Google’s PageRank – the algorithm that decides which pages show up when someone searches for your name – is an incredibly complex and nuanced algorithm. Every time you hit the “Google search” button – it runs millions of possible result pages through a detailed mathematical equation and displays the highest-ranking results on the first page.

Google takes over 200 factors into account before deciding where a page should rank in the search results. You certainly can’t just “whip up 20 new pages” and expect that they’ll rank overnight. Google takes into account when the page / and or domain was first discovered, as well as a few hundred other quality controls that make it very difficult to game or “whitewash.” It appears to semantically analyze both the content of the page, and the content and tone of the different sites that link to it – to determine where it should rank in the index.

Say you do a search for Abraham Lincoln. All the results in the top ten are being propped up by links from schools, government websites and historical information sites. But one day a new domain is registered called “AbrahamLincolnConspiracy.com” and it starts to accumulate links from an entirely different and diverse set of link neighborhoods — skeptic sites, historical revisionism sites, and conspiracy theory forums. These aren’t junk sites or spam – they’re real, popular sites where people publish controversial opinions. Google wants to offer a diverse mixture of information to the end users and may well try and boost the visibility of this page in the search results.

Here’s a more common, business-oriented ORM example: Say you do a search for “Joe’s Auto Repair.” You see 9 positive results and one negative one on the first page. There are over 15 pages that mention his shop, but they’re mostly linked to by low quality automotive-themed sites and local business directories in Joe’s state. Then Joe has registered 5 blogs on different topics (he didn’t know Google can tell who registered them and where they’re located) – and he linked these to his positive pages to repair his online reputation. But that one darn consumer complaint site domain has over 50,000 links from other consumer watchdog sites, and the negative review page on it about Joe’s shop has links from an angry lawyer’s blog who claimed Joe ripped him off. Google will probably discount Joe’s domains and automotive-theme links, push some of them aside and make space one the one negative page appears to be different and unique – because it has links from a quality legal-themed blog, and none from the usual auto sites and directories.

Note: this is not a scientific fact (Google does not share the details of their algorithm) but merely my personal opinion based on observations made when working intensively with search results.

I had a great time at my first social media conference, SMX Social Media in Long Beach, CA. I enjoyed getting to meet some of the top players in the search & social media marketing industry, such as:

Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz, Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land, Jimbo Wales of Wikipedia, serial entrepreneur and Twitter kingpin Jason Calacanis, and #1 Digg user MrBabyMan.

I also met a ton of amazingly nice,  highly-talented marketing mavens:

Toronto SEO Jeff Quip, Utah SEO Jordan Kasteler, action sports publisher Cameron Olthius, Guillame Bourchard of Montreal SEO company NVI, social media consultant Brent Csutoras, social media strategist Reem Abeidoh, Shinsuke Usami and Kazumasa Harumoto of Japanese shopping site EC Navi, social media agency president Rob Key, New York social media consultant Chris Winfield, Chiropractic SEO Michael Dorausch, small business SEO Matt McGee, Michael Gray, Kid Disco, Scott Clark who gave permission to use the photo above, Jane Copland from SEOmoz, Lisa Barone, Nick Dynice, Abhilash Patel of Rank Lab Interactive, and social media rock star Neil Patel.

It was cool to meet so many people experienced at running and scaling a SEO / social media business and talking to them about how they did it. They led me to believe that I can do the same.

And thanks to the generous people who bought me dinner and drinks every single night.

I’ll see you on the flipside — from behind the podium — one of these days!

I knew that the Digg user experience was sure to deteriorate when they agreed to let Microsoft serve their graphical ads, but I didn’t know they’d allow advertisers to try and foist this type of deceptive blinking schlock on a relatively tech-savvy community:

I was really hoping this was some kind of joke. But sadly, it very clearly states that “This is not a joke.” And it seems to run contrary to the spirit of Kevin Rose’s promise:

It’s important to say that we’re as focused as ever on a great user experience. So, no dancing monkey ads, and the design will remain uncluttered.

Diggers used to love some of the ads on the site (e.g., Snorg Tees girls) and mention them frequently in the comments. Reddit is doing a little bit better at targeting their audience, and the community speaks up and gives feedback on the insulting ads. Diggers should do this too.

And advertising execs should know that deceptive, blinking “Free Laptop: Must Complete 6 Offers” banners erode social media users’ confidence in a site’s advertising much more than any short-term profit it could bring them.

Once of the drawbacks of being a social media power user is that everything moves way too fast. You’ve got so many amazing stories streaming your way that you barely have time to read and enjoy them. Instead, you’re forced to woof it all down: rush to vote on friends’ picks and hustle to submit your Google News / RSS finds before someone else beats you to it. You’re lucky if you get to partially scan most of it.

Making “permanent” bookmarks in your browser can get messy, so the good people at Idea Shower have created Read It Later, a temporary bookmarking plugin for FireFox.

When you see a story that you want to get back to later on, just right click on the link and select “Read This Link Later.” The story then gets stashed in a convenient browser button for you to peruse later on. It also contains a feature for submitting and bookmarking your best finds to other social sites.

Good stuff!

If you’re launching a new site and you are submitting it to some of the more reputable old & expensive web directories, you want to get as much anchor text bang for your $279.95 as possible. But most “reputable” directories will only link to your site by the “official” name, whatever that is.

Before:

So pick the right “official” name. Just make new graphic header for your site, and throw it up there for the one week that you submit it to the directories. If the site is for a real estate office called “HomeFinders Realty” you might just want to name it “Denver Real Estate, Inc.” And change it back after you get accepted with juicy anchor text.

After:

In most cases, after they’ve charged your credit card for the link buy editorial review fee, they won’t be double checking it anytime soon. Okay, some people might say this is a little bit grey hat… but I rationalize it by saying that if you are going to pay hundreds of dollars for an ad listing, you’re entitled to (try and) get your money’s worth with good, descriptive anchor text that doesn’t mislead the search engines or users. And when that auto-billed $499.95 annual review comes around again, they are more than welcome to change it back– if they notice.

Maybe you’ve bought a carton of soy milk with a picture of a wind turbine on it. Or you get internet service from a company claims to be carbon neutral. It is marketing designed to bring up warm fuzzy feeling, unless you take a more skeptical view of carbon offsets.

Last week I went to a local environmental group discussion that was sponsored by Renewable Choice, a local carbon offset company. As we sat at a Nepali restaurant drinking beer and munching on *papadums*, two company representatives passed out pro-offset literature and moderated a lively discussion.

Most of the audience members who spoke up challenged the two company reps, grilling them questions that were difficult for them to answer. There was a pretense of politeness, but a palatable undercurrent of skeptical antagonism.

I’ll spare you the coverage of the pretense and principles. Here’s what I was able to “read between the lines” from conversation:

* **[Carbon offsets](http://http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_13/b4027057.htm/ “another inconvenient truth”) are intangible, even symbolic.** When traced back to the source, the offset credits usually encourage climate protection that would have happened regardless of buying or selling of paper certificates.

* **Carbon offsets are a “middle-man” business model, kind of like the charity telemarketing or multi-level marketing (MLM).** An undisclosed cut of the profits goes to support the offset purveyors, and *some* of it is (hopefully) passed on to renewable energy infrastructure.

* **High-carbon corporations like Pepsi and Whole Foods are some of the biggest buyers and fans of carbon offsets.** Rather than take steps to actually reduce their carbon emissions and environmental impact (i.e., by recycling or driving electric cars), they carry on with business as usual and leverage the credits for advertising and PR to “green up” their image.

* **Carbon offsets are sold to individuals and corporations at different rates, with no outside regulation.** Some people question the integrity of the accounting.

* **While most carbon offsets may not do much to reduce carbon or help the environment, they may be an easy first step that gets people thinking about carbon emissions and environmental issues.** Some awareness is better than none. It’s a start.

* **Some dubious companies have sold carbon offsets and gotten called out, blurring the line between green marketing and greenwashing.** The stigma of this could harm more legitimate non-profit environmental action groups and causes.

After an hour of discussion with the environmentalists and carbon offset sellers, I felt like there was an inconvenient truth about carbon offsets. I’m not saying that **all** offsets are inherently questionable, but it feels to me like a symbolic/economic thing doesn’t really get to the root of the problem or leave the Earth any greener and pristiner than before.

I’m on the lookout for energy conservation technologies and products that make a significant, direct difference. And I don’t want to get distracted.

A Wicked Social Buzz

I haven’t been in the search marketing business for that long, but I’m definitely gravitating towards social media.

I find that creating content and participating in social web is significantly more stimulating than… say… making XML sitemaps, geeking out infront of WordTracker, or crafting copy with judicious use of the phrase “Alabama tax lien attorney.” Watching the links, comments and votes pour in after a social campaign is up there with hitting a home run or the jackpot in Vegas. It triggers strong emotions and a massive rush of endorphins.

The buzz of brainstorming a massive social campaign and watching it spread is much stronger than watching the rankings incrementally improve during a manual link building campaign… it’s a much bigger bang than modest pleasure of crafting a clever 301 redirect…

But Is It Sustainable?

Naturally, I’d love to make social media the main focus of my workday. But as a Capricorn, and I’m way too practical to just follow my bliss without any kind of business plan. As I think about how to take my social media skills to the next level, here’s a few concerns that come to mind:

1. The ethics of SMM are blurry.

Is it OK to make a second account? Ask friends for votes? Buy votes or automate them? Write fake reviews? Recycle content? Bury the competition?

I generally try to swing straight, organic, white-hat and transparent-ish (I don’t want anything coming back to haunt me)… but I’m aware that the pressures of client expectations and making profits (a.k.a. stayin’ alive) can really stretch people’s morals and ethics. And if you think Digg and Stumble are competitive now (in the absolute infancy of the genre) it’s only going to get harder. 2007 is to social media what 1996 was to SEO.

Will we see teams of professional voters and commenters? Rampant payola and Multi-Level Voting (MLV)? Online reputation extortionists and protection rackets? Social media username and brand squatting (“MrBabyMan” is already registered. Please choose another name.’)? Account brokers? Officially sponsored story submissions (“$2999 for express home page submission, subject to editorial review”)?

2. SEO is steady. SMM is volatile.

Just about any website can be helped out by solid SEO. Search algorithms are mechanical and more “impartial”. In contrast, social media success depends entirely on the tastes, opinions and politics of people – and their feelings at the moment. Some brands are loved as “way cool” and others are poo-poo’ed as pariahs (i.e., Mircosoft’s Zune‘s “Welcome to the Social” campaign ). You can give things your best spin, but ultimately you have no control over the outcome. The audience decides… and they’ll either get a kick out of your story, or they’ll kick the snot out of it. And if the sysadmins decide there’s anything fishy about your account or voting history… GAME OVER.

3. Social media marketing can be hard on the nerves.

The highs are spectacular, but the lows really suck. Every time the sever goes down from a traffic spike, the mob revolts and smashes you and your content with seditious smacktalk, and the burry brigade starts taunting you with libelous comments… it’s enough to trigger a heart attack. Especially if weeks of hard work have gone into a project and an expectant client is sitting there, biting their nails right along with with you. I’ve gotten myself so worked up over social media campaigns that I needed crack open a beer at the end of the day to calm my nerves. I don’t want to end up actually ordering that Xanax and Tramadol stuff that always shows up in the comment spam.

4. So many sites, so many profiles, so little time.
Technology is a harsh mistress. The only thing my iPhone did for my life was seduce me into spending 15 hours a day online, rather than just 10 or 12. Nowadays, I find myself checking on my Reddit stories while hiking (!).

It’s getting harder to find original content that hasn’t been submitted already. More time consuming to post it to all the sites that are popping up, keep up with what is going on, AND find time to update 5 different blogs.

Some people have referred to social media promotion as “the new link building” because it’s so massive and overwhelming a task. New social media account consolidator sites like Fuser are trying to make access to your Facebook and MySpace-type accounts available in one place, but the social landscape and user base are growing faster than tools and widgets designed to keep up with it. Sooner or later… we’ll have to adopt 30 hour days in order to get it all done.

Social Media Career Ideas

I think that becoming a social media professional is possible and sustainable. But it hasn’t yet evolved into recognized business marketing role yet… so we’ll have to take define this emerging profession and market ourselves aggressively.

Here’s a few ideas on how you can start to do that:

- Become an expert a seeding and growing online social communities for corporate or non-profit sites. Many well-funded companies are throwing up massive web infrastructure, but they don’t have a clue how to kick things off socially. You can use the same interaction skills you’ve sharpened on forums, blogs and Facebook… where there is a growing, commercial market for it.

- Work with startups. Here in Boulder, there are tons of tech startup companies with venture capital and solid developer talent. What they seem to be lacking, in most cases, is someone with serious social networking influence and viral skills to make their concept popular. They spend $2,000,000 developing and launching a site. For promotion, they send out a couple of electronic press releases and do a half-baked Blogspot site. Then… while woefully carrying the desks out of the office, they wonder why their site never “caught on.”

- Seek cool brands that could be leveraging social media, but aren’t. (Think: surfing companies, solar technology, DRM-free audio downloads.) Offer to help them out, and show them how they could benefit by participating in the social web. It’s probably on the back of their minds already, but they don’t even know what – or who – to ask. You might literally be the answer to their prayers.

- Try pitching some traditional PR firms (if you’ve got boatloads of patience and professional tact). Work for them and help them understand how the Web is changing the world of communications. Help them realize these are no longer the days of pompous-sounding press releases and licking stamps. Teach them how to make “social media relations” a part of what they do.

What Do You Think?

If you’ve read down this far, you’re also probably pretty excited about social media. I’d love to get your take on things:

Do you think social media marketing can be a viable business and career?

What kind of issues, problems and potentials do you see with it?

Today I am joining 16,000 other bloggers on Blog Action Day to speak out on a topic that directly affects all of us: the environment. In addition to my monthly contributions, I pledge to donate 100% of this year’s ad earnings on my other blog to Environment Colorado, a local action group that is putting pressure on the government to get movin’ on clean energy adoption and incentives.

I was raised with respect for nature.

As a kid, I was in Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts, so I got to go camping every month. In college, I further honed my wilderness skills at outdoor festivals and Rainbow gatherings, where I learned how to live on the land and leave no trace. My first professional job was on the JET program in deep rural Japan. There was nothing to do in my country town besides swim, hike, climb volcanoes, and surf – and I found great peace and refuge in nature.

After Japan, I spent 2 years on a personal vision quest / RPG adventure… backpacking and camping across Asia. From high glaciers in Western Nepal, to horribly polluted cities and devastated forests in Indonesia, to uninhabited coral-ringed islands near Burma, and in outback bush of South Australia… I got to deeply experience some of the most pristine and some of the most disgustingly damaged ecosystems on the planet.

I saw how quickly the third world was developing, and how many BILLIONS of off the grid people were craving a fossil-fuel and plastic powered Western lifestyle… way more people than the Earth can possible support at our current level of energy and disposable technology.

I realize my nature and travel experiences were much more than an adventure or an indulgence – they were an initiation. Last year, when I was shocked to find out my friend Chelsea Gerlach was arrested and sentenced to 9 years in prison for radical environmental action (arson) – I felt the call to action. I decided that what I wanted out of my life was to master the science of marketing (affecting mass-scale changes in behavior) and find a green technology “killer app” that will seriously reduce carbon and environmental damage… not just a “feel good” indulgence… and use my marketing powers push it through to adoption.

I’ve been immersing myself in copywriting, SEO and social media with the sincere hope it will allow me to play a more powerful role in preserving the environment and leaving the Earth in decent condition.

I want to look back on this life and know what I did professionally really mattered. Not only for my fellow man and my ancestors, but for the corals and the squirrels, and for the bees and the trees… who can’t do anything about it… like I can.

That’s what the focus of my trip is going to be, from now on out. Thanks for reading, and thanks for contemplating what your part in the game of life is going to be…

I’ll be back to social media and green marketing coverage, shortly!

Recently the Digg interface got an extreme makeover. There are now more social features on the site, like photo albums and public “shout” messages. And the new system has been designed to make reciprocal voting on friends’ stories far less convenient.

Instead of blasting down a list of your friends’ submissions (“Digg! Digg! Digg! Digg!“)… Uzi style… it now takes some real mouse-clickin’ effort. It takes so much patience that some people are submitting less, and others are ditching personal politics and “friends of convenience” and only voting on stories that they actually like.

While many of the hardcore Diggers complained that the site is ruined, I think the changes are probably making the site fairer and more accessible for the average user. And I think it has (marginally) improved the diversity and quality of the content that hits the home page.

The interface changes make it far more time consuming to maintain a Digg power account. Before you could maintain relationships with people by checking in once a day and spending 10 or 20 minutes on the site. Now it takes more like 30 to 90 minutes a day just to vote on friends’ stories, and you need to check in two or three times a day because you can only see three pages of your friends’ recent submissions.

Thankfully, there’s a way Digg through your friends’ submissions much quicker. If you’ve got a Mac, the Dugg widget for your dashboard is highly recommended.

Just hit the F12 key, and click on the tiny “i” in the upper right corner of the widget. For the “Digg Topic” select “friends’ submitted” and put your username in below:

Click “Done” and then you can see a list of your friends’ stories. Click on them and it will open up the story in your Web browser (in tabs)

All it takes to Digg a story is a quick:

F12 + Click-Click

rather than:

Opening up a browser, going to Digg.com, (maybe) logging in, clicking “Friends’ Activity,” clicking “Submissions,” then click the story, then click to Digg it, then click the back button.

I personally find the Dugg widget really makes voting quicker and more enjoyable. You can check in on your stories and your friends’ stories several times a day with minimal effort.

The only downside it is gets kind of “messy” by opening dozens of browser tabs while Digging a long list of stories…

As marketers successfully propagate the message that it’s hip to be green, many people are fine with that as long as they don’t have to do much – or give up anything , like the instant convenience of bottled water. Bottled water, which the Economist calls “one of the great mysteries of modern capitalism,” gives us such instant gratification that we don’t even have to turn a faucet, take a second to fill up our glass or wash out our water bottle.

Marketers sell it to us with the wholesome image of pure Swiss meadow springwater, but it has repeatedly been shown that most bottled water is tap water. And a lot of tap water is safer than bottled water.

Bottled water is the instant titty, a refreshing polyethylene coconut with no tree to climb nor hard shell to crack. But the convenience comes at a price: it takes a lot of fossil fuel to make it, and it burns a ton of gas to ship it to us. And when we’re done with it, it becomes a giant plastic turd that we leave behind on the planet forever.

To assuage our growing feelings of guilt, marketers need a gimmick to keep the illusion. So, now they sell it in an “eco shape” that uses a little less plastic for a “better environment.” And we can feel good once again as we toss away the thick plastic wrapper (with pictures of pristine alpine lakes that some of the bottles will inevitably end up in.)

In developing countries like India, which have few landfills and no public recycling centers at all, bottled water has become a status symbol. It’s seen the same light as expensive champagne… as the drink of foreigners and movie stars. Upwardly mobile young Indians clamor to be seen swigging from a Bisleri bottle, just like a American who teen takes a proud, postured drag off his tenth Marlboro in public.

As a result, polyethylene bottles are conspicuously and permanently littering the lands in the developing world. Especially in the places visited by backpackers and tourists.

When you travel overseas, don’t leave you green values at home and believe the lazy myth that “it’s better to drink bottled water”. Investing in a lightweight high-tech purifier is infinitely more chic and impressive.

Regardless of what the companies would like us to believe, using up lots of plastic water bottles (when safe tap water or filters are readily available) is “eco” in no way, shape or form.