions – the evolution of SEO

The truth is that SEO has grown up. Three years ago, a lot of clients attached wild expectations to their campaigns. It was seen as a quick fix, a silver bullet, a sure-fire way of turning round their business overnight. Now I detect a lot more realism - companies recognise SEO is an ongoing process and a long-term investment. What worked last year may not work this year and clients are willing to engage in the creative process rather than tearing their hair out whenever rankings fluctuate.

Related to this is the fact that keyword stuffing has become less common. In 2006, some industry experts still thought cramming copy with keywords was enough to reach number one. Now we know there is much more to it – the content must be readable, titles have to be clean and embedded hyperlinks should encourage browsers and spiders to explore the site.

Finally, there’s a more holistic approach to marketing on the web today. The theory that SEO is just about tricking Google has been debunked and there is a renewed emphasis on measuring success by quality of click-throughs, not quantity. Focusing on conversions means you need to be more creative in content – after all, Google spiders don’t buy products or register email addresses. Blogs, social networking groups, tweets and video landing pages are all increasingly popular and demonstrate that modern SEO copywriting is about more than just keyword-heavy news stories.

So what does the future hold?

Bing, Microsoft and Yahoo - SEO copywriting marches on

The only honest answer is that it’s impossible to know. SEO copywriting has subtly but noticeably evolved over the last three years and it’s a safe bet that it will continue to adapt to the increasing sophistication of web users and search engines.

On the search engine front, for example, this summer has already seen the introduction of Microsoft’s Bing and a technology-sharing deal between Microsoft and Yahoo. Even time-honoured constants like Google’s dominance of search suddenly look less certain. SEO is a dynamic industry and copywriters must always be ready to adapt to the unexpected.

Richard Frost

Microsoft-Yahoo and what it means for SEO

So it finally happened. The worst kept secret in SEO - that Yahoo and Microsoft will join forces to take on Google - has finally become a reality.

But the partnership between the second and third biggest search engine providers is by no means as simple as Microsoft’s ill-fated bid to buy Yahoo outright for $31 per share in January 2008.

Who’s in charge?

In a nutshell, Microsoft has reached an agreement that will see its new search engine Bing become the exclusive algorithmic search and paid search platform across Yahoo’s sites.

Microsoft’s AdCenter platform will also become the pay-per-click advertising portal of choice for both companies.

However, Yahoo’s worldwide relationship sales force will continue to look after its own premium search offering – and importantly it will also take over Microsoft’s responsibilities in this area.

A decade is a lifetime

The deal is scheduled to run for ten years, which as every SEO marketer knows is a lifetime on the internet. After all, go back a decade and Yahoo was an online search leader while Google was just starting out.

Search market share

Now Google has a remarkable 65 per cent share of the US search market in the latest comScore figures, while Yahoo has 19.6 per cent (incidentally, Microsoft has just 8.4 per cent).

The turnaround is even more stark in the UK – Google enjoys 90.6 per cent of searches according to Hitwise, while Yahoo has just 3.9 per cent (Microsoft lags even further behind on 2.4 per cent).

Reception to the deal

So what could the next decade bring? Could this deal really reverse or at least halt Google’s ever-growing dominance and provide a viable alternative for SEO marketers?

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer predicted it would lead to “better value for consumers” and Carol Bartz, his Yahoo counterpart, said: “Advertisers will benefit from scale and enjoy greater ease of use and efficiencies working with a single platform and sales team for premium advertisers.”
Of course, it’s to be expected that Microsoft and Yahoo have hailed the deal.

More significant are the words of approval from respected media figures outside the two camps.

Thoughts from the outside

Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of one of the world’s largest communications services group WPP, said: “This is extremely encouraging and introduces more balance into the search and display markets.

“It is good for our clients and our agencies and for regulators.”

Meanwhile, organic search specialist Vanessa Fox noted on Search Engine Land that SEO marketers wanting to know how their pages will be indexed and ranked on the new Yahoo essentially just need to check how they perform on Bing.

She added: “This might not be a bad thing for site owners, as over the last year, Yahoo’s search quality seems to have been declining.”

The Microsoft-Yahoo timetable

One potential sticking point, of course, is the timetable.

Microsoft is hopeful that regulatory approval will be granted in early 2010 and has estimated full implementation of the agreement will take a further 24 months. That’s more than 2½ years from start to finish.

In the meantime, all eyes will be on Google to see how it responds to the linkup between its two main search rivals.

Richard Frost