Best SEO Blog|Launch your site.

I’m writing this article on Monday and scheduling it for a Thursday post. I HOPE the link stays live at least long enough for you to try it.

Check out Blind Search, which compares results for BING, Google, and Yahoo!. The tool was developed by a Microsoft employee but I found that it is a good test for which search results I like.

You type in a query and then pick the results you prefer. If you use queries you monitor regularly you’ll be able to figure out which search engines are which, but if you just randomly type in queries you’ll be better able to see where you really get the most relevant results.

For my tests I found that BING did indeed outperform Google and Yahoo!. What surprised me was that Yahoo! outperformed Google as well.

Why is that? One reason is that I am sick and tired of all the commercialized ad-laden crap Google pushes up in its search results. I recognize those sites now and try to avoid them like the plague.

Sometimes I want to see those sites when I know they organize information in a way that works well for me. Most of the time I am usually looking for something else and the blind search test tells me that Google is probably not the search engine I should be using.

On the other hand, you can use the tool to evaluate your optimization strategy. If you get very little traffic from Yahoo! and BING and your site doesn’t appear in the top results for queries where you’re in the top ten for Google, don’t blame Yahoo! and BING for your lack of optimization.

If the tool is no longer available by the time this article goes live, consider developing your own tool. Compare all the major search engines side-by-side and see which ones give you the best exposure. If you find a correlation between minimal exposure and minimal traffic, you know where you need to turn your optimization strategy to next.

Visible Technologies announced the formal launch of its TruReputation and TruReputation Score websites this week.

The TruReputation service brings together under one brand all of Visible Technologies’ search and social media optimization services from traditional eCommerce site marketing to international brand reputation building. We’re also introducing two new tools, an Internet Monitoring Service and a do-it-yourself search reputation scoring tool.

With the Internet Monitoring Service you will be notified of new blog posts, articles, and news stories in a timely fashion about the topics you want to track.

The search reputation scoring tool introduces a 500-point index that we feel weighs your search visibility according to sentiment better than any tool currently on the market. The free version is live now and a more robust paid version will be released soon.

Our brand search marketing service is designed to help large, high volume sites improve traffic and deliver better conversions.

A lot of hard work has gone into the launch of these new sites and the service names. Please take a few minutes to check them out.

Google took search engine optimization mainstream with its free optimization guide, which is actually pretty good as introductory documents go. It doesn’t get into advanced optimization techniques but provides a very good foundation in basic search engine optimization.

Frankly, I would recommend Google’s eBook over any other “introductory” SEO books I have read (and maybe written — I tend to write for conceptually advanced audiences anyway).

However, doesn’t it just burn your biscuits to know that the Googlers could have shared more than they do? Obviously, they didn’t write the eBook for experienced optimizers.

But if you look closely enough you’ll find a few gems in the eBook.

But enough about that. What I really wanted to point out was that when you’re up against experienced optimizers (including search engine strategists who seem to feel that “brand value” may be best represented by the obvious made-for-adsense conglomerates Google now routinely promotes in its search results), you have to take your optimization to the next level.

The easiest, quickest way to escalate search optimization is to identify the fringe queries that haven’t been attacked by the well-armed large content made-for-adsense sites that Google favors. Keep in mind that once you demonstrate there is value in those queries the mega sites will move in and eat your query as a quick snack. If you are not pre-positioned to survive the onslaught your site will drop out of the top ten.

So what you need to do leverage the query space to promote YOUR site as the best result before anyone really cares. Now, I’m talking about optimizing for active queries but you have to work on queries that appear to have little to no real brand value.

Your strategy has to consist of creating the brand value in the query. When a query acquires brand value, its traffic increases. If you enjoy taking risks, then you can use your trends analysis skills to look for queries that will assume brand value naturally as much as 6-18 months in advance.

When you’re building brand value in a secondary query space you have to have the resources to tell people about the newly branded space. That is, you have to have the means to teach people to search for your query. You have to have an existing audience large enough to spread the word for you in a true viral campaign (most so-called “viral” SEO campaigns are not viral).

You create brand value by promoting a site with the query for which you want it to rank first, and you of course want it to rank first for that query. You use those keywords to announce and promote that site and you talk about those keywords in all your literature and press releases. In most cases the professional optimizers will either ignore what you’re doing or they’ll look at the estimated traffic for your query and assume it’s not worth their trouble.

By the time they change their priorities your site should have established itself in the niche sufficiently well that even Google’s MFA-favoring algorithm won’t knock you down into the lower-tier SERPs along with the other original content sites that best match user queries.

It’s time for Google to restore the “Supplemental Results” label to its search results.

Now that Matt Cutts has adjusted his disclosure argument to once again invoke the Federal Trade Commission’s guidelines, people in the SEO community need to say, “Enough with this nonsense!” We already know that the United States Government says links are not endorsements.

Here is the problem: Despite the fact that science has shown that Citation Analysis is an invalid measure of quality, Google continues to promote its PageRank ideology as a tool to help clean up the Web.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently suggested that a greater emphasis on brands might clean up the Web, although Google so far hasn’t really done anything to promote brands in its search results.

Not unless you consider “brands” to be database-driven, AdSense-carrying, Google-mini using, hundred-thousand-page, user-generated-content mush sites like IMDB, Wikipedia (AdSense not included), Cars.com, and a host of other generic sites that either provide you with information of questionable value (UGC typically changes over time and if ever it becomes accurate and correct usually does not stay that way) or just want to sell you something you could buy elsewhere.

Let’s see a show of hands: how many of you feel Rip-off Report (with its plethora of fake complaints) is a “brand” site worthy of being included in so many of your customers’ name spaces?

Clearly, Google likes to promote snake oil Web sites because it’s easier to do that than to find the real quality. I call that the Wikipedia Principle.

Frankly, all this talk about “disclosure” from Google leaves me shaking my head. Google doesn’t bother to disclose its Supplemental Index any more, thus creating exactly the kind of consumer confusion that the Federal Trade Commission is so adamantly opposed to. After all, how are consumers who use Google search to know that they are NOT being shown the most relevant content if Google doesn’t tell them that more relevant content is available but not fully indexed?

More importantly, Matt keeps telling people that we need to “disclose to search engines” that links and posts were paid for by using “rel=’nofollow’” — but there is nothing in the spec that says “rel=’nofollow’” indicates that a link was paid for. How does the use of “rel=’nofollow’” on paid links (and in paid posts) “disclose” anything to Google or any other search engine?

Clearly, there is obfuscation and misdirection going on at Google. Google is not being open and honest with people about the real purpose behind Google’s nofollow initiative.

And to be honest, I don’t really care about Google’s nefarious motives. What is important is that Google address its serious moral failings and start engaging in FULL DISCLOSURE OF SUPPLEMENTAL RESULTS again.

Anything less is completely unacceptable.

If anyone wants to criticize Google for hypocrisy, let them ask Matt Cutts when Google will begin fully disclosing its Supplemental Results once more, so that search engine users will no longer be deceived into thinking that there is no Web Apartheid.

When you set up a Website, if you consider implementing “nofollow”, don’t do it because you think you’re disclosing anything to the search engines. You’re disclosing nothing. All you’re doing is helping Google fight a losing war against link manipulation.

Google could win that war easily by ending its use of PageRank and anchor text in the search results. Let the truly relevant and authoritative content float to the top of the search results, Google!

I call upon Google to improve the quality of its truly sucky search results by allowing the best content to rank where it belongs, and put an end to this faux brand and disclosure nonsense.

Until then, Google, it’s open season on PageRank. Trust me: getting PageRank is like taking candy from a baby. PageRank has absolutely nothing to do with quality or brand value.

Microsoft has just launched its new search service. While people are curious enough to look, you should link to any BING searches where your sites rank higher than on equivalent queries on Google and Yahoo!.

Get people interested enough in BING to teach them to look for your sites there instead of on more competitively crowded search tools.

You don’t often get an opportunity like this because Microsoft is about to launch a $100 million advertising campaign to encourage people to use BING.

Microsoft’s Live Search already receives nearly as many visitors as Google each month. You may be able to position yourself to take advantage of improved search positioning on the new engine.