SEO 101

Roundtable on Bing-Yahoo and Google Caffeine

From SES San Jose 2009, a panel of Search marketing experts; BestOfTheWeb President Greg Hartnett , SiteLogic Director of Marketing Jennifer Laycock, Pole Position Marketing President Stoney deGeyter and Enquisite CEO Richard Zwicky, discuss hot topics including the Bing Yahoo deal, and Google Caffeine. Our Sponsors: * Producer Brasco: As digital professionals and business owners, we understand the critical importance of a secure and high-performing website. That's why I want to talk to you about Kinsta, a managed WordPress hosting provider that delivers exceptional speed, security, and reliability. Kinsta's infrastructure is optimized for WordPress, ensuring your site loads lightning-fast and ranks well in search results. They utilize Google Cloud's premium tier network and C3D virtual machines, which significantly boost performance. In fact, Kinsta customers often experience up to a 200% increase in site speed just by migrating to their platform. Security is paramount, and Kinsta provides enterprise-grade measures to protect your valuable data. They are one of the few WordPress hosting providers with SOC2 certification, guaranteeing the highest level of security for your website. Kinsta's MyKinsta dashboard offers a user-friendly interface with a comprehensive suite of tools to manage your site efficiently. From cache control and debugging to redirects and CDN setup, MyKinsta simplifies website administration. For SEO 101 listeners, Kinsta offers specific advantages. Their platform is optimized for speed, a crucial ranking factor in search engine algorithms. Their security measures protect your site from malware and hacking attempts that could damage your online presence. And their expert support team is available 24/7 to assist with any technical issues that may arise. If you're serious about your online presence and want a hosting provider that prioritizes performance, security, and support, I highly recommend Kinsta. Visit kinsta.com today to learn more and take advantage of their limited-time offer for new customers. That's k-i-n-s-t-a dot com. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Duration:: 35m
Broadcast on:: 11 Aug 2009
Audio Format:: other

From SES San Jose 2009, a panel of Search marketing experts; BestOfTheWeb President Greg Hartnett , SiteLogic Director of Marketing Jennifer Laycock, Pole Position Marketing President Stoney deGeyter and Enquisite CEO Richard Zwicky, discuss hot topics including the Bing Yahoo deal, and Google Caffeine.

Our Sponsors:
* Producer Brasco: As digital professionals and business owners, we understand the critical importance of a secure and high-performing website. That's why I want to talk to you about Kinsta, a managed WordPress hosting provider that delivers exceptional speed, security, and reliability. Kinsta's infrastructure is optimized for WordPress, ensuring your site loads lightning-fast and ranks well in search results. They utilize Google Cloud's premium tier network and C3D virtual machines, which significantly boost performance. In fact, Kinsta customers often experience up to a 200% increase in site speed just by migrating to their platform. Security is paramount, and Kinsta provides enterprise-grade measures to protect your valuable data. They are one of the few WordPress hosting providers with SOC2 certification, guaranteeing the highest level of security for your website. Kinsta's MyKinsta dashboard offers a user-friendly interface with a comprehensive suite of tools to manage your site efficiently. From cache control and debugging to redirects and CDN setup, MyKinsta simplifies website administration. For SEO 101 listeners, Kinsta offers specific advantages. Their platform is optimized for speed, a crucial ranking factor in search engine algorithms. Their security measures protect your site from malware and hacking attempts that could damage your online presence. And their expert support team is available 24/7 to assist with any technical issues that may arise. If you're serious about your online presence and want a hosting provider that prioritizes performance, security, and support, I highly recommend Kinsta. Visit kinsta.com today to learn more and take advantage of their limited-time offer for new customers. That's k-i-n-s-t-a dot com.

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The opinions expressed on this webmasterradio.fm program are those of the hosts, guests and callers. And do not reflect those of the staff, management or advertisers of webmasterradio.fm. Any rebroadcast or retransmission of this program, without the express written consent of webmasterradio.fm is prohibited. Welcome to SEO 101, your introductory course on Search Engine Optimization. So turn on your computers, open your mind, grab your mouse and get ready to get back to the basis SEO 1011 on webmasterradio.fm is now in session. Hello and welcome to SEO 101 on webmasterradio.fm. My name is Ross Dunn, I'm the CEO of Step 4th Web Marketing and joining me of course is John Carcutt, the SEO manager at MediaWiz. And his mic isn't on yet, but we're just going to say hello and we're at Search Engine Strategies, San Jose and joining us today are four esteemed members of the audience. And I'd like to start with Jennifer introducing herself. Well, I'm Jennifer Evans-Leicock, I'm Editor in Chief of Search Engine Guide and Director of Marketing at SiteLogic. I'm Richard Zwicky and I'm the President/Founder of Inquizant, Stoney to Gider, we are Stoney to Gider, I'm President of Pulposition Marketing. And Greg Hartnett, I'm the President of Best of the Web, B-O-T-W.org and I told this directory. Outstanding, this is a great panel. Awesome. And I guess what we're going to do today is we're just going to kind of hit on some topics that have been kind of top of the line, top of everybody's mind and search recently and get your guys' opinion on what's going on. The first and biggest one kind of in the news these days is the Yahoo Bing deal/merge or whatever you want to call it, Bing hoo, whatever. What do you guys think this means for us? I know that's kind of a broad question, but there's a lot going on that has to do with this. But specifically, this is the SEO 101, from an SEO perspective, what do you think this means for our craft and what people are going to have to do and prepare for this merger. Again, it's probably a year or more off, but what do you think that means for what's going on? Richard? I think it's great for the industry. There's an increase in competition, there's an increased push on innovation throughout the industry. This, you know, the alignment between Bing and Yahoo is going to throw tremendous additional resources behind the search industry and behind continued innovation and only makes everybody stronger. From a search marketing perspective, it's great because it clears the path and allows you to continue to focus on driving relevant traffic. But the different measures by which you get measured on relevance across different channels is now standardizing and that's a great advantage for everybody. You know, it's all about getting customers to the right information or searchers to the right information quickly and efficiently. And the two channels themselves are being completely dedicated to that is only going to help the consumer and the search marketer. I would have loved to see both them Bing and Yahoo become players up against Google, but short of that actually happening, I think it's good to see them combined and join forces. I like having competition, I like having various search results and really being able to break down Google's dominance for one. I think that's important, not that they're ultimately going to topple them or anything like that, but just to have the competitive field out there, I think it's good for the industry. Is there anything specific that you think maybe as an SEO looking to the future that we can do to prepare for what's going to happen? We don't know what's going to happen, but what would you do to prepare for it? I don't know about that. I honestly, I think it goes back to the concept of the universal search and integrating social media and really searchability. Not just how do I rank in any one engine, but as we see Yahoo and Microsoft coming together and you see some of the third party programs that they've bought and Yahoo with Flickr and all these different things that start to integrate, that's been Google's strong point is that they can integrate YouTube and they can integrate all the other features that they have in. I think it's more reminding people, you've really got to branch out and you have to make sure that you're findable no matter where people are going. This is just going to make it a little more condensed, you want to take that strong Microsoft traffic, that strong Yahoo traffic, put it together with the same technology behind it and really have a chance for something to compete. To take the flip side of that argument, I don't see how the combined forces, like you said, we still need to see how everything is going to play out and how the search is going to implement within Yahoo. I mean, it's still today, even if you take Yahoo's portion of the search and Microsoft's portion of the search, it still remains that roughly 30% and that's not going to change, so I don't see it as phasing Google's dominance in search at all. I mean, Google's still going to have their 70-ish percent of domestic market share and I personally think it's going to, I think it's going to strengthen Google. I think Microsoft is going to come out somewhat stronger and I think it's pretty much the first step of the nail, well, in Yahoo's coffin. All I can say is I'm glad I'm not a Yahoo shareholder. I think it's a horrible deal for them. They should have taken the $44 billion that they were offered a year ago and now I think they're pretty much handing away their shop for pennies on the dollar. So I would like to say, first of all, when you do get the microphone, if you just mention who you are so we know who's talking, that'd be great because, of course, our audience doesn't really know, but what do you think in terms of optimization? I mean, I know it's really fresh, but have you seen any elements that work best on Bing? I know a lot of, I've got clients asking that, I've certainly seen it a lot on forums. Are you seeing fresh? Have you seen anything so far? Adam, this is Greg Hartnett. I've seen Bing tends to, well, first of all, they have a lot of work to do on their webmaster tools. It's really thin right now, so it's tough to gauge exactly what's working and what isn't working, but from sites that I've monitored and sites that I own from years ago that are showing very well in Bing have a lot of low quality links. They seem to be, thus far, putting more emphasis on quantity of links as opposed to quality. So blog comment links, they have a long way to go in tweaking their relevancy and getting rid of the low quality links and placing more value on the high quality links. And it's almost, from what I've seen, it's almost diametrically opposed to what's going to help you in Google. So by focusing on Bing, I think you're going to sabotage your Google links or your Google listings, so it depends upon what it is that you're trying to do with the site and what market you're trying to capture. And I think also it seems to be a snapshot of where Google was months ago, right? So one of the sites that I own that got hit in Google is rocking in Bing right now. So I'm just waiting to see, is Bing going to catch up and eventually de-emphasize that site as well, or is it just going to keep on going? It poses an interesting problem when things do merge later on with Yahoo and Bing. If they haven't changed, all of a sudden Yahoo, and that's a big property people won't be getting the rankings on. I know some of you have been mentioning they get great rankings on Yahoo, and they're afraid that's going to be gone now because of the merger. So it's a concern, but Richard, do you have it, something like that? Yeah, thanks. So we monitor traffic across thousands of websites on behalf of a variety of customers across verticals. And there's obviously going to be different strengths and weaknesses between the different engines and across different sites within verticals. But I think that, you know, I don't look at it quite the same as you do. I see actually, you know, the combined Yahoo, Bing, engine offering a lot of advantages. And we have customers, we see customers' data where they're succeeding phenomenally in both Bing and in Google. And it isn't always obvious, it isn't always the same reasons they can point to that are causing to succeed in one or the other. There isn't a, you know, there are a lot of different tactics we've seen people using. And that's part of really what I think one of the big changes or one of the big advances for our industry with this change is it enforces and it pushes a greater reliance and depend and value on the search marketer's skills. The search marketer is more and more important than ever in delivering customer acquisition to their client because the channels are a lot clearer and the strategies they can use. They're not simpler, but they don't have to worry about as many channels to get to the customers. They can do a much more focused job and deliver higher value on an ongoing basis, which means their value and their ability to keep up on the skill, on their skills and keep cutting edge is more important than ever. So would you say that that counters the, well, they mentioned that it's essentially spammy to some degree right now, still, or at least the quality of the results aren't nearly as good. There's some stuff that's lower quality links that are getting rankings. How would you address that? Well, you know, there's, I mean, I think every engine, every engine, Google's had to go through that. Every engine has to go through looking at quality in different ways to factor it in. In some verticals, Bing seems to be doing an absolutely phenomenal job. In other areas, they don't have it right yet, but they're refining it. And the search marketer is refining the strategies they use to succeed. And instead of succeeding in an area where it's 4%, 5%, they're able to succeed now in an area which is 25% or 30%, that's much more significant. And you know, there's always going to be spammy tactics in every engine. But the reality is every single engine is moving forward aggressively to clean that up. And every time they close the door, a new one opens up. There is no, you know, Google is better than Bing today in a lot of areas. There are areas where actually we see some much stronger results in Bing. And it's sometimes people actually don't give Microsoft the credit they do for a lot of what they've done because people tend to think they're behind. Whereas in reality, in some areas they're ahead, we just don't recognize it. >> So I got a question, looking at this from a more tactical level, what this does. Two things that I've run across a couple different times people asking questions about. Specifically when Yahoo changes, is paid inclusion going away? And B, are we going to lose sight explorer? And so we don't know, of course, nobody knows. But do you guys have opinions on what do you think that's going to happen or not? >> This is Stony. You know, if you were relying on paid inclusion, I mean, I don't know anybody who is. I haven't used paid inclusion for several years. I would not be concerned in Iota if that goes away. Well, and maybe that's just me. You know, as an SEO, I'm not going to change my strategy on how I optimize sites because Bing and Yahoo have merged. I think good SEO, you focus on the things that work for each engine and if something works for one and it is penalized on the other, you just, you avoid that tactic and that strategy. You focus on the positives that work best and avoid the negatives that are going to harm you and either one or the other. >> I don't think I'm on and I guess I'll tell you I'm Jennifer, but seeing as how I'm the only girl up here, I don't really think I'm going to get confused with everyone else. But I think on the paid search side of things, I think from, you know, the small business one, even I guess the enterprise perspective, the idea of having two major engines to worry about as opposed to three is very nice because, you know, when you had to look at both Yahoo and Microsoft, putting, you know, basically the same amount of time and effort into both of them and splitting it, you know, between two different groups, if you can cut the amount of time and the amount of money and half and actually, you know, really be able to focus and get better results out of that, I think that's a great thing, you know, from the site owner side. But, you know, then it does become the question of, you know, well, which of the two, you know, we don't know exactly what features of the two different systems are going to come into play. And, you know, there were a lot of really great features on the MSN side, you know, some of the customization and targeting that were really nice. And I'll be curious to see what they come out with on that in terms of what we're going to lose or what we're going to be able to gain. I think if I can just, it's Richard, I think it was one more point I can add to that. In the past, a lot of people in a lot of companies ask their search marketer, do we need a strategy for Yahoo or Bing? It's just Google, it dominates. Now that's no longer a question. There's two obvious clear channels, which both have substantial market share and can deliver value. And you need to focus on both. You need to spend the time and effort because customers are there. At a point. Yeah, to play devil's advocate yet again, I think that, yeah, it's your job, yeah. This is Greg Hartnett. From a side owner's perspective, I would be uncomfortable in the trade-off of convenience of having to only optimize for two engines with the risk factor now of, you know, getting a whammy in any one of them and now you're effectively out of the market except for one. The good old days when you optimized for AOL and you optimized for Yahoo and you optimized for Microsoft and you optimized for Northern Lights and Altavista, and those were, that was great, you know, and if you started showing well in, you know, ink tomi and you weren't so-and-show well in Yahoo, you know, it didn't matter as much because you had your, you know, you had traffic in 15 different engines. And now as we consolidate, it just, it places more risk on the side owner. So I, once again, I would feel uncomfortable in that, you know, the trade-off for convenience rather than risk. You don't think you had an opinion on the paid inclusion thing when I mentioned that and I got a feeling it's going to be different than everybody else's? Yeah, go figure. I think it's, there's a, well, the paid inclusion has been an option for enterprise-level clients with Yahoo for a handful of years now and I know there's a handful of companies that are going to go out of business should Yahoo decide not to, you know, have their PFI. I mean, those companies that specifically cater to the PFI as well as companies that, you know, the PFI is, it's a nice avenue to get those organic listings, you know, without breaking your bank. So I think, once again, that the removal of that PFI is a bad move. This whole thing is all speculative. We don't know what's going to happen and I just wanted to emphasize that point. These guys are experts in their field. I know you hate that word, Ross, but we just want to give you an example of what people think and where they're going with this right now. So before we continue on, we're going to take a quick break and when we get back, we're going to talk about caffeine. It's the latest buzz online these days, so... No pun intended. Yes. SEO 101 will be back right after recess. Hey, this is Danny Sullivan, talk to you about Bruce Clay Incorporated. They've made ink magazines list of growing private businesses and have exhibited and sponsored them like offices since the very beginning. You've seen their search engine relationship chart where you've read their SEO code of ethics, seen other SEO experts, but did you know they can help you with PVC, web analytics, web design, marketing strategy, promotion and branding? Yep. Get everything you need for success in the online marketplace. You can check it out for the professionals at Bruce Clay Incorporated for over 10 years of offices worldwide. They've got the answers you need, check them out today at BruceClay.com. 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We've got a big gang here, and our next question here is, we're at search engine strategies, first of all, in San Jose. I wanted to get back to that, and we are alive, and I've got a question for the group here. There's been a few mergers, or at least one merger, for sure, Facebook has bought friend feed. There's also rumors of Twitter potentially buying Bitly. Again, it's a rumor, but those rumors tend to come to fruition these days, it seems. Do you predict any other mergers anytime soon, or anything you'd like to see, and why? I can think of a couple that I'd like to see, most of them involving the purchase of Best of the Web, and I can think of a handful of good suitors as well. Why aren't you guys looking at making your own purchase not too long ago? Yeah, we did. We were speaking with people, a couple of people at DMOS, and talks just broke down, so go figure. But yeah, you guys are, that's old, boring stuff. You want to talk about the 2.0 mergers and stuff, so I'll pass the microphone to Stoney. I got nothing. It's hard to follow up on. Now, I'm curious to see what Facebook will end up doing with friend feed. I mean, the two were fairly tied together anyways, although I always saw it more as Facebook information feeding into friend feed instead of the other way around, so I'll be curious to see what they do with that, but I'm really going to be curious, really around Twitter, and to see who tries to pick that up, to integrate it into some type of larger network. Because we still hear the buzz about Twitter, there's tons of people headed towards it, tons of people using it, but we've not seen from them any type of monetization channel yet, and seeing the challenge that Facebook has had with really monetizing to match up to what people are saying they're worth, and some of these other social media sites. Right now, the thing that I look at is just, okay, how long can these companies stay afloat? It's great to have valuations, and it's great to have people say you're worth this or that, but until you actually start producing the revenue to go along with it, you're always in danger of just vanishing or shutting down or running back into the fail-whale scenario that we see happen with Twitter so often. So I'm more interested just to kind of watch and see what companies are forming the partnerships that help each other build up than necessarily worrying about who's buying who and what the latest buzz is on that. So I think any of the rumors are really interesting, but perhaps even more pertinent for us in the industry is an acquisition like the one of Razorfish over the weekend. And other agencies that will be purchased, and there is a consolidation, you know, another round of consolidation that is going to go on, there's a lot of agencies, there's a lot of specialty agencies, and with the economy being what it is and the necessity of specialization and a different customer acquisition strategy, you know, we're going to see a huge round of acquisitions, of course, always in technology, and there's always going to be rationales behind it. So we haven't seen a massive round and roll up in the agency side yet, and that's actually a bit surprising that it's been so long since we've seen any major activity there, and this might be the first, you know, this announcement over the weekend might be the start of a round of acquisitions in the agencies, and I look forward to that, I think that's strong for the industry. Richard, do you think that the Razorfish sale was really basically because of the industry is starting to do that, or more because Microsoft needed to push him off because of the Bing launch and all the detention beings get in? You know, I don't think it has to do with the Bing launch. I think, you know, Microsoft isn't in that business and hasn't necessarily wanted to be in that specific business for a while, but there still had to be a market who was willing to acquire it for the right price, and that helps define the price for a lot of other agencies, of the rest of the marketplace, the value of the technology that's there, the value of the customer that's there, and also just the way the market and the strategy of the traditional agencies who are investing more and more online today and going forward, because quite honestly, a lot of the traditional agencies, you know, they've got a ton of brand names, but a lot of them still haven't developed a comprehensive web marketing strategy, and they're looking for the pieces to fill that in. Razorfish was an extremely important piece for, you know, for a publicist in this case, but whoever ended up getting it. I would like to first of all ask whether that's foreshadowing, inquisits going to buy someone or get bought, you know, anything coming up? Nothing today. Well, one thought I had, I don't know, have you ever tried Evernote, anyone here tried Evernote? It's this cool program that allows you to take a photo, a snapshot of anything, and it recognizes the text on board, so like say you take a picture of a business card, it will recognize all that, you know, keep it so you can do searches and it will actually find that particular business card. Seems like a logical move for Google to at least incorporate that technology so that there's a certain amount of image recognition in search. And then you take that to the next, so that's one particular possible acquisition, Evernote. Another one is, and I'm afraid I'm not familiar with it because I don't have an iPhone, but I know, is it the Apple, or sorry, Apple, they have a way of recognizing your face within images so you can find other friends like that, that's the sort of stuff that needs to be built in, and of all people, Google or Bing, these are the front leaders, they should have this kind of technology, and I think that opens another question, like what other technologies do you see coming in soon? You must hear a ton of stuff, or at least some gossip, and I know John's jumping up and down here, he's got one, why don't we go straight to John first and we'll go around. Well, it kind of foreshadows the question I was going to ask a little later on, but if it's in, and I want to tie it in through, and I want to tie it in through what Jennifer was saying earlier about Twitter and modernization and where these social networks are going to go to make the money to prove that they're worth what people say they're worth. Twitter is a very good example, if anybody, if you guys read all the tech crunch, the leaked documents from Twitter, if you guys read that stuff, so somebody leaked a bunch of documents, internal Twitter documents to tech crunch, and it published little pieces of it. One of the things that I read out of that that really struck home to me from a Twitter standpoint was in one of their meeting notes, they actually said, they had to say, we want to do to Google what Google does, did to everybody else. So it doesn't sound to me like Twitter is actually looking to be, you know, an acquisition from somebody, especially Google. So I see them with their, the rumor of them picking up Bitly, which is the URL shorting services, it's the default for Twitter, and Bitly has a new product out called Bitly Now, which is going to be a major competitor to dig before long. Twitter and a lot of this social stuff is really primed for real time search, hitting data at a real time, you know, what people are talking about right this moment. And I think that's where they're going to find their modernization. Any thoughts on, you know, real time search and where that's going, because that's a big topic recently. Well, I think with things like Twitter, that's where the social side of it comes into play so strongly, because it takes time, I mean, even as fast and as good as Google is, it takes time to go out and find this information and compile it and process it and figure out, you know, how you're going to get that data back out to people. And with something like Twitter, you know, where people can go in and build up their own networks of credibility of, you know, who they trust, who they want information from. And you know, when Twitter bought, and I can't even remember what the name of them was now, but the powers of the search for Twitter now, it was a whole separate site. Yeah, yes, some eyes. When they bought some eyes and brought them in, you know, that made a huge difference in the usability of Twitter, because you could go in and get the data so well. And I know for me, you know, if there's breaking news or you know, I see a story on something or I hear from somebody, that's the first place I go now is Twitter to get that information because it's so real time and you're getting the links out, you know, to other people's stuff. I remember when Michael Jackson died, perfect example, everybody that I knew spent the entire day on Twitter, not because people were saying what was happening because that's where you found the most recent stories and most recent updates. Yeah, exactly. Because the news is coming out and it's not just hearing other people talk, but it's people pointing to, I just found this article or I just found that. So when you have that credibility of people you trust and you've built up that network of your own, it's like instant, it's like everyone else you know going out looking for the same thing you are and everyone pulling that information together. And that's where I think the value lies in Twitter in terms of search is just the ability to kind of aggregate that that group effort of going out to get the information. I hate Twitter. I hate it. As a business owner, it's, whenever it's down I rejoice because then I know my employees are working and not Twittering. A tweet come by the other day when they had the DOS attack on all the different social networks. Somebody said, I finally figured out what Twitter and Facebook are for, they're gonna let you know when the other one's down. Right. Right. Yeah, I probably am the only Twitter hater up here, right, you're a Twitter hater also. Yeah. Yeah, I still, maybe I'm heading the sand or I still don't. I can't see the, I can tell for some businesses how it might have a, you know, a practical application. I just can't get my hands around how every business can make use of Twitter. I think, you know, Twitter has a definite role towards reputation management brand strategy and also predictive modeling and analysis because it is a leading indicator of where people are and where people could be going and you need to, but what you need to do is tie it back to the metrics you're monitoring and also use seating of Twitter and monitoring the clicks and the track backs that come back from it to see what is resonating to be able to do testing in real time with the marketplace. It's phenomenal for applications like that. I think there's a lot of uses of Twitter, which, yeah, there is no business viability for it, but I think there's actually a good business strategy using Twitter for brand recognition, brand management, reputation management and also just pure out testing out ideas and hypotheses and seeing what happens. And I think Twitter is probably the best application out there for that today. I would actually like to, oh, sorry, Stony, and I don't Twitter very often. No, I'm kind of in agreement as far as the business use of Twitter and Facebook. You know, for me, they're just my opportunity to say something that I think is funny and hope somebody laughs. But on the other end, there are aspects to it that are valuable. You know, I posted a PDF of my master checklist for web marketing and it got retweeted like 16 times and within a week it's had over almost 400 downloads. So there is an application for it, but for the most part, I mean, it's not business for me. I actually found that I got speaking opportunities through it, like just people looking around and trying to watch who is on the cutting edge of stuff, you know, even writing an article discussing the latest news with other people and networking. Frankly, I'm on Little Island, right, I don't think for Alan there and I find it tough to network a lot of people in the big cities. This way I can use it through Twitter. I've become quite friendly with them. I get to know what they're doing in their day. Yeah, it's a bit of a time waster on some days, I have to admit, but when it comes right down to it, I get these connections I didn't have before. I can meet someone here and go, "Hey, I know you," and we just get this discussion. And I have gotten a business out of it, whether it's worth all the time, that's the whole other debate. I'm not sure of Jennifer. And to jump back to the point that Richard made, I think the thing that so many companies are missing with the social media is it's not the direct channel for marketing, the direct channel for getting things out. But like with Twitter, if we're doing some type of social media pitch and we're looking to get in touch with bloggers, Twitter is a great place to go to really get some background on who someone is, what their personalities like, what strikes their fancy. So if you can go find that blogger and then track them back to their Twitter and see what sites resonate with them, what do they like enough that they retweet and engage with them in some conversation there, it's that chance to do like Russ said, some of the sort of networking and getting to know someone so that when you go to them with a standard pitch, something that's going to come through email or through a blog, you've already established an idea of what they're going to be looking for and you've already established some type of contact point with them. So on the creating a relationship side of things, I think there's some true value there and Greg just grabbed the microphone so I know there's going to be some devil advocate coming up here. I don't know. From a social engineering standpoint though, I could see it and Rick makes good points as well, you know, but from, to me there seems that there has to be a better avenue for even that social engineering, right, then I just, I've never seen the bang for it when we've experimented with it and we actually had Ashton Kutcher post, you know, "Hey, you should check out this article" and that front, and he's the number one, the number one Twitter whatever guy, right, he's got like 3 million followers or something and he posted, "Hey, check this out" and it brought us like 2,400 clicks, 2,400 clicks from the number one, you guys got 3 million followers and it brought us 2,500 clicks. Thereon lies the challenge of Twitter is, you know, yeah, you have 3 million followers but how many of them are online and reading and paying attention at anyone moment in time, when you have something like Twitter where it goes by so fast, it's not, you know, yeah, it's index and someone can go back and search it, but it's not, you know, some, if they're not actively seeking it, like they're going to on a search engine, you know, when they go there they know what they're looking for. On Twitter it's a flash in the pan and if you don't catch the flash in the pan it's gone and you're not going to go back and read it and you're not going to get it. So I think that's where some of the question comes in on, you know, just do 3 million followers on Twitter really matter because, you know, someone that tweets at a certain time of day every day and has those loyal followers that are always there, you know, maybe they have 4,000 followers but half of them are actually, you know, going to follow through on that link. It's so hard to create those patterns to say, okay, what does it take to get this type of reach, what does it take to get this type of reaction because there's just no way to know which of those followers are online and active at any point in time. Well, on behalf of John and I, we actually have to end the show right now but I'd like to thank Jennifer, Richard, Stoney and Greg for coming on the show today. Definitely, thank you so much. Yeah, it's great, it's good banter, we threw around a few ideas and went, oh, no, no, we don't have to talk about here, like, you guys are great because they had no clue what questions we're going to ask them. All the answers you guys heard were off the top of their heads and I really appreciate it. Yeah. So thank you very much and thanks for joining us on SEO 101 on webmaster radio.fm. My name is Ross Dunn, CEO of Stepport Web Marketing, and John Tarket. John Tarket, SEO Man, for me to with, okay, thanks guys and have had a great day. Thanks guys, bye. The holidays are doubly important this year, so make your celebrations doubly special. At Kroger, we've got a huge selection of high-quality meats on top of fresh, natural produce like fresh, never-frozen, prime-grade beef and our simple truths or gated Brussels sprouts or delicious king crab legs with our private-selecture gourmet potatoes. And to say that, doubly fast, Kroger, fresh for everyone. 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