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How Can Google Determine QUALITY Blog Content?

Google’s latest changes, thanks to the JCPenney/Searchdex debacle, has a lot of search engine optimization people scratching their heads, worrying about what it will do to their search rankings. Google has also declared war on content farms, going after the black hat backlink builders that build crappy sites who try to game search engines by filling websites and blogs with lots and lots of useless, poorly written content.Black Cowboy Hat

Don’t ask me how they’re doing it. Google’s remaining mum on the situation, saying only:

Many of the changes we make are so subtle that very few people notice them. But in the last day or so we launched a pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking—a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries—and we wanted to let people know what’s going on. This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on [emphasis added — Erik].

It’s this last statement that has me intrigued about how Google is going to recognize some of this. How will they know whether sites have original content, do their own research, or provide thoughtful analysis?

I think the answer lies in the foundation of semantic search.

Semantic search, says Wikipedia, “…seeks to improve search accuracy by understanding searcher intent and the contextual meaning of terms as they appear in the searchable dataspace, whether on the Web or within a closed system, to generate more relevant results.”

In other words, semantic search tries to figure out what you mean, not what you said.

For example, if you’re doing a search for “bark” and “dog,” a regular search engine may give you results not only about dogs, but about the bark of a dogwood tree. But semantic search will know that you’re inquiring about a dog, and return only those results that meet your requirements.

Right now, Google is looking at content farms as a group and dropping them — as a group — from their search index. And that’s fine. For the most part, it shouldn’t hurt anyone who is writing original, thoughtful content.

But what happens when Google decides to take a look at some previously ignored places where people are writing bad content trying to game the system? What happens when they look at WordPress.com and Blogger.com, two favorite targets of the search spammers, who dump crappy article after crappy article into throwaway blogs? Google isn’t going to dump their own blog platform (Blogger) from their index, and they won’t do it to WordPress.com without hundreds of thousands of people crying foul. So how will they do it?

My prediction is that Google will be able to figure out what’s good and what’s bad by using the semantic search technology. They’ll determine what’s well-written and what sucks, what’s original and what was barfed out of an article spinner.

We’ve seen some examples of this technology already. Anyone who has ever run the grammar checker on Microsoft Word (which was apparently written by my 7th grade English teacher) has seen how this works. It checks the grammar and usage in your documents to see if there are any serious errors. It’s not great, and often delivers inaccurate or outdated grammar errors, but it can at least find some problems.

So why can’t Google do this? By using semantics, a good grammar checker, and a thesaurus, Google could determine what is original content and what is crap. By examining the language used, Google may be able to determine the intent of the content writer, and whether they’re truly creating original, thoughtful content, or just trying to game the system again. They could raise up some content while flagging or penalizing others.

The best part is this strategy would encourage people to create valuable content, rather than just trying to stand on the shoulders of others and steal theirs or spin it as a way to game the system. It means your stuff has to be well-written. You need a decent grasp of the English language, and the ability to string more than two sentences together.

(Of course, this could have a detrimental effect on people who just can’t write, don’t speak English as a first language, and teenagers who insist on writing in text speak, but that’s a post for another day.)

What do you think? Will a semantic indexing system help bloggers who are trying to do the right thing, or will it hurt the industry as a whole? Do you think people will mistakenly be caught up in a new semantic system? How would you avoid it, either from Google’s view or the writer’s?

Photo credit: arbyreed (Flickr)

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Indiana Deputy AG Learns Hard Lesson About Social Media & Job Security

You wouldn’t think someone would be fired for 3 words.

But Jeffrey Cox, Indiana deputy Attorney General, was terminated by the Indiana Attorney General for a number of offensive tweets he sent out on February 19th.

We were surprised in the Indianapolis community, not only by the quickness of the developments — Cox was investigated on the morning of Feb. 23, and fired that same afternoon — but also because such a public figure as a deputy AG would make such publicly heinous statements.

According to an article on the Mother Jones website, Cox tweeted that he believed Madison police should “use live ammunition” when dealing with protesters at Wisconsin’s state capitol.

Tweet from Indiana deputy Attorney General Jeff Cox

What Cox failed to understand is that social media is public and permanent. If you put out good stuff, and are helpful and supportive, it can prove valuable later on. But if you say something hateful and nasty, it may come back to haunt you, sooner rather than later.

It can hurt your reputation, you can lose your job, and in some cases, you could badly damage, or even end, your career. Even if you try to keep a wall between your personal life and your professional life, social media has broken it down. Something you say in private can become a problem for your work life, and vice versa.

In short, be true to who you are, but if that you is a jerk, then you don’t need change your online behavior. You need to rethink your whole approach to life.

The fact is, social media has tripped up people making rather awful statements, exposing what people think are private jokes or “only a little mean.” What you might see as snarky, or even a bad attempt at dark humor, can end badly. It can be something as minor as public embarrassment, or something as major as being fired in as public a manner as possible, and being a story on the 11:00 news, as well as making headlines in the London Daily Mail.

I was interviewed by WISH TV and Debby Knox (@Debby_Knox) last night for the 11:00 news, and asked about the potential damage Cox did to himself because of his public missteps.

“Unfortunately, this sort of thing will follow him around forever,” I said. “When someone, like a new employer, Googles his name — even 10 years from now — this story will forever be associated with it.”

I don’t know if this is irony or just an odd coincidence, but nearly 10 hours earlier, I had spoken to the Young Professionals of Central Indiana — including several attorneys — about the reasons they need to be on social media, personal branding being the biggest reason of all.

Social Media Affects Personal Branding

What that means for anyone who uses social media is that we need to remember that recruiters are searching for us online. If they find you tweeted about how police should shoot fellow citizens, you can guarantee you’ll be dropped from the candidate pool immediately. If you post your “Spring Break” photos on Facebook, they’ll be held against you. If you write blog post after blog post calling the other political party a bunch of Socialists or Fascists, people won’t want to work with you.

Social media does not let people whisper dirty jokes or make offensive statements among friends. Social media blasts out everyone’s messages, and exposes character flaws and moments of indiscretion.

Cox says this is a matter of his First Amendment rights being quashed. And that this was satire, and he “wanted to make people think.” While that may be the case, it’s also a matter of his reputation, now horribly stained and tarnished. Sure, you’re free to say these sorts of things, but when you’re a public servant in a visible agency and position, you should be held to a higher standard.

The lesson here is be careful of what you say online. A career you spent ten years growing can be undone in mere seconds. Things you meant for a few people can become widespread in a matter of hours, or even minutes. In Cox’s case, 3 words, and the subsequent deeper-hole-digging tweets, became an international story, and resulted in him losing his job in the most embarrassing manner possible.

The things that make social media awesome also make it dangerous. It’s a double-edged sword, so handle it with care.

My book, Branding Yourself: How to Use Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself (affiliate link), is available on Amazon.com, as well as at Barnes & Noble and Borders bookstores. I wrote it with my good friend, Kyle Lacy.

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315 Million Reasons Why Writers Shouldn’t Write For Free

The online newsies of the world all pointed and shouted with excitement, “See?! SEE?!” when AOL bought the Huffington Post new blog for $315 million. Newspapers and journalists all hunched over and typed a little faster when they heard the news, hoping they too could be the next major acquisition by the online giant-emeritus.

But it’s only recently that people began realizing that Huffington Post built its success on the backs of unpaid writers — writers who want to be compensated, even just a little, by the news source they built. (Simon Dumenco has a good wrapup of how Huffington Post is screwing their writers.)

I understand the appeal. The writers were promised the one thing every startup publication offers plenty of (but usually has none): exposure.

“We can’t pay you, but we’ll put you in front of all of our readers,” they promise. “Once we start to get money from ad revenues, then we’ll start paying you for future articles.”

But Huffington Post aside, those 9 million other magazines and newspaper startups never see enough revenue to pay for the celebratory kickoff party, let alone paying the bankruptcy attorney when they fold three months later. Besides, it doesn’t sound like HuffPo ever offered money. Ever.

It’s real simple, writers shouldn’t write for free. In that link, scifi writer Harlan Ellison rants about how writers are constantly getting the short end of the payment stick, thanks to the mistaken idea that what we do is somehow easy.

What we do is not easy. We’ve only done it for so long, we make it look easy. It still takes work to string together 500+ words, make sure they’re spelled correctly, are coherent thoughts, and are assembled into something that’s both easy and enjoyable to consume. (If you think it’s easy, take a whack at 500 words on any topic, and send it to me for an “honest but thorough” critique. I dare you.)

Look, if you want exposure for your writing, and you want to write for free for Huffington Post. Go ahead. But don’t do it in the hopes that they’re going to come up with a little thank you gift for all your hard work. You knew it was free going in, and that was the deal you made with them.

I don’t mean to sound unsympathetic, because I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been screwed by an editor or potential client. I fervently believe that Huffington Post should do the nice thing and show a little love and gratitude to the people who made them worth $315 million, but I don’t think it’s something they have to do. Not because it’s their party, and they made the rules, but because the writers never had the expectation of getting paid, and went into the relationship fully expecting to never receive money.

(Update: One friend who runs a very popular community blog said if he gets a front page placement on Huffington Post, his site get 10,000 – 50,000 extra visits from the story. Otherwise, he runs around 2,000 extra visits. For a site that makes money from selling advertising, writing for free for Huffington Post is worth it, because it helps him serve up more ads, which makes him more money.)

If you want fame and exposure, write your own blog. Work your ass off in that niche, become famous, and work on your personal branding to find new readers. Then leverage that into paid bylines in real print publications, public speaking gigs, and even a book, like say, one on personal branding (affiliate link).

While that strategy is much, much harder than knocking out a few blog posts for Huffington Post, it also protects you from being totally screwed when the website is sold to a giant conglomerate and you don’t get anything. At least when you’re writing your own little blog, you’re getting nothing anyway, but without the painful screwing that the Huffington Post writers just experienced.

There’s no reason you have to write for someone else, especially when all you get is a byline. Thanks to all the different free blogging platforms that are available — Blogger, WordPress, Posterous — you can have your own blog and write for free to your heart’s content. And when someone makes an overture to buy you for $315 million, you don’t have to share it with anyone at all.

My book, Branding Yourself: How to Use Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself (affiliate link), is available on Amazon.com, as well as at Barnes & Noble and Borders bookstores. I wrote it with my good friend, Kyle Lacy.

Photo credit: Daniel Borman (Flickr)

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Who Owns Your Freelance Copyright? Not You

If you’re a freelance writer, graphic designer, or even a web designer, you don’t own the work you just did for a client.

As a ghost blogger and author, I have to keep different pieces of copyright information straight, and understand what I’m selling or giving away when I write something for a client or for me. As a published writer, I learned very early on about the different forms of copyright for the pieces I wrote. As a ghost writer, I also learned I don’t own a single character of what I write for a client.

Coffee shops are filled with freelancers and entre-commuters. That's @JasonFalls in the black shirt. (No, the one on the left.)

This is often a point of contention between freelancers and small businesses, and their clients, when a relationship goes south. Graphic designers demand the return of their illustrations, web designers lock owners out of their website, and writers, well, fire off very well-written angry letters “impetrating the former habitué to refrain from using their discourse” (demanding the former client quit using their words — hey, we’re word nerds. What do you expect?).

The problem is, the creator of the work no longer has the rights to the work. If the client has paid you, then they own it, not you. You can’t even ask for it.

That’s because you just performed a work-for-hire service. Basically, that means you acted as an employee of the client, and performed a job function, namely, creating a logo, writing a blog post, or building a website.

If you had been hired as a full-time employee of the client’s and done that work, your employer would own all rights to your work, and could do anything they wanted with it — reproduce it, sell it, stamp it on scented soaps, whatever.

Work-for-hire works the same way: you were hired to perform a piece of work, just like an employee. And when you’re done, that means the client owns that piece, and can do anything they want with it, which means you can’t ask for it back when you and the client are pissed at each other.

Of Course, The Client Has To Pay You First

In our ghost blogging work, we also include a clause in our contract that the client does not own the work we create until they have paid us in full. This allows us to withhold future work until we’re paid, although we have never tried to reclaim work when clients slow pay.

And that’s the one problem for creative freelancers. It’s hard to reclaim creative work when a client hasn’t paid. Web designers have a little more leverage, especially if they also have access to the client’s server.

So What Can You Do?

Unfortunately, there’s not much you can do when it comes to relinquishing your ownership. That’s one of those things you need to resign yourself to if you’re going to lead the life of a freelancer (although the Professional Artists League believes that work-for-hire is unethical and evil).

However, it also means you need to follow a few basic practices if you want to protect yourself in the future:

  • Don’t flesh out your own ideas or use your own creations in a client’s work. If you’re developing a new process or idea, or you have a new animated character, don’t put it in a client’s project. They own that idea from then on, and you can actually be sued for stealing your own idea later on.
  • If the client provides you with equipment, like a new computer, never work on your own stuff while using their equipment. The argument can be made that since you created something with their property, they own it. And while you could probably argue against it, chances are you don’t have the money to test that theory in court.
  • Whenever possible, try to include a revenue-sharing agreement in your contract. While this is harder when you’re doing small-time projects, if you’re a big-shot consultant, and you’re only being paid a small amount to come up with some huge revenue-generating ideas, ask to share some of the profits. It won’t always work, but it’s always worth asking. Who knows, you may get lucky and come up with a process that makes the client millions.

Do you have any work-for-hire suggestions for new freelancers? Any success stories or horror stories about a work-for-hire project? Let us hear from you in the comments.

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Are You a Social Media Private, Captain, or General?

I’ve noticed that most social media books are written at one of three levels:

  • 30,000 foot view — The General
  • 15,000 foot view — The Captain
  • Ground level — The Private

Books at the ground level, that is, the Private’s level, are how-to books. They detail the step by step process you need to follow to execute a strategy. Follow those steps, and you will have done the right thing. Write a weekly blog post using these 12 steps. Add 1,000 people to your Facebook business page by using this tool. Feed your blog post into Twitter with this plugin. They touch on strategies, but they’re mostly just books on execution.

Books at the 15,000 foot level — the Captain’s level — are the strategy books. They show you how to create the plan to give to your Privates, with some statistics to back it up. They tell you to blog, because 77% of American Internet users read blogs. They tell you to use Twitter, because 150 million people are on Twitter. They tell you to use Facebook because Facebook has 600 million users. They may touch on the why, and they may cover a little execution, but they’re by and large books on the what and when of social media

30,000 foot level books — the General’s level — are the why books. They tell you to use social media, because social media is more popular than porn, or because more people use social media than any other form of entertainment out there, including television. They tell you why you need social media, maybe even tell you what you can accomplish with it, but they’re short on strategy, and they never, ever discuss processes.

A General’s book explains why you should “Take that hill,”

A Captain’s book shows you how to “Take that hill by outsmarting your enemy.”

A Private’s book explains every step you need to “Take that hill in 30 days.”

I’ve been thinking about this a lot, because I’m trying to decide the next stage of my development. I’ve spent so much time on the ground, telling other people how to do processes, and that’s working well. Those blog posts are some of the most successful I’ve written. Those talks are some of the most well-attended at any conference. But, just like the army, there are thousands of us.

I like creating strategies better. I like being the Captain. I’ve created enough marketing strategies over the last 18 years, because I get the most enjoyment out of it. Of course, with an army of two here at Pro Blog Service, I’m also the Private, carrying out the strategy I just created.

But I hate being a General. I don’t have the patience or world view to tell people how to see the big picture. I can’t even see it that clearly myself a lot of the time. I know enough to explain to a client why we need to take that hill, but once that’s done, and they’re convinced, I can’t add any more value, unless I can put on my Captain’s bars and create the strategy.

However, it’s the Generals who are seeing a lot of the success in this industry. A lot of luminaries in the business world are Generals. A lot of rock stars are Captains, but they don’t get the glory. Or the keynote speeches. Or make the New York Times Best-sellers list.

But I also know myself enough to know that I’d much rather give up that stuff if it meant liking what I do. Still, I’m wondering if I can create a new niche for myself. Maybe I can be a Major, or even a Colonel. I can tell people why they need a strategy, and then I can create it. Sort of the 22,500 foot view. I don’t want to hang out out 30,000 feet above the earth, and I’m tired of slogging in the mud.

So who are some good Majors to pay attention to? Who are some of the business leaders I should be watching, and what books should I be reading? What have you been reading lately, and why should I read it too? Leave a comment, and let me know.

My own book, Branding Yourself: How to Use Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself (affiliate link) — a true Captain’s book, if there is one — is available on Amazon.com, as well as at Barnes & Noble and Borders bookstores. I wrote it with my good friend, Kyle Lacy, another Captain, who’s been eyeing a Generalship lately.

Photo credit: Virginia Guard Public Affairs (Flickr)

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5 Strategies for Avoiding and Eliminating Twitter Spam

Yesterday, I sparked some real interest from people with my 10 Signs for Spotting Twitter Spammers, and a lot of people started tweeting and commenting about how they have been hit with the same Twitter spam hammer. That got me to thinking about some of the different ways I’ve avoided and even eliminated a lot of the Twitter spam clogging up my Twitter tubes.

  1. Shut off email notifications. If you’re still getting email notifications about new followers, the best way to cut back on it is to shut off all email notifications and use TweetDeck’s New Followers column.
  2. Hit the Block or Block & Report Spam. Look for any of the signs of Twitter spammers and just block those people directly from TweetDeck (HootSuite can’t do that, can they? Update: Jill Manty says in the comments that, yes, you can do that.). If a Twitter account gets enough blocks, they’ll shut it down. This has an added bonus of not only eliminating spammers from your stream (and preventing them from seeing your tweets), but you can continue to frustrate the attempts of spammers.
  3. Use Formulists.com to see who has unfollowed you.A favorite trick of Twitter spammers and number chasers (i.e. people with 10,000+ followers and 200 tweets) is to follow and unfollow people. Since Twitter caps the number of people you can follow at 10% over the number following you, the spammers will follow and unfollow a lot of people, letting them bounce their rate higher and higher as their followers increase. This lets them build up a large follower network, which allows them to follow more people at a time.With Formulists.com, you’ll start to notice that people who followed you also unfollowed you 2 – 3 days later. You can also see if you inadvertently followed a spammer, so you can then unfollow them before you hit the Remove button.

    (Note: While I expect this kind of behavior from spammers — because they’re evil — I’m sometimes surprised to see this from real people with real accounts. How do I know? Because they’ll follow me 2 – 3 times, or they’ll unfollow me within 48 hours of following me. You people know who you are. You should also I know I block you. Hard.)

  4. Use SocialToo.com to eliminate DM spam. I don’t use this service very often, but only because I’ve managed to avoid following a lot of spammers. Occasionally I do get auto DMs from people who thank me for following them, and ask me to download their free report. SocialToo will let you filter out certain DMs based on keywords and phrases you choose. So adding things like “free whitepaper” or “free report” to the filter will keep those DMs out of your stream and email inbox. SocialToo has limited options in their free service, but this is at least a place to keep some DMs out of your tubes.
  5. Use TwitSweeper.com. Doug from TwitSweeper left a comment on yesterday’s post, which reminded me I had signed up for their free trial several months ago (which has since run out). The great thing about TwitSweeper is that it identifies the tweeting pattern of your followers, and will flag them as spammers if they meet certain criteria. The one downside is that if you follow some news outlets, they may inadvertently be flagged as spammers, because they don’t have conversations and they don’t retweet. But TwitSweeper lets you see who you’re about to unfollow so you don’t accidentally drop people you wanted to keep.

Do you have any strategies or tools? How do you get rid of Twitter spam? Do you have a way to drop the spam hammer on people cluttering up your Twitter followers? Share your ideas in the comments below.

My book, Branding Yourself: How to Use Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself (affiliate link), is available on Amazon.com, as well as at Barnes & Noble and Borders bookstores. I wrote it with my good friend, Kyle Lacy.

Photo credit: Jens Lumm (Flickr)