That’s why it is hard to look back and realize we didn’t follow our gut instincts and buy into the Google IPO nearly six years ago. Here’s a look at what GOOG has done in that time:

So what brings this up now? In a recent Harvard Business Review article, Google CEO Eric Schmidt offered his first-person account of the “quirky IPO,” from the Founders letter by Larry Page and Sergey Brin to the Google Guys interview in Playboy (we hate to link it; just Google it!) that almost derailed the process to the unique Dutch auction concept that aimed to help allow the little guy to get in on initial shares.

And we were in on every step of the auction bidding process. Until we were out.

So we thought it might be a little fun to take our own look back at that process, which started in January 2003 when we first contacted our Morgan Stanley broker to inquire about Google going public. We followed up in November of that year when we heard the company was getting closer to going public and that Morgan Stanley had been tapped to lead the way. Keep us in the loop, we said, as we’ll be buying shares.

By January 2004, we were really all over it. News was out that Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs would indeed be managing the Google IPO. We’re in. Our only concern was: How many shares would we be allotted? We knew we couldn’t afford much, but it would be fun to participate.

In April 2004, Google filed for the offering. By July, things were moving along and Google had outlined a “Dutch auction” process that prospective investors would have to navigate to purchase shares of the company. First, we had to go online to the Google site and register to get a bidder number for the IPO. We did. Number 0126-6035-3855-2803-4600. That gave us the right to participate in the auction process, in which each investor could tell Google how much he or she was willing to pay per share and how many shares he was willing to buy at that price.

Mr. Schmidt said this process would allow his company to “do a better job than the traditional approach of setting a price for our shares – and would allow our share price to remain stable after we went public.” In other words, the large institutions couldn’t hoard all the shares, then flip them at a huge profit at the opening bell as the stock started trading and the small investors got their first chance to buy. Theoretically, the little guy would have as much of a chance as the big boys, and Google would not leave any money on the table at the offering.

So now that we had our bidder number, it was time to bid. The company initially came out with a suggested bid range that went up to about $140. The Dutch auction process is complicated, but the general concept is that the company takes bids on what investors are willing to pay and the amount of shares they would buy at that price. Each bidder can even offer a range of prices they will pay and shares they will buy. Mr. Schmidt says the company could then “move down from the top bid until it reached the highest price at which it could sell all the shares it wanted to offer.” So if it had enough orders, it could sell all shares at $140. If not, it would move down the list until it reached a price where all the shares would be purchased. Everyone who bid that price or higher would get the shares at that price.

So here was the chance we had waited for. We’d already been working in Search Engine Optimization for some time and had dabbled in the AdWords bidding process for our clients, an online auction if you well that somewhat resembled the Dutch auction. As a result, we (like so many others) were convinced that Google was the best positioned search engine in the market place. We wanted to have a little bit of equity in the company. Make no mistake, we didn’t have a lot of money, and what we did have for retirement and our young children’s college funds we didn’t usually “gamble” on stocks. Instead, we mainly invested in mutual funds and hoped to watch those investments grow slowly over time.

But in this case, we decided to make up to a – gulp — $10,000 investment. So we bid on 25 shares if the price at which Google went public was $140. If it ranged down to $125, we’d buy 25 more shares (50 total). At $110, we’d buy 25 more (75 total). And if it went to the low end of the estimate at $100, we’d go with a round lot (100 shares) and invest the full $10,000.

We put in our bid and waited to see what happened. Which was nothing. Instead, the range for the offering was lowered to a top end of $135. That’s okay, we’re still in. But clearly Google had to lower the bids because not enough folks bid high enough to cover all 20 million or so shares being offered in the initial range. What did the savvy investors know that we didn’t?

Anyway, we put in our bid again in the lowered range. Starting with 25 shares at $135, down to 100 shares at the lowest end. And once again, they didn’t end the auction. Meaning that, even at the lowered price, Google and its investment bankers couldn’t get enough bidders. So, the range was lowered. We were still in – we love Google, remember? – but we were getting very jittery. Why were we willing to pay up to $140, but not enough folks were even willing to pay the previous low end of $108 to buy up all the shares? We put in our bids again, down to $90, but we weren’t near as confident in our decision.

Then it happened. They lowered the pricing again. To a range of $85-$95 per share, or 60% of the initial price we were willing to pay. So if we liked the company at $140, we must really love it at $85, correct? What we should do now is double down, put in $20,000 and enjoy a good investment over the coming years. Sure, the stock price might go down initially. But Google is such a good company, the investment will pay off in the long run. And we’re long-term investors, so let’s go for it, right?

Wrong.

We called our broker and dripped out of the auction. We’re not in for any shares of Google. Not 25 shares at $140, nor 50 shares at $115 or 75 shares at $100 … not even 100 shares at $90, which had been our final offering on the low end. Nope, we don’t want any shares at $85. Though in our gut we just knew that Google was the major player in the ever-expanding field of search, we worried that all the smart money folks had driven the price down, so there must be a reason. Surely the stock was going to go down, not up, when it started trading.

The rest, of course, is history. Initial investors received their shares at $85 in the IPO. The first public trade of GOOG on that first day (August 19, 2004) was $100, which is about where the stock closed that day. So a 100-share investment at $85 ($8,500) was already worth over $10,000, a gain of 18%. As you know, it gets worse from there (worse, that is, if you didn’t buy any shares). At its highest point in late 2007, the stock reached $714.87 per share, meaning that initial $8,500 investment would have been worth $71,487, about 8.5 times the original investment.

Of course, we probably would have sold long before the $700+ peak. But you get the point. We really wanted to be a part of the unique IPO. We were willing to invest at $140 per share. But we couldn’t pull the trigger at $85 per.

We often wonder how many small investors there were who, like us, wanted to be involved but got skittish and backed out as the big money drove the price down. Did Google accomplish its stated goal of letting everyone participate? In the end, the answer is probably yes, at least to a degree, though the company didn’t accomplish its goal of not leaving money on the table. With the IPO priced at $85, remember, but the first bids coming in at $100, Google could have made 18% more for the company. Just like we look back with a little regret, we guess Mr. Schmidt and Company may as well. But with the stock currently hovering around $500 per share, that regret likely passes pretty quickly. Ours lingers.

Google’s first production server at the Computer History Museum.
Photo Credit: jurvetson

Taking that concept to the World Wide Web, Page and Brin set out to construct a search engine that utilized link structure (along with the actual anchor text in the hyperlinks that pages point to) to return relevant results, and to do so quickly and efficiently. PageRank — a play off of Larry’s last name –was introduced. “BackRub” — perhaps a play on back links? — became Google — for sure a play on googol — and the rest is history.

[Larry and Sergey’s Stanford paper, The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, is a fascinating read into the backstory of Google. Amongst the talk of damping factors and mathematical formulas like PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + ... + PR(Tn)/C(Tn), the paper gives great insight into the duo’s thinking as it laid out its goal of “Bringing Order to the Web.”]

Now, let’s take that concept to your site. If you write about “rocket science” … and you include that phrase in page titles … and you have it in page headings … and you have links within your pages that include rocket science as the anchor text and point to other pages about the subject … then you’ve told your visitors, and the search engines, that one of the themes on your site is rocket science. Within reason, the more this phrase is naturally used in page content, titles, headings and hyperlinks, the better. Google knows this phrase is important to you, and it can begin to judge the importance of your site for that term.

Here’s where PageRank, external links and anchor text solidify your theme and can help establish your site as an authority on rocket science. When other sites and blogs and Tweets, etc., link to you with rocket science in the content of their pages and in the actual hyperlinks that point to your page, your site in essence receives votes for being important for that topic. (It’s one thing for you to write “we are the best at rocket science.” It’s another for someone else to write that “these guys are great at rocket science” and link to you for more information on that subject.) The more votes you receive the better you rank. And, more importantly, the “better” the vote (from a site which itself is an authority on the topic) the better your ranking.

Again, the concept can’t be abused. Excessive links from bad neighborhoods or from multiple domains controlled by the same owner or from other shady practices can lead to penalties. Like other SEO techniques, it shouldn’t be overdone, or forced, or spammed … but legitimate links from legitimate sites give a boost to your Google Juice … and everybody likes Google Juice, right?

Remember the premise of Google: Each time a given author was quoted as a reference in other academicians’ research papers, it was seen as a vote for the authority of that author. Now, simply carry that forward to the multi-billion-dollar external search engine: The more times a site is referenced, the more authority that site has, and the higher it ranks. Write good copy, optimize it well for on-page factors, and let the world vote on that content with links to your site.

So as an advertiser, how can you adjust your online campaign(s) to better reach this demographic?

Here are ways to target your online campaigns (specifically AdWords) to reach the Hispanic market.

• When setting up your campaign, you can select the Spanish language box in your language setting options. By doing so, your ads will reach users searching Google in the Spanish interface. Note:  In this scenario, users would still need to search on the English keyword and ads would appear in English.
• If you’re looking to take the extra step to reach your intended Hispanic visitors, setting up a separate AdWords campaign with translated keywords and ads is the way to go. By creating a second campaign in Spanish, you’ll be sure to reach Hispanic users that search in both English and Spanish. Google provides tools to assist in the translation, or you can utilize the services of a third-party vendor.
• Make sure the designated landing page for your campaign takes users to a useful page. If a user clicks on an ad in Spanish, leading them to an English-only website would negate your efforts and provide for poor user experience. Make sure your landing page addresses the Spanish-speaking user either through a translated page or an action item that directs Spanish users where to go (i.e. a phone number to call to get more information).

By knowing how to better reach Hispanic users through your AdWords efforts, you’ll be better equipped to create smarter, more effective campaigns.

A recent study about search engine ranking factors, highlights where keywords are most effective on a website. The study results were gathered from a 2009 poll taken by a panel of 72 SEO experts. The top ranking on-page (keyword-specific) ranking factor was using the keyword in the title tag on the page.

Summarizing methods that we already knew and what these findings supported, here are tips on where to place your keywords on your site:

• Title Tags. Get your keyword into the first couple of words in the title tag if possible.
• Domain Name and URL. This one’s more difficult we know. Many of us don’t have a site devoted to just one topic, rather a collection of topics. So if your keyword can’t be in the root domain name, consider adding it to the subdomain name or page name URL.
• Headings On The Page.  Get your keyword into the H1 tag/main headline on your page. 
• Copy On The Page. Include your keyword in the copy of the page. This will let Search Engines find the content on your site that does relate to the keyword searched on.
• Internal and External Linking. Include your keyword in any internal cross-linking or external linking to your site. Include this method in your internal SEO practices. When possible, request external sites that are linking to your site to include the specific keyword in their link.
• Description Meta Tag. Include your keyword in the description meta tag. Google will pull the description meta tag and display it in the search results, if the keyword is included.
• Image Alt Text. Include your keyword in your brief descriptive image alt tags.

And, of course, always make your page and/or website relevant to your keyword with rich, supporting content, videos and images. Remember, keywords are still important, it’s just a matter of how you use them.

Don’t spend an extraordinary amount of time populating the keyword meta tag. And don’t stuff it with irrelevant words. But do spend time focusing on what the main keywords/phrases are for a page, do create content that utilizes those words, and do populate those words into the meta tag. You might even add synonyms and a misspelling or two to help the engines.

At the time, we said, “the search engines virtually ignore meta tag keyword entries.” Recent developments indicate that you can strike the word “virtually” and safely say, “the search engines ignore meta tag keyword entries.”

In fact, Google engineer Matt Cutts mentions that fact three times in a short four paragraph blog post, and highlights it more with a video (below). For good measure, Google says the same thing in its Official Blog, and adds the Cutts video again for good measure. (I think they’re trying to tell us they don’t use the keywords meta tag.) Recently, Yahoo was quoted as saying the same thing at SMX East in New York. (UPDATE: Danny Sullivan says that Yahoo does use the keyword meta tag, and used this word xcvteuflsowkldlslkslklsk to prove it.)

So, should you spend a lot of time on the keyword meta tag? No. Should you spend time researching keywords and phrases about which you’ll create content, pages, description meta tags, title tags and link opportunities. Yes! (And go ahead and put those in the keyword meta tag for good measure, especially if you use the Google Search Appliance or similar tool.)

Google XML Sitemaps

Search engines do a great job of finding web-based content on their own. But sometimes they need help, and in recent years they adopted a standardized format that site owners can use to submit sitemaps (lists of pages on a site). The format is called the Sitemap protocol and it basically involves putting an XML file listing a site’s indexable content somewhere on the site where search engines can download and process it. Maintaining this XML file can be a very tedious task to do manually, as the format is quite strict. What’s a blogger to do? Surely not update the sitemap XML file by hand after each post? Enter the Google XML Sitemaps plugin.

This little wonder updates your blog’s sitemap file each and every time you publish a new post (unless you wish to update it manually). It not only updates the sitemap file, it also gives Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask a big heads-up that there’s something new to come see. You can tell it to exclude certain categories, tags, or posts from the sitemap and set up simple rules for priority and update frequency. Note: For Yahoo automatic notification, a Yahoo Application ID (similar to a WordPress API Key, discussed in our prior discussion of Akismet) is required (sign up for one here).

Check out the Google Sitemap Generator plugin home page for more information or to download it yourself. As usual, don’t forget to donate to the author!

Next time we’ll cover Twitter Widget Pro, a great tool to display your Twitter feed in your blog’s sidebar.

The one gotcha is that the ga.js code can’t be at the bottom of the page, which is non-typical, and could increase page rendering times. The reason Google’s ga.js code goes at the very bottom is to prevent the latency of connecting to Google from adding to the page’s render time. Since the code is now at the top of the page, there’s no way to avoid the (admittedly only potential) latency problem.

But hey, you can track your document downloads! =)

Update: Also works for offsite links.