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That evocative title, Spirit Show, came on my newsfeed radar screen this week. Even back in 2004, I was questioning whether Trade Shows Are Out? given that Internet marketing was becoming so powerful.

If you run your trade show activities now in 2004 exactly the same way as you ran them 7 years ago, then you have probably seen a major decline in ROI from this activity. Relying only on the direct selling benefit at the show is sub-optimal. You should probably seriously question your continuing trade show participation.

You remember 2004. Although Google was giving some website owners a hard time, most online e-commerce sites were doing just fine. The increased costs of travel, and the delays through heightened security were making tradeshows ever more difficult.

Now move forward to 2008. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is still very powerful, but the new trend is Social Media Marketing (SMM). Everyone is thinking communities and how to spread the word through viral marketing. Who isn’t trying to figure out how Facebook might help them? No wonder that Microsoft, at a loss for what to do next, is contemplating acquiring them. With the explosive increase in energy costs, what model of a trade show can hope to survive?

Well, perhaps the Spirit Show typifies that model.

The Spirit Show is an open trade show dedicated to the privately owned recognition product stores. The trade show serves as a showcase for approximately 80-100 exhibitors carrying Greek, Cheer, College, and Recognition products along with a wide variety of complimentary goods and services. The Spirit Show is unique in that the exhibitors are geared to sell directly to the smaller, privately owned stores.

The market, which its participants serve, is made up almost entirely of social media. Sororities and fraternities are some of the earliest examples of communities, and many of them have their online presence in Facebook. You might assume that Greek clothing or Greek gear would be traded entirely online.

Well, it’s always been true that people prefer to buy from people. Buying from an online box store carries with it that unspoken risk. Is this company one I can trust? Meeting face-to-face can set many of these fears to rest. A trade show like the Spirit Show has a very clear niche and its participants go there to buy and sell. The ROI on their activities is much more measurable than for a trade show, where networking is the sole objective. We wish the Spirit Show a long and happy future.

Microsoft has finally said its courtship of Yahoo! is over. Perhaps it was never meant to be. Danny Sullivan has a very fine analysis of the whole saga and wonders whether walking away is perhaps Microsoft’s $5 Billion Mistake? There is still the same concern however that Michael Martinez raises. How can Microsoft succeed in Search?

The key question is: Should Microsoft have two brands? That same question came up two years ago. However that was discussing whether they should be running with both MSN Search and Live Search. A subsidiary question was how to pronounce the latter: Liv Search or Lyve Search.

Microsoft seems to be good at getting itself into these problematic situations. Just think Internet Explorer versions 6, 7 and 8 as an example. In its strategic thinking it seems to follow the Tom Peters precept: “If you’re not confused, you’re not paying attention.” How much better they would perform if they followed the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Sweetheart). There are many more eminent thinkers they could refer to who would support that approach.

Focus, focus, focus

Peter Drucker

The Null Hypothesis is presumed true until statistical evidence indicates otherwise.

Sir Roland Fisher

A scientific theory should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.

Albert Einstein

Of two competing theories or explanations, all other things being equal, the simpler one is to be preferred.

Occam of Occam’s Razor

With Bill Gates adopting a more hands-off approach, the chances of Microsoft becoming more KISSy seem remote. They presumably will soldier on trying to figure out how to get their Search horse back on its feet. The prognosis is not good.

Spread the word, it’s RSS News Feeds Awareness Day. Although the International Labor Organization may currently be the biggest group celebrating May 1, that could change. Perhaps Daniel Scocco had forgotten about the ILO in coming up with the idea of designating May 1 as RSS Awareness Day. However given that RSS newsfeeds unleash the communicating power of the Internet, the word can spread very fast. I learned about this from the RSS news feed of Andy Beard, who had blogged about it. As we all tell our readers about it, then the momentum becomes unstoppable.

RSS news feeds have been around for many years. It’s the fastest way to be aware of what the BBC or CNN is reporting on. In order to subscribe to the RSS feeds of such favorite sites, all you need is an RSS reader. Here are three web-based and free RSS readers that you can use. All work well and it’s a question of what works best for you:

• Google Reader
• Bloglines
• Newsgator

Once you have your RSS reader working you can just head to your favorite website and subscribe by clicking on the RSS icon.

Courtesy Andy Beard

Another important way of staying on top of breaking news is with Google Blogsearch. It went through a rough spot during recent months but it’s now back functioning well to alert you to Hot News Items. That too is relying on RSS news feeds. All in all, it’s good to be aware of the power of RSS news feeds. If making May 1 RSS News Feeds Awareness Day can help spread the message, then let’s all ping away.

Related: News Feeds Boost Website Traffic

Finding Waldo seems to be a hot item at the moment. The natural way to find anything now is to Google it. That’s the challenge that Melanie Cole, a Media Art student, has set Google Earth. The glasses-clad, lanky geek in the striped white and red tee, matching hat (complete with pom-pom), jeans and his trust cane has now been painted on Vancouver, BC rooftops, creating a larger-than-life game of Where’s Waldo!

The challenge is reasonable since according to Google, its mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. There would seem to be no limit to its ambitions. Perhaps not surprisingly, Google has just announced that it is crawling through HTML forms. This seems to be upsetting some website owners, but Google is unrepentant.

This experiment is part of Google’s broader effort to increase its coverage of the web. In fact, HTML forms have long been thought to be the gateway to large volumes of data beyond the normal scope of search engines. The terms Deep Web, Hidden Web, or Invisible Web have been used collectively to refer to such content that has so far been invisible to search engine users.

Perhaps it’s time for Google to revisit its mission statement. It is after all a publicly-owned company. It should endeavor to balance the interests of all its stakeholders. Perhaps some parts of the world’s information just aren’t worth accessing. At the very least it would be interesting to see a cost-benefit analysis done for all the different places it is seeking that information.

Footnote: if you want to know where to find Waldo, then Frank Taylor, who knows a bit about Google Earth, has some revelations for you.

Some website owners seem to feel that there are three steps in creating a successful website. These are:

1. Design the website
2. Do on-page SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for the Web pages
3. Get links to the website from others.

That approach could certainly explain the following e-mail message I just received:

Since I offer a more holistic approach to making websites perform, I suggested a Google search might bring up names of people who could better meet their needs for this more limited service. I wondered at the time whether I could have offered some further advice to help the writer in his search. There are a lot of somewhat shady characters offering link creation services just as there similar individuals offering SEO services. Perhaps if I had been able to offer a simple 10 Commandments for Links, that might have been more helpful. A simple one page document with a list of things to avoid. Something like the Biblical 10 Commandments that gave unequivocal advice on what was not acceptable.

I looked around and thought perhaps The Ten Commandments of Link Building by Jai Nischal Verma might do the trick. However it’s not a list of things to avoid doing but rather some suggestions on possible ways of creating links.

1. Link Exchange
2. Social Bookmarking Websites
3. Link Baiting
4. Web Directory Submissions
5. Article Submissions
6. Press Releases
7. Blog Commenting
8. Forum Posts
9. Link Programs
10. Creating Contests

On further reading, I did not feel this was the solution I was looking for.

By chance I noticed a reference in Sphinn to a post on Defining Link Building Best Practices. The author’s nickname in the Sphinn discussion was LinkMoses. Surely he might have run across a suitable 10 Commandments if anyone has. The nickname is that of Eric Ward, who has been involved in Content Publicity & Link Building Strategies since 1994. Regrettably it seemed from his post that he was even reluctant to nominate Best Practices.

That’s hardly surprising. If everyone is made aware of Best Practices then everyone can use them and no one can stand out from the crowd. Perhaps defining 10 Commandments is easier. It’s a list of things to avoid doing, since they may almost guarantee failure. It’s a way of avoiding being grouped with the goats rather than the sheep. Perhaps just as for Moses, such a list is only available from on high.

As it happens, Google (Mountain View, CA) has almost developed this list for us. Just check out their Webmaster Guidelines. Most of the following are directly taken from those Guidelines with one or two additions. Some of these are more ‘evil’ than others.

Ten Commandments For Google Links

1. Avoid Me-too or irrelevant content that gives users no reason to visit your site.
2. Avoid broken links and incorrect HTML.
3. Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100)
4. Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
5. Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines.
6. Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
7. Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank.
8. Avoid valueless links from unrelated websites
9. Avoid links from low PageRank pages with many outgoing links
10. Avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web.

Obeying these 10 Commandments should keep you out of trouble, although Google does add the following:

Google may respond negatively to other misleading practices not listed here (e.g. tricking users by registering misspellings of well-known websites). Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit.

This is only a personal interpretation of the 10 Commandments and could undoubtedly be improved. If you think the list should be amended in any way then your comments would be most appreciated. Please add them below. Based on such feedback a more polished version of the 10 Commandments will be produced.

Footnote: Thomas Schmitz (SOEinSeattle) has pointed out to me that Link Moses has produced his version of the Ten Commandments in a slightly less serious vein. Jim Boykin has also recounted how The Google Gods (in our heads) Speak to Us about Link Building. I did not find these when I searched. Apologies. Perhaps the best of these can be combined.

Malte Landwehr commented on an earlier post on the changes in Google snippets for blog posts. He noted that the Google snippet dates on his blog posts appeared in a German format and therefore required more characters than the English version. He surmised that this meant that less of the Description meta tag could be used in creating the snippet.

As far as we can tell this does not seem to be the case. Below are shown the starting text in the SERP snippets for the same blog post in four different language versions of Google. In each case the date is shown in the language of the searcher. In each case also, the snippet used the same 138 characters from the Description meta tag.

Google - English - http://www.google.com

Google - French - http://www.google.fr/

Google - Finnish - http://www.google.com/ig?hl=fi

Google - Saudi Arabia - http://www.google.com/ig?hl=ar

Danny Sullivan has questioned in Sphinn whether this is a real phenomenon. However it seems to be the case for blog posts that appear in more popular searches. The posts on the same blog that preceded and followed this post, which are less popular, still currently come up in SERPs without dates. Whether this dating becomes the general rule or disappears at some time can only be a matter of conjecture at the moment.

If you have any views on what is happening here, then please add your comments.

A previous post discussed the importance of Google snippets in bringing visitors to your Web pages. It is of course important to rank towards the top or even #1 on a Google keyword Search Engine Report Page (SERP). However if the Google snippets for the items at #2 or #3 are much more engaging then perhaps the searcher will click there instead.

The creation of those Google snippets is an entirely automatic process. In other words it’s a computer-generated snippet. Google does try to help you to get better snippets. Matt Cutts has even made a short video about snippets (just over 8 minutes) - tip of the hat to Kathryn Katz. A key element in getting good snippets is the description meta tag. There is an interesting discussion currently going on in the Cre8asite Forums about that. One most useful piece of advice from Ron Carnell is to have a sentence of not more than 155 characters and spaces in that meta tag. Since this is the length of a typical Google snippet, then it is highly likely that your engaging sentence will be used as the snippet.

That was true until about four days ago. Suddenly there has been a switch in the automatic snippet creation process, at least for blog posts. It is not yet universal for all blog posts but seems to occur for ones that frequently come up in keyword searches. Here is an example:

The snippet for such blog posts now starts with the date of the post displayed in the language of the searcher. In English this uses up about 17 characters of the snippet including the ellipsis (…). Since the total length is still 155 characters and spaces, this leaves only 138 characters and spaces for you to write that engaging sentence.

It’s still early days so whether this change will be applied to all blog posts or will remain a permanent feature for Google is still in question. Yahoo! and MSN/Live still seem to be working with the longer 155 characters snippets. Anyone with a WordPress blog who uses the All-in-one-SEOpack plugin is faced with a dilemma. It suggests that descriptions should not be longer than 160 characters, but that number should now perhaps be reduced.

A surprising number of people, and indeed some surprising people, are now using Twitter to give status reports on what is happening in their corner of the universe. The strict imposition of no more than 140 characters and spaces seems to concentrate the mind most effectively. Tweats are of course produced by human writers. Twitter can certainly be rated a success.

Google snippets are those short pieces of text that appear under each item in a Google Search Engine Report Page (SERP). They too have a strict limit of 155 characters and spaces, just a little more than a Twitter tweat. Google snippets are produced by computers. Perhaps it’s time for Google to re-examine its snippets reasoning, because it is questionable how successful it is.

If you believed the Google documentation, you might believe that Web page Descriptions would be a key summary of the content of Web pages in their keyword search results:

We frequently prefer to display meta descriptions of pages (when available) because it gives users a clear idea of the URL’s content. This directs them to good results faster and reduces the click-and-backtrack behavior that frustrates visitors and inflates web traffic metrics.

They even go so far as to encourage you to Improve snippets with a meta description makeover:

The quality of your snippet — the short text preview we display for each web result — can have a direct impact on the chances of your site being clicked (i.e. the amount of traffic Google sends your way). We use a number of strategies for selecting snippets, and you can control one of them by writing an informative meta description for each URL.

In practice it doesn’t turn out exactly like that. You need to choose very carefully the exact words of your Descriptions if they are to be used at all, as you can see in (You Must) SEO Those Descriptions For More Google Visitors.

A post by William Slawski suggests why this is happening. It relates to Google’s fixation on inlinks to a Web page. So they may well Use Anchor Text to Determine the Relevance of a Web Page. In such a case, perhaps they wish to justify their reasoning by including it in the Snippet they construct to show the item is Relevant. Bill’s advice if this is affecting your Google appearances runs as follows:

If you run a web site, you may have visitors coming to your pages based upon the content anchor text in links pointing to your pages instead of the text upon your pages themselves. If the term is one that you want to be found for, you may want to consider adding some text to the page, if possible, using that query term, to provide a more persuasive snippet for the search results.

Perhaps if you put that persuasive language in the Description, it has a better chance of surviving that snippet creation process.

Standing well back, you might even question how customer-centric Google snippets are. Are they really the best way for searchers to find what they’re looking for? Perhaps they are motivated by a wish to prove that some apparently obscure item should logically appear in the SERP. Why else would you add in text taken from other related Web pages? The resulting snippets often seem much more attractive to computers than to the human readers they are intended for.

So do Google snippets work for you? Would you like to see Google change how it helps you to find what you’re looking for? Perhaps your comments here could trigger some rethinking.

Related: How to Optimize your Search Engine Snippets - Michael D Jensen

As we all spend more time in social media, such as Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon or Sphinn, the ability to write catchy headlines becomes as important as it ever was. If someone skimming through a list of possible topics is intrigued by your headline, then they may dip in to find out what it’s all about. That’s why Brian Clark suggested you should be writing Magnetic Headlines. If you were using WordPress to write your blog, then you would presumably put that catchy headline in that field labelled Title. It all seems so easy, but in fact it’s a little too easy. In what follows to avoid confusion, we’ll call what appears in that WordPress Title field the Headline.

Although your Headline may be written to attract human beings, it may not work well in a search engine keyword ranking. Since the largest proportion of the traffic to your website will come via search engines, it may be worth using something that the search engine robots will find attractive. The problem is that WordPress uses the expression in that Title field in a number of different ways. It is of course used as the headline in the < H1 > heading for your blog. It is also used as the Title element in the head of your blog page. This is the text that appears in the bar across the top of the screen. If you have nominated Pretty Permalinks, then the WordPress will also use the same text to develop the URL for the post.

Creating Optimal Titles

This is where the dilemma arises. The Title in the head of the blog page is very important in search engine rankings. The URL may also have a slight effect on these rankings. Optimizing the text for search engine robots will likely produce something, which is not necessarily one of those Magnetic Headlines that was being suggested.

Luckily help is at hand from a variety of sources. For example, Stephan Spencer and his colleagues have developed SEO Title Tag 2.1.3, which allows you to specify a Title for the blog post, which can be different from the headline. A more complete solution is provided by the All in One SEO Pack PlugIn from Uberdose. This not only allows an independent title but also has a number of other useful features. Even used ‘out of the box’ with default settings the PlugIn will achieve a good part of what is needed to optimize your blog posts for the Search Engines. Katy Castro has a good description of how to use it.

Getting the Meta Description Right

An equally important element in getting search engine traffic to your blog post is the text in the Meta Description for the blog post. The All in One SEO Pack allows you to prepare a separate description for each page. If you don’t, the default is that it will take the first 155 or so characters from the start of the post and use that. That avoids a problem Google has in indexing blog posts that all have the same Meta Description. Checking your website with the Google Webmaster Tools website will tell you whether duplicate descriptions is a problem for your blog.

By writing the most engaging description of your blog post in 155 or less characters, you increase the chance that this is what Google will show in its search engine report pages (SERPs). Most such snippets are a jumble of words that Google selects to try to show that its selection may be relevant to the keyword search. A well-crafted sentence will encourage many more visitors to click through to your blog post.

Although the Keywords MetaTag is of limited value nowadays, the plug-in does allow you to specify what keywords are most appropriate. Again if you do not specify keywords, the plug-in will select keywords by default from either the categories or from any tags that post may have.

The URL Of The Blog Post

A secondary factor in the optimization of the blog post is the URL for the blog post. Selecting the Pretty Permalinks option is one important step here for a WordPress blog. Unfortunately as mentioned above, this is again derived from the Headline of the blog post. You will find the text used in the Post Slug element in the right hand column of the Edit screen. It is derived by taking the Headline of the Post, putting all letters in lower case and adding hyphens between the words. This is not something where the All in One SEO Pack PlugIn helps. However as the WordPress Codex recommends, if you want to create a more memorable URL, then you can create such a one using lower case words and hyphens. Often taking the Title you have derived for the All in One SEO Pack PlugIn and converting it will be a good way to go.

Conclusion

Users of the All in One SEO Pack PlugIn are effusive in their praise of how well it works, even using it ‘out of the box’. If at least for your more worthy blog posts, you go the extra mile by crafting individual entries for the PlugIn, then you will see a significant increase in your visitor traffic. If you want to see how such a post appears, you can check this post. The headline was of course, Headlines Are For Humans, Titles Are For Robots. However in the Title bar at the top of the screen, note the Title of the post, Write SEO Titles For High Rankings. A version of that also appears in the URL. Check the description by viewing the source code. It’s all extra effort but a very good use of your time.

Pierre Far, in a guest post on Techipedia today asks the question, Is Social Media the Final Frontier of Marketing? Given the popularity of such activities as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, it’s clearly a question that many marketers must be asking.

As confirmation of the topicality of the question, only three days ago Business Week had a long nine page article suggesting that Social Media Will Change Your Business. A few quotes will show how Business Week is seeing all this.

Go ahead and bellyache about blogs. But you cannot afford to close your eyes to them, because they are simply the most explosive outbreak in the information world since the Internet itself. And they are going to shake up just about every business. … Given the changes barrelling down upon us, blogs are not a business elective. They are a prerequisite. And yes, that goes for us, too.

Still, blogs could end up providing the perfect response to mass media’s core concern: the splintering of its audience. Advertisers desperate to reach us need to tap niches (because we get together only once a year to watch the Super Bowl). By piggybacking on blogs, they can start working that vast blogocafé, table by table. Smart ones will get feedback, links to individuals-and their friends. That’s every marketer’s dream.

In a world chock-full of citizen publishers, we mainstream types control an ever-smaller chunk of human knowledge. Some of us will work to draw in more of what the bloggers know, vetting it, editing it, and packaging it into our closed productions. But here’s betting that we also forge ahead in the open world. The measure of success in that world is not a finished product. The winners will be those who host the very best conversations.

Overall Business Week seems to suggest that the big mainstream companies will still be the ones in control. Perhaps they’re missing the real point about social media. Pierre Far sees it in a different light.

The point is that consumers now have a more potent aggregate power: someone with a problem can now reach others with the same problem faster, build a community around this shared problem easily, and mobilize lots of people behind the common cause more efficiently. That’s what’s new: a significant leap in efficiency. This gives consumers a loud voice that companies have to listen to.

This message has been around for some time. It started with the Clue Train Manifesto in 1999. As the authors said then, As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies. If Business Week does not fully understand even now, how long will it take for the mainstream companies to realize that others are now in charge?

Related:
Business Blogging Now
Riding The Internet Tidal Wave
Smart Advertising On Cell Phones