The practical summary of Latent Dirichlet Allocation for SEO

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Sep 7, 2010 in Blogging, Marketing, search engine optimization, Technology | 5 comments

What’s the hottest trend in search engine optimization that you’ve never heard of (yet)? The folks over at SEOmoz have been doing a great series on Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), which is a context-based algorithm for determining search relevance. Their research has shown strong correlation between LDA and search rankings. However, it’s little things like this:

Photo credit: SEOMoz

…that make people flee in terror from LDA, and who can blame them?

So here’s what you need to know about LDA as it relates to search engine optimization:

Your content has to be about something and worth reading.

Huge surprise, huh? Google has said for years that its stated aim is to get search engine rankings in alignment with “human rankings” – that is, if the content is valuable to a human being, it should rank well. If the content isn’t valuable to a human being, then it should rank poorly. For years, Google has used PageRank and inbound links as proxies for judging the value of content, but now there’s a theory in the SEO community, supported by the SEOmoz data, that on-page content may play more of a role in your rankings than previously thought.

What makes this different from the early years of SEO is that it’s somewhat harder to game. Instead of simple on-page optimization tricks that Google can devalue quickly (bold text, H1 titles, etc), the LDA algorithm looks at the total picture of the content and its context. Does a web page talking about World of Warcraft mention paladins, death knights, and fish feasts, or is it just badly repurposed, valueless content surrounded by gold spam ads?

So how do you make use of this knowledge? Here are three immediate to-do tasks:

1. Make sure you are using the rel=canonical tag.

Use this tag in your web site, blog, and any place where you have ownership of your content. As more and more algorithms are tuned to contextual content, the reward of ripping off someone else’s content will be much greater, so using this tag will help at least assign some level of ownership to stuff you write. If you’re using WordPress, the All In One SEO plugin will do this for you automagically. Want to learn more about this tag? Read what Matt Cutts of Google has to say about it.

2. Make your web site about something.

A personal blog is fine to be all over the place, one day talking about cooking, the next day talking about Twitter, etc. A professional blog and/or your corporate web site has to be about something and needs to have lots of original, high quality, on-topic content using semantically related words in the copy that correlate to the search terms you’re going after. For example, Blue Sky Factory’s new web site (shiny!) has a TON of new content that talks about email marketing in all of its various aspects, using all of the different ways people talk about it. You can’t get away with two sentence pages and minimally valuable content any more – you have to do the hard work of creating good stuff in order to leverage this algorithm effectively. That’s why we’re seeing strong correlations between the LDA algorithm and Google’s results – Google wants to continue rewarding valuable content and making life harder for lazy SEO folks.

3. Stop feeding the social media machine all your stuff.

This one will be controversial but true. It’s perfectly okay to have conversations, to engage, to be interesting on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. but I want you to stop putting your best stuff there in full. Why? Because this algorithm is all about quality AND quantity of content. If your blog or website is gathering dust while your Facebook page is bursting at the seams, you’re doubly harming yourself. Not only are you making yourself dependent on an entity that doesn’t give a rat’s ass about you, but you’re penalizing your own web site/blog by not having context- sensitive information on it. Keep sharing, keep linking, keep conversing, but don’t give the keys to your kingdom – your content – to the social media sites. Excerpts? Fine. Full blog posts? Not so fine. Teasers from eBooks? Fine. Large chunks of copy? Not so fine.

Is LDA a game-changer as many say? Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but if you follow the practice of creating lots of original, great stuff on properties you own, you’ll never go wrong.

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Job search recommendation: Steve Sherlock

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Sep 6, 2010 in Conferences, Productivity | 2 comments

As I wrote on the Blue Sky Factory blog today, it’s Labor Day, a great opportunity to not only celebrate friends and family, but to also take a few minutes to help out someone you know who is looking for work. These days, with the unemployment rate knocking on the 10% door (and underemployment significantly higher), there are plenty of people who are exceptionally talented but can’t find a place to call home. It’s not the scrubs or the lazy that can’t find a job – it’s millions of people.

So to do my part, which is a bit more than 5 minutes, I want to take a few moments to tell you about someone I’ve had a chance to work with in a volunteer capacity for years upon years now, a guy most known for two things: his reliability and his hat.

Photo Credit: Whitney Hoffman

Enter Steve Sherlock, of Franklin, Massachusetts. Former director of project management for some of the largest corporations in New England (Fidelity and Unisys), he’s been a reliable face at PodCamp Boston nearly since its inception. While I never worked with Steve at Fidelity or Unisys, I’ve worked with him at nearly every xCamp in New England that he’s been a part of. If you’ve been to a PodCamp and seen this hat, you’ve seen Steve.

He’s a master of his trade, which unfortunately is supremely unsexy: making things happen, getting things done. While most volunteer events would be lucky to be able to find their own bottoms with two hands, a flashlight, and a team of five, it’s folks like Steve, coordinating organizer conference calls, transcribing meeting notes, coordinating teams of volunteers at events, and working in the trenches on game day that make things happen. And this is on a volunteer basis, with no pay, no compensation, no reward except to see an event you care about happen smoothly. Imagine what he’s capable of for things that actually matter, like your business.

Here’s the part where you come in.

I know Steve’s hitting all the channels – he’s on LinkedIn, Twitter, his own blog, etc. But in this economy, that’s not enough. I’d like your help in helping him find a Boston-area company that is desperately starving for good operations and project management on an ongoing basis, a company that currently lacks reliability internally and needs a rock to build on.

Help me connect Steve with that company in and around the Greater Boston area. If you’ve worked with Steve in the past (and many of you have), please forward his profile to the hiring managers you know. If you’re a hiring manager, take a careful read of his recommendations, because you’ll notice a consistent theme: not just smart, but rock-solid reliable, a rare trait these days.

Who will you help on Labor Day?

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The presentation blog test

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Sep 5, 2010 in Blogging, Presentations, Strategy | 0 comments

Here’s an easy test to assess the value of any slide in a presentation, if the presenter is using slideware:

Would this slide make a decent blog post?

Not the slide itself, per se, but whatever the content is that’s on it or that accompanies it. Would it make a decent blog post? Would it be interesting enough that you could write about whatever the topic is for a few hundred words?

Sometimes when I’m putting together a presentation, I’ll find that a slide is just vapor. It originally might have had a point, but time, practice, and refining has whittled that point down to a pale shadow of itself, not enough to make content for a reasonable blog post. The slide gets the axe.

Sometimes, the opposite a true. A slide tries to say too much, do too much, and would probably make about three blog posts. I’ll mentally draft out the three blog posts and then blow up that slide into three, as long as the blog posts I’ve written in my head about them are reasonably good.

Try this the next time you’re working on a presentation or reviewing one you’ve already made. See how many slides you end up blowing up and how many end up getting the axe entirely. When you’re done, you’ll have a much stronger presentation…

… and a whole bunch of blogging to do.

Get this and other great articles from the source at www.ChristopherSPenn.com! Want to take your conference or event to the next level? Book me to speak and get the same quality information on stage as you do on this blog.

Do you care if the shelves in your store have more stuff?

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Sep 3, 2010 in Advertising, Marketing, Social media | 2 comments

One of the students in the course I teach on Advanced Social Media asked how in the world we are all expected to manage the tremendous number of services, tools, tactics, and ideas in social media. Various lists float around the Internet from supposed social media experts of the hundreds of different tools out there. New stuff gets announced on Mashable and Techcrunch faster than your poor mouse can scroll. How is someone supposed to keep up?

You’re not – and that’s more than okay, it’s the smart thing to do. Let’s change contexts to home improvement. Generally speaking, you go to a home improvement store because you have a home improvement problem or challenge. You want to fix something, build something, or paint something.

When you get to the store, a home improvement expert doesn’t immediately begin telling you where everything in the store is. Chances are they’ll ask if they can help you and then direct you to the aisle in the store that has the stuff you’re looking for in order to solve your problem.

Generally speaking, if you don’t have a home improvement problem, no amount of stuff added to a store’s shelves is going to matter to you. Even if the store issued a press release touting how much was on the shelves, even if home improvement experts blogged about how they knew about every product in the store, if you didn’t have a problem, you wouldn’t care.

The same is true of social media. Figure out first if you have a problem that calls for a social media solution, and then worry about which tool, service, or tactic fits the bill. There’s a very good chance that there are much bigger overall issues you need to solve first, and then apply social media methods as part of an overall digital marketing strategy.

You as a homeowner are not obligated to know how to use every tool in the home improvement store. You just have to know where to go and how to ask for help when you have a home improvement problem. You as a marketer are not obligated to know how to use every social media tool available. You just have to know where to go and how to ask for help when you have a social media problem.

Finally, if you as a marketer think that telling the world about your latest features in your product or service is going to move the needle, ask yourself this: when was the last time you saw a home improvement store do a massive campaign about new stuff in aisle 18?

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Public service message: ScheduleAPickup.com

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Sep 1, 2010 in Awakening, Rant | 1 comment

Yesterday, I was walking along the streets of Boston, and noticed the biannual dumping of perfectly good stuff by college students on the sidewalks and streets. Mind you, this isn’t just the dorm room poster collection or something – we’re talking furniture in like new condition, clothing, lights, etc. – things that people with less money could use in their homes.

The problem is, most students don’t want to go to the trouble of hauling stuff like this to a charity. I can understand that, having been a student – the last thing on your mind as you’re moving out or in is moving yet MORE stuff somewhere else.

I’d like your help in spreading a simple message to every college student, to everyone and anyone who has stuff in still usable condition. There’s a charity I support called the Vietnam Veterans of America that has a charity donation system that kicks ass. Here’s how it works: you visit ScheduleaPickup.com and pick what you’re giving away, and most importantly

WHEN A TRUCK FROM THE CHARITY CAN COME TO YOUR PLACE AND PICK IT UP

That’s right: no hauling. No moving. No schlepping. A truck magically appears on Wednesdays and takes your still perfectly good stuff away. They leave you a receipt for tax purposes, too.

If you live nearby some college students who are throwing away perfectly good stuff, please consider corralling it to your yard or doorstep and then calling in the charity air strike yourself. There’s absolutely no reason that this stuff needs to take up space in a landfill when someone else can get some good out of it.

Please spread the word LOUDLY about ScheduleaPickup.com and solve both a waste and charity problem at the same time AND with little to no effort on the donor’s part. Everyone wins.

Get this and other great articles from the source at www.ChristopherSPenn.com! Want to take your conference or event to the next level? Book me to speak and get the same quality information on stage as you do on this blog.