Tuesday, February 05, 2008
SEO - Duplicate Content, when employees blog...
A recent email from a client asked about handling duplicate content:I know that having duplicate copy is bad but I'm wondering if I can get away with two things:
1. One of our high-tech gurus wants to update his personal blog and have me copy or syndicate the post on our company blog. I have added links and for key words I change his spelling. Will Google ding us if I copy the content of his blog?
2. I would like to set up a wordpress blog and use the copy from our company blog to feed it. My thought is that a blog hosted outside of our website and linked extensively might help us. However, this might cause us problems if Google dings for repeat content issues.
Metrist response:
Suppose we look this question from Google's point of view? They don't want to end up with the same article showing up multiple times on a search engine results page.
By the same token, you will dilute the effectiveness of your linking strategy if you publish the same material in several places. If I'm a blogger and I want to link to your story, to whom should I link? You end up with your own pages being spoilers for building link strength.
While it may be a good idea to utilize the community benefits of publishing on WordPress (or Blogger, etc.), you can get the same effect by putting your corporate blog articles on an RSS Feed from Feedburner, with strong headlines and good relevant meta tags. We have a couple of clients using Feedburner and they were very satisfied with the results. Their content got blogged faster and more often than before.
The issue of your Guru's personal blog + corporate presence is potentially problematic. Ultimately, I'd recommend that it work like Matt Cutts, from Google. He's a Google Employee who blogs independently. Occasionally the Google webmaster blog
Now, it turned out that Matt Cutts weighed in on duplicate content SEO
I often get questions from whitehat sites who are worried that they might receive duplicate content penalties because they have the same article in different formats ( e.g. a paginated version and a printer-ready version). While it’s helpful to try to pick one of those articles and exclude the other version from indexing, typically a whitehat site doesn’t neet to worry about 1-3 versions of an article on their own site. However, I would be mindful that taking all your articles and submitting them for syndication all over the place can make it more difficult to determine how much the site wrote its own content vs. just used syndicated content. My advice would be 1) to avoid over-syndicating the articles that you write, and 2) if you do syndicate content, make sure that you include a link to the original content. That will help ensure that the original content has more PageRank, which will aid in picking the best documents in our index.
We use additional heuristics of course, but I figured other people might want to hear that take.
Labels: duplicate content, seo
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Google Analytics sponsors Web Analytics Wednesday in Chicago in February
Web Analytics Wednesday in Chicago, which my esteemed colleague Avery Cohen has been organizing since 2006, has a special sponsor, Google, in February. WAW-Chi is always a lively discussion, and we you to join us (use the link above).
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Making a (small) killing from killer web apps
ZDNet's Phil Wainewright claims that Amazon DevPay hasn't had the attention it deserves. In How to really make money with Web 2.0 he asserts that DevPay will have a similar impact on real economics (as opposed to startup valuation economics) for online applications as Google AdSense has for online content.
As end users of online apps, not advertisers, are making the micropayments, this still requires that the end users sign on to the micropayment system. However, Amazon has the largest customer base of the online world already in automated 1-click mode, the closest anyone on the Internet has come to the electric or gas company metering model, so Wainewright may have a point. As always, time will tell. He does make the interesting point that most entrepreneurs have focused on capital payoffs rather than revenue streams, so a well-subscribed micropayment mechanism may shift the economics of Web 2.0.Wednesday, January 16, 2008
2008 Technology Forecast
MIT – Enterprise Forum and Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center
Chicago, January 15, 2008The panelists covered four areas of technology:
Energy and sustainability: Adam Cohen, Deputy Associate Laboratory Director for Physical Sciences at Argonne National Laboratory
Medical Technology : Linette Demers, Senior Consultant for Sg2
Mobile Technology : Thomas Lee, Vice President, New Product Development for U.S. Cellular
Information Technology : Armando Pauker, Apex Venture Partners
Moderator : David Weinstein, Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center
1. ENERGY AND SUSTAINABILITY
Adam Cohen provided a “whirlwind tour” of Energy Technology (with a nod to sustainability). Tech focus will be on “Green Energy” – Energy sources and uses with low impact on the environment.
Energy demand will increase two to three times in the next 25-50 years. 85% of energy use is fossil fuels. We have three strategies available: 1) Generate more energy, 2) Use more from green sources and 3) use less energy (we will move quickly from fluorescent to LED light bulbs).
His forecast: Globally, we will use more electricity and we will move away from fossil fuel.
Energy Sector forecast for the near-term:
- Solar is still ripe for small manufacturers.
- Nuclear will be big, but takes time to get online.
- “Clean” Coal – Carbon capture and sequestration will be future generation low emissions coal plants
- Solid Oxide fuel cells, starting with natural gas and developing toward hydrogen.
Other energy sources are small impact, including wind and water. Real long term: hydrogen power in 50 years, fusion also in 50 years, high temperature superconductors (HTS) a little sooner.
2. MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY
Linette Demers, SG2, Healthcare technology strategy consultants, primarily for hospital groups. Her talk was “Emerging Technologies in Healthcare.” The theme was “Smart Growth in Healthcare”.
Primary growth force is the cost of care. Hospitals are focusing on Workflow Productivity. This is a shift from the past, when they focused on “boxes” – expensive imaging equipment. Now that everybody has the “boxes”, the payments from Insurance and Government are going down. On the other hand, proton beam therapy accelerators for cancer treatment are being used more because insurance pays.
Government and Insurance is looking for cost effectiveness. Technology and medical treatment don’t always make a difference. Examples of include use of Stents for heart patients and Back Surgery. They don’t make a difference after a year or two.
Not that technology can’t help; there are some potentially disruptive technologies on the horizon that will displace conventional tools or technicians. In the short term these include:
- Non-invasive diagnostics replacing imaging
- Incisionless surgery, especially for cancer and gastro-intestinal ailments
- Vaccines – new disease models
- Molecular diagnostics and regenerative therapies
- Global workforce and telesurgery
- Mobile technology for monitoring patients
3. MOBILE TECHNOLOGY
Tom Lee from U.S. Cellular Marketing, the sixth largest carrier. He has a constant exposure to new product opportunities – he’s always being pitched. He stands at a nexus of new consumer technology. They are looking for areas of customer need and relevant technology.
How he judges fitness of those pitches:
- The customer experience, willingness to pay for that experience and the potential for new markets.
- Industry Ecosystem to support
- Needs best met other by platforms other than PC’s and Laptops
- Probability to launch in 2 to 5 years.
The customer experience: Will this make my life easier or more convenient. Examples: Phone with bar code, RFID reader. Integrate mobile information with lifestyle; Google wants to be the “broker” of my personal profile. They will make my life easier or better in exchange for profit resulting from facilitating the exchange of my personal profile data.
Ecosystem will support ubiquitous connectivity to the Internet. For example, this could benefit people who require medical monitoring.
Information Discoverability: finding information that is relevant to me “here and now”. To do this successfully, device interfaces need to improve. The interface needs to be seamless with the user context. (I really like this as it echoes what we have learned from SEO/SEM work over the past two years).
Mobile advertising is a frontier. Carriers want dollars from advertising support. Nobody has worked out how to make it relevant and accessible -- the seamless user experience.
4. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Armando Pauker from Apex Venture. He was in Silicon Vally and in 2000 joined Apex. He discussed Information Technology trends.
- The rise of eco-efficient IT. Influence corporate energy and carbon consumption, track and manage consumption for the enterprise.
- Widening of the Wireless World. Protocols are not converging.
- User Generated Content. Social networks to go local, we may finally see micropayment systems for authors and service providers. SOA and AJAX, add value and generate capabilities to create and design customer software and collaborative communities on demand.
- Security continues to be a concern. Privacy has a large dollar exposure, there is more connectivity, and there is a need for collaborative security to fight fraud, phishing, and “day Zero” attacks.
- On-demand computing and Virtualization
- Innovative video conferencing services (I don’t know why this got its own bullet-point beyond collaborative, but I’m just reporting here.)
From the Business Model and Venture Capital side, Pauker identified some interesting trends:
- Globalization of Production and Consumption. Non-US markets are driving global growth and creating a need for global finance.
- M&A will continue. Big companies are lagging global growth. There’s increased commoditization and goods and services become commoditized more rapidly. Customers want to deal with fewer vendors.
- Business Models will continue to develop: Open Source and Outsourcing, Low-cost self-service, Software as a Service (SaaS) and Virtualization will disrupt traditional IT licensing models. Consumer advertising supported business will saturate in a weak economy.
- The Individual will have a profound influence, with many conflicts to be resolved: Privacy concerns vs. Social Networks, Always connected vs. need for personal down time. From the consumer side: technology products for aging boomers, merging cellular, RFID and GPS functionality – monitor your vital signs and transmit to your doctor or hospital.
5. FINANCIAL SERVICES in Chicago
As a bonus, David Weinstein talked about how he is seeing a lot of new IT being applied locally in the Financial Services area. Talk of a new exchange that will be completely automated trading, enhanced tools for investors (OptionCity), Access-based technology with low latency to markets, Back office technology for clearing efficiencies. He described what he sees as a lot of “deal flow”.
6. Q & A after the presentations
The first question had to do with the effects of an overall economic slowdown. Everyone responded and said that any innovation in the short term would have to be focused on payback over investment. Hospitals will focus more on workflow efficiencies and better utilization of current investments. In energy, LED lights, small-scale solar have the possibility of short-term payback. Mobile carriers may focus more on acquisition and retention over risky new technology features.
A diabetic guy with nine toes complained about hospital workflows and asked why the healthcare system doesn’t focus on prevention and preventative medicine. The response was that prevention doesn’t make hospitals money, and insurance companies profit based on managing expenditures, so prevention needs to be a matter of public policy.
As far as IT and Healthcare, healthcare records management and the adoption of electronic health records is critical to efficiency of operations, so it will happen. However, there is resistance to change and the cost of technology is to the doctors so there’s only 10% adoption currently. Healthcare organizations can subsidize the transition. Another issue is that the information isn’t transactional or interactive to the patient.
Where will we see the impact of genetic analysis for the replacement of current tests or drugs? Diagnostics has quick adoption but not high value for reimbursement. However, one example: study showed that a $200 test for breast cancer was so effective and created so much savings that they were able to get approved for a $ 3,500 reimbursement.
In response to energy questions, Argon’s Cohen said that he expects Ethanol to shift away from corn and toward cellulosic ethanol which is more efficient. He also sees nuclear as the inevitable future – 200% increase worldwide, but it takes 4 to 8 years to bring online. Stick around another 50 years to see commercial fusion power.
Labels: chicago, events, MIT-EF, technology forecast
Monday, January 07, 2008
Google is Up, but Don't Count Yahoo Out
AdAge's Digital editor Abbey Klaassen, dubbed a CES "non-booth-babe" today by Gizmodo (eyes on the technology, guys), noted recently that Google's search share was still increasing at Yahoo, algorithm-touting Ask.com, and others' expense (subscription to AdAge required to see the entire article).
That may be, but here is something I've I noticed for many of my content clients: Yahoo is in many cases the biggest referrer of current content. Many use Google as a spell-checking address box, typing the site name or variant there rather than using their browser's address box, and those "non-search searches" represent a large volume of Google referrals. My takeaway: don't dismiss Yahoo, for as unhip as it seems to be, it is still a strong potential source of referrals.
Is anyone else seeing similar referral patterns?
Labels: Abbey Klaassen, ask.com, Google, Organic search, Yahoo
Saturday, December 15, 2007
SEM and CAM as R&D
A powerful but, I think, underappreciated benefit of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) along with the subset of Content Ad Marketing (CAM) is that it provides an incredibly inexpensive means of fine-tuning Marketing Research and Development, from strategic to tactical marketing purposes.
SEM and CAM deliver copy-testing and concept testing at rapid turnaround and low cost. Copy-testing through a set of tuning cycles gives marketers an opportunity to eliminate the lowest-performing semantic groups while simultaneously determining how to most effectively fund the highest-performing semantic groups.
Metrist Steps Up:
Every year, half, or quarter, take four weeks to test adjacencies to your programs and extensions appropriate for new offerings. The nature of SEM pushes us to test alternative landing page language and formats. Use those findings to extend the highest performing groups by testing other semantic groups and to drop poor performers.
It seems in one sense non-sense that one should divert marketing funds from what's already shown to be a good program to something unproven and even a bit dodgy, but SEM gives a low-cost, high-speed tool for testing new ideas.
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Everything is Miscellaneous: David Weinberger on Embracing the Chaos
David Weinberger, co-author of "The Cluetrain Manifesto", spoke at Mobium Creative's Big Frontier event on Monday. His new book is "Everything is Miscellaneous". Weinberger says he has an ongoing debate with Andrew Keen, the last speaker at Mobium's Big Frontier series.
Summary:
Everything is being digitized. By "everything", he means all information. All of the books, photographs, maps, music and movies in the history of the world. And throughout the history of the world, people have tried to manage this data using various categorization schemes. And every one of these categories contains a "Misc." category. That miscellaneous category gets bigger and bigger over time until the categorization schema is revised or replaced. Weinberger contends that now that everything is being digitized and is available on the World Wide Web, the best technique for managing is to put everything in the Miscellaneous category.
From there, he contends that Social Networking and The Wisdom of Crowds will use the Internet to make information available where it is needed and to create new information (or mash-up existing information) so that it is useful when it is needed.
This has some interesting implications. He gives examples of how the Internet brings a democracy to determining what information means. The social implication is that conversation leads to knowledge which leads to greater understanding.
Discussion:
1) The problem of abundance. Very little of what we "know" is "right". Historically, mankind's knowledge has been wrong or incomplete. And most of what we "know" is colored by interpretation as opposed to being factual.
2) The problem of Physical Limitation. Most of our organizational schemas are based on Physical Organization and follows the rules of space: an object can only be in one place at one time. Some examples:
* Merchandising: stores put the most sought-after items at the back of the store.
* Students in a classroom: historically organized to maintain order.
* Newspapers = physical organization of information. Newspapers provide only one way to look at information.
These schemas follow physical necessity, but also follow the notion that the universe follows physical rules. This dates back to the ancient greeks. And it breaks down, such as the categorization of planets and the recent demotion of Pluto from Planet to "miscellaneous".
3) You no longer have to pick a single way to organize things.
4) Therefore, we no longer have to rely on "experts" or social hierarchies to pick the way things are organized.
Weinberger discussed four implications of this shift:
1) A leaf can have many branches. Any piece of information may appear in many classifications.
2) Messiness as a virtue. The "mess" enriches the object we are studying, contextualizing it in many contexts.
3) No difference between Data and Metadata. Metadata is data about the thing. You can search for "Moby Dick" and get the book, the movie, and everything you could imagine about Herman Melville. You can search for "Herman Melville" and get the text of "Moby Dick".
4) Unowned Order. Classifications can come from any source. Weinberger gives examples of "Faceted Search" (newegg.com uses it, Visual Sciences (HBX) is one vendor that sells this feature as part of their content management suite). The visitor to the site can pick how they want the information organized, they aren't captive to the organization of the web site (you don't have to browse through the most expensive items to get to the cheaper ones). Weinberger contrasts the Dewey Decimal System against the public "messiness" of del.icio.us public bookmarking/tagging system, and comes out on the side of del.icio.us.
In a business context, "open content gains value". In the category of Travel, the airlines and hotels make their schedules and rates public. Expedia provides competitive listings services. Then add-on services like Kyak, Farecast, and Trip Advisor add value to the information and ultimately the service being sold. He gave a similar example with Real Estate -> MLS -> Zillow.
Finally, he gives four concepts for embracing the chaos:
1) Simplicity. In broadcast, the media (and politicians) get a broad audience by simplifying their message. Some have called this "dumbing down". Weinberger gives the example of a short speech by President Bush on immigration. Within 8 hours there were 2400 blog posts on this simple, short speech. We (the people) make the simple more complex. We add meaning, as we question and interpret.
2) Conversation improves knowledge. Example: Wikipedia = the public negotiation of knowledge. Also: Digg.
3) Fallibility. Experts are often wrong. Wikipedia has several kinds of "fallibility" notices, and every page offers the "discussion" of how the current page developed.
4) Knowledge leads to understanding. Here, Weinberger invokes Heidegger and talks about meaning. Meaning is external to the object, and the internet creates a democracy around the how we create the meaning of information.
At this point, Weinberger acknowledged that he is an "Internet Utopian" and Steve Lundin suggested that we all buy "Everything is Miscellaneous".
I find Weinberg's subject fascinating not only in its implication for using the Internet in commerce (we have, for example, edited Wikipedia on behalf of clients who had relevant information on various topics), but in how people work together in the "real world". As information is being freed from constraining hierarchies, so are people in more and more companies being looked at not as their position in the hierarchy or hierarchical process, but as individuals with skills and experience that can be utilized in many different and creative ways.
