Many of our “100th Tweet thoughts” are still true today, and we’ve added some tools to make our Tweeting even better:

• Our main focus with Twitter remains keeping up with the Search Marketing community and their blogs, re-tweeting information and linking to posts that will help keep our clients updated on digital (and traditional) marketing trends.
• Each day, we highlight our five most recent Tweets on our website home page, ensuring constantly updated content for visitors to the site.
• We track our favorite blogs in Google Reader as the primary source of our Tweet material.
• Each time we update our blog, a Tweet goes out to notify our followers.
• Our tweets are used to update our status on our Facebook page.
• We use TweetDeck for desktop as a personal real-time browser to update our status and to follow the Twitter stream of lists, hash tags and friends.
• We registered g-3.me to use as our Custom Short Domain, then mapped that URL to bit.ly pro. This allows all of our Group 3 Solutions Tweets to be branded with the g-3.me shortened URL.
• Each week or so, we compile our messages into a Tweet roundup blog post.

Has our Tweeting been a game changer for us? Not really. But it has allowed us to improve our knowledge of the real-time information network as we assist our healthcare vertical clients in their social efforts and introduce business-to-business clients to how they can enhance their marketing program with social networking.

Where is real-time information networking heading? Let’s take a look at what is happening in the ever-changing field, and what others are saying.

• Real-Time Search. We think Twitter, and other services like it, will continue to have an impact on search engine marketing, with real-time search results becoming increasingly important in the future. Danny Sullivan, the authority on SEO industry reporting, took an early look at Google’s real-time efforts. Here’s Google’s page on the topic, and Bing has information here.
• Social Media Marketing. As marketers seek to tap into the 120 million or so Twitter users (as of July 2010), new advertising companies are being formed, small agencies are expanding their offerings, and larger ones are buying these smaller firms or establishing their own social marketing divisions. “Ad spending on social networks worldwide is expected to rise 14% this year (2010) to $2.5 billion,” according to research firm eMarketer. “Although social media represents only a fraction of the $55 billion online-ad market, it is one of the fastest-growing segments,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
• Multimedia. ReadWriteWeb reports that Twitter may soon be displaying images and video inline, perhaps “betting that 140 characters just isn’t enough anymore.”
• Real-Time Advertising. Is Twitter best for public relations, or will the new advertising platform be better for ROI? Mashable suggests keeping in mind the affinity already built with Twitter as you consider going to Sponsored Tweets or other advertising opportunities on the service.
• Competition. Location-Based Social Networks (LBSN) such as Foursquare may vie for marketers dollars with Twitter. “The time for marketers to get involved with LBSNs is coming,” Forrester says.

So … a lot has changed while other aspects have stayed the same between our 100th and 1000th Tweets. What will change as we work toward 2000 Tweets? Follow us on Twitter to find out!

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.

Jill Whalen

I hear from many people who want to be told exactly what they need to do to get high rankings and bring more targeted search engine traffic to their websites. I wish I could provide them with a straight answer, but every site has its own needs when it comes to SEO. Which means there’s no exact rule that will work each and every time for any website.

One thing, however, that can help you figure out how to SEO your site is to learn the whys behind the specific techniques you always hear about. But to understand the whys, you first need to get the gist of how search engines work. Sounds scary, I know, but I’m going to make it as simple and painless as possible – so stick with me!

In very simplistic terms, there are 2 main components to the search engines: the crawler and the algorithm.

The crawler, which is sometimes referred to as a spider, a robot, or simply a bot, is what goes out on the web and fetches all the pages of information that it can get its virtual spidey legs on.

The algorithm (or algo) is basically the ranking formula that each search engine uses to determine the relevancy of any page that the crawler finds.

The search engines use this formula to decide – out of the pages that were previously fetched – which pages they should show for which keyword phrases that any searcher might type into the search box. Those keyword phrases are also sometimes referred to as a person’s “search query.”

While the algo is a formula, it’s so complicated that it’s not something you can simply reverse-engineer. The engines look at hundreds of factors and weigh them all differently. This is why you’ll find that automated SEO software doesn’t work well to increase your rankings.

Here’s an interesting point – those hundreds of factors that go into the relevancy algorithm boil down to two major things:

What you say about yourself, and what others say about you.

Really. It’s as simple (and as hard) as that!

“What you say about yourself” means the information you provide on your website, or the words that you write on your pages. The Internet is mostly a word-based medium. Every single web page has its own story to tell. Each page should be relevant to one or more search keywords or phrases. And each page’s story helps the search engines understand which search queries the page is relevant to.

Make sense?

So now let’s look at what others say about you. This aspect of how the search engines determine relevancy is known as the “off-page” criteria, and it’s typically done through links.

That is, another site owner likes what you say or offer on your site, and wants to tell their own site visitors about it. The way they do this is by linking to your site – or a specific page of your site. Search engines take these links into account because what others say about you provides an additional layer of trust beyond what you say about yourself.

Still with me?

These two major factors – how search engines work and what they’re looking for – help clarify what you need to do SEO-wise to keep them happy.

First, you need to steer clear of any technical issues that can impede the crawler from finding, reading and indexing the pages of your website. The easier you make it for them to do their job, the better chance your pages will have of showing up for relevant searches.

Which means you need to start on the SEO of your website from the very beginning. You’re going to need lots of up-front research on keywords and other elements. You’ll also need to make sure your content is written to appeal to both your users and to the search engines. While all of this *can* be done later, you’ll save yourself tons of time if you plan your SEO before you ever start developing your website.

Then, once you’ve got a crawler-friendly website, you’ll need to create pages that conform to the search engines’ algorithms by making sure they are not only relevant to what people are looking for, but interesting and unique enough for others to want to link to them. You’ve also got to spend time getting the word out about your website, because even the greatest content in the world won’t market itself!

I hope I’ve simplified the search engine process and SEO enough that you understand why you need to use the specific tactics that are involved. If you always keep the two major factors that search engines are looking for in mind – what you say about yourself and what others say about you – you’ll always be able to make the right decisions for your website.

It’s those two factors that drive the SEO process and fulfill its goal of helping your target audience find your website when they’re seeking out exactly what you offer.

Jill Whalen, CEO of High Rankings a Boston SEO Consulting Agency, has been providing SEO services since 1995. Jill is also the host of the High Rankings Advisor newsletter and the High Rankings SEO forum.

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.

• In battle with Fox, Time Warner shows how to grab video directly from the web. WSJ: http://bit.ly/6iitC8
• Slate answers the question: ‘Is Facebook Spying on My E-Mail?’ http://bit.ly/6HtCuu
• Verizon gets $550+ million from Microsoft, we get server-side install of Bing on our BlackBerry. Search Engine Land: http://bit.ly/7BDzhw
• For those who care … Google Toolbar PageRank appears to be updating today. SEORoundtable: http://bit.ly/74CiH4
• Jenn Strathman (@KSHBConsumer) takes a look at the top KC investigations of the year for NBC Action News. http://bit.ly/4×1uSG
• What to do? ‘The amount of time people devote to LinkedIn is a fraction of the time they spend on other social sites.’ http://bit.ly/822q6a
• Watch out! Nearly 15 inches of snow for Kansas City in Dec. The last time we had this much (1961), we followed up with 30.5 inches in Jan.!
• Anil Dash on being on Twitter’s suggested user list: ‘makes no appreciable difference in…retweets, replies, clicks.’ http://bit.ly/8lkdjY
• ‘Facebook was the #1 most visited website in the United States on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day this year.’ http://bit.ly/8uIZeZ  
• Fun breakdown (first in a series) from Bruce Clay Inc. on the ‘Best of Search Conferences 2009: The Agenda.’ http://bit.ly/87bB6F
• In Kansas City and elsewhere, Time Warner and News Corp. are fighting over subscriber fees for Fox programming. http://bit.ly/5×51tS
• Nice profile of Kansas City’s ‘White Ollie Gates,’ Joe Zwillenberg of the Westport Flea Market. Hearne Christopher: http://bit.ly/74DpNA
• ‘Fun Stats: 28% Of Sites Use Google Analytics; 5% Have Facebook Or Twitter Links.’ Danny Sullivan: http://bit.ly/6Q0Dh5
• Twitter CEO on purchase of Mixer Labs: ‘We want to know What’s happening?, and more precisely, Where is it happening?’ http://bit.ly/4BOo41
• Roger Twibell leaving KC radio to start Clear Golf. (via KC Confidential) http://bit.ly/7xTaVV
• According to Firefox, the first mobile phone version is just “days away.” http://bit.ly/8dIBWx
• Facebook projected to surpass its rival, MySpace, in ad revenues in 2010. http://bit.ly/5sclyG
• YouTube launches youtu.be as a shortener for video links — and nothing but YouTube links. http://bit.ly/4nQ9Oj
• Google, Yahoo! and YouTube led the way as far as most accessed sites and brands on the mobile web in 2009. http://bit.ly/6D2zwN
• Over one in five households have ‘cut the cord’ and gone to wireless only. Nielsen: http://bit.ly/565eqs
• Google Content Network YouTube Channel ’stockpiled with videos, links and downloads about the full suite of features.’ http://bit.ly/8IIYlH
• WordPress 2.9 is released … watch ‘a short video summarizing some of the cool things about the new version.’ WP blog: http://bit.ly/6PuXps
• ‘Google-Yelp Deal Not Happening Now.’ http://bit.ly/4QUJwa
• Google in Talks to Acquire Yelp for $500 Million. http://bit.ly/5OihXB
• ‘Trident Gum Turns Fan Tweets Into Full-Page USA Today Ad’ http://bit.ly/8ceTX8
• Search Engine Land: ‘SEO Expert Swears In Court That Google Uses Meta Keywords Tag.’ http://bit.ly/6sbpIY  
• November Search Engine Marketshares: Google and Bing Up, Yahoo Down. http://bit.ly/87amZ1
• ‘Now You Can Reply To Facebook Status Updates By Email.’ Inside Facebook: http://bit.ly/7fXukc
• ‘To help you understand how everyone sees your website, we created a tool called Browser Size.’ Google blog: http://bit.ly/5pvCpQ
• ‘Marketing (as we know it) dies’ in 2010. Newspaper circ down; TiVo & TV; FTC & privacy; FB gets ‘MySpaced’? Forrester: http://bit.ly/6gEzyC
• 5 Great Website Tips To Help Keep Your Brand Image Fresh http://bit.ly/8aNfPp
• The first official Bing App for iPhones and iPod touch is now available. http://bit.ly/5UNL9P
• According to comScore, Facebook traffic grew by around 5.5 million users in the United States last month. http://bit.ly/8Qb8Xm
• Yahoo! Search makes it easier to search and find local businesses. Yahoo blog: http://bit.ly/70Dds0
• Tweets from Santa! http://bit.ly/92zsVd | Group 3 Solutions blog.
• Search Engine Land: The Importance of Creating an Inventory of Link Building Assets. http://bit.ly/5Syina
• NielsenWire: ‘U.S. Web Users Spent Just Over 66 Hours on the Computer in November.’ http://bit.ly/5tu592
• Our week of Tweets about search engines, digital marketing and Kansas City stuff. | Group 3 Solutions Tweet Roundup | http://bit.ly/7ZQvgQ

Previous Tweet Roundups. Follow Group 3 Solutions and Darrin Widick.

The answer is: Yes …

… depending on which stats you believe. With a range of 65% on the low side and 80% on the high, there’s a pretty large gap in the numbers. So when clients ask how their monthly search engine traffic distribution compares to the average, which numbers should we compare them to? The ones that say Google, Yahoo and Bing have 65%, 19% and 9%, respectively, of the market, or the ones that say they have 80%, 9% and 9%?

So we thought we’d try to establish an “Internet Average” of the market. We took market share numbers from six different companies, added in our own numbers based on observations of sites we monitor, and came up with this table.

Granted, each company has a different universe of searches from which it draws, and uses different methods of calculating its numbers. So this certainly is not a scientific process. But we do think it strikes a happy medium from the low to the high across Internet statistics. And we think it provides a nice baseline to which folks can compare their own traffic numbers.

Here’s where we pulled the data:

• Experian Hitwise
• StatCounter Global Stats
• ComScore (via PC World)
• Nielsen Wire 
• Group 3 Solutions Data
• Enquisite
• iCrossing (via search engine land)

• Conversion Tracking is now ‘easier to implement, monitor, and troubleshoot.’ Inside AdWords Blog: http://bit.ly/3O4r4h
• “Pretty nice casket’ for his cat but he had to ‘dig a really big hole.’ Walmart caskets get reviewed online. AdAge: http://bit.ly/1ak4jc
• ‘Way too many business people say Twitter is stupid.’ Social-media thoughts from Gary Vaynerchuk’s new book via WSJ http://bit.ly/15wQ4o
• LinkedIn testing a ‘cleaner, less-cluttered look.’ Nav changes, less scrolling, more space for content. http://bit.ly/2I8aen
• ‘How We Use Twitter.” Our small business shares our thoughts on using the microblogging platform. Group 3 Solutions: http://bit.ly/2JBsqR
• Walt Mossberg review: ‘The Droid is potentially a big win for Verizon, Motorola and Google.’ http://bit.ly/2H6sBY
• How much does Google know about you? If you use Gmail, Voice, Search, Reader, etc., it might be a lot. Google Dashboard http://bit.ly/2Py7pw
• Southern Comfort media now 100% online because, ‘It’s about delivering value beyond what’s in your bottle.’ eMarketer: http://bit.ly/dEQSl
• Jeff Jarvis is ‘fretting about us all forgetting things because we’re using Twitter.’ It’s the ‘Temporary Web.’ http://bit.ly/4tVL4Y
• At Purdue, using Twitter, FB, SMS to backchannel ‘allows students to comment on the class as it proceeds.’ http://bit.ly/1K8DDB
• Google Social is ‘thrilled to introduce a new set of Friend Connect features.’ Aimed at getting to know visitors. http://bit.ly/2n6QOr
• ‘Ad Sitelinks will display up to 4 additional Destination URLs.’ Will this increase AdWords conversions? http://bit.ly/3Huzjz
• ‘With a new, streamlined and less cluttered appearance,’ MSN introduces a new home page. Social, video, localization. http://bit.ly/4kH8tb
• StatCounter: Google nears 81% market share for October, Yahoo and Bing about 9%. http://bit.ly/3RG8e5
• Forrester blog asks, ‘Why Are Marketers So Bad At Measuring Social Media?’ SMM is ‘drowning in a sea of metrics.’ http://bit.ly/YPor0
• Follow-up DMOZ post on ‘identifying the good, organizing it, classifying it, providing links to it’ on the web. http://bit.ly/b7kks
• ‘Come to Think of It, eBay,’ ad campaign starts today, says WSJ. ‘Ad motto, or desperate plea for attention?’ http://bit.ly/3tlGhg
• Does ‘the best SEO in the world come from small shops and freelance consultants?” SEngineLand asks. We think so! http://bit.ly/3Ul3EQ
• Jeff Jarvis: ‘journalists must become entrepreneurs.’ Give j-schoolers access to biz incubators, not gov funding. http://bit.ly/mTjVJ
• SearchEngineWatch compares banning social media now to banning Web mail and even the Internet a few years ago. http://bit.ly/4EebeY
• SEO isn’t Rocket Science (but if your site is about Rocket Science, make sure you mention it). Group 3 Solutions blog: http://bit.ly/2yacJv
• A week of Tweets about search engine marketing, advertising, analytics and Kansas City. Group 3 Solutions blog: http://bit.ly/1PeO8X
• Yahoo’s Yodel Anecdotal Blogger Nicki Dugan ‘Will Not Be Yodeling Anymore,’ says All Things Digital. http://bit.ly/2kxGZu

Are you following Group 3 Solutions on Twitter? http://twitter.com/Group3Solutions

Let us explain.

When we mention that we’re involved in Search Engine Marketing, the second thing folks often do is ask why their site isn’t ranking. (The first thing they do, of course, is call us braggers for being search engine optimizers!) Anyway, here is how the conversation often goes …

Them: “Speaking of rocket science, my site doesn’t appear when you search the term ‘rocket science’ in Google.”

Us: “But in looking at your site, the terms ‘Rocket’ and ‘Science’ never appear together in the titles, headings or pages.”

Them: “But it’s what we do. It’s obvious.”

Us: “It’s not obvious to the search engines. Put the phrase on your site, write copy about it, and optimize for it!”

It sounds so fundamental, but you’d be surprised at how often that happens. Sometimes, the reason for the lack of rankings isn’t that cut and dried. For example, the person may have a Flash-heavy site that has all kinds of pretty moving pictures and parts about Rocket Science, but no spider food in the form of text that the search engines can devour. Or the site is competing in the search engines against Rocket Scientists from around the world, when all the owner wants is a little piece of the pie in, say, the Kansas City market.

So we advise the owner to go to work getting content created, adding copy where there is none (or external resources when main content is in Flash). Creating a blog is always good for this, as is creating pages by adding copy from sales letters, brochures, presentations and other resources used to communicate about the business.

Then, create internal links within your site that hyperlink pages via anchor text containing the terms “Rocket Science” and “Kansas City” and other relevant qualifiers. Use those same terms in your page headings and title tags. For good measure, add a strong description of each page in the meta description tags. And populate the meta keyword tags as well, though it won’t help a lot for rankings purposes.

Finally, get some related sites (vendors are great for this) and directories to link to your site with “rocket science” in the hyperlink. And see our tips for titles and meta descriptions for further assistance.

• Twitter lists are live, allowing ‘users to create groups of Twitter users into categories.’ Search Engine Land
• The ’slew of product roadmap announcements’ from Facebook have ramifications for ‘all page and brand managers.’ Inside Facebook
• What Garmin did to paper maps, will Google do to Garmin? BusinessWeek looks at ‘Google, Garmin, And Free Navigation.’
• MapQuest has refreshed their map styles, enhancing the ‘map-viewing experience.’
• Google Analytics changes: Engagement Goals (reaching an involvement ‘threshold’) and Goal Sets (totaling 20 goals).
• A distant 4th in the search-engine horse race, Diller says he’d be willing to sell Ask.com. WSJ
• Yahoo testing real-time search, but may be looking to OneRiot instead of Twitter. Washington Post
• ‘Is the youngest person in your office your social-media expert?’ WSJ takes a look.
• Concerned about upgrading in WordPress because of plugin compatibility? Check out this feature.
• The DMOZ/Open Directory Project is still around. So, what is it? Nice summary at Search Engine Land.
• Google Social Search Launches, Gives Results From Your Trusted “Social Circle.”
• AOL has 3000 journalists on staff. Ready to ’spew out’ content in a secret new CMS project. TechCrunch
• ‘Not Helpful At All’ is how 63% of US small biz execs rate social media for lead generation. via eMarketer
• Newspaper circulation down 10.6% in 6 months. WSJ moves to No. 1, only top daily with an increase. AP
• ‘How easily can real-time search turn into real cash?’ NY Times
• Joe Posnanski blogs about the difference between golf and other sports. ‘Golf looks easy.’
• Our friends at Dobies Healthcare Group ‘connect the dots’ in this post for hospital marketing leaders.
• ‘Internet relic’ GeoCities takes its last byte on Monday as Yahoo ends the free website building service. Mashable
• To go along with Twitter agreement, ‘Bing Search Engine Cutting Status Update Data Deal with Facebook.’
• Google has ‘reached an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results.’
• Bing now has ‘access to the entire public Twitter feed and (has) a beta of Bing Twitter search for you to play with.’
• On our Group 3 Solutions blog, we take a took at ‘Keyword Placement for Organic Optimization.’
• Can you outsource SMM (Social Media Marketing)? Virginia Nussey at Bruce Clay Inc. takes a look.
• Back from Baltimore and loving Southwest’s EarlyBird Check-In. don’t have to do online check-in EXACTLY 24 hours prior to flying.
• Blogging platform WordPress still working on 2.9, but ‘back-ports’ some security updates into version 2.8.5 .
• ‘More Powerful, Flexible and Intelligent’ Google Analytics.  We like 20 goals per profile!

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• Yahoo to end Search Submit, its paid inclusion program.  ‘Committing our resources…to our core areas of focus.’
• ‘Westlake Ace Hardware has tapped Kansas City, MO-based…Barkley to take on its CRM and database marketing.’ DMNews
• ‘We believe the worst of the recession is behind us,’ Google says in reporting 7% year-over-year revenue growth. WSJ
• White House converses with LinkedIn community ‘regarding the challenges faced by health care professionals…’
• Was the media ‘punk’d by Balloon Boy?’ Mashable | Twitter, Facebook mash up the story. Mashable
• Us: ‘We Don’t Use the Keyword Meta Tag.’  Danny Sullivan: ‘Yahoo, You DO Index Meta Keywords Tag.’
• Van Natta cuts staff, tears down walls, turns over the C-suite. WSJ Digits.  Will it save MySpace?
• ‘Shared bicycles,’ emblazoned in Google-logo colors, were a favorite on our recent Googleplex visit. ‘Green Tour‘
• Been following the Sidekick data loss debacle at Microsoft sub Danger? They now say most data is recovered. Mashable
• Experian Hitwise data on US search share, long tail, search engine marketshare by industry. via Virginia Nussey
• Danny Sullivan uses the word xcvteuflsowkldlslkslklsk to prove that Yahoo DOES use the meta keyword tag. Search Engine Land
• Twitter as ‘poor-man’s email’ … and as a tool for community, brand and business. Nice Quick-Start Biz Guide. ClickZ
• To infinity and beyond … or at least 10,000 points anyway, as the Dow tops that mark for the first time in a year. Up 50% since March.
• Will digital print, and the ability to customize content, save traditional publishers? Trib, Time Inc. try it. DMNews
• ‘Promoted Videos has become a critical way for creators to get their content in front of viewers.’ Now via AdWords.
• It took LinkedIn 477 days to get first million users. The latest million took 12 days. Now at 50 million total users.
• Yahoo and Google to report earnings soon. YHOO stock up 39% this year, GOOG up 70% since January. Kara Swisher
• Bloomburg buys BusinessWeek…cheap. Conde Nast’s Portfolio is gone. 3 biz mags remain: BW, Forbes, Fortune. WSJ
• Our weekly Roundup of search engine marketing, advertising, analytics and Kansas City Tweets, through 10/09/2009.
• Top users are on social sites more than email, IM combined. ‘Dollars are following eyeballs,’ ad prices low. eMarketer
• ‘This ship is sinking,’ says Mashable regarding MySpace. Traffic has dropped nearly 20% since June.
• Fun stuff. Esquire’s Digital Man, Barry Sonnenfeld, vlogs about the Traeger Professional Wood Pallet Grill. Kara Swisher
• Email no longer rules, but does that save time…or waste more of it? WSJ
• 9.1 million saw The Office ’spoof within a spoof’ wedding entrance, but 27+ million have seen the JK Wedding Dance. E!
• WSJ: ‘the biggest battle over fonts — ever — has broken out in New York federal court.’ NBC vs. Font Bureau.
• Google Blog: ‘This week we made many small improvements to the functionality and usability of our search results.’

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