Mike Grehan Interview
March 31, 2009
Many thanks for talking with us today, Mike. We’ve spent a few messy evenings drinking girly Merlots, but for those who don’t know you, can you be so kind as to introduce yourself?
Ahhhh… those halcyon Merlot fuelled days… I remember them well… (truth be known, with all that Merlot, I don’t remember much at all!).
So for those folks who are new to the industry, I can give a little background.
I first invented the Internet back in the 1960s. I had a young whippersnapper working for me as my assistant at the time. Al Gore was his name. I believe he grew up and took some sort of job with the government. Not sure where he is now.
In about 1965 I coined the term “hypertext,” which I was thrilled about. It didn’t actually mean anything, but it sounded really cool. I used to drink with a guy called Ted Nelson who thought this was a pretty cool word, too. Ted’s an old scientist living here in New York. And we do laugh when we get together about all of those people who have assumed that it was him who coined the term. Boy, must we have been drunk that night.
After messing around in physics (it being the new rock and roll, of course) I moved to Geneva, Switzerland and took a job at the European Organization for Nuclear Research. It was a pretty dull job actually – same thing day-in, day-out. Atomic nuclei can get pretty boring to interact with. Plus I didn’t like the special suit.
On one occasion, I was working with a complete dunderhead by the name of Tim Berners Lee. He was one of those guys that you just knew was never going to amount to anything in life. I explained to him that, during my morning shower, I had this brilliant idea to apply hypertext to the internet. He was so excited.. Mike, he said, I think you’ve just invented the… interweb!
Stupid boy!
Anyway, after being knighted by Her Majesty the Queen for my sterling work inventing what we now know as the “World Wide Web,” I thought I’d better do something practical with it. By now there was a lot of stuff out there and it was getting difficult to find anything. I was a visiting lecturer at Stanford University at the time and hooked up with a couple of kids called Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
This was not a good experience for me. These guys came to my dorm one night and stole a paper I had written called, “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine.” I even had a pet name for it. I called it “Google.” I thought that was quite cool and trendy, what with Google being a play on the word goggle, which means to ogle women. Some time later, I read some bullshit from these guys who stole my idea that it had something to do with “googol,” which is the Californian pronunciation for a word which also means to ogle women… er… I think.
I’m in the process of suing these Google jokers for almost 600 bucks to cover the amount of time it took me to write the paper. I’m not stupid… I’ll get every penny of it, I bet!
Eventually, I moved away from search, mainly because it doesn’t work properly and never will. So, I invented my latest toy, which I call Twitter. I called it Twitter because it’s full of twits talking bits of shit to each other. Shitter.com had already gone by then, unfortunately.
Oh! Fancy me forgetting to mention Wikipedia! I actually invented that as a joke and people started taking it seriously. What fun!! People are failing exams because it’s full of false crap. Some people have been seriously injured for the rest of their lives for taking some of the medical advice… ROFL
I’m on the verge of leaving the internet space to work on my new invention, which is very much a green thing. Imagine this: Reusable toilet paper! Heh! How cool is that. Some people have called it a flannel. In fact, some have called it a face cloth. Dood, I wouldn’t want that near my face knowing where it had been before. Eeeuuwww!
Anyway… these are just some of the excellent things I’ve done in my extremely interesting life. What other brilliant things do you need to know about me? Being as modest as I am, I may not be able to answer all of your questions of course…
Every word Mike says is true 
In your paper “New Signals To Search Engines“, you frame search in a historical context - where it has been, where it is now, and where it might be going. What are the major changes coming up that will have the most impact on current SEO practices and goals?
Grehan now puts serious head on…
I’ve talked about how search engine optimization evolved in the first instance. It was driven by the limitations of the technology used by search engines. Basically, the World Wide Web was developed to do one thing – but everyone wants it to do another. So, crawling the web using the HTTP protocol was the obvious route to go for search engines back then.
But if Google is saying they now have seen a trillion URLs and have no certainty that they’ll ever be able to crawl them in a timely fashion, maybe we’ve reached the zenith of the crawl. Not only that, the end user is expecting a much richer experience. So if the main job of SEO was to optimize static web pages and make them available to crawlers, it’s all becoming a little passé now.
Have we seen the end of HTML and the crawler? Absolutely not. But the level of requirement for SEO work is going to diminish, rather like that of the blacksmith when motorized transport was introduced. Do we still have blacksmiths today? For sure, but they’re not as required as they used to be.
The main changes will be in existing SEO shops either moving into other technical/development work or retraining in other online marketing disciplines. It’s a very exciting time in search. Most marketers can see that. But those people from a purely technical background and used to just doing geeky code for a crawler don’t see it that way.
You mention that user trails - as provided by the toolbar, tagging etc - will become some of the strongest signals. That’s pretty much the death knell of traditional SEO, isn’t it?
If we take what I said in the answer to the last question, you can see that traditional SEO as we know it has had to evolve anyway. I don’t really think of link building as SEO, to be honest. For me, link building is the by-product of good marketing. Whereas fixing pages for a crawler is purely a technical process.
What needs to be taken into account most importantly is not where SEO goes to next, or whether it survives at all. It’s about where search goes to next and how the end user evolves with those changes. Making pages for crawlers and getting links for the sole purpose of getting links omits one thing from the equation: the end user experience.
So, now that search engines can follow end users they can see where they started and where they dropped off. That kind of data is so important. It’s the wisdom of crowds. It’s the people’s vote. So how does a marketer get involved there? It’s going to be a little clichéd, but create an experience - not a web page.
Last year, Eric Schmidt CEO of Google, said an interesting thing in an interview. He mentioned - and I’m paraphrasing here - “that the Internet is a “cesspool” where false information thrives, and that “brands are the way to rise above the cesspool”. Do you think brands might be an important signal of quality?
I read that interview too.
He was stating the obvious to be honest. People have long bemoaned the fact that smaller businesses don’t get the same shelf space in search as the big brands (the same applies offline, of course). Brand building is all about good marketing. It’s all about building trust and reputation. But wait for this… It’s not just about the big boys. A local store can build up as much trust and reputation within its community as well as a high street chain.
Social networking sites are all about people building up trust and reputation on a personal level. So, I think the notion of brands as we’ve known them – such as multi-nationals like Exxon – is going away. I think we’re moving more into social search and that’s all about tapping into a network of trust.
Addressing your question directly: “Do you think brands might be an important signal of quality?” As long as those brands belong to the end user and not large corporations, and that’s certainly what’s happening, then yes, a great signal of quality.
Social media, for want of a better term, is a “place” where most content is being generated, and increasingly where many people are spending their time. What are your thoughts on, say, Twitter? What are the implications for Google and other big search engines when people rely on real-time wisdom-of-crowds, and communities, for answers?
So we’ve already touched on this a little when talking about tapping into a network of trust. Absolutely this is a very important move. The results you get at search engines are hardly verified results and they can be manipulated. That means you have what a mathematical formula (the algorithm) believes are the best ranked documents. And then you have a little re-ranking going on when Ralph Tegtmeir gets to them!
However, if you tap into a network of trust, such as a parenting group, and ask them a about a child’s allergy, the information is likely to be much more verified. If 500 parents all agree that a certain method works then that’s more trustworthy information than a search engine algorithm can provide.
But there’s a whole lot more to it than me Tweeting my followers and asking which is the best Irish pub in New York and wanting an answer now!
Can we talk a little about formats. You make the point that HTML may have served us well up to now, but things are changing. The web is becoming media rich. What does this mean for SEO? Do search marketers become multi-media positioners?
I saw a quote from a senior scientist at Google where he said we’re moving “away from a web of content to a web of applications.” So it’s more about the end user experience and the method of delivery, as opposed to one protocol over another. I don’t think HTTP/HTML is going away anytime soon. But it’s not going to be the primary method for internet search going forward.
People are already talking about new platforms. One idea is Flash. I like that. Or maybe pure java. Most certainly social search into networks of trust and live search via apps such as Twitter will further develop in the future.
We spend a lot of time on SEOBook connecting-the-dots between areas such as seo, brand and traditional marketing. You’ve said “connected marketing” is the future of marketing. Can you talk a little about this? This is the point where big worlds collide, isn’t it?
Connected marketing is a kind of generic term for the new audience of always-on, 24-hour-a-day networks. I use the iPhone as a primary example of how to connect with your audience in so many different ways. Sure, it could be the HTTP/HTML route as it comes with a browser. But there are also so many apps you can download. You can get to your audience via email, txt, Twitter. You’ll be surprised at this… you can even use it as a telephone!
It is about big worlds colliding. It’s not just that technology has changed so we market via different channels to the same people. It’s more about how the audience has changed. And so we have to change the way we connect with them.
I don’t think that conventional methods such as the 30-second spot are going away anytime soon. But we need to examine all areas of this new marketing mix and get our messaging aligned.
If traditional SEO is at a point of diminishing value, what are the things an SEO can do to adapt to this brave new world?
First of all, stop using just SEO. The job we’ve been doing to help search engines do a job they should have been doing themselves is not as critical as it was. Crawlers are getting smarter and the communication between search engines and SEOs is much more transparent now. Search engines provide many tools to make the process of letting them know that you have good indexable content available.
But as the end user demands a much richer experience, search engines need to know a lot more about other types of content. Not just the textual HTML pages that SEOs labor over.
It is a brave new world of marketing. It’s tremendously exciting. But you do have to start and think more about smart marketing and less about smart HTML coding.
There’s a plethora of books and information on social media, optimizing video and perhaps, more importantly, analytics which open up this whole new world of marketing. As the value of providing pure SEO services diminishes, the value of new services increases. This is not a bad time for search marketing: It’s the best it has ever been!
Many thanks, Mike.
Mike Grehan is Global KDM Officer with Acronym Media, a leading search marketing company based in New York’s landmark Empire State Building. Follow Mike on Twitter here.
Review of SES NYC by Khalid Saleh
March 31, 2009
Conferences are especially interesting especially in a tough economy. Truth be told, I had low expectations for SES NY when all I was reading was companies scaling back and downsizing.
But the first tweets about SES painted a brighter picture. And with close to 5,000 marketers registered for the conference it was shaping up to be an excellent conference. As I walked through the exhibit hall vendors had a very good show and were very pleased with the large numbers of crowds that showed up. Of all the different SES shows I have attended over the last few years, this particular SES NY had to top the list in both the quality of the lectures, the speaker list and even the small details such as quality of the food J.
Here is a quick wrap up of some of the highlights
I thought that Guy Kawasaki’s choice of topic on using “Twitter As A Tool For Social Media” was an interesting one. And although I am a fan of Guy, my assumption was that most everyone in attendance must have used twitter for some time. I was really wondering if I am going to learn many new things from session. The room was over flowing with people and the few who showed up late had to spend the hour or so standing.
Guy made 9 main points:
- Forget the A list (sort of funny coming from A lister
) - Defocus
- Increase your followers
- Monitor the conversation
- Copy best practices
- Use search
- Use the right tools
- Squeeze the triggers
- Make it easy to share
Guy’s favorite tools to use in conjunction with Twitter
- Retweetist which measures how many times a person is retweeted.
- Social Too allows you auto follow those who follow you.
- Twibs shows you how some of the big brands are using twitter.
- TweetDeck
- Twhirl
- CoTweet
- Twitter Hawk
My favorite portion in the presentation was the section on search and utilizing advance search parameters to look for terms people are using. That can be a valuable tool to increase business. Let say you are a web designer who is looking for work. You can setup a search for a term such as web design referrals. That is an excellent time to jump in and introduce yourself.
Twitter hawk is a tool that can be used to send automatic “paid” messages when people search for a term. I am not familiar with the tool but I see the potential to use it for business development. I am sure there are many who will debate the tactics Guy suggested in the session. If you are a believer in pure social media, I think there are many things that will turn your stomach.
The session on Meaningful SEO Metrics focused on measurements that help generate better ROI. Traditional metrics focus on number of visitors, pages per visit, time on site, etc. Ray "Catfish" Comstock discussed how bounce rates for keywords is critical in the process of conversion optimization. Ray suggested examining:
- High Bounce Rate keyword phrases: which indicate keyword phrases that are generating traffic but users are not finding what they want.
- High Conversion Rate keyword phrases: which indicate keywords that are working and therefore which phrases you should focus more resources on.
I did not really appreciate the importance of mobile SEO until I chatted with an SEO for a large auto site. He mentioned that their site traffic usually peaks on Mondays and Tuesdays. That is the time where people are searching for cars. The traffic usually dies off on weekends when people are out shopping. If you think about it, people actually shopping in real life is perfect time for Mobile SEO. That discussion was enough to convince me to attend Mobile seo best practices. Cindy Krum who specializes in mobile marketing consulting did a great job covering Mobile Marketing Strategies. While visitors of traditional marketing can arrive at a site at different stages of the buying process, mobile search usually indicate immediate intent. Cindy pointed out that real mobile web browsing, flat-rate data pricing, and faster download speed are all factors help that make mobile web more relevant. Cindy’s advice for basic mobile seo includes:
- Follow all Traditional & Local SEO Best Practices
- Submit your Site to Mobile Search Engines & Directories
- Avoid using flash, scripts, popup windows.
- Follow XHTML standards
- Use external CSS
The panel discussion on the most common search marketing mistakes CMOs make promised to deliver an interesting topic. My favorite of the mistakes was failing to assign $ value to every conversion on a website. There are too many times when we focus on a generating sales or leads via a website and forget about the other conversions that can take place. These other conversions might not have the same dollar value as a sale but they are the still conversions. A visitor might subscribe to a newsletter, download a white paper or subscribe to a blog. Assign a dollar value for each of these activities.
The extreme makeover session with a focus on conversion made for an entertaining afternoon. Jeffry Eisenberg of Future Now, Tim Ash of SiteTuners and Ethan Griffin of Groove Commerce took on a discussion of one of the sites Groove Commerce worked on. You can tell right away the different approach to optimization each of these guys takes. Jeffry is evaluating different customers, looking at what might work for them. Tim is focused on the testing aspect. Ethan is considering optimization as well as implementation details. Jeffry and Tim seemed to disagree even when they were making the same point. As a listed to the panelist go back and forth on what to test and what to remove, some sitting next to me asked, so who should we listen to here? I smiled and said, listen to your visitors!
Night time at conferences is as valuable as day time and SES New York was no exception. So, on the first night of SES NY I stayed up until 4 AM with Frank Watson (AussieWebmaster AKA crocodile man in some Hollywood circles) and Patrick Sexton (who you know from SEOish or his latest venture GetListed.org), every muscle in my body was aching. I am just not sure how Frank was planning to stay up for few more hours.
B2B complex sales involve longer cycles, many stages and different people in each stage. The session on B2B marketing focused on search marketing tactics that can help deal with some of these complexities. Segmenting data becomes more critical in complex sales. This can be done through allowing customers to identify what segment they belong to (enterprise, small business, etc). Another important factor when it comes to complex sales is going beyond the cost per lead to cost per action which is a good indicator of the quality of leads.
Another panel discussion I attended at SES was Slash Your Search Budget. As you can imagine the title hit home with what many companies have to deal with nowadays. Unfortunately, this session was perhaps the most disappointing discussion in the conference. The speakers did not offer real ways to slash marketing budgets. The talk of mobile SEO as an alternative to traditional SEO threw me off completely. How would that relate to slashing a marketing budget? Talk of utilizing social media as a way to generate hits did not resonate with me either. Social media takes a lot of nurturing and a lot of budget. So, at that point, I could not help but raise my hand and ask how is using social media help in cutting SEM budgets? There was a bit of silence there.
The only exception was Aaron Kahlow of the online marketing summit. He offered candid suggestions: It is better to take charge of the budget discussion. Approach your manager/boss and tell him you want to slash the budget. Evaluate which parts SEM activities are not producing results. By doing so, you will be guaranteed a seat at the table.
The 2 nd night at SES included attending live web master radio show hosted by David Szetela, learning more about the SEO community from Jim Hedger and enjoying a lengthy discussion on online marketing with @webanalytic J .
On the third day of SES, I attended News search and SEO. Most notable on that panel was John Shehata of who specializes in news search seo . John provided many valuable tips that ranged from the basic to more advance level. Some of the tips included:
- Use trends/buzz keyword tools when writing news for online audience (Google hot trends, Yahoo Buzz, Google Zeitgeist, seomoz popular)
- Print headlines sell the story, optimized web headlines tell the story
Well, before I sign off, I have to congratulate Matt McGowan and his team for an excellent show and raised the bar for upcoming search events. I think Matt is on his way to Australia at this point. If you enjoyed this post and would like to connect, then follow me on twitter.
How Many Trillions Does it Take to Put a Banker in Jail?
March 31, 2009
About to go to jury duty here in about 15 minutes…which got me thinking about the concept of justice.
I don’t mind paying a lot of taxes if it goes toward creating a better society, but in California when you get toward the upper end of the tax bracket you can pay ~ 60% (federal + state + local + self employment/social security) of your income in taxes. And those tax payments probably do not even offset the handouts we are giving to bankers that gambled with trillions of dollars and lost.
News of additional bailouts via a public private partnership (that makes almost all the reward private and almost all the risk taxpayer funded) have spurred Bank of America and Citibank into buying more of the toxic assets that they allegedly need help clearing off the books.
A guy writes $7,000 in bad checks and gets a 24 year prison sentence. These bankers cost tax payers trillions of dollars. So much money stolen that they debased the currency, and they are awarded with free money for being incompetent.
I am not sure what will come of today, but if this country actually had any sense of justice then there would be at least a half dozen bankers serving a few decades in jail. The fact that none of them have been locked up yet shows how perverse our justice system is and how little you should trust the U.S. government. Politicians work for the bankers.
Obama has a poll allowing voters to ask questions about the economy. Most of the questions are about “what about me I am broke and don’t know what to do” and “I need some relief” etc. And that is how they will remain until our financial system is fixed. And by fixed I mean these bankers serve the jail-time they earned and pay back their “earnings.” Billions of hours of labor have been wasted propping up a ponzi scheme that promotes insider/bank traders winning on both sides of the trade, while handing you the losses.
Is there any wonder why so many people feel overextended?
These bankers put teeth in the consumer bankruptcy law (lying using bogus statistics to pass it) then they wanted a decade long ride on the free money train for their company.
What’s worse is that children who have yet to be born have interest working against them starting from the day they are born. They are in the hole from their first breath, having done nothing wrong other than being born into corruption. The politicians take care of their own children, just not our children.
We are so afraid of terrorism…and financial terrorists that cost us trillions of dollars are somehow just part of how the system works. No big deal.
Sorry, but I don’t need to pay for someone else’s second yacht or fourth home. If anything these career criminals should be scrubbing my floors and taking out my trash. You and I are the people who are actually paying their salaries (and bonuses) through a collective billions of hours of OUR LABOR that was confiscated and handed over to the banks. This makes me angry enough to want to go unemployed and stop working and/or move to another country. I hope I get to be a juror over a banker some day. And I hope you do too!
Update: here are a couple relevant articles in Rolling Stone & The Atlantic, and a nice video.
A Further Look at Making Money Online
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One method of making money online is considerably less reliable than traditional retail business but considerably more interesting. Although it is unlikely that most individuals will be able to make a living out of this type of revenue generation it can certainly provide a considerable amount of extra cash with relatively little pain. This method of making money is taking advantage of online markets….
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Search Goes Global
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PPC Content Advertising: The Latest Tips and Best Practices
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My Thoughts on Promo Outcomes
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