I blogged last month about Wikipedia and SEO. There are a number of considerations when making edits, creating entries, and passing the “Notability” test — practices to avoid so you don’t run afoul of their guidelines and so on.

Well folks, the game has changed. Wikipedia just instituted nofollows on all external links. This had already been in place for a while on some of their sister sites. This effectively removes a lot of the incentive to contribute to Wikipedia. Or does it? It does if your end goal is receiving PageRank to your own sites. But not if your goals are traffic (a top ranking Wikipedia page that links to you will still drive plenty of direct clickthrough traffic your way), credibility (companies with entries give the impression of being bigger and more legitimate), and reputation management (because a favorable Wikipedia entry for your company will probably occupy a spot in the top 10 in the SERPs for searches on your company name).

So are legitimate SEOs going to give up on contributing to Wikipedia? I hope not — at least for the ones who are adding value to Wikipedia. I think we’d all like the spammers to leave (I certainly would!), and I know that is Jimbo Wales’ intention, but I doubt that’s what will transpire. Nofollowing blog comments didn’t drive the spammers away; I can’t see it working for Wikipedia. Especially as long as Wikipedia holds the top spot for important keywords such as “marketing” in Google. (sigh!)

More discussion on this development at SEOMoz.

It’s 2007, so it’s out with the OLD and in with the NEW.

What’s old, in terms of SEO? Obsessively watching indexation numbers and rankings on “trophy” keywords (like the one you know the CEO always checks first thing in the morning). Worrying yourself sick over “duplicate content penalties”. Relying on Sitemaps XML files to fix your indexation problems (news flash: your rankings will still suck!). Exchanging links.

What’s “in” in SEO for 2007? Truly understanding and leveraging the power of Long Tail dynamics. Becoming a trusted contributor within Wikipedia, Digg, StumbleUpon, Netscape, Reddit. Building your network in MySpace, Flickr, LinkedIn, YouTube, Bebo, MyBlogRoll, and the blogosphere in general and then reaping the rewards of “network effects.” Building custom search engines and rallying your community to help improve it. Link baiting.

So how the heck do you measure the impact of this sort of stuff?

These new paradigms call for some new KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). Addressing Long Tail SEO specifically, we at Netconcepts came up with the following KPIs (props to my colleague Brian Klais for coming up with a lot of this!):

1. Brand-to-Nonbrand Mix
2. Unique Pages
3. Pages Yielding Traffic
4. Keywords per Page Yield
5. Visitor per Keyword Yield
6. Index-to-Crawl Ratios
7. Engine Yield

For definitions and explanations of these seven new metrics, have a read of Brian’s article Beneath the Surface of Search, hot off the presses at Multichannel Merchant.

Remember those old commercials… “This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs.” ? Well, if you do, then just imagine a take-off on the commercial… “This is your website. This is your website on WordPress.” But in this version, imagine the latter is an Olympic weightlifter on steroids. If I hadn’t made the case enough for WordPress as a CMS for regular websites (not just blogs) in this recent post and in this recent case study, then I guess the traffic increases must not have been impressive enough for ya!

So we decided to start experimenting with WordPress on microsites for clients. The first client guinea pig was Countrywide, and the site was Credit Demystified. I don’t have any Before and After stats to share on this one, because the site was launched under WordPress from the get-go. Once we have a bit of a track record going (the site is less than a month old), I’m hoping that our client will give me permission to share some metrics here. So stay tuned. And in the meantime, check out the site. Any feedback is welcomed!

Here are some of the advantages of a website powered by WordPress:

1. tag clouds — which provide keyword-rich text link navigation, which link to…
2. tag pages — which contain excerpts of posts/pages that are related (by the fact they have the same tag in common)
3. RSS feeds — which help with link building and garner you visibility in the feed/blog search engines like Feedster and Google Blog Search
4. Technorati tags — to garner visibility on Technorati’s tag pages, thus delivering you Google visitors too by the fact that Technorati tag pages tend to rank really well in Google
5. keyword-rich, search-friendly URLs — that are spider-friendly and tend to be indexed and ranked better in search engines than the complex, dynamic-looking URLs that are typical of content management systems
6. content-rich, search-friendly HTML — thanks in part to the presentation layer (usually) being cleanly separated from the content layer, along with semantic mark-up, which gives the search engines good clues as to what copy is important and what is not
7. visitor participation — through comments, trackbacks, and pingbacks
8. post-dating of content — to automatically “go live” on a scheduled date
9. ease of maintenance — with no, or minimal, HTML skills required
10. extensibility — through plugins (it’s pretty easy to write your own. Heck, I I managed to), sidebar widgets (like the Swicki buzzcloud**), and direct hacks to the open source PHP codebase.
11. easy handling of “rolling events” — like speaking engagements, news releases etc.
12. free support — from the very responsive developer and user communities

The first six of the above list are of primary benefit to your site’s SEO.

These were compelling enough reasons that search marketer Alan Rimm-Kaufman is porting his corporate site to WordPress. Good on ya, Alan! Now who else can I count on to make the switch?

So remember, you don’t have to have an actual “blog” to reap the benefits of having a “blog”. I recommend you peruse both Netconcepts.com or CreditDemystified.com and prove it to yourself.

** Footnote: In case you were wondering what the heck a swicki was, it is a custom search engine, like this one, and a buzzcloud is a tagcloud type thing, but of popular searches rather than tags, that displays on your site along with the Search box, like the one displayed in the right column on my daughter’s Neopets Cheats site.

I’m not usually one for propagating memes (a meme is a “copy me” instruction that is backed up by threats and/or promises), but this one spreading amongst the SEO bloggers is kinda fun, so here goes…

1. I wrote a BBS (bulletin board system) from scratch in BASIC when I was 13. I then operated that BBS for months from my home. I didn’t have a dedicated phone line, so I used our one-and-only phone line, much to the irritation of my mother. She would pick up the phone to use it and got modem tones instead of a dial tone. So she would yell at me to shut it off, and I would dutifully comply, cutting the user off abruptly. The name of my BBS? “Fly By Night BBS”, quite fittingly.
2. You may know that I live in New Zealand. But you may not know that I live by the ocean and get to enjoy breathtaking views of Lyttelton Harbor. I feel very blessed. This is what I get to see out the windows while I do the dishes:
   
3. I was 19 when I got married. That was in 1990, and I’m still happily married. (yes, to the same woman!)
4. I am a big fan of the sci-fi shows Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis. I used to love Star Trek Voyager and Enterprise, but I’ve seen all the episodes too many times now.
5. I filed a patent application this month. (woohoo!)

Now it’s my turn to tag some SEOs… Paul O’Brien, Chris Smith, Alan Rimm-Kaufman, Shimon Sandler, and Gord Hotchkiss. Thanks to Ian McAnerin for tagging me.