This past Monday, Adcuda was asked to sponsor and participate in a unique marathon brainstorming session on how to best integrate Google’s new high speed fiber-optics into the lives of everyday Kansas City citizens. The session lasted from sun-up to sun-down and ended up cultivating hundreds upon hundreds of ideas – each written on its own colored note card and smacked to the wall with a resounding THUD.

I had complete access to film each brainstorming group as they spent the day churning out new and innovative ways to implement this powerful new technology. How do we integrate high speed Internet access our daily lives without it taking over who we are? (. . . “WALL-E” . . . ‘nuff said). How will this new speed make life easier for those who are immobile? Can it bring communities together? Will it make us better people or will we be become corrupted by the glow of our computer monitors – eyeing the world through a high-def peephole? All these questions aside the truth of the matter is we already HAVE all these opportunities in front of us. The speed provided by Google’s ‘gigabit’ wire is just a better method to help facilitate what’s already happening.

As I made my way across each room with my camera one topic that I kept hearing about was video. How will having instant accessibility to videos not only increase our enjoyment of online media but help reform our online experiences with video and improve the well-being of a society. The former is obvious – better looking videos and nearly zero lag time means we will soon be spending even MORE time online, sifting through the endless amount of media hoping to find what’s relevant to us. Soon we will no doubt see even longer pre-rolls and in greater quantities. Take loading time and poor quality out of the equation and I believe we can sit through much more gobbledygook in order to watch what we want instantly. The latter is less obvious and only time will tell.

When it comes to online video we are actually very spoiled already. A decent Internet connection gives you the ability to watch almost anything in rather decent quality with almost no wait time. You can load an entire Netflix movie in under 15 seconds – any HD Vimeo video in less than 3. Where online video is currently falling behind is live, high-quality streaming. Today, only top tiered organizations have the ability to stream content in anything remotely close to HD and the load time is excruciating at even the most competitive speeds. I generally avoid it and wait a day for the ‘syndicated’ version.

Now we could be looking at full resolution video and audio streaming almost instantaneously across the Google network into every home, business, and classroom. WAIT A MINUTE! Now we’re talking about TELEVISION. The difference here lies in the ability for anyone to create their own ‘station’ and broadcast anything to anyone at anytime. Think YouTube on steroids. That may seem scary to some, but it enriches the idea that we are all created equally (well – as long as you can afford the equipment/connection/computer) – we all have a voice and an idea, and as long as you have a camera, a microphone and an Internet connection you can create your own unique content. The question is what will we do with such power?

Probably screw it up.

But, maybe someday soon we’ll also get truly comfortable with being so easily connected and pull something remarkable out of the chaos.

My rules are – we still need movie theaters and we can’t end up like “WALL-E.” Other than that – go crazy.

Take a moment to watch our new ‘trailer’ of the Building The Gigabit City experience below.  Special thanks to the great folks at the Social Media Club of Kansas City and Brainzooming for help on the project and providing us with the opportunity to make it happen!

Google Image Search
There’s some basic background information you need to know to fully understand how Google ranks images. Its image rankings are much more complex than typical website text, so that means it’s more difficult for Google to analyze and sort them all out into its rankings. However, there are a few key factors that it focuses on, which you can easily isolate and use to your advantage. If you’re wondering how to rank on Google images, focus on the following factors:

ALT Attribute
The way Google and the other images typically read an image file looks something like this for example:

<img src=”http://www.domainexample.com/image-file.jpg” alt=”Adcuda SEO”>

The text that’s entered in the alt= attribute, which in this case is “Adcuda SEO,” is sort of a tag for the image that shows up if the link is broken or the picture can’t load for whatever reason. The purpose is to describe the image, and Google reads that tag to get an idea of what the picture is.

Image Filename
At first glance, this factor doesn’t seem to hold much value – most image filenames are not very descriptive and Google has a limited amount of opportunity to get solid data on what the image is about. However, since the majority of images don’t do a good job of describing the content, taking the time to do so will definitely make your image stand out. Plus an additional use of your keyword never hurts.

Image Dimensions
This one’s pretty simple. If you’re reusing a common image or one that’s regularly shared, resizing helps make the image appear unique to Google. Otherwise it may view the image as duplicate content, which is never good from an SEO perspective.

Text Around Your Image
The text surrounding an image typically describes its content. Using keywords in the caption and the text in the immediate area around the image will give Google better context for figuring out what the image is about.

Traditional On-Page & Off-Page Factors
Other SEO factors still play a major role in the image ranking for your target keyword. That means the page containing your image should be well optimized using the same keywords. Off-page, the number of links and overall popularity of the page will also help the image rank. If Google values the site itself, that will translate just the same in the image search results.

Flickr
Flickr is one of the top dogs when it comes to social image sharing and searches in general, so if you’re optimizing your images, it makes sense to get involved here. Here’s the downside of ranking on Flickr – since it’s owned by Yahoo, Flickr images don’t show up in Google results very often. However, they dominate Yahoo images and also show up quite often on Bing. Flickr also offers additional opportunities from a social perspective to interact with potential customers and integrate your brand and message into your photographs. For example, if a clothing brand were to post and optimize “behind-the-scenes” pictures from a photo shoot, they could endear themselves to both current and potential clients. So how does Flickr rank photos? Its key factors are much more transparent than Google’s:

Photo Name
Regarding ranking on Flickr’s own internal search engine, simply having your target keyword in the photo title will help immensely.

Photo Tag
Photo tags work similarly to the titles, but give you more opportunity to be descriptive. Don’t just limit your tags to your keywords – include where the image was taken, who it was taken by, commentary on the style and whatever else might be relevant. Remember, we’re looking to completely utilize all the features Flickr provides.

Photo Description
Though not as relevant for ranking, photo descriptions are important for Flickr results in much the same way that meta tags are for websites. They provide the user with information about the picture within the results before it is even clicked. Use the description as a way to tell the user, ‘you’re headed in the right direction, check out this picture.’

Vertical search:

How to rank Instant search
How to rank Video search
How to rank local search or Places search
How to rank Image search
How to rank Universal search

Alternative search:

How to rank Amazon
How to rank YouTube
How to rank Facebook
How to rank Delicious
How to rank Flickr
How to rank Twitter

We’ll be looking at one vertical search element and one alternative search engine per post. From this, you should be able to take away answers to key questions, ranking factors, along with advantages of each search engine.

Use the links above to familiarize yourself with each type of search we’ll be discussing, and if there are any other alternative search engines out there you’d like to cover, please feel free to comment below.

I know you’ve been there – your mind thirsty for knowledge, the promise of the infinite wisdom of the collective human consciousness hanging out there in space-time, throwing yourself at Google’s feet just begging for answers.

So you type in your query and hope for the best. Sometimes the search results will lead you to a delightful little nugget that satisfies your every desire. But other times, they lead you to a pile of rubbish that makes you wonder how such a page could ever be ranked so highly in the first place.

So what happens when you land on a site with generic, poorly-written content? You click the back button and try another, instantly becoming a statistic for bounce rates. There are plenty of SEO tactics you can implement to achieve a high rank, but they don’t mean anything if your bounce rates are off the charts or your conversion rates stink – people pop in, take a moment to read what stands out and instantaneously decide whether they’re going to explore the site or return to the search results page. If your page isn’t up to par, they make a hasty retreat and your bounce rates analytics will look ugly.

The other day I was shopping for a new pair of Air Jordans. The site pictured here was one of the top links, and the first I happened to choose – mainly because it had the word “cheap” in the title. My eyes went right to the middle of the home page and I only made it through two sentences before realizing it was a trashy site that doesn’t deserve my business. It seemed to me like the shoes were probably fake (also known as “factory variants.”) If they’re real, the writers did a terrible job of proving it to me.

Increasing traffic to your site is the whole point of SEO, but high bounce rates and poor conversion rates mean you haven’t put the effort into developing the content on your website. Here are some essential methods for keeping visitors happy:

-         Gain their trust. Spam or generic duplicate content doesn’t give you much of a chance. Make the user feel like they’re in the right place by installing compelling, useful, original content that they’ll want to share.

-         Design your pages in a way that enhances the user’s experience and makes them think you’re worthy of their business. Doing so will drive conversion rates.

-         Include video. Original content doesn’t have to mean clunky blocks of text.

There are no shortcuts in SEO. From content to design to development, your site has to be well made all the way around to avoid high bounce rates and drive conversions.

Regardless of what you have probably read or heard recently, manual directory submission backlink strategy can still be a good way to lay some solid links into your site’s profile, but you have to be smart about which directories you go out and associate your site with. When we’re doing SEO in Kansas City for our clients, our link advocates do employ some high quality directory links, depending on the type of client. Although these make up a minority of the links you need overall for a good profile, it’s some nice kindling for the fire.

See, directories on the web should accomplish exactly what the name implies, be a useful directory of links to quality sites. Unfortunately, when word got out that these directories provided a great place to easily syphon page rank (and even lay in some quality anchor text), both the users and the site owners quickly became abusers. The users began spamming any directory they could find, going as far as creating bots to spam directories for them, and the site owners, quickly realizing the opportunity, began focusing on selling “high profile” or “high quality” links on their site for some quick and easy cash. As we all know, purchasing links is against Google’s webmaster guidelines, so these types of sites quickly started seeing major penalties and the whole community jumped off the directory bandwagon for a while. Google however is actually cool with directories, as long as they are used appropriately and add value to the web.

So, how do we know which directories are good and which are bad? Here are a few simple things to look for:

1. The directory has more ads than content. If the directory appears to just be jam packed with advertisement text and banner ads, with little focus on driving you to those quality sites they should have in their directory, this probably isn’t worth your time.

2. Is the directory indexed by Google? If a directory is a major offender Google will not index the directory at all. The first quick step is to simply do a search in Google for that directory’s URL (www.directorynamehere.com). If you don’t get anything then stay clear, as it’s obviously getting a heavy penalty from Google. For an even more in-depth search to see how much of the site Google is indexing, perform a quick search typing this: site:directorynamehere.com and you’ll get a decent look at just how much of the site is being indexed by Google. The more results typically the better.

3. The directory doesn’t function properly, has broken images everywhere, etc. If it appears that this directory has gone into autopilot then people have probably been spamming it for a long time, or nobody is getting in because there is nobody around to edit the submission requests.

4. Dive into the directory and look to see who you will be sharing the page with in your category. Most directories default to alphabetical order so you can get a good idea of where you’re going to land. Do these neighbors look like people you want to be associated with? Are there a bunch of broken links on the page? Adding your website to a bad neighborhood of links will not do your site much good at all.

5. Be careful of any directories with words like: free, submit, rank, SEO, links, and so on in the name, URL, or used heavily on the site. Again, remember that we’re looking for quality directories to associate our business with, not to game the search engines.

6. Lastly, this one is pretty simple: are there just too many dang links in the directory? If there are thousands and thousands of links in your category within the directory, or there are hundreds of links on each page in that category, chances are there isn’t much juice left to flow through yours.

Make sure to spend some time writing a good, honest and objective description of your business so that you’re more likely to get included. Just have some patience, the good directories take some time to get into because they are human edited.

Google responded to this paradigm shift some years ago with Google Maps included in the search results.  The most recent change was to divide Google Maps into Google Maps and Google Places.  A Google Place is almost a mini website where the owner can modify content to fully represent their business or organization including even pictures and videos and associate it with a geographical place. The ‘Place’ will often come up in a search result when the searcher is naming a particular city or geographical area such as “philly cheese steak in kansas city” or “daycare in kansas city”.

Google Map/Place Example

Most people are familiar with the map and the A, B, C… stickpins that appear in these kinds of results.  These maps are said to get 25% of the clicks that will happen on any page they appear on, and that percentage is growing.

As of last month, July 2010, it looks like Google is responding once again to the growing interest level for local search and is currently testing a new layout for geographically targeted search requests. The new format can be seen on a blog from Frank Reed. If this new layout tests well, the significance that the Google Places listing has will grow tremendously.  If you haven’t taken the time to claim your listing, NOW is the time to do so!

Looking at the new layout, most people won’t even realize that the traditional organic listings space has now become an extended Google Places space.  Organic listings have be where 60% of the clicks come from on pages where maps were also present. Google Places will look a lot like organic listings to a lot of people if this layout becomes standard.  If that’s the case, just having a well organized Google Place will get you first page on Google for all the searches that include a ‘geo target’.  That’s HUGE!

It will be interesting to see where Google comes down on these tests because a huge revenue generator for Google is Sponsored Listings, aka – Adwords.  Currently only 15% of the clicks happen in this space on the page.  Will the evolution of Google Places shrink that percentage even further?  Will Google Places become a source of revenue to Google in the future?  Already you can purchase a nice bright yellow TAG for your Google Place, suggesting that Google just may start charging ‘rent’ for your Place.

For now, Places are FREE at Google, claim’em while you can, for no money down and zero rent!

1. Make it more than just a keyword. A name made up of two or more keywords is often the first thing that new business owners lean towards – and is usually not successful. They are easily forgotten, confused with other companies, and can lack interest – in other words, BORING.

For example, when you hear bestwidgets.com, betterwidgets.com, superiorwidgets.com and greatwidgets.com it is obvious than none of them stand out in a unique brand.

2. Make it sound different. The name you choose should sound like nothing else. Here is a bad example – Claris, Clarins, Claritin, and Claria. It’s hard to remember which names refers to software, line marketing, antihistamines or cosmetics. Even if you did remember it’s likely that you would associate all words in one category.

3. Verb Potential. Think ‘Xerox’ or ‘Google’. A generic pronounceable word that means nothing is the best launch for a brand to become unique. Words such as these develop their own verb. There isn’t a day where you hear someone say ‘google it!’ If you hear someone spending their time saying “[your name]-ing it” then you’ve got a promising brand name.

Kudos Brandbucket.com

Take, for instance, the Batman movie series wisely ousting director Joel Schumacher and replacing him with Christopher Nolan.  Very good move, indeed.

And then there’s Yellow Bot.

Yellow Bot’s refreshing new spin on themselves has opened up new and improved ways for local businesses to connect with customers.

Reinventing yourself can be a great way to not only draw in new and old faces to your website, but by paying heed to Yellow Bot’s new design structure, you begin to notice a couple of subtle, yet possibly important ways for local business listings to say hello to consumer search:

1. Ease of Access: Right off the bat, Yellow Bot improves the one thing that escaped business owners from doing as soon as they got there: submission of business. Err, let me rephrase that: you could submit your business listing the whole time, it’s just for “user-friendly” experience, you kind of had to go Sherlock Holmes on the website before you could find the “Add Business Listing” icon.  Nowadays, there’s an icon at the bottom that’s big, blue and looking for you.
2. Speedy Exposure: Once you’ve claimed your business and added the proper information, Yellow Bot has always been very good about placing your listing up in a timely manner.  Only thing is, this time you’re the star of the show for a day.  By that I mean your newbie listing is given top-shelf treatment via any photos you’ve included.  You’re only given three picture slots, so make them as pleasing to the eye as possible, because the right picture just might turn in the lead you’ve been looking for.

Just like Google’s subtle change to their home page, the warm, inviting colors used by Yellow Bot make the site look appropriate for today’s web design pallets.  Oh, and it doesn’t hurt that Yellow Bot lets you run rampant with your business listing, allows you to add numerous tags and such.

So go on, embrace change and get active with your business listing today!