Gray Area Google-Fu

Gray Area Google-Fu

After my presentation at the Skookum Tech Talks someone asked me about the hackability/indexability of the popular file storage service, DropBox. I’ve not heard anything related to this Google hack topic and them, but was just thinking that I added my tax folder to my dropbox. Although kind of fatalistically, the more I find out about online security seems like if someone who knows what they are doing really wants to get you then it’s game over. So bottom line, be nice to each other, follow the security stuff as best as you can…life is too short to worry all these details.

I didn’t get to most of the juicy stuff at the end, I only have 5 minutes for the audio/video. Perhaps that was a good thing for fear of showing you too much…but for those that are interested, here’s some more of juicier tidbits:

• http://goo.gl/7K9WY
  Use this search to find FTP servers that have been indexed. Being that most people I assume don’t think Google indexes FTP servers (Yale included), they aren’t as concerned about what information goes up on them. Just think outside the box and try combos of commonly used words on tax returns or how people would request social security numbers. Doesn’t take much thought to reveal some extremely sensitive information.
• http://goo.gl/gkyAo
  This was an instance of someone hacking into Google Webmaster Tools and showing how you can remove a site from the Google index. This was quickly fixed but shows the power here if you choose to look just below the surface.
• http://goo.gl/3pTnB
  Kind of scary to reveal that there are this many but this is a list of websites that have uploaded their VPN/network passwords on their server. Kind of mind numbing that there are so many results for this particular type of network. Supposedly, this is a way that many LulzSec and Anonymous users hide their location. By tunneling into others networks and computers they leave a very difficult trail to follow and hide where they are actually entering the net from.
• The bullet titled Bowling just refers to the aggressiveness that Google has taken recently to police sites receiving links from spammy/gray area link farms and networks. The assumption here (although unproven to my knowledge) is that you could sign your competitors up for one of these spamy link farms and move them from #1 to result #382.
• Last part titled ‘phpbb’ references a popular forum that is commonly outdated, thus vulnerable. However, PPC (porn, pills, and casinos) SEOers don’t just take down the site or load malware onto it, they use the site’s link juice and further build up their own link popularity, thus increasing their rankings for competitive words in Google. Just do some creative searches (on your home computer!) related to PPC and phpbb…you’ll get all kinds of interesting results.

Political parties and candidates must gain great online visibility to generate more supporters.  Most attempts that I have seen so far at political SEO are google bombing and paid ads.

There are a number of SEO strategies that can be used for Political SEO.  Like any other part of a campaign, this must be planned strategically to be obtain optimal results.

First part of the strategy is to define targeted keywords. This must be a good combination of the candidate’s name and the position they are running for. Along with these combinations, we can include generic     political terms that people may possibly search for.

Once we have the keywords, we can then start to execute our SEO plan.

Website

SEO takes time. The earlier we begin the strategy the better. With political campaigns, normally we have to build a website from scratch, which means we will need a new domain to use and Google still need to index and rank it.

Social Media Sites

Social media sites such as facebook, twitterand youtubeare proven to be a very good tool in Political SEO. It is best to launch these pages as early as possible to gain more exposure and following. Here we can update our followers of the latest events, happenings and news of the candidate or political party.  With this, we can also possibly catch the attention of social news sites and drive contributions.

Blog

Setting up a blog and updating it with fresh contents daily is also beneficial in a Political SEO campaign. This will also make it easier for people to find us using a keyword search. Plus, having a blog can motivate supporters to visit the site often and even blog about the candidate.

Press Release

Sending out press release about the candidate or party is another good tool to use. Political campaigns will be in the news and will just stay there. However, candidates must invest in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to be able to influence how the story will be reported. Thing with politicians are, even if you are the front-runner or the most popular, you are always subject to nasty attacks.

So how will your campaign deal with this? In the pre-internet days you can just easily ignore the issue and just let it die down, however because of the emergence of how the internet recycles news wherein it is reposted and re-reported ubiquitously and after a week of it being posted being a “no comment” story unwittingly becomes something of negative interest. With this you can release your own rebuttal of the issue by sending out a press release.

Search Terms

One of the most important factors in a Political SEO campaign is about what terms need to be targeted. You have to come up with the exact words someone would use to search for those results. Define the terms that are valuable to your race. Combinations of the candidate’s name, the office they are running for, and the candidate’s geotargeted areais a good basis. Along with these combinations, you can include generic political terms and issues that people may possibly search for.

Online Reputation Management

Candidates or political parties have an image to protect so it is important to stay away from Blackhat SEO tactics as this can affect the candidate/party in the long run.

Also ensure that your site ranks for your own name. Politicians can possibly register for multiple domains to be able to control the SERP. Now this may bring down link equity; however this can be easily alleviated by using these standalone sites to deep-link to the main site.

You see: for me, as someone who has been an SEO professional for over a decade, the one SEO tip I’ve never seen in any article is just that. Don’t Panic. Ever.

Client hit by Panda? Don’t panic.

A Fortune 500 company falling to page 3 when they search for their own name? Don’t panic.

Lost all your long tail traffic overnight? Don’t panic.

By now, I think you are getting the idea. All of the situations detailed above are resolvable but, as an SEO, if you panic you will most likely do far more harm than good.

Of course, like anyone else in this business, I am well aware of how difficult it is not to start worrying when you’ve either lost traffic/revenue of your own or you have clients shouting at you to get things fixed. However, you are the professional and you have to act like it even if, inside, your stomach is churning and you are thinking ‘oh God, what do I do?’

The temptation is to immediately start changing things to try to rectify the problem. You may begin that process by checking all the tools at your disposal to see if you have lost some critical links or if those 301 redirects didn’t work or if all those useless ‘tag’ pages are still indexed or whatever. You may even choose to first check out industry resources or peer forums to see if other people are experiencing the same thing. But, very often that desire to be seen to be doing something overwhelms more sensible impulses.

This is, of course, completely understandable. It’s a mistake but it is understandable. For me, more websites are permanently crippled by their SEOs making quick and rash changes than by the original problem the site was presented with. There is a real danger that, having spent a small amount of time reviewing potential issues, you start making premature changes to your or your client’s website.

So, I guess, the real SEO tip that no one ever tells you is twofold: ‘Don’t panic and don’t make hasty decisions’. Indeed, in a lot of cases I would go further and say: ‘Don’t panic, don’t make hasty decisions and often…don’t do anything at all’!

Without wishing to sound arrogant, one of the reasons I’ve been a successful SEO for so long is that frequently I choose to do nothing – at least for a time – when a client has lost rankings. And, if you think about it carefully, you would probably choose to do nothing too.
If you’ve been in the industry for even a small amount of time you will already know that when an algorithm changes comes about, there is a period of flux. This can frequently result in some fairly dramatic – but temporary – ranking changes. It would be foolish to start to make changes to a site before the situation settles down. And yet, many SEOs do, based on the flimsiest of chatter on webmaster forums.

Once again, I say: don’t do it. Hold fire until you really have a grip on what’s going on. Even then, be slow in making alterations based on forum gossip, Twitter posts or even blog posts from the almighty Google. In the last 10 years, I’ve lost count of the number of times that making no changes at all and keeping my nerve has resulted in websites rebounding as strong or stronger than ever.

It doesn’t matter whether you are trying to get your website to rank for something like 50th birthday presents or something hyper competitive like ‘free games’, you will certainly find that if you don’t panic and don’t make rushed decisions, your success in the SERPs will be more sustained and longer living.

About The Author

Mark Stockton is an experienced SEO and online marketer, now working almost exclusively for Find Me A Gift, the UK gifts store.

Well, it’s a good thing you asked Mr. or Mrs. Web Pioneer.

In this short video I’ll address these questions and many others related to website content and Google Panda.

Understanding Google Panda

Understanding Google Panda

He arrived just in time to see a bit 2011. Graham has all his fingers and seems like a healthy, normal baby.

Here are some questions though going through my mind:

1. Will you learn to type the alphabet or write it first?
2. How much of your education will you receive from a LCD screen?
3. When will you make your first Facebook post?
4. How many digital photos will be taken of you this year? Looks like 375B will be taken this year.
5. How many times will your identity try to be stolen?
6. How many hours will you spend in front of a computer screen?
7. What will your first tweet look like?
8. Will you (sadly) ever use a mouse?
9. When will you get your first phone? What will it look like, the iPhone 14? And what rationale will be used to get it, safety, convenience, texting, driving your car or something else that doesn’t exist now?
10. Will your interact more with your friends in person or online?
11. Will you just bypass all this technology and go back to the olden days of wooden teeth and wigs? If you did, know that we’d support you 100%. Just want you to be healthy and happy.

This presentation discusses some things to consider when thinking about how to better design forms with conversion rate optimization in mind.

(I ran out of time at the end of the video, so feel free to view more info in the prezi below.)

Much thanks to Bermon for getting me most of the design information for this presentation.

My-my-my-my search engine sucks hard

Come December 2011, web surfers might be singing a new song. They’ll have a new tool, a Hammer tool. To be specific, they’ll have MC Hammer’s new search tool, WireDoo. The rapper-turned-entrepreneur, born Stanley Burrell, announced his brainchild at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.

Where’s the connection between a music career and a new tech launch? Creativity, says Hammer. Whether in music or in any other field, it’s all from the same side of the brain.

And how exactly will WireDoo be different? Hammer explains WireDoo’s “relationship-driven searches.” Search for zip code 90210, for example, and in addition to the standard search results, the user will find a set of related content offerings — schools, homes, and hospitals, and so on. (No word yet on whether the engine will produce the angst-ridden adventures of the new denizens of West Beverly High School.) Click on “schools,” and the user will find further offerings on areas such as performance scores, teacher credentials, parent demographics, and truancy. Each layer brings the user deeper into the search.

WireDoo, Hammer says, will bring more of what the user is looking for. A search for “car,” he explains, is “not just about the word ‘car,’ but it’s about insurance, it’s about the specs, it’s about mileage, it’s about style, it’s about all these things. So that’s the way it works.”

Rather than relying on the standard keyword spider algorithms, WireDoo, according to Hammer, will ferret out public record information and other web-available material to bring forth what the user really yearns for. The idea feels like a combination of Wolfram|Alpha but with access to more public data. Where this data will come from remains to be seen.

Both skeptics and fans can submit their names and email addresses at the WireDoo site for a chance to become beta testers. Hammer expresses faith that excited and satisfied users will spread the word through social networking and help WireDoo to really dig in and take off… then do the running man.

Being the dynamic super web hero I am, I decided to put together this slick presentation together. Hope you like it.

Here’s the original presentation:

Next thing you know, you’ve missed a meal because you were too busy watching videos or yammering away in chat rooms to notice how quickly the time was flying by.

The internet is a great resource for research, but it’s also as addictive as a slot machine, and for the same reason. It puts you on an intermittent reinforcement schedule, rewarding you at pretty much random intervals, just like B.F. Skinner randomly rewarded rats in his maze.

It doesn’t have to be the barking cat or the confused web-cam grandparents. Because the internet is such a motley collection, just about anybody with any obscure interest can suddenly hit pay dirt if only they make one more click. Presto! There’s a clip of Buster Keaton laughing! There’s a picture of the actual train that was stuck in the Tracy cut, that kept the Ingalls family near starvation during The Long Winter! There’s a video of Anna Pavlova dancing “The Dying Swan!” There’s a copy of Dale Earnhardt’s autopsy report! There’s an essay by Chuck Jones about how he became a cartoonist!

What’s worse, no matter how esoteric your interest, there’s a clique of people ready to argue with you about it. You start out just wanting to find out the caloric count of popular vegetarian foods. Suddenly you’re in the middle of a flame war between advocates of soft versus firm tofu (if there really is a debate…really!), and you’re astonished to find that you actually do have an opinion about it, even if it’s that nobody should ever eat tofu.

When you get online, the fact that you were ACTUALLY looking for something specific often falls by the wayside.

With all that temptation lurking, how do you keep yourself on task? Or if not totally on-task, at least honest about how many of those online hours you’re billing your client for?

Well…(sales pitch coming) you can make one more click to a great time tracking program. This product Worksnaps.net tracks computer usage — programs, web pages, you name it. Best of all (if you are fine with Big Brother), they takes periodic screen shots so you (and your boss/client) can see exactly what you were doing at what time.

Of course, this carries the risk of becoming fascinated with your browsing habits and getting sidetracked yet again. Still, it gives you the tools you need to sort out play time from work time, and bill your clients honestly. I find it particular helpful when collaborating with people that you are physically working with at the same location. So, you can turn “Did Tom really work 6 hours on the design” to “I see Tom working on 6 hours of design. Groovy!”

Then (once you are done) you can get back to the Internet Movie Database and find out which critics enjoyed “Cycle Vixins” as much as you did.

Big thanks to @shaymus for his post about Startup marketing.