What better way to honor Bill’s learning legacy than to use his story as a lesson in SEO?

Numerous articles the next day referenced the odd chain of events immediately following Bill’s collapse. Rather than jumping to his aid, students first focused their attention on social networks, tweeting about his collapse and eventually making #billnye a trending topic on Twitter. While the students’ behavior may be disturbing, this flurry of social media activity was the initial catalyst that drove Google to take note of the event.

One part of search engine optimization (SEO) that often goes ignored is the reality of query deserves freshness (QDF). QDF is a part of the Google algorithm that detects an unusual amount of conversation around a topic – such as a spike in search queries for “Bill Nye” or increased mentions on social networks. QDF gives more weight to pages’ recency, and is activated when an event is big enough that searchers presumably expect the freshest results. The conversation around Bill’s collapse was big enough that Google took notice, and activated QDF.

It is important for online marketers, and especially SEO professionals, to understand the basic principle of QDF. It’s a fact is that Google has the ability to recognize spikes in social activity about a given topic. These spikes can trigger QDF, shifting results to include pages with fresher content, while pushing pages with stale content lower in the list.

How does QDF affect search results? On Tuesday morning, top results for Google searches on “Bill Nye” returned Bill Nye Online Labs, images of his quirky face, and the Bill Nye Wikipedia and IMDB pages. Just 24 hours later, following the flurry of tweets, articles, and other social media notations, the Google results are different. Top results now include links to news articles on the event, as well as links to dozens of recent updates from Twitter, Facebook and more.

Google query deserves freshness (QDF) ranks links with more recency first in search results.

What does QDF mean for marketers? As online marketing campaigns are developed, marketers should resist the temptation to trickle out and leak messages. Gradual growth of social activity about a topic over a few weeks won’t necessarily impact SEO, whereas a surge from virtual silence to a buzz-filled day will cause Google to take note – and, hopefully, activate QDF.

When designing campaigns, identify topics that will make people talk. Consider controversial angles or unique insights that will engage your target audience. Plan press releases, articles, blog posts, Twitter activity, marketing emails, landing pages, and Facebook updates, all for simultaneous release. Most importantly, make it easy for people to retweet, forward emails, and republish content. Enable your audience to spread the word as easily as possible, as quickly as possible, for the best results.

Landing pages and associated product pages also need focus. Optimize landing pages for a defined set of target keywords related to your campaign. Be sure to include the “canonical tag” in the pages’ code, which will help reduce confusion for the Google index as people start to mention and link to your pages. Include links to the most relevant product pages on these landing pages with clear calls to action to get the most from your increased traffic.

For an extra boost, add SEO-friendly social modules to landing pages to make the pages appear fresh throughout the day. For example, add a stream of content from Twitter or a list of relevant product reviews that change frequently.

You can also prepare product pages for unexpected QDF activation by making sure that Google is not bored with your content. If the content in your product page is the same today as it was two months ago, or for that matter a year ago, your page will virtually disappear when QDF activates. By including regularly updated user generated content like reviews, questions, and answers on product pages, Google will have more interest in your page regardless of whether QDF is active or not.

We can’t always know when random events will trigger QDF, but SEO professionals can take steps in advance to gain the most traffic when these events do occur.

For more information about how to leverage QDF, take 7 minutes to watch this video that Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz.org published in March of 2009. Take note that the SEO impact of Facebook and Twitter are substantially more important now than they were when this video was recorded 20 months ago.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Query Deserves Freshness from Scott Willoughby.

• What does it mean?
• Should we be scared?
• Are our rankings and search traffic going to disappear into a black hole?

Image from flickr user Dick Mooran

In all the messaging from Google about this update, this much is clear: Caffeine is an infrastructure change that will allow Google to identify content changes and update their index significantly faster than their previous system.  From the Official Google Blog:

"Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index, and it's the largest collection of web content we've offered. Whether it's a news story, a blog or a forum post, you can now find links to relevant content much sooner after it is published than was possible ever before."

Whether it’s an Official Google Blog post like this or one of Matt Cutts’ videos, you always have to read between the lines to find the real story.  Let’s do just that.

By dissecting this snippet and the rest of the Google blog post, it’s clear that they are placing primary emphasis on freshness, with a secondary focus on relevance. Language like, “50 percent fresher,” “much sooner after it’s published,” “relevant content,” and a few others make a strong statement about Google’s understanding of human nature. Let me explain: Who really wants the top items in their SERP (search engine results page) results to be outdated articles from three years ago?  Google knows that people want the latest information, and if we don’t find it through Google, we’re going to turn to a competing search engine until we find what we want—fresh, relevant content.

Google prefers fresh-baked content (Image from flickr user Let Ideas Compete)

So what does this mean for the average website? It means that Google is likely to“get bored,” with its pages if rich, relevant content updates are not made often.  Google is indirectly messaging here that it is not acceptable for the copy on your website to become stale (no matter how great it is). SEO’s have been talking about freshness for years, but Google’s recent messaging around Caffeine, and the fact that they just completed an enormous and costly infrastructure update centered on freshness, mean that these conversations have suddenly been lent more weight.

Obviously, it’s neither practical nor efficient to rewrite your website frequently just to make Google happy.  And, it’s entirely possible that the content written 2 years ago about your best-selling widget is indeed still fabulous.  That said, maintaining a good SERP ranking now requires that at least some of the page’s content is fresh and dynamic, which indicates to Google that the page is still relevant.

For websites with reviews and Q&A, it’s important that Google can see and read that content.  Make sure that at least a few reviews are included in your primary page for each product or service.  A handful of fresh review content, or questions and answers, can make a significant impact on how Google perceives that page’s freshness.

You should also consider a technique called “integrated blogging” or “stories”. With this method, you proactively share stories about your products or services,  placing snippets of those stories on your product pages.  Each time the snippets change, Google Caffeine will see those updates and once again consider your page fresh, and thus more relevant.

It’s important to note that the other rules of SEO still apply and that freshness alone will not solve the world’s SEO problems.  However, without fresh content, Google Caffeine will get bored with your pages and they will eventually slide into no man’s land.

Learn how fresh content through SearchVoice Inline contributed to a 17% increase in OpenTable’s natural search. Read the SEO case study.

Sameer Samat, Director of Product Management, Google

At our annual Social Commerce Summit in Austin today, we announced a partnership with Google to introduce an industry-first program that lets brands easily share product review content from their Bazaarvoice-enabled websites with Google properties: SyndicateVoice for Search. Sameer Samat, director of product management for Google Product Search, shared the benefits of the program with a sold-out Summit audience during his presentation, “Organizing the World’s Information for Shoppers.”

This partnership is an incredibly important milestone for Bazaarvoice and for the evolution of social commerce. Why?

We know that shoppers trust customer word of mouth, such as online product reviews, more than any other type of marketing (1). At the same time, 61% of all shoppers use search engines (2), and more people use Google Product Search than any shopping portal (3). Furthermore, user-generated content is becoming increasingly dominant in search results, with over 25% of results for searches of the world’s top 20 brands linking to UGC (4).

In partnership with Google, Bazaarvoice customers can now use SyndicateVoice for Search to combine their most trusted and valuable content – authentic reviews written by their customers – with the most popular search engine in the world to attract the most qualified shoppers to their site.

While this is a big win for brands, who face increasing competition for consumer attention and shopper loyalty each day, the real win is for consumers, who can now quickly find the information they need to make the right purchase decisions for their needs. We’re “democratizing commerce” by enabling consumers’ authentic feedback to help shoppers find exactly what they need, shifting more control of the shopping experience to the most important person in the process — the shopper.

For more information, check out Google’s blog post on the partnership, see their Google Product Reviews Program site, or read our official announcement.

(1) Edelman Trust Barometer, 2006-2009
(2) Compete Online Shopper Intelligence study, February 22, 2010
(3) Comparison Shopping Rankings from CPC Strategy, LLC, April 14, 2010
(4) Socialnomics 2009

Ajay Tejwani, Social Media Strategist, USAA

This blog post is guest-written by Ajay Tejwani, Social Media Strategist for USAA. Check out his blog and find him on Twitter.

“If I can’t search it, it doesn’t exist.” – Anonymous (Year 2000)

“If I can’t find it from my circle of trust, it doesn’t exist.” – Anonymous (Year 2010)

What are the four words any Internet marketer wants to hear? “Your Content is Searchable!” Any marketer will vouch for the power of content, and that’s why you need to explore the goldmine of user-generated content (UGC).

A 2008 eMarketer study showed:

• By 2013, nearly 155 million net users in the US will consume some type of UGC
• There will be 115 million content creators on the web by 2013
• By 2013, almost 52% of U.S. Internet users will be content creators as well

If you want to know how UGC is being used for SEO, look no further than what the search engine goliaths are doing.

Twitter and Facebook have already made pacts with Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Bing that enables the search engines to access the social networks’ real-time data streams. And Google has implemented Social Search, which allows people to view relevant content created on Twitter or Facebook to show up in search results, based on keywords.

These social media channels have made UGC available on the entire web, and more and more users on Facebook and Twitter are keeping their profiles public, because it’s a great way to network with others.

A recent Nielsen Buzzmetrics report suggests that 26% of all search results on major search engines link to UGC. Why? Most importantly, user-generated content is deemed reliable by other users when making key value judgment decisions, and search engines have recognized this fact.

Search Engine Results (Source: Nielsen Online)

Businesses need SEO to thrive in this harsh economic climate, and UGC is a great resource for boosting SEO campaigns. User reviews can have a huge impact on SEO.

• Close to 83% of online shoppers admitted that product reviews submitted by users on different websites are one of the main influences on their purchase decision. (Source: Opinion Research Corporation)
• Nearly half of adult net users in the U.S. read product reviews and ratings at least once a month. (Source: Bazaarvoice)
• USAA, a full financial services company that proudly serves the military and their families, estimates that the increase in application starts resulted in 15,978 additional products and policies across its five main product lines in the first year, after launching ratings and reviews on their site. (Source: Forrester Research)

The latest stats from Hitwise show that Facebook is now the most visited website, beating Google for the week ending March 13, 2010.

This should drive home the fact that social networks are gaining high popularity and people are looking for information from their friends and family more than faceless search engines.

If you are monitoring social networks using tools like Radian6, Umbria, etc., you should look for hot keywords associated with your brand. Use those keywords on your website to drive more traffic to your site. And don’t limit your search efforts to traditional search engines; look at social search engines like Delver, SamePoint, SocialMention, Serph, OneRiot and see how to get higher ranking (short answer: better and more robust content from users, not you).

Tip: Do your research for keywords in real time to ensure you are not relying on last month’s data!

In closing, here are a few things to keep in mind: -

• The participation from even a few of your customers is truly helpful in converting a more engaged audience in the future.
• UGC is for everyone. Your target audience also includes Gen X and Baby Boomers, who are no less conversant with UGC. So make sure that the UGC you use caters to them as well.
• Include everything in UGC – not just text, but also images, video and audio. Digital Asset Optimization (DAO) is the new SEO. Don’t hesitate to be creative and make the most of available marketable resources.
• Achieve your goal of a high search engine ranking by selecting the right form of UGC for your site. Articles, blogs, product reviews, etc. – all could work well if your targeted keywords are present in the content created by users.
• Integrate UGC on your site. Create a vibrant community of people, with your products or services as the common link they use to interact and create content. The successful use of UGC allows your loyal customers to feel more “involved” in your business, and brings you closer to them.

Having defined objectives, a good implementation plan, measurable results and flexibility to adapt based on results seen will drive your SEO success.

Matthew Lawson, Appliances Online

This post was guest-written by Matthew Lawson, Web & SEO Manager, DRL Limited (Appliances Online).

In selling UGC to your executives internally, proving ROI is crucial. Focussing only on the end of the purchase path – the final sale – doesn’t tell the full story of your UGC benefit.

While it can be difficult to do, understanding customers’ online shopping habits is highly valuable for brands. Studying search to determine how customers travel through hundreds of products and categories can reveal insights worth their weight in gold.

Shopping Stage

As consumers search for products online, they commonly fall into three main “buckets.”

Researchers – these searchers have a need, but they’ve only narrowed it down to the product category, such as “washing machines.”

Browsers – these searchers have narrowed their query to the next level, and have started to apply their desired product attributes, features, and maybe even brands. They might search for “black Hotpoint washing machine.”

Shoppers – these customers have done their researching and browsing, and have decided on the specific product model they want to purchase, searching for “Hotpoint WMD960K Black Washing Machine.”

Their Searches

Breaking your customers down into these groups tells you something about their specific needs and motivations. Searchers in the Research stage, for example, are less likely to buy during their visit than those in the Shopping stage. By examining the search queries driving traffic to your site, and categorizing them in the same way, you’ll find that conversion rates for and revenue generated by Shoppers is significantly higher than Researchers.

This probably doesn’t come as a surprise. But traditional analytics attribute too much of the sale to that final Shopping stage, ignoring the work toward a purchase done in the Research and Browsing stages. Engaging searchers in these stages does the ground work, building the brand and making visitors more likely to return later as Shoppers and convert.

How can you do these early search stages justice, and show the ROI of UGC in every phase of the purchase path?

Attribution Modeling

The illustration below shows the click path a searcher may take in researching and shopping for washing machines. Traditional analytics would attribute all revenue of the final sale to the last click – in this example, a PPC ad. Attributing revenue in this way gives no credit to the hardest working traffic –searchers in the Research and Browsing stages, brought to your site organically by your UGC.

To show the true value of social commerce, this revenue should be split among the various stages of search.  Attributing 30% of revenue to the first click, 50% to the last click, and spreading the remaining 20% equally across the middle clicks, gives a more rounded and holistic picture of your search traffic and its value – and demonstrates the ROI of UGC on your site.

This model also opens opportunities to more cleverly target visitors in each search stage, allowing you to attribute value to previously unprofitable methods of marketing, such as generic PPC bidding.

Results

On Appliances Online’s kitchen appliance ecommerce site, we found that the majority of traffic generated by our customer review microsite were searchers in the Browsing phase of their buying cycle. Attribution modeling, compared to attribution based on the last click, attributed 18.4% more revenue to the review microsite.

If you’re having trouble selling the business value of UGC internally in your business, attribution modeling makes it easier to prove the ROI of customer feedback.

As you've read in our other search blog posts, we think “beyond search engines” in search. To be successful in attracting the right shoppers at the right time, today’s companies need to present information in places where searchers want to find it – via search engines, in on-site navigation, and through social networks, to name a few.

Today’s consumer seeks to cut through the noise – there is so much information out there, they just want what’s most relevant to them. To attract the most users, it’s important to speak their language. And what resonates best with them? Input and opinions from other shoppers like them.

The most obvious example of this is the “top-rated products” list. When searching for a new product, shoppers want to know what other people like them think. And top-rated products aren’t just top-sellers – they’re the products that people bought and liked.

PETCO found that people who used top-rated product navigation converted 49% higher compared to people who viewed the same products and didn’t use top-rated navigation. And people who used top-rated navigation had a 63% higher sales volume than the average visitor. Clearly, those who look at top-rated products were able to cut through the clutter and buy quickly.

It’s also important to mine your user-generated content for most popular words, then use those words in your marketing – play them back to consumers. Read how Nintendo Wii did this back in 2007. Remember that searchers search and shop using the same language as reviewers and storytellers, and capitalize on that – both on your site and beyond. Many of our clients have used review snippets in email marketing, increasing conversion up to 10% — but this practice goes beyond online marketing. Use popular customer-generated words to attract shoppers inside your store, then help them discover products through snippets on product tags, in signage, and by sharing this input with your staff.

User-generated content can also fuel paid search advertising. Office Depot mined its keywords and implemented an SEM strategy leveraging top review phrases, driving a 196% increase in paid search revenue, plus a 24% conversion increase.

In short, when customers are talking about your products in a certain way, leverage that – it will resonate with your customers more than any type of marketing-speak you use. Sure, customer-generated content is valuable to the shopper within the purchase cycle, but companies can also use it themselves to fuel effective marketing.

While social search involves much more than search engine optimization, it’s important to have technology in place that attracts searchers at every level of the purchase path. The Bazaarvoice social search framework is designed to help customers find the right information at the right time for their needs, at every stage of the purchase path.

While in the “awareness” mode of the purchase funnel for a new camera, a shopper might search for “top-rated cameras,” to help narrow down choices. The SearchVoice Microsite combines all user-generated content complete with category, subcategory and product level navigation, creating a great source for researchers looking for consumer recommendations. This site automatically creates fresh lists such as “top rated” or “most popular” for each category on the site, and it’s a first stop for online researchers looking for products other consumers like the most.

Once a shopper narrows down choices to select the Sony CyberShot, he may search for reviews, and their search will lead them to a search-optimized Review Landing Page. SearchVoice Landing Pages create a search engine-optimized page separate from – but linked to – the product page. This page also gets indexed by search engines and is targeted to broad, product- or service-related searches.  As more and more people turn to other consumers for recommendations, this search grows in popularity.

Finally, as a shopper is ready to buy their new Sony T900, they can again call on customer reviews to help with their purchases. SearchVoice Inline allows clients to index content directly on the product page, creating a source of fresh content that is continuously changing – Google prefers pages that get refreshed often. SearchVoice Inline gets to the heart of the searcher’s need, where the search is most specific and they’re ready to buy – when they land here, they are one click away from a purchase.

These combined technologies maximize search results for Google, creating a competitive advantage for our clients in the battle for search.
When looking to optimize your user-generated content, technology is important, but Bazaarvoice believes that technology alone doesn’t win the search battle. Bazaarvoice combines technology with Social Amplification, Dynamic Merchandising, and customized strategies based on our Social Search Playbook that help your site deliver the right content to the right person at the right time.

Learn about our holistic view of search in our blog that introduces our Social Search Framework, and watch Bazaarblog for more information about how we look at search – which goes far beyond search engines.

When you look at search in the new social economy, it’s a whole new ballgame. In 2010, 70 percent of all online content will be user-generated, so optimizing this information – in addition to traditional content – is key to winning new traffic. MySpace and Facebook alone have more than 450 million users – this is where people are congregating. And consumers are getting smarter in the way they search. There’s huge growth in specific search terms – those that use five or more words are growing, while those using one or two words are declining.

When considering the search problem in this social economy, you need to optimize all the user-generated content (UGC) that customers contribute, find ways to work with popular online destinations rather than compete against them, and deliver information in the ways that searchers want to find it. At Bazaarvoice, we’re helping clients fulfill all these opportunities.

It’s obvious that product or brand content won’t capture all these searchers. It’s too generic, and it’s full of “marketing speak.” UGC speaks the same language as these searchers, even going so far as making common spelling errors users make. And retailers may find that their product copy is identical – or very similar – to that on competing sites. In this case, retailers would have to focus on expensive search engine marketing campaigns to simply stand apart and capture search traffic.

UGC also excels at fueling long-tail search, which has been shown to indicate that a searcher is closer to making a purchase. For example, if you are searching for “Nissan Sedan,” you may just be looking for generic information. However, if you search for “2009 Blue Nissan Sentra SE Austin,” it’s an indication that you know what you want, and you’re looking to buy it.

From the contributor’s angle, posting a review is often just the beginning of their contribution – they often want to share their recommendations with friends and family, which opens up a whole other area of search optimization. For example, when a user reviews a product or answers a question, they can share it on their Facebook page, so the members of their social network can read it. Now that content can be found by their friends and colleagues, and it’s linked back to the product page.

Searchers also rely on experts in certain categories. Experts build credibility by the content they create and recommendations they make, and such experts often make themselves known via profiles on sites that offer UGC. Searchers go to their favorite sites that have UGC, find profiles of people like them or experts, and uncover new products those contributors recommend. All the cross-linking within the page also creates new opportunities for search engines to find this content, again bumping up the search quotient.

In short, Bazaarvoice is creating a new way of thinking about search, and a new framework to help our clients optimize all the search possibilities. Our current SearchVoice Platform, which includes inline search, search-enabled landing pages, and cross-linked microsites, provides the technology that increases search across the entire purchase funnel. Social Amplification enables our clients to share their content beyond their site – via Facebook and other social networks, in shopping portals, and on other sites. Dynamic Merchandising lets UGC fuel successful search engine marketing programs to maximize results.

We help optimize search as soon as a client starts the implementation process, then each client’s Bazaarvoice Community Manager assesses their search performance using our Search Playbook and helps them advance across the search maturity model. We continuously innovate in search to help our clients win the battle for more search traffic via UGC.

Look for more about search on this blog in the coming weeks, and request our white paper, “Boosting Natural Search Traffic using Ratings and Reviews."