SEOMatrix LLC Blog: Your Daily Ethical Search Engine Marketing Treats

%20 —- when you see one of those gremlins in the url string — it’s just the hex code for a space, which is not allowed in urls. Change those hexes to underscores or underlines and the problem is typically solved.

FAQ — what do you guys and Brian Ortiz at SEOMatrix do over there in 2008? — hit me with a few acronyms please —

1) organic search engine optimization (SEO / SEM)
2) website conversion rate improvement (CTR, CPM)
3) pay per click management and improvement (adwords PPC among others / quality score improvement)
4) social media optimization (SMO / SMM)
5) local search
6) reputation management and online identity management (OIM)

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…the ostensible reason for me not to expound on the term “canonicalization” is because Matt Cutts did a pretty decent job of it on his own, and wikipedia lends a hand as well. One area I wish to stress is the duplicate content issue as it relates to canonicalized urls. Using FTP clients I occassionally forget what an actual or intended home page url is – sometimes I upload index.htm files or index.html files without really giving it a second thought. I’ve also seen more than a few occassions where a given website has had up to six home pages saved on a server’s root directory- good for backup purposes in case of a hungry hi-tech gremlin — bad for search marketing and especially Googlebot — my recommendation is to perform a periodic scan of the root directory to see if there aren’t any duplicate home pages (or sub level pages for that matter) that may have been unitentionally saved with a different extension or page name. Google’s algorithm seems to be limiting the ranking possibilities of sites where they even suspect duplicate content to exist — a precaution well worth the time investment.

…not sure if it is worth the fight — but www.zodevdesign.com is toggling between #1 and #2 in Google for their keyword “architectural rendering.” Battling against the Wikis usually amounts to certain SEO death, but a steady stream of inbound linking, coupled with onsite optimization landed this target - www.seomatrix.com/robert/ was the particular optimizer on the project.

…i’ve had a few requests to differentiate between blogs and forums:

Forums are open discussion boards, usually on a wide variety of topics, that are generated by numerous posters, contributers, or members - Forums typically have moderators that can filter information at their discretion.
Blogs are usually the thoughts of an individual which are laid out in frequent, chronological posts.  The entries are ”commented” on by people reading them. Blogs are more “stream of consciousness” type journal entries.

sample blog:  http://txsasquatch.blogspot.com/
sample forum: http://www.bigfootforums.com/

New York Times:
Technology article on driving safety and wireless access

Thought this would be valuable following my last A/B Testing post:

Landing Page Optimization: Improving Conversion 50-60%

I assume Scarlett Johannson has an e-mail address. I assume she also may be internet savvy. I assume she just might have a gmail account. So, I e-mailed her - scarlettJohannson@gmail.com and scarlett.Johannson@gmail.com as well as missjohannson@gmail.com (a long shot, i know). So far, nada, zilch, zippo, no response — no “hiya” no “hehe” no avatar smiley face — nothing. What’s going on:

1) Those may not be her actual e-mail addresses
2) She may not like receiving e-mails from me
3) She may have tried to e-mail me back (went right to the spam folder of course)
4) She is on location and doesn’t have WiFi or access to an internet cafe
5) Ryan Reynolds promptly deleted the correspondence

The difficulty in deciphering her lack of engagement is similar to my A/B website testing. For those marketing newbies who aren’t familiar with Robert McNamara’s system of analysis, A/B testing is breaking down a system into individual elements to test which variables are really a decisive factor within the system (remember the grade-school correlation vs. causation logical reasoning, as well). A/B testing or split testing changes one element at a time, so as to isolate single factors or variables.

I mainly use A/B testing for two purposes:

I test web site landing pages to determine which elements are critical in marshaling a website action or conversion. I also test web site pages to discover which on-site or off-site elements may be changed to affect search engine rankings. Either way, breaking the system down, element by element, is the critical theme of my message here. If multiple variables are changed at the same time, the true measure of what caused the change is difficult to discern.

Testing for website conversions is a relative no-brainer — as long as I have a sufficient amount of data or visitor actions to analyze in a somewhat controlled environment. Testing Google’s ranking system is a bit more difficult, because the formula for ranking websites changes often (Mr. Brin doesn’t like to remain status quo for too long). Anyway, A/B testing for dynamic systems (like Google’s algorithm) can give you some information; but a significant amount of guesswork still enters the arena. I can empirically change factors one at a time and record my results… but, in the back of my mind, I will still be wondering: Was it my change that resulted in the ranking change, or was it Google’s algorithm change? The more control I have over the experiment, the more reliable and predictable (and profitable) my results become.

Google may agree with my first application of A/B testing as they created their own website optimizer www.google.com/websiteoptimizer chock full of A/B testing features. They haven’t gotten around to creating a Google organic ranking optimizer just yet, only general guidelines.
In a similar vein, Scarlett hasn’t gotten around to e-mailing me back as yet; but, before I consider any other factors involved in her lack of communication, I will check my spam folder now… and will keep everyone updated.