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.

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."

IABC – Demystifying Search Engine Optimization

Taught a fun SEO seminar called "Demystifying Search Engine Optimization" at the Houston Technology Center for the International Association of Business Communicators Houston Chapter today.  This picture really captures it all, "look at the pretty screen!"

The reviews came in very good, so hopefully everyone got their value and will come to more great IABC events in the future.

One interesting thing about teaching SEO on a network with NAT is that we actually, as a class, got locked out of the Marketleap Linkback Calculator!  The good news is we had no problem getting the class to move on to the next slide after lockout occurred.

Microsoft Search Call Out to Google

"The magic moment will come when our search is demonstrably better than Google’s," – Bill Gates, 2005

Google discussing financial stuff in their blog – frequent question

When speaking on web marketing, or blogs, or rss, or podcasting, or SEO, one of the comments that comes up time and again is "well that might work for a small company, but we are a public company and can’t go discussing financial stuff online as that isn’t fair disclosure." 

Having asked several lawyers over the years I get vague responses about "well, that law hasn’t really been tested fully yet".  And having suffered through discussions of nexus for web sites and tax law in the past, I can assure you these conversations suck are difficult.

So I find it significant that Google’s chief accountant is clarifying financial results in their blog.  I have no idea what he is saying, but there it is.  So I will get the question again, and I still don’t have a definite answer, but at least I have some ammo.