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Since the advent of Search Engines well over a decade ago, many huge and incredible strides have been made on the back ends to improve the quality and usefulness of results. The weakness of search, in my opinion, has never really been on the back end. Rather, the biggest obstacle search engines face is on the front end - people simply do not know how to search. To compound that, even if you do know how to search (or if you bring up the "advanced search", it's still not very intuitive.

I like to consider myself a highly skilled searcher. It is part of what makes me good at what I do in consulting web businesses in how to improve search engine traffic and conversion rates. Even with all the skills I have at my disposal, it can often take me a fistful of search refinements and adjustments to find exactly what I'm looking for.

Today, I would like to take a few moments to do two things: 1) Ask the question: "What's being done to improve the front end part of search?" and 2) Help novice searchers with a few tricks that will help them get better results.

It happened again this weekend. The "Search-Engine-Centrics" made a post about how search engine specific tasks are more important to SEO than user specific tasks. The "User-Centrics" then made a counter post. It happens all the time, and really - the debate isn't so huge and the two sides aren't really that far apart in their beliefs. The battle came about primarily because of the inflamatory vocabulary used (e.g. "Terrible SEO Advice"). It makes people go on the defensive about their own priorities.

If you get down into the meat of both of these articles though - they are both saying the essentially same thing. They are just looking at it from different points of view. The question, now, becomes: Which point of view is the right one? Optimize for Search Engines? Or Optimize for Users?

I would like to suggest that both are wrong and both are right. The most useful answer is: Optimize for Yourself!

We all have goals for our web ventures. We want to generate leads, establish customer loyalty, improve our customer service effectiveness, make sales, improve our brand recognition, and/or all sorts of other great things. Those of us who are lucky enough to already have some cash flow have many advantages, such as being able to bring in experts in certain areas to help us with marketing copy, SEO/SEM, usability, behavioral tracking, and all the other little elements that go into making a successful web site. Those of us who are smaller, though, have a hugely different advantage... our web sites have someone who loves them.

For you larger companies... you pay all sorts of people to do all sorts of things, but who are you paying to love and nurture your site?

Today I'm taking off my "Stockbridge Truslow" hat and putting on my "Bo Grumpus" hat. This article might seem like it's all a bit obvious. You might read it and say, "Yes, yes - I know all that!" But at the end of the day - what are you doing about it?

This article came to me while writing the first part of my Deja Vu: Changes in the Internet (or Lack Thereof) Series at Search Engine People. It got me to thinking about some things that also haven't changed - but probably should...

Back before the search engines first started messing around with the notion of crawling dynamically generated sites, we needed to use URL Rewriting rules in order to trick the search engines into thinking it was a static site. As time went on, the search engines got much better at it. I purposely left the URL's in my old Rock-N-Reel movie site dynamic so that I could see the positives and negatives. By the time I took it offline toward the end of 2005, it was well represented in all the search engines and it ranked in the top 5 for many movies and celebrities.

Four more years have gone by and people are still using URL Rewrite rules to make their sites search engine friendly. Why is this? Do we really need to do this anymore? Are there better ways to do this? And... most importantly, if this is the best way to do it still, why? And how can we change that?

If you have been reading the story so far, you know that the Google Logo has had some rather mysterious UFO related logos. Google has always had a penchant for changing their logos on holidays and on significant anniversaries. But these have been very obscure references and have also been accompanied by cryptic codes coming out of Twitter. There is a lot of guessing and speculation going on, but I think I've gotten it all figured out.

Maybe.

Or not... On September 21st, Google came clean...

It was only ten days ago when we had a mysterious UFO appear on Google. They're back again this morning along with some more mysterious clues coming across the Twitterverse. So, what does this all add up to? Let's take a look...

They say that timing is everything. (Actually, they say a lot of things are everything, but that's another story...)

I only recently starting playing around with the (relatively) new "Social Networking" things out there such as Twitter, Facebook, etc. As I follow more people, add new friends (and old friends) and generally dig into it all to see how it all works, I find myself realizing that some of my old marketing strategies are probably going to come into play here, too. As they say, the more things change, they more they stay the same. (Boy, "they" say a lot, don't they?)

Is "when" we Tweet as important a factor as "what" and to "whom"?

Here's a nice little addendum I found. Inc. Magazine has posted their Top 5,000 Lists for 2009. In there is a list of the Top 10 Companies by Growth Rate, and I thought it would be fun to see which, if any, used their Brand in their page titles or not. Obviously, I'm expecting a fairly even split - and I'm also expecting to find that a lot of these aren't putting a lot of emphasis on their web sites to bring growth and new customers, either. (Many companies use their web site as aftermarket support more than for generating new business.) Let's see what we come up with...

This is part two of a two part series. In Part 1 we discussed exactly what a brand is, and how it is important no matter whether or not you think it is. Though not absolutely necessary, I strongly recommend starting there before digging into this section. This article is much longer than it should be, but it's a very important aspect of our online business and presense, so I think it's important to get it all down on paper. It might not convince you of anything, but I hope that it will at least give you things to consider as you continue trying to grow and improve your web site traffic, exposures, and conversions.

We now know that your brand exists, whether you know it or not, and whether you like it or not. Today, I want to take a look at missed opportunities and some considerations that I think are very important when it comes to marketing and leveraging yourself in the competitive search market. We'll look at how this applies to both paid and organic results and how so many people are missing the boat. Over the years, I have tried to make this point on numerous occsassions - each time I've been met with much antipathy. That said, this is the first time I've actually laid it all out and explained my thoughts completely.

My Hypothesis: Putting your textual brand symbol in your page titles and advertising titles (in Google AdWords, and such) is at least as important for long-term click through rates as putting in keywords. Now, let's see what I can do about proving it!

Yesterday (September 5th) the internet was abuzz with a strange logo that appeared on Google's homepage. Many speculated as two what it might mean, many even got it right. Still, despite the answers, many places (such as Digg's #1 Most Dugg source on the subject) got the solution, but failed to report the significance.