In the beginning, there was text

Up until the early 1990s, the web was largely text based. There was little text formatting, no images, and no structure beyond what you could achieve in a plain text document. Then in the ’90s, HTML was adopted as a way to visually format and structure text within the web browser, which lead us into the era of table-based layouts.

For those of you who never had the fortune of building websites in the ’90s, table-based layouts were the equivalent of creating an entire website using an Excel spreadsheet. Tables were never meant for anything beyond displaying tabular data, but at the time they were the only HTML element that allowed us to create horizontal layouts. For example, sidebars and multi-column layouts were made possible thanks to HTML tables. It wasn’t until the early 2000s, when CSS was adopted, that we were able to move away from hacky, table-based layouts, and take on a more semantic approach to development.

The idea behind CSS (cascading style sheets) is that the structure of a web page and its design should be kept separate. This allows us to reuse more code, making our websites faster, and also swap out styles and designs quickly and efficiently. CSS also offered us more control over visual layout and formatting. Thanks to CSS we could create the multi-column layouts (and much, much more) we are used to today, and do it in a semantic way, meaning every HTML element had a role and it should only be used for that role (i.e. tables should be used for tabular data).

This shift to semantic web development allowed us to start defining what our webpages mean through proper use of HTML, which in turn allowed computers to make more sense of our content. This was only the beginning, however, and leads us directly to HTML5.

What is HTML5?

I get asked this question a lot, and it’s a hard question to answer. Technically HTML5 is a new language specification for HTML, but many other new technologies have been thrown under the HTML5 umbrella, which has turned HTML5 into a nebulous collection of technologies rather than any one thing in particular. For those of you who remember the Web 2.0 craze, HTML5 could be considered Web 3.0.

Some of the flashier technologies included under the HTML5 umbrella allow us to do things like manipulate the user’s webcam, render creepy 3D eyeballs, and create dynamic, 3D user interfaces. While these are all amazing and groundbreaking for the web, none of them are purely “HTML5″. They are HTML5 used in conjunction with other new technologies.

So what is HTML5 then? The major contribution of HTML5, on its own, is that it allows us to further define the meaning of our content. In fact, HTML5 goes beyond meaning and allows us to define the intent of our content. Let me repeat that again, because this is the true importance of HTML5.

HTML5 allows us to define the INTENT of our content.

Not only can we define what an element on a page means (ie. this piece of content is a paragraph, or a heading, or a link to an external resource), but it allows us to define the purpose of our content. Computers don’t inherently know the difference between an “About Us” page and a blog post, or a blog post and a list of content related to said blog post. But, with HTML5, we can give computers hints. For example:

• The `<article>` element is used to specify content that is independent of the content around it, and is meant to be distributed by itself (think article or blog post).
• The `<aside>` element is used to specify content that is tangentially related to the main content (think recent or related blog posts).
• The `<nav>` element is used to specify a group of links that are used to navigate a site, as opposed to linking to resources that support the content.

If you’re still not convinced of HTML5′s importance, think of it this way: by defining what our content is, and what purpose it has, we allow search engines and possibly other, future technologies to make more sense of our content, which in turn improves content sharing, curation, and discovery in a huge, yet to be defined way. When combined with its umbrella technologies, HTML5 is the next leap in the evolution of the web and will fundamentally change how we communicate and interact with each other and our content.

Caveats

While all of this (hopefully) sounds great, not all is sunshine and rainbows when it comes to HTML5. In particular, there are two major issues that I see. The first is that the specification itself is still a work in progress. While most features have been solidified by now, some parts of the language have changed from the first drafts of the specification, or been removed entirely. The second is browser support. All modern browsers support most of the HTML5 standard, as well as a good portion of the technologies under the HTML5 umbrella. The problem, though, is 10% of the population still uses Internet Explorer 8 or 9, and we’re stuck with one foot in the past until both of these are obsolete.

Conclusion

So what’s the takeaway from all of this? The technologies associated with HTML5 are making the our content more dynamic and interactive, and are essentially improving the user experience of the web. The new HTML specification, on the other hand, is the scaffold. It provides more robust structure and organization. It is the means by which we classify the flora and the fauna of the web. New HTML elements may seem trivial, but the ability to better define our thoughts, content, and architecture improves our ability to connect and share content.

The post Why HTML5 is, like, REALLY IMPORTANT appeared first on Portent.

Wrong. That’s the kind of handoff that sends everything swirling down the potty. There’s a right way to do handoffs. I did a SlideShare about how I approach handoffs. Have a look:

As always, this is just my thinking on the subject, and I’m not a business process expert. I’m just a guy who’s seen all manner of business horrors.

The post How to: Hand off a task appeared first on Portent.

How do I set it up?

Easy! Google will automatically transition all eligible local phone numbers where available. According to Google, there will be some cases where local Google forwarding numbers are not available for your specific area code. In these cases, ads will get assigned a number with an area code for the geographic region your business is in or a toll-free forwarding number.

Who should give it a try?

This is a great new feature for all local advertisers that rely heavily on phone calls for business and do not have internal call tracking software. With local call forwarding, you will now be able to utilize the free call tracking already built into AdWords without sacrificing benefits gained from having a more appealing local number.

The only real drawback that still persists is that the number displayed in the search engine results still will not be your own. It will still be a Google generated number that forwards calls to your real number, which some advertisers might not like. Regardless, this is a step towards more localized SERPs, which is a good thing.

As mentioned, this feature is set to roll out early November 2014. Keep an eye out for it and let us know what you think.

The post Google to Localize Call Extensions. Hurrah? appeared first on Portent.

Rooting out the bad links can be exhausting, but it’s part of the job. It has to get done so we can do awesome stuff with the good link building without hindrance. Using heuristics for qualitative and metrics from quantitative, I know, on average, whether a link is worth keeping in less than ten seconds; if I have to look at the code, it takes a little longer. There are going to be loads of almosts, mights, and should’a would’a could’a because every site has a different link profile. There are so many “depends” that go into it that it is crucial to take your own site’s history into mind. That being said, these methods should work for finding the domains causing your link-related woes.

Porn, When Your Links Are Showing Too Much

If your site isn’t in the porn industry, you probably don’t want porn links. I have yet to see a case where it made sense. Whenever you have porn links, use your imagination on words to search for in your link data. A good starting point is looking for “xx” or “xxx.” These are used frequently in domain names, titles, and URLs. Other terms are related to body parts and genres of adult entertainment. The hardest part, well, if you’re at work, is spot checking these links. Considering these types of sites aren’t safe for the majority of work environments, I recommend making the window as small as possible so that you can review it. If you’re on a Windows machine, I use the mouse over preview. You’ll be able to comprehend a site’s content real fast based on even a thumbnail-sized image. Sometimes, you will be surprised that a site isn’t pornographic, so the occasional spot check is still suggested when uncertain.

Pills, Not What the Link Doctor Ordered

“Viagra,” “Cialis,” and any other medicine you might take for extremely personal reasons are the normal suspects. The pill names, other than the big brands, are long words and medical sounding. Review the anchor text, URLs, domains, and anywhere you can apply filters to look for the bad words. You want these links gone, and I have not seen a situation where you’d want pill links yet. Maybe, they’ll be okay if you have pharma clients.

Gambling, the House Always Wins

Gambling can be a fun activity, but I really don’t think gambling with your link profile with these types of links is worth it. Common trigger words to look for are “poker,” “casino,” and “gambl.” Gambling links normally show up as a sidebar sitewide link or as an advertisement. In general, they don’t represent as large of a problem as porn and pills, and only pop up from time to time. That being said, gambling links still produce problems in search results and should be deleted.

ccTLDs, the Bottom Level of Linking Domains

The TLD is an easy method of picking out poor links. My favorites are .pl, .ru, and .br. They have been the worst offenders in the past. If you see a pattern of a specific TLD pointing bad links to your site, check them out. Unless your business is international and frequently deals in those other languages, the linking sites might be up to no good in your neighborhood.

Hidden Links

Have you selected all on a webpage recently? People are STILL trying to hide links with white text. Unbelievable! These have to go, and selecting everything on the page is a simple way to find the “white-out” links.

What about when the link is there but you can’t see it? Off to the code with you! Press F12 or CTRL+U to start searching for the link. Once you find the ahref, inspect the element on the page to identify where the bugger is hidden. There shouldn’t be too many of these, but when they exist, they are vile because they are time consuming to find. The positive side of this is that most of the “hidden in the code like a ninja” links are sitewide, so you get to bust a whole bunch at once.

The Blank Slate Blog

There are several telltale signs of a blank slate blog: generic, starter WordPress theme (often, still on a WordPress subdomain), no blog comments, spun content (does not make sense when read), no internal links, bulk content uploads on the same day, exact-match domains (EMDs), excessive advertising, and no social profile links. It takes a only ten or so seconds to complete a quick scan on the content to look for these clues. When boxes aren’t checked, the game is afoot; the blog is not being updated, stinks, or is part of a network – all good reasons to remove and disavow those links.

Farming, Not Grassfed, Natural, Organic Links

The number of external links on a page can be an indicator of whether the page is good or not. We’ve seen classic examples of link farms. It’s hard to put a number on “how many is too many” because the site might have poor optimization and their navigation is full of junk. Tell you what though, 1,000 is excessive. If there are more links than text words on the page, something is going on that requires a closer look.

Quantitatively Speaking

Quantitative is much simpler. Utilizing link data from whatever tool you’re using (note: use as many of them as possible and always include Google Webmaster Tools data), apply rules and automatically weed out links that shouldn’t make the cut. Because each site has a different profile, it is better to work on the rule of averages for the links you have. For example, if your average domain authority is 52, start cutting sites below 15 rather than 30. Here are my metric preferences to use:

• * Domain Authority (Open Site Explorer): a link-based score on the predicted strength of a website in the search results.
  * Number of Linking Root Domains (ahrefs, Majestic, Open Site Explorer)
  * Trust Flow (Majestic): a link-based score on the predicted strength of a website’s trustworthiness in the search results.
  * Citation Flow (Majestic): a link-based score on the predicted strength of a website in the search results.
  * Domain Count (Excel): the count of external links coming from a domain.
  * Anchor Text Count (Excel): the count of specific linking keywords.

Other Time Saving Tips

Think at a Domain Level

Typically, if a link on a page stinks, the rest of the domain stinks, and there are hardly any reasons to look at any other pages linking to your site. You should be disavowing at a domain level for almost all of the problem links, so this can save a considerable amount of time.

Remove the Limb to Save the Body

If your website is under a Google link-related penalty, you need to prepare for the worst. Depending on your history, you might have to get rid of nearly every link to prove your worthiness to the powers that be.

Always Be Learnin’

Once you’ve wrapped up discovering as many bad links as you can find, it is time to work on link removal and the disavow file. Link removal is absolutely necessary, if you are working under a Google penalty, so that you can show your work when requesting a review. If your link profile review work is preventive, you can skip to the disavow file and upload proactively. Remember, work as much as you can at the domain level; this is especially true in the disavow file.

These are my go-to favorites when vetting links for their removal and ultimate demise. Have any of your own that you’d like to contribute? I’d love to hear about how you find the bad ilk.

The post How I Know Which of Your Links Are Bad – Link Profile Review Tips appeared first on Portent.

Growing up as a camper, then a camp counselor, and now a trainer of counselors has taught me many lessons.  The parallels of working with sixth grade campers to working with marketing professionals are more than I care to admit.

One of the things I loved at Camp was that we started off each morning with a “Big Idea”.  It was a concept that we wanted everyone to consider throughout that day.  It could be a reminder of our broader natural environment, but it most often had to do with the relationships that were quickly forming.

Today, I have not put down the clipboard.  As a member of the Executive Team at Portent, I share in the great responsibility of helping our company move forward and grow. (Frankly, it’s one of the coolest jobs I’ve ever had – more on that another time).  Recently, we closed the office to hold an all-company retreat.  I sat in the back of the room and watch my colleagues share their ideas for an “ideal agency”.  The activity sparked for me an idea that pulls Camp right into our working life… the concept of The Big Idea for our agency.

Please let me introduce this concept:

• The Big Idea is one single thought for our whole organization to consider together.
• Big Ideas should not be actionable, as in a programmatic “ask” of folks to DO anything other than to discuss and consider implementing.
• Big Ideas are more about people than about service lines or offerings.  They are meant to drive culture and simpatico for a bigger mission.
• Big Ideas can evolve into bigger initiatives, a vision, or even full-time roles that support the concept, but that is not the motive.
• Big Ideas should be iterative and renewed regularly.  (We’ll do it monthly)
• A Big Idea shouldn’t have any barriers to entry such as budget or authority to implement.
• Most importantly, Big Ideas are shared to inspire people.

 Disclaimer

These are truly the Big Ideas we are sparking at Portent.  They will be honest and transparent, which may reveal more than we would normally would about what’s not working behind our doors.  But we believe that by sharing what we are talking about internally, that we will build a community of supporters who will contribute to our agency transformation.

Our Commitment

This will be a series of posts that we will issue as a memo to our teams first, and then here on the Portent blog.  Our Executive Team will all contribute to these Big Ideas – but it won’t stop there.  Anyone at Portent, or any of our clients who wish to contribute, are welcome to offer a Big Idea.  Our aim is clear: to crowd-source inspiration.  With that, join me in this journey of consideration and “the camp spirit”.

The Big Idea #1: “We All Come With Positive Intent”

So often we are quick to blame and judge.  “She did a terrible job on the monthly report, I don’t know if she’s committed.”  “He really bobbled that client call, should he be in this role?”  It’s natural for us to go to that negative place of distrust when we are unsatisfied with our peers’ performance.  We are too often focused on the effect that someone’s action (or inaction) has on us. But consider, rather, a person’s intent.

“Positive Intent” simply means that someone’s innate intentions are to achieve the most positive result.  Applied here at Portent, we know folks are not out to miss deadlines, or let down teammates with less-than-epic performance.  Leaders aren’t trying to cause confusion nor stress.  We know things happen.  There are external distractions to weigh (e.g. life) or our team member may have a skills gap.  There may also be anxieties or emotional cues interrupting success, especially if a relationship is built on distrust. Communication styles and priorities may differ.  But the concept of “prove first, trust second” is what we are challenging this month.

If we believe from the start that our peers will under-achieve or that they have ulterior motives, it’s certain to taint our interaction.  However, if we come into the room with the belief that they have the intention of success, our relationships dramatically change shape.  Bonds are built in the trenches of empathy and a shared goal.  This is where transformation and creativity take place.

Beyond that, we want Portent to foster a culture of belief in possibility. A place where people are admired for what they do bring, not what they lack.  Let’s build these walls with brick and mortar from our own positive intentions. Because, frankly, we will make a get-through-the-trenches-worthy workplace.

This is no easy task.  Let’s be mindful this month to, first, switch our mental default to a positive resting place.  Then, realize that others are all doing the same.  Hopefully our habits (and relationships) will start to change, fortified by trust.

TL;DR Big Idea #1: Participate in relationships believing that others are coming with Positive Intent first, and let us bring Positive Intent to the forefront of our own actions.

The post The Big Idea (a Camp Counselor’s Guide to Inspiration at Portent) appeared first on Portent.

We won! Best SEO Campaign of 2014. Allow me to wax philosophical for a second:

My team constantly teaches me new stuff. Their skills and approach are a constant inspiration, and I can’t say it enough times: It’s such an honor to get to work with this team. Every day, through ups and downs (and ups again).

So when Portent got nominated for five Search Awards, I was pretty dang proud, and a wave of high fives traveled through the office.

When we won the Best SEO Campaign of 2014, though, I was overjoyed. In addition to celebrating Ken Colborn, the primary SEO Specialist on this project, I want to point out our entire team’s efforts. Marketing campaigns only succeed with collaboration. Everyone at Portent helps with these projects: Project managers, account managers, content folks, technical and UX SEOs, offsite and social. Everyone.

Thanks folks. You earned this one.

The post Search Awards 2014 – Best SEO Campaign appeared first on Portent.

While bidding on the branded terms of your competitors is not an innovative practice, poor execution is something we see over and over again. Poor execution when buying on your competitor’s brand names is a terrific way to flush your ROAS down the drain.

When looking to go after this type of paid traffic, it is important to look at two sides of the paid search user journey- first, your account and campaign setup as the advertiser, and secondly, the experience visitors are taken through on your website after clicking your ad. Tying those two pieces together is your best chance for success when advertising on your competitor’s branded search terms.

Below are six actionable tips to implement immediately when bidding on competitor brand terms:

First, we will start in your PPC account.

1. Dedicate a specific budget

Set aside a portion of your account budget dedicated just for generating traffic from the brand names of your competitors.

When assigning this budget, go ahead and throw away your last-click attribution model and account-wide performance metrics— these types of campaigns typically convert at much lower rates than other traditional paid search ventures.

2. Separate competitor brands into individual campaigns

Search volumes are going to vary depending on the size discrepancy of your competition. If you set up one campaign to hold all competitor keywords, the competitors with the highest search volume will end up spending the highest portion of your campaign budget. Your largest and most searched for competitor should not necessarily dictate that they are your most important competitor.

To give those less searched for yet still important competitors a chance to have their customer base captured, segment each competitor into its own campaign to ensure your budget is spent under your control.

3. Customize ad copy

Find a way to make a connection between the users search query and your ad. It goes along with that whole relevance thing. Just because you are in the same industry as your competitor, a searcher may not know that and may have never heard of your company. This is your first chance to introduce yourself and create a connection between your company and your competitor.

Wading through the waters of Google’s trademark policy can be tricky when potentially dealing with trademarked brand names.

Finding a clever way to incorporate both your brand name and your competitor’s into an ad can position yourself for a huge win, leading to strong click through rates.

Once a user clicks on an ad, we must shift our attention to landing page experience.

4. Solidify a connection between your company and your competitor

Once a user hits your landing page, solidify the bridge between you and the specific competitor that user was searching for. Your visitor is familiar enough with your competition to search for their brand name- they probably know that competitor’s product line and the need it fulfills. Your ad created the connection for them, your landing page should drive home that connection.

5. Directly highlight why you are better

You know your product. You should know your competitor’s product. Now speak directly to why you are better. You have to convince a visitor who had the intent of learning about an alternative solution that you are the best option. Directly call out what you do better than a given competitor.
In an ideal world, set up an individual landing page designed around each competitor you plan on competing directly with.

6. Funnel to a soft conversion

Once your ad is clicked on, a connection is made, and persuasive messaging compels a visitor, look to convert them through a soft conversion. Free trials, whitepaper downloads, and free product samples are good ways to do this.

Provide great value to them at no charge— that can motivate visitors back to your core offerings, which is where you collect revenue and tie back value with your paid ads.

By following these six actionable tips, you can begin driving value on your competitor-based paid search terms.

What techniques have you used to drive value when bidding on competitor branded search terms?

The post Six Ways to Win on your Competitor’s Branded Keywords appeared first on Portent.

Google rolls out custom affinity audiences ad tool for targeting very specific groups of people

We’ve been researching this for a few years now. We started showing our results when I babbled about random affinities and such a few years back at MozCon. Right now Google is discussing this in terms of paid ads, but I strongly suggest getting in line with best practices on the organic and social side. There’s one crucial action to take:

Clearly define relationships between content

1. Mark up products, etc. Use related to in your product info.
2. Link articles to related material using, well, links.
3. But also use is based on.
4. Mark up reviews.
5. Make sure you’re doing it right using the Google Structured Data Testing Tool.
6. Use OGP, because it can’t hurt.

Oh, and read carefully between the lines when Google says, “we don’t need authorship anymore.”

In the past, we’ve learned that “we don’t need” is very different from “it won’t help.” I’m not a conspiracy theorist — Google isn’t just messing with us (well, I prefer not to think so) — but they have a lot of different issues to juggle, from spammers to search quality to resources. Keep using this stuff.

It’s just smart

Even if I’m 100% completely utterly wrong, these are the right things to do. They help with SEO. They help with social. They future-proof your content. And, they’ll make you the talk of the town at every nerd party. These steps take very little time. Go do ‘em.

Read a bit more

A few points of clarification, and why we’ve seen this coming for a while. If you want to read how I think this came about, read these bits:

All about dispersed citation

My Whiteboard Friday about random affinities: The IdeaGraph

And my YouMoz article: Growing Your Audience With Random Affinities

Where it’s all going

I can’t say “HELL YES WE NAILED IT BABY THIS IS WHY WE’RE CALLED PORTENT!!!!!” I’m sure Google is taking this in other directions. They’re only talking about this in the context of paid advertising.

But if you look at the Knowledge Graph, In-Depth Articles and other developments, you can see Google, Facebook and others are in a race to connect ideas using more than words and links. And everything we need to do to capitalize makes sense, anyway.

Like always, if you help Google achieve their goal, they’ll return the favor. Make relevance measurement easier, and they rank you. Make random affinities detection easier, and that will probably pay off, too. It’s up to you.

The post Google Custom Affinities Is Here: What You Should Do appeared first on Portent.

With the multitude of phones, tablets, phablets, fondleslabs, and other devices on the market, it can be difficult to determine whether or not your new responsive web site is actually responsive. Unless you have a lot of cash to blow on every mobile device that exists, you are probably going to want to use a variety of emulators, applications, and browser tricks to test your responsive design.

Within the browser

If you just want a super quick overview of what your site looks like in various screen sizes, you can type in your site’s URL in one of the many responsive web design testing tools. However if you are developing the website yourself or doing more extensive testing, you may want to get a little more involved.

When I first start development on a responsive project, I mainly do my testing within Google Chrome. There are a couple of browser extensions you can use to aid in this process. The first is called ‘Window Resizer’.

Window Resizer adds a handy button to your Google Chrome toolbar that allows you to choose between a few predetermined breakpoints such as iPhone, Windows Phone, iPad, Desktop etc. After installing the extension, simply go to your website URL and choose a breakpoint from the list of options. Once you click a breakpoint, the browser window will automatically resize itself to that particular dimension. There’s even a way to easily add your own preset screen sizes. As you drag the corner of the window, Window Resizer will tell you the exact pixel width and height of your browser window.

Window Resize

Since I have installed dozens of extensions in Google Chrome, it can sometimes be difficult to resize the window below certain dimensions. The menu bar only contracts so much. That’s why I also installed an extension called ‘Open as Pop-up‘. Clicking this simple button will, as you can probably guess, open the current tab in a popup window, without the address bar and other things cluttering up your screen. If you really want to get fancy, you can install another extension that hides Google Chrome’s scrollbars, giving you an unadulterated view of your design. I like the extension called ‘No Scrollbars Please!‘.

iOS Simulator

Since Apple products are some of the most ubiquitous devices on the planet, it might be in your best interest to make sure your website works on iPhone & iPad. If you develop on a Mac, the easiest way to do this is with the Apple developer tools.

The first thing you need to do is make sure you have Xcode installed. Once you have that you can select Open Developer Tool > iOS Simulator from Xcode’s main menu. The iOS simulator provides you with emulators for iPhone and iPad in various resolutions. Simply select the device you want to emulate from the Hardware > Device Menu. Open up the Safari app and type in your website’s address to see exactly what your website looks like on an iPhone. It even allows you to switch between landscape and portrait mode, simulate shake gesture, and more. If you’re developing a responsive website, the iOS simulator is essential. But what if you don’t develop on a Mac?

Browser Stack

Browser Stack is an amazing service that allows you to spin up remote machines using whatever OS and web browser you desire. BrowserStack uses real desktop browsers, not emulators or virtualization, for the most accurate testing possible. Just take a look at the vast array of browsers they support. This means that if you use Windows, you can test on Mac, and vice versa.

BrowserStack even allows for local testing via a secure connection, allowing you to test as you develop locally. The only downside to the service is that connecting to the remote machines is sometimes slow, and you don’t have any control over the remote system. BrowserStack also requires a monthly subscription.

Virtual Box

Normally if you want to run IE on your Mac, you would have to either dual-boot (which can be time consuming), run something like Parallels (which can be expensive) or use something like Wine (which can be buggy). Virtual Box is a powerful open-source virtualization tool that allows you to run a virtual machine right on top of your desktop without a license key. I tried installing ie9 on my Mac, and it downloaded and installed in minutes.

Virtual box Running WIndows 7 on my Mac

Adobe Edge Inspect

Edge Inspect allows you to wirelessly synchronize your mobile devices with your desktop. As you browse your website on your desktop, the paired device will automatically update, allowing you to preview both devices at once. Edge Inspect even supports localhost so you can test while you develop. Obviously Adobe Edge Inspect will always provide you with the most accurate test results, as you are testing on the actual device, and not in an emulator, virtual machine, or plug-in.

As you can see, there are a variety of options for testing your responsive design without breaking the bank. The only method I’ve mentioned that costs money is the BrowserStack subscription. If you are a web developer or if you just want to make sure your website is working correctly, the above methods should have you covered. What do you use to test your responsive designs? Let us know in the comments section.

The post How to Test Responsive Web Design appeared first on Portent.

For me, gaming the algorithm means finding the fine edge between legitimate and spam, and skating that edge.

The high-minded ideas don’t spring forth from my buttocks, fully-formed. I don’t have some moral objection to testing the limits of Google, Facebook and others. This is about smart application of resources.

I’ve developed my own decision-making algorithm to answer “Should I try to game the algorithms?”:

1. Research tricky tactic
2. If brain effort to use tricky tactic >= effort to do something legitimate, do the legitimate thing
3. If unsure, default to legitimate thing

That’s worked pretty well so far.

Have a look inside my geek brain. I feed these kinds of questions through my personal algo every day. Here are the answers I invariably get:

Search

I just did a search for ‘beat Google’ and got 160,000 results. They’re not popular. You need to decide: From 9-5, are you a revolutionary, or a marketer?

Algorithm: Google Panda

Question: How much do I have to change this paragraph/sentence/page to make Google think it’s unique?

Answer: If you’re asking, you’re already in trouble. Google’s getting better and better at examining content structure and meaning. At this point, your only guarantee is to completely re-order and rewrite your content. It’s easier to write something new. And, in an infinitely-large universe, there are plenty of related articles you can write on a topic. So do that, instead.

Effort level to rewrite content just enough: 7/10
Effort level to just write new stuff: 5/10

Algorithm: Google Penguin

Question: All these other sites buy links. Why can’t I?

Answer: Google dedicates massive amounts of computing power to finding artificial link schemes. They miss a lot of them. For a while. But they’re using NSA-dwarfing data processing oomph to hunt ‘em down, and nothing is forever. Consider yourself a pebble under a steamroller. The odds are very, very much against you.

Effort level to acquire links and not get caught, forever: 10/10
Effort level to not get banned by Google: 0/10

Algorithm: Google Hummingbird

Question: How many times should I repeat the keyword?

Answer: Google’s getting better and better at tracking keyword co-occurrence and semantic matching. Use it to your advantage, and write decent copy.

Effort level to shoehorn keywords into place: 9/10
Effort level to write content that doesn’t make my eyes bleed: 7/10

What’s it all mean? Search engines are applying mind-boggling resources to close algorithmic loopholes. The border between legit and spam keeps moving to catch more spam. Faking it has a very short lifespan. Don’t do it.

Social

A search for “Facebook rank” got me 155 million results. All of those people are spending time pursuing magic formulas. That gives you a lot of room to do it right, and kick their collective rears.

Algorithm: Facebook EdgeRank

(actually, not EdgeRank any more, but I have no other name)

Question: How many likes do I need?

Answer: It depends. On Facebook, there are now 100k or more factors that determine what appears and what doesn’t. Who the hell knows what those factors are. Relationships, velocity, time decay, interests, ad clicks, average freckle count…? I have no idea. If you want to game the algorithm, aim for lots of likes by real users with broad influence. But that sounds an awful lot like marketing to me.

Effort level to acquire likes that look legitimate: 7/10
Effort level to acquire legitimate likes: 7/10

Algorithm: Various

Question: Can’t I just buy followers and views?

Answer: Of course. Fiverr is a great market for such things. But YouTube sure doesn’t like it. On Facebook, it’ll actually hurt you, since their algorithm includes user behavior. Users who loll about doing nothing show up as uninterested. You want 40,000 uninterested users feeding into your post rankings? Be my guest.

Effort level to acquire buy enough YouTube views to rank and never get busted: 13/10
Effort level to acquire legitimate views: 2/10

Algorithm: Readers’ brains

Question: Can’t I just pay people to re-tweet my articles, or somehow force them to like the article before they read? Won’t that help me look legit?

Answer: Yes, but is it sustainable? People get tired of ‘like gates’ pretty quickly. And getting a bajillion re-tweets on one article won’t help the next if the re-tweeters are sitting in a room somewhere, using 200 fake accounts.

Effort level to fake popularity, forever: 10/10
Effort level to build popularity, forever: 10/10

What’s it all mean? The algorithms behind social media are so complex you’re better off trying to decipher the human brain. Which, of course, is what social media companies are really trying to do. If you’ve figured it out, stop doing marketing, build a bunker, then build an army of intelligent machines and take over the world. Anything else is a waste of time.

Apply your nerd-fu wisely

Instead of gaming algorithms, apply scientific-ness to legitimate methods:

• Smart, targeted content promotion
• Maximizing crawl visibility and performance
• Testing the crap out of everything
• Keeping a log of everything
• Getting content performance down to a science

We all have a choice: Use our brains to game the system for short-term gain, or use our brains to measure and improve serious, long-term marketing strategies.

You want to game the system? Go for it. I will not judge. But there are better ways to use your time. Think about it.

Pssst. I wrote a book about strategy. Buy it on Amazon.

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