SEO Expert, Anthony Yap

Wikipedia is a great repository of information for a net user. It exemplified the wonderful aspects of the web by being a collaborative, self-enforced online encyclopedia. SEOs know the value of an authoritative link from an authoritative site. Being a high traffic, authoritative site which allows anyone to edit its pages, Wikipedia became prone to spam links.

Not surprisingly, Wikipedia has gone the way of putting the NOFOLLOW tag on ALL of its outbound links with no exception. While this may curb some of the spamming, I don’t believe that it’ll ever put a stop to all of it. The nofollow tag is supported by Google but Yahoo, MSN Live, and Ask treat it differently. As long as links give significant weight to rankings, spammers will continue to spam.

Personally, I believe the self-policing nature of the Wikipedia should take care of most of the spam and this move isn’t really necessary. Spam aside, there are some great external links within the Wikipedia and it’s a shame that the links won’t count for much in Google.

Ever wonder what percentage of people use 2 word compared to 3 word queries? Data collected from users of European Web analytics provider OneStat, reveals (surprise, surprise) most people use two or three word queries in search engines.
Here’s the full breakdown:

1. Two-word phrases — 28.38 %
2. Three-word phrases — 27.15 %
3. Four-word phrases — 16.42 %
4. One-word phrase — 13.48 %
5. Five-word phrases — 8.03 %
6. Six-word phrases — 3.67 %
7. Seven-word phrases — 1.63 %
8. Eight-word phrases — 0.73 %
9. Nine-word phrases — 0.34 %
10. Ten-word phrases — 0.16 %

The RankStat research is based on a sample of 2 million visitors, made up of 20,000 visitors in 100 countries each day.
Via Search Engine Watch.

While the data indicates most people use fewer keywords in search, it’s good practice to optimize for longer search phrases simply because they offer higher sales conversions, in most cases. Generally speaking, going after a two word phrase might not be the smartest thing to do for businesses with a limited search visibility in the first place since it makes ranking for the phrase much harder. Establishing a solid SEO strategy usually involves a strong dose of web analytics to determine the most profitable search terms. After all, what good is traffic if it doesn’t convert?

For many, a well-executed viral marketing campaign increases sales or brand perception. Viral campaigns spread very quickly and with the advent of blogs, social networking, and other web 2.0 sites, mention of a business, product/service can appear in hundreds to thousands of websites around the world overnight.

While viral marketing offers the advantages of “word-of-mouth” advertising, sophisticated marketers must realize that SEO plays a large role in converting visitors to buyers as well.

In the JupiterResearch report “Consumer-Created Content: Assessing Opportunities for Automotive Marketers”, consumers did one or more of the following after viewing an online ad:

31% searched the product or service to learn more
22% visited a site related to the ad
12% told a friend about the ad or product
8% forwarded the ad to someone
7% went to a related site to post a comment
5% went to a related site to upload photos or videos

What’s interesting to note is how little trust was placed on consumer-created content such as blogs and forums. Almost 50% more people found public forums untrustworthy. Four times more people didn’t trust ads. More than double found product information on blogs untrustworthy.

Consumers of higher-priced items are getting savvier and perform more research to check out a product before purchase. By having a more pervasive presence in the search engines in addition to a virally spread message, a business capitalizes on building a stronger brand and gives them an additional opportunity to re-introduce the message to their target audience through the corporate site by showing up in the top ten organic search results for their business name/product/service.

Via Clickz, JupiterResearch Analyst Emily Riley emphasizes:

Viral marketing doesn’t exist in a vacuum, to consumers these are all just different ways of getting a message about the same product….Just taking advantage of this new tactic in social media doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to improve your brand affinity