Google “God in Houston” and you won’t find a church

In the process of explaining SEO (search engine optimization) over the years I frequently demonstrate that if you Google “God in Houston” the top results are not churches. Now I’m not talking about the local results that show the churches, but the actual search results below that that lists KSBJ as the top result for “God in Houston” when searched on Google. And the only paid search result is for “Houston Gold” – like the shiny stuff you make jewelry out of. Here is a screen shot:

From a technical perspective, this makes perfect sense. Because the largest churches in Houston do not mention the word “God” on their web sites. Yes really. Using a search engine keyword analyzer, a test of second.org shows the following.

Note the title is “Second Baptist Church, Houston, TX.” Thus they will likely rank for “Churches in Houston” but not for “God in Houston.” A simple fix would be to update the title to “Second Baptist Church, Serving God in Houston TX”.

I mention this because exactness of speech matters. It means that some of our largest churches have zero (0) possibility of being returned if a downtrodden person googles for them in the middle of the night. It means missed connections when a bible study group at a particular church might be the perfect connection for a fellow Houstonian. But we will never know because of a failure of exactness of speech.

On the flip side, a tip of the hat to Braeswood Assembly of God church which comes up for both the physical location and second natural ranking after KSBJ in the search results. And all because they mention the word “God” in their title.

So be specific. Be exact. And I’ll leave it to you to search for the ministers’ names – they rank a bit higher than God.

SEM Presentation from Barcamp Houston 2007

Met Steven Evatt today at Barcamp Houston. Steven does SEO with the Houston Chronicle. This is our presentation on search engine marketing at the HTC Houston Barcamp.

Mahalo Greenhouse – user generated search pages

For the search engine advertising folks in the house, put Mahalo on your radar. It is a manually created directory calling itself a search engine. They are now trying to be more inclusive as the top 10k search results really is a finite amount.

My take? Maybe mahalo will get DMOZ right as DMOZ has fallen into a group of non-responsive fiefdoms.

Viral Marketing Described as Link-Bait

While a few of our team attended Search Engine Strategies in San Jose this week, I did not. But I have been reading the newsletters that come out on the sessions.

On session that is worth review is from SEOmoz blog on a formula for creating compelling content by Randfish. Content so compelling that others link to it and therefore help your search engine rank. It is told from the perspective of the web yet it should work off line just as well from a PR perspective.

Here is the link-bait presentation with a summary below (go visit the presentation for the REAL content):

1. Researching a Sector’s Link-Worthiness
2. Discovery of ‘Big’ Players in Your Field – Technorati and Google Trends with your keywords
3. Targeting YDDS (Yahoo!, Digg, Del.icio.us, Slashdot.org) (maybe also netscape.com)
4. Targeting Offline Media – hire PR expert
5. Selecting a Content Focus
6. Melding Branding and Viral Elements
7. Targeting Keywords/Search Traffic
8. Look at Examples of ‘Brilliant Ideas’
9. The Value of a ‘Web 2.0′ Look & Feel – "The  right "look and feel" will earn links"
10. Elements that Encourage Linking
11. Pre-Launch Public Relations
12. Managing Launch Traffic – do not respond negatively
13. Continuing to Get Value from Linkbait – "Update the content with timely information."

Squidoo and SEO Spam- please no

From this long tail post on Seth’s blog, it looks like SEO black hat bait to post lenses on squidoo. Please tell me it isn’t so? I have some friends headed to SES San Jose so I’ll post what I learn when they get back. Sigh.

For the non-serious geeks, squidoo lets people build a list of sites to be searched as a group, by topic. So you can add 10 sites related to ferrets and search like google, but only within your select sites. And of course you can share it. Seth’s blog post is pointing out that the lens itself is scoring well in other search engines, which creates an incentive for folks to cheat in the search engines using custom lenses. Just something to watch out for as I am sure google is already doing.

Perhaps there is a strategy application for this within public relations for the enlightened? But that is another post.

Microsoft AdCenter Gender Predictions for Demographic Marketing

The demos of demographic profiling of search on adlab site of adcenter search technology. The image to the left demonstrates the end result; you get gender approximations based on search term. These are estimated from the behavior of the user I am guessing from total search patterns.

So, hypothetically if a searcher is obsessed with someone perhaps this indicates a male behavior. That profile data is tied back to search terms and presented to the marketing team as such. Interesting.

All kidding aside, I do see real value in demographic data when formulating strategy for clients. This does matter. Note that Google only released google trends after it was obvious that technorati and blogpulse visual reporting was skyrocketing in use. Perhaps this will lead to a similar disclosure from adwords or overture in the future?

Privacy? That is another matter.