Andy Beal, on his Marketing Pilgrim blog, announced his Campaign to Reduce Wikipedia’s PageRank to Zero.

Now I know that link spam has been an issue on Wikipedia, and yes, some of those links reduce the value of the information on the page. But there has to be a way to give back to the community that made Wikipedia what it is today without making such a sweeping change that devalues the links of valuable contributors who are genuinely trying to make Wikipedia a better resource.

This issue stems from the fact that, while the internet is becoming more and more competitive as a marketplace, it’s still very much influenced by its cooperative roots. As participants in the internet, we’re expected to link out to people and companies that we feel add value to our service or information, and we expect to receive the same in return.

I remember the furor that occurred when rel=nofollow first gained widespread support by the search engines. During the course of this, Jeremy Zawodny wrote a post called Nofollow No Good? in which he talked about how people had stopped commenting and linking without the incentive of receiving a little love from the links such activities invite.

In that light, I think that there’s a very real possibility that Wikipedia could see a fairly significant drop not just in spam, but in relevant edits and links by people who are genuinely trying to help build the resource (in exchange for a little link love). Wikipedia removed a major incentive to participate, and that will have its consequences.

Do I think that that will kill Wikipedia? No. But it does create a (small) opportunity for a competitor who is a little more willing to address the spam issue in a less-sweeping fashion. And as far as my participation in the Campaign to Reduce Wikipedia’s PageRank to Zero is concerned, I’ll join in, just so if anything cool happens, I can say that I was a part of it.

technorati tags:wikipedia, nofollow, marketingpilgrim

Steve Jobs is currently announcing the iPhone, and I’m pretty much geeking out. Good thing my contract with Verizon is up…

technorati tags:iphone, apple, steve, jobs, macworld

Maybe I’m just crazy here, but I swear I’ve never seen this content in these boxes on the login page for Google Analytics before, particularly the case studies box. It looks like Google’s just trying to drive more signups with its case studies, but there are some good lessons about the usefulness of web analytics (along with some ideas about how to structure your metrics processes). Is this new, or have I just been oblivious?

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Think, for a minute, about the sheer volume of knowledge about search that gets churned out on a daily basis by search marketers. There is no shortage of bloggers willing to share their expertise. Unfortunately, it’s tough to find a lot of these blogs.

Fortunately, Lee Odden, the friend of search students everywhere, has compiled a gargantuan collection of SEO blogs, from A- to Z-list. There are over 250 of them, so he’s even included an OPML file for easy addition to your feed reader. Check it out!
(And if Lee decided to add JazzcatSEO to the list, that would be OK too…)

technorati tags:blog, list, lee, odden, sem

Statistics are a fact of life for most SEOs. We have metrics for virtually every aspect of web marketing, with some extra statistics thrown in for good measure. That said, it’s amazing how often many marketers allow themselves to get distracted by these statistics. Ultimately, however, there’s only one metric that really matters - ROI.

Whether you’re using PPC, organic SEO, or a combination of both, you need to be sure that you are getting more for your efforts than you’re spending. Costs need to be figured in both dollars spent (of you’re using PPC and CPM advertising) and time taken to create and manage the channel.

From a PPC perspective, what good are cheap clicks if your cost per conversion is greater than your profit?

By the same token, are the terms you are targeting with your SEO campaigns relevant enough, and is there enough volume on those keywords to justify the amount of time you are taking to gain those rankings?

technorati tags:seo, sem, roi, marketing