Only When the Words Outdo the Silence

Lehrl’s axiom was that the definitive test of the efficiency of any organization structure was information and the filtering and dissemination of information.

-The Pale King, David Foster Wallace

I came across this line in David Foster Wallace’s latest book The Pale King two weeks ago and it’s been lodged in my head since then.  Particularly in my line of work, the ole optimization of search engines…, it’s paramount that I and my team filter – this is key as it’s incredibly easy to find one busy-work article after another after another – and disseminate information about the search landscape, traffic, keyword movements, an update to the visual presentation of SERPs, a potential correlation between act A and result B to one another.  It is one way to test the efficiency of an organization’s structure and vitality.

And then, I realized it’s also generally relevant to a company’s online presence: do you publish information about your company and it’s products in an effective and efficient manner? Do you filter out the fluff and publish what’s important to your users – whether they’re at the top or bottom of that farctate funnel (don’t forget the first touch!)? Is your information dissemination efficient – is it located in a logical and intuitive hierarchy on your site, is it easy crawled, indexed and found?

Greetings Passersbys (is that the appropriate term?),

A couple of links – and a slice of their pie to entice you to click through – I just came across that are good brain turners:

Thoughts on Economics: Phenomenology

The techniques of physics hardly ever produce more than the most approximate truth in finance because ‘true’ financial value is itself a suspect notion. In physics, a model is right when it correctly predicts the future trajectories of planets or the existence and properties of new particles, such as Gell-Mann’s Omega Minus. In finance, you cannot easily prove a model right by such observation. Data are scarce and, more importantly, markets are arenas of action and reaction, dialectics of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. People learn from past mistakes and go on to make new ones. What’s right in one regime is wrong in the next.

Active Listening

When I was doing a lot of travel for book tours and speaking, I spent many hours with cab and limo drivers. I discovered two questions that would almost always lead to something interesting:

1. Where did you grow up?
2. Have you driven anyone famous?

Error Message: Google Research Director Peter Norvig on Being Wrong

What do you think have been Google’s biggest mistakes?

I can’t speak for the whole company, but I guess not embracing the social aspects. Facebook came along and has been very successful, and I may have dismissed that early on. There was this initial feeling of, “Well, this is about real, valid information, and Facebook is more about celebrity gossip or something.” I think I missed the fact that there is real importance to having a social network and getting these recommendations from friends. I might have been too focused on getting the facts and figures—to answer a query such as “What digital camera should I buy?” with the best reviews and facts, when some people might prefer to know “Oh, my friend Sally got that one; I’ll just get the same thing.” Maybe something isn’t the right answer just because your friends like it, but there is something useful there, and that’s a factor we have to weigh in along with the others.

Huge fan of slide 84. It’s one of the initial seeds I like to plant during the kickoff phase of an SEO engagement – it’s all web content.  All of it.  PDFs?  Text it.  Create pages.  Processes?  Talk about them.  Make it a prominent feature?  No.  Make sure your CTAs are solid, in prominent positions; their presentation is consistent.  But create the plan and build it out.  Build it out entirely. Don’t let those branded keywords as the top traffic drivers fool you.  How did they find your company initially?  Probably a mid or long tail keyword.  Check out this deck on content strategy by Kristina Halvorson.

image by DolliaSH

Written on September 15, 2009

Is the content on your site linkable?  Does it need to be beefed up?  Do you deserve to be ranked on the first page?  No, yes, no?  We’ll use Austin Restaurant Week to illustrate the idea behind creating sumptuous, linkable content to garner incoming links.  Google is hungry and you need to feed it.

First, what is Austin Restaurant Week? Between September 13th- 16th and September 20th – 23rd, those fortunate enough to be in Austin can visit a number of fine dining establishments to feast on a delicious menu set at an affordable fixed price, between $25 – $35.  Call in a reservation to ensure you and your significant other a seat and eat up (if you’re looking for a date idea, I think this fits the bill perfectly)!

Second, how does this have anything to do with SEO and beefy content?  Rewind to last night.  I’m sitting in my living room nearly comatose from the pizza and football I’ve gorged myself on for the past few hours.  Of course, my mind’s nose picks up the scent of Austin Restaurant Week and I head to the website.  I click the links of two places I’ve not been to,Roaring Fork and Green Pastures Restaurant, and notice links to their respective menus:

• Roaring Fork Menu
• The Green Pastures Menu

Now, like I said, I’ve never been to the Roaring Fork and am making no assumptions about the quality of their dining. As a matter of fact, I’ve heard nothing but good things. When I mentioned this blog idea to a co-worker, she said, “Roaring Fork is one of my favs.”

However, looking at these two menus, which one has you salivating?  Which one has beefier content?  Which menu would you rather link to?  Which menu provides the most information about their offerings?  I think the information provided in the Green Pastures Restaurant menu makes their food sound much more enticing – they didn’t even dress up the language with adjectives – and I’d be more inclined to link to their menu.

If I or a search engine only had the information provided by the menus, and could look at the popularity of each by way of incoming links, to determine the most relevant menu for a search term such as “austin fine dining” or “austin restaurants,” then who would likely rank in first position?

The same idea should drive your analysis of the content on your own site:  if someone came across my site, would the information I’m providing them about “Software Development Life Cycle” be enough for them to link back to my site?  If I visit a competitor’s website and notice they’re providing beefier content that likely attracts incoming links, then why should I be ranked ahead of them?

To summarize, be honest about the quality and/or quantity of the content on your site:  Is it informative?  Should more be added?  But not simply added to attain a mythical keyword density.  Is it linkable?  Smoked salmon or The Upland Game Plate: Quail, Quail and Some More Quail?  Serve your visitors with healthy portions of information.

And, in case you’re wondering, I’ll be making a trip to The Melting Pot tonight.