Show, Not Tell

I believe that the best way to sell anything is to show it, not to tell it.

Here are some examples of why I think that I know SEO:

Google: design technology marketing



Google: design technology strategy



Google: design technology marketing strategy



You will see that my sites are on the first and second search results of these pages. And trust me, if you use my name, there won't be just two :)

Point.

Related SML
SML Pro Blog: How to unGoogle yourself
SML Pro Blog: SML on SEO
SML Pro Blog: SML SEO = See-ming Lee + Search Engine Optimization

SML Copyright Notice

©2007 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe. All rights reserved.

Yahoo Pipes: Search Engine Masturbation / 2007 / SML

Thanks to Alex's generous recommendation, I would like to unveil to the world my first Yahoo! Pipes that is reusable by the general public for your daily vanity search activity:

Drum roll...

Yahoo Pipes: Search Engine Masturbation = Google Search + Live Search + Yahoo Search

SML Flickr: Yahoo Pipes: Search Engine Masturbation: Run Pipe / 2007.09.13 / SML

For those who are not familiar with Yahoo Pipes, here is the official description:

Pipes is a powerful composition tool to aggregate, manipulate, and mashup content from around the web.

Like Unix pipes, simple commands can be combined together to create output that meets your needs:

• combine many feeds into one, then sort, filter and translate it.
• geocode your favorite feeds and browse the items on an interactive map.
• power widgets/badges on your web site.
• grab the output of any Pipes as RSS, JSON, KML, and other formats.

The source of this pipe look like this:

SML Flickr: Yahoo Pipes: Search Engine Masturbation: Run Pipe / 2007.09.13 / SML

I have been using it to create a rather large collection of RSS feeds for myself—which by the way is what is feeding all those content at the bottom of this page&mdashbut this is the first one that I have created to service the public.

This pipe simultaneously search for any search string using Yahoo, Google and Live Search. When you run the pipe (e.g. Run Pipe by entering "See-ming Lee" in the text input box), you will get a result that looks like this:

SML Flickr: Yahoo Pipes: Search Engine Masturbation: Run Pipe: See-ming Lee / 2007.09.13 / SML

You can also subscribe to the RSS feed after you run the pipe. Translation: you don't need to Google yourself everyday. Just add the RSS onto your RSS reader and let the machine do all the SEM (SML: Search Engine Masturbation) for you.

Happy masturbating!

Related Blog Posts

• Domain names = my one-line poetry
• SML SEO = See-ming Lee + Search Engine Optimization

SML on SEO

In the world of SEO (Wikipedia: Search Engine Optimization), content is king. If you write good content and thus draw enough target audience, search engines will be your friends.

If you are mainly interested in the U.S. market, then Google is your friend, because that is where this search engine has the highest market penetration. If your target audience happens to be in Asia or Europe, then you are probably better of with Yahoo!, because it has long had an international brand presence and Google just started to expand into those markets recently.

Interestingly, most Americans find it surprising that Yahoo has more netizen population than Google overall (Source: Compete.com). Since Google has more American population than any other search engine, it is natural to assume so. However, if you survey your friends outside the U.S. to see which search engines they use most, and you may be surprised with your results. In my random sampling, I have found that almost all of my friends in the UK prefers MSN Live Search.

To find out just how well you rank among all the search engines, I recommend Jux2, a meta search engines which combines and compares the results of Google, Yahoo and MSN. You may be surprised of how many results are specific to a single database. If you are trying to appeal to an international audience, you will do best to optimize your search strategies for all three primary players.

If you are an individual, can you utilize these techniques to compete with global international companies? I think so. I Googled SML (initials for See-ming Lee, my name) today, and this blog is prominently featured on page one among approximately 7,450,000 results. I am competing with global players and acronyms here. It's definitely a very 'gratifying' activity. :)

Do you have to spend a lot of money? Does it take a long time to see your ROI (Wikipedia: Return on Investment)? I don't think so. I believe that I am gaining these benefits all by writing a few poems recently. And I published pretty much all of them within the last four months.

I fell into all these mostly out of my recent interest in network theory. Based on my research, I have a hunch that Google's algorithm has largely to do with network theory (Wikipedia: Network Theory / SML Bookmarks: Social Media / SML Bookmarks: Network). This is a hunch, not a proof. Theoretically speaking, I don't think that any proofs are definite. You can, on the other hand, validate your confidence level based on statistics and analytics reports.

Copyright 2007 SML SEO = See-ming Lee + SEO. All rights reserved.

SML SEO = See-ming Lee + Search Engine Optimization

Source: Amazon

After reading Turtles, Termites and Traffic Jams, my exploration of decentralized networks went down a very viral path. I discovered that the application of network theory is enormous and has huge implications and applications on every seemingly unrelated topic that I have come across.

It can be used as a tool and device to understand cities, computer networks social networks, human-human interactions (speech), human-computer interactions (HCI), computer-computer interactions (protocol), diseases, computer viruses, nature. If you think about it, all these things boil down to a single category: communication.

My recent interest in networks has in turn got me into search engine optimization — because search engine is essentially a highly networked database with stored properties between data collections. Here are the steps I have taken to research this topic:

1. Study network theories (mostly through books and wikipedia)


2. Dive into every social-networking sites and analyze their business strategies


3. Domain-shopping and create targeted content as a way to validate the theories studied

It appears that my SEM (aka Wikipedia: Search Engine Marketing aka SML: Search Engine Masturbation) has paid off — I discovered today that I have accidentally fell into a gold mine:

1. Googling design, technology and marketing returns about 209,000,000 results.
   SML currently secure results #1, #2 and #3.


2. Googling design, technology and strategy returns about 159,000,000 results.
   SML currently secure results #3, #7 and #9.


3. Googling design, technology and marketing strategy returns about 109,000,000 results.
   SML currently secures results #1, and #2.

Notes:

1. Your personalized results may vary.
2. Sign out from Google to view neutral results.

Here are a collection of books that I recommend if you are interested in this topic:

Source: Amazon	Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi "Understand the properties of networks, and you will understand the principles governing life." — See-ming Lee
Source: Amazon	Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams: Explorations in Massively Parallel Microworlds (Complex Adaptive Systems) by Mitchel Resnick
Source: Amazon	The Computational Beauty of Nature: Computer Explorations of Fractals, Chaos, Complex Systems, and Adaptation by Gary William Flake
Source: Amazon	A New Kind of Science by Stephen Wolfram
Source: Amazon	Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Theory of Networks by Mark Buchanan

If you like these books, you might also be interested in other books that I recommend.