The second context, which is the topic of this article, is the duplicate content that is created by WordPress.  There may be many arguments why duplicate content is good for human readers, but it certainly creates problems with the search engines.

The reasons for these problems are really at the heart of a post that Matt Cutts did some years back speaking of his enthusiasm for blog posts and how well Google was handling them.  Minty Fresh Indexing he called it.  The reason why Google was handling them so well was the relatively new BlogSearch and its ability to deal with news feeds.  As he said, a post could be visible in a keyword search within an hour or two as opposed to the much slower spider crawling entry of static web pages.

What was not so clear at the time was the associated problem that news feeds provided a parallel content stream that was almost exactly the same as the blog itself.  In this post we will discuss ways that have been suggested to solve this duplicate content problem and describe the gap that has still been left in creating a complete solution.  We will then offer a  solution to fill that gap.

The Classical Way to Reduce WordPress Blog Duplicate Content

Blogs came with major pluses and major minuses.  They naturally have a large number of internal hyperlinks which helps the search engine spiders to identify the full blog structure rapidly.  On the other hand they also produce a large number of similar pages, which may cause confusion in keyword searches when different web pages come up with the same content.  In particular, the blog Home Page presents particular problems.

Blogs started off as journals or in other words a chronological listing of items the author found worth recording.  In WordPress,  to avoid the Home Page becoming inordinately long, WordPress offers some code which allows an article to be split to give only a short introductory excerpt and to then give a Read More link to read the remainder of the article.  A blog Home Page setup using this More link looks a little like a newspaper front page.  It has a series of teaser items which require you to go to another page in the blog to read the full continuation of the article.

With physical newspapers, this approach of ‘Continued on Page Twelve’ seems the right compromise.  The newspaper reader can then rapidly scan all the items on the front page and move to whichever article takes their fancy.  Physically it would be difficult to maneuver a huge newspaper front page that had all the articles printed out at length.

Applying the same teaser items approach for a blog home page is not necessarily a way human readers will find satisfactory.  One can navigate rapidly through a very long scrolling web page if you know that an article is to be found in its entirety farther down the front page.  However adopting that approach which does not use the More link presents its own problem.

Many recommend having full post entries in the RSS newsfeed since readers of the newsfeed may prefer to stay with the newsfeed rather than switching across to the blog to read each individual article.

In this case, the news feed and the Home Page will be remarkably similar content.  Several different solutions have been proposed to deal with these kind of problems and we will list them here.  However they leave a gap, which we will describe.

Solutions To WordPress Duplicate Content Problems

Some of these cover other issues in addition to the duplicate content problem but largely they cover the same ground..

How to Make a WordPress Blog Duplicate Content Safe
November 30th, 2006 – Oleg Ishenko – A good discussion of the Read More approach and related issues.

Make WordPress Search Engine Friendly
March 19, 2007 – a video from Michael Gray

SEO for WordPress – The Complete Guide
March 2007 – Jim Westergren

Fighting Duplicate Content On WordPress
July 25, 2007 – Chris Walker

Avoid WordPress Duplicate Content Problems With Google
an earlier post on this blog on June 3rd, 2009 – using the robots.txt file for the duplicate content problem.

A Search Engine Visibility Gap Sometimes Left By These Solutions

The following logical steps will show you the gap in search engine visibility that can develop where both the Home Page and the RSS Newsfeed contain full posts.

1. To avoid duplicate content being indexed, the robots.txt file disallows the feed from being crawled by the robots.
2. When a new post is added, the search engines are pinged.
3. When the Google robot checks the source of the ping the news feed is excluded from the crawl.
4. Accordingly the post content in the feed cannot be included in the Google BlogSearch results, which are based entirely on news feed content.

I base my statements on personal experience but others may find the logical steps controversial.  The following references show the debate that has gone before on this.

Search Engine Optimization for WordPress

The WordPress Codex gives as an example WordPress robots.txt file:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /feed

Adding A Robots.txt File Has Increased My Google Traffic By 16% In 4 Days
12 April 2007 – Everton notes that the following robots.txt has increased Google traffic by 16% in 4 days.  His robots.txt file includes the following

User-agent: *
Disallow: /feed/

Feeds in the search results?
03 October 2007 Joost de Valk offers the following assurance:

If you’re afraid blocking indexation of your feed might cause you to loose traffic from Google BlogSearch and/or Technorati, it won’t. Google BlogSearch uses FeedFetcher, which doesn’t observe robots.txt, and neither does Technorati. They both seem to be under the impression that pinging a blog search engine is enough consent to get it indexed, while others have suggested that pinging Technorati on behalf of others might be a nice way of improving your Technorati authority.

Webmaster Central Discussion
28 August 2009 – In a discussion on robots.txt disallowing certain URLs, a celebrated Google Employee, JohnMu, offered the following:

Generally speaking, I would also recommend not disallowing access to your feed since this is used by Google BlogSearch.

Overall I would rely on this more recent information from a Google employee than an outsider’s judgment, however much I do respect that individual.

Unfortunately JohnMu’s advice would leave us with both the Home Page and the RSS News Feed visible to the search engines and representing duplicate content.  How do we avoid that and still make sure that blog posts are found in Google BlogSearch?

Does Feedburner Provide A Solution To This Google BlogSearch Gap?

One way that might come to mind is to register (burn a feed) with what is now Google Feedburner.   The feeds created on Feedburner are then equivalent to the Feeds that are produced by the blog itself.  However they would still represent duplicate content just like the original feeds so that is not a solution.

A Duplicate Content Solution With The LMNHP Approach

The LMNHP Approach, in addition to the other advantages it gives for search engine visibility of the original blog posts, provides a solution for the duplicate content BlogSearch problem.  With LMNHP, there is now no regular web page on the website that is similar in content to the RSS News Feed with its string of full post entries.  The ‘front page’ of the blog contains only a single blog post entry.  In consequence the RSS News Feed does not need to be blocked from robots and is available to the Google Blog Search process as JohnMu recommended.

As far as I am aware, there is no other solution to this duplicate content problem if the blog Home Page contains a series of full posts and the RSS news feed also contains the full posts.  This points once more to the somewhat illogical structure of the Blog Home Page, whether it contains full posts or a series of teaser items.  The simplest answer once more is to adopt the No Home Page approach.

Post from: BPWrap

Google Duplicate Content And WordPress – An Unresolved Problem

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• April 22, 2010 -- The Marshmallow Challenge (2)
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• April 28, 2007 -- Yes, The National Gazette Does Have News Feeds (0)

If you think that is a very un-Godin-like title, you’re in for a surprise.  You may have been thinking about Seth Godin’s post on Small Is The New Big.

Small is the new big only when the person running the small thinks big.  Don’t wait. Get small. Think big.

And indeed he was quoted as believing quite the contrary in a recent Interview on Marketing 2010.  Mark Barrett of CIMarketing Sydney discussed the current marketing environment with the world’s foremost marketing author and multi-time New York Times best-selling author.  Seth Godin suggested that:

You will succeed when you have something to say, just as your Yellow Pages ad will work once you have something to offer. Bigger isn’t better. Better is better.

However measured on another scale, Seth Godin is clearly going for big.  His score is 25 when even the White House only scores 10.

If you are scratching your head on what this dimension could be, then let me add that Darren Rowse also scores 10 while Brian Clark scores only 6.  The more well-informed may realize that these two latter gentleman are very famous bloggers, and that is the clue to what we are talking about.  This is the number of posts that appear on the Home Page of each of their blogs.

Copyblogger has 6 posts on its Home Page, Problogger has 10 posts on its Home Page, the White House Blog has 10 posts on its Home Page while Seth Godin has a somewhat staggering 25 posts on his Home Page.

As we are discussing elsewhere, these long Home Pages cause problems for Google.  In search queries where a recent post might be appropriate it will often be outranked by the Home Page.  However the link to the Home Page may be displaying current content where the particular item of interest is way down the screen or may even have been displaced from the Home Page by more recent content.

Thus we have a major search engine problem here.  In addition, I really question whether this is the best way to serve up this content to your readers.  How many readers will patiently read through the whole blog from the most recent post right through to the last one displayed on the Home Page?  I would hazard a guess that almost no one does this.  Why then serve up the content in this long scrolling format?

I believe many have not thought sufficiently about how best to present their blog.  The default format of showing a series of posts is in my opinion not reader-friendly.

In addition since many people will come to the blog via a search engine, only a single post that relates to their search query is what they wish to read.  Following that logic, the Home Page should contain only a single post.  Or if you have the boldness to go where few others have gone as yet, you may abandon your Home Page and present only the most recent post.  It’s what we call the LMNHP approach.

If you try it, you may be pleasantly surprised at how much those search engines may rank your blog posts more highly in relevant keyword searches.

Post from: BPWrap

Seth Godin Thinks Bigger Is Better

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A Marshmallow Challenge might seem to be an unlikely topic for this blog, but it is a topic on today’s Ted Blog that is amusing and stimulating.  It is a talk by Tom Wujec and it is all about collaboration, innovation and creativity.  He is a Fellow at Autodesk and is the creator of the marshmallow challenge.

He describes it as one of the fastest and most powerful techniques for teams to improve their capacity to generate fresh ideas, build rapport, and master the skill of prototyping – all of which lie at the heart of team innovation.

The challenge is disarmingly simple.  The teams get 20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard of masking tape, one yard of string and one marshmallow.  The rules are straightforward:

1. Build the Tallest Freestanding Structure: The winning team is the one that has the tallest structure measured from the table top surface to the top of the marshmallow. That means the structure cannot be suspended from a higher structure, like a chair, ceiling or chandelier.
2. The Marshmallow Must be on Top: The entire marshmallow needs to be on the top of the structure. Cutting or eating part of the marshmallow disqualifies the team. 
3. Use as Much or as Little of the Kit: The team can use as many or as few of the 20 spaghetti sticks, as much or as little of the string or tape. The team cannot use the paper bag as part of their structure.
4. Break up the Spaghetti, String or Tape: Teams are free to break the spaghetti, cut up the tape and string to create new structures.
5. The Challenge Lasts 18 minutes: Teams must not be holding on to the structure when the time runs out. Teams holding the structure will be disqualified.

If you explore the website, you will see some of the creative solutions that teams have used around the world.

This post is also a challenge in another way.  Like the other SMM blogs, this blog is currently structured according to the LMNHP (Look Mom No Home Page) approach.  It is early days and the key measure of how useful this approach is will come from rankings of posts in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). 

The Marshmallow Challenge has produced no less than 390,000 items and the TED blog post today will encourage many more.  It will be interesting to see, given that competition, how high this blog post can rise for a Google search for ‘Marshmallow Challenge’.  We will keep you posted.

Post from: BPWrap

The Marshmallow Challenge

Related Posts

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Blogs have now come on the scene and ‘out of the box’ they seem to do exceptionally well in keyword queries.  There are two reasons for this.

1. Blogs usually create RSS news feeds, which give an instant alert to the search engines that a new post has been written.
2. Google attaches considerable weight to the recency of new web pages. 

This is why blog pages seem to rank very highly in keyword searches, particularly in the early days after they appear.

This has resulted in a feverish interest in having blogs.  Without thinking too much about it, many have set up blogs.  Software such as WordPress make it Oh So Easy. .. and surprise, surprise Google loves blog posts.  This sounds like a no-brainer?

Even though the results are impressive, you can do even better.  However you may need to discard some of your preconceptions.  Let us explore the nature of a blog and how it performs in search engine keyword searches.

The Typical blog

If you go to visit a typical blog, then at the blog website, say www.myblog.com, you will find displayed a long scrolling Home page with several posts, usually with the most recent post appearing at the top.  In some cases, the full content of each post may be shown and in other cases you may get only a short extract with a link to read More.  This link takes you to a web page that shows only the single post you are interested in.  Some people prefer to arrange their blog in this way to avoid duplicating exactly the same content on two separate web pages.  This would mean that the search engine might serve up either web page in a keyword search when the single post web page was really more appropriate.

The simple picture below shows what a search engine holds about any blog web page.  For the Home page for example, that is displayed when you visit www.myblog.com, the search engine has the URL, www.myblog.com, the blog title, the blog meta description, the current content of the Home page and a list of back links.  Back links are the URLs of other web pages that have hyperlinks pointing to this Home page.

The Google algorithm (and probably other search engine algorithms too) take into account those back links in determining the importance of this particular Home page.  In the case of Google, they use the term PageRank as a measure of this importance.  A large number of back links, particularly if they come from authoritative websites like the New York Times, the BBC or CNN, will mean that the Home page has a higher PageRank.  As the search engine spiders (sometimes called crawlers or robots) wander around the Internet, they register all these back link URLs.  Since many of them ‘point’ to the Home Page, this means that the Home page will have the highest PageRank.  New single blog post web pages will have few direct links so their PageRank is usually not defined for weeks or even months.

Even though the single blog post web pages may never get direct links, they can benefit from the internal links within the website.  For example that link  to read More on the Home page does confer some PageRank contribution on the single blog post web page.  According to what has been published by Google, a discount factor applies so that say only 85% of that PageRank contribution is applied to the single post web page.  So far this is all standard ‘stuff’.  Let us now begin to give some different insights on what is happening.

Note that we have signaled something different about that content on the Home page with that yellow background.  Unlike a traditional website with static web pages, the content keeps changing as new blog posts are written.   Either an extract or the full content of the latest blog post is added to the top of the web page and the oldest blog post is bumped off the bottom of the web page.  Once two or three blog posts have been added, what the search engine is holding in its database may differ markedly from what is appearing on a visit made today.  Of course if the search engine spider does recrawl the web page, then the content will be updated.  However for most blogs what the search engine is storing for the Home page will be different from what is currently being displayed.

The Typical SERP For A Keyword Query

SERP is the acronym for Search Engine Results Page, which is what the search engine displays when you do a keyword query.  When someone does a keyword query in a search engine, the search engine finds content in the database that matches the keywords.  If both the Home page content as stored and the individual blog post web page content (if stored) would be relevant, nevertheless the Home page ranks higher so will very likely be shown first or may be the only entry shown.  Although the entry was chosen as being relevant, what appears in the first line of the SERP entry is the Title of the whole blog.  This is general and probably does not refer to the keywords.  Moreover in developing the explanatory snippet, the search engine can only rely on the Meta Description for the whole blog, which is probably irrelevant, and on the content of the blog Home page as recorded when spidered.  The combination of an irrelevant title and a somewhat fuzzy snippet in the SERP is probably unlikely to attract the click of the searcher.

If the searcher does click on the entry, the blog Home page has likely changed by now and the keywords may no longer even be in the current version.  It might be thought that by going to the Cached version of the page, you may be able to see a version that includes the keywords.  However even here a caution is appropriate.  Search engines do not necessarily create a cached version of the web page on every spider visit.  The cached version may then be from an even earlier period.  In such a case, we have the somewhat anomalous situation that the cached version of the web page and the current version of the web page do not show the keywords, but the version that the search engine crawled in between the cached date and the current date did contain the keywords.  This is why the blog Home page was the item shown in the keyword query SERP.

The search engine time cycles for crawling and indexing web pages on the Internet can occasionally be measured in weeks so it is not surprising that entries in SERPs can be on occasions completely irrelevant to the keyword query.  Is there a way of correcting this situation?  It all stems from the fact that the Home page has too much authority?  Could this be reduced in some way and the resulting ‘authority’ that is freed up be spread around among other blog post pages?

The LMNHP approach

In trying to ‘flatten out’ the authority profile of a blog, no obvious solutions came to mind.  However a somewhat unorthodox approach seemed of interest, partially fuelled by the blogging approach that was being used for all the SMM blogs.  Having been frustrated by the typical blog with a number of blog posts all featured on the Home page, for some time all the SMM blogs had featured the latest post content on the Home page.  In other words, the latest post content appeared for example at http://www.staygolinks.com/. If you then clicked on the permalink that appeared in the H1 heading to the post content you would then be switched to the single post entry at http://www.staygolinks.com/latestpost.htm. This particular single post web page had only minor differences from the Home page version of this post entry.

Suddenly the light bulb came on.  Why not avoid the traditional Home page entirely and immediately switch (301 redirection) to the single latest blog post web page.  Details are given in the LMNHP post.  LMNHP is an acronym for Look Mom No Home Page.

What this means is that while this post continues to be the latest, the http://www.staygolinks.com/latestpost.htm will be treated as the URL that applies for the blog website.  Any back links, either external or internal, will be deemed to apply to that URL.  Thinking again about the earlier picture of what the search engines are registering, all items are now unchanging.  That means we have a Title and Meta Description that is appropriate precisely for this blog post content.  The content is unchanging and is the same over the long term.  The only difference is that the search engine may have been attempting to access http://www.staygolinks.com/ and is instructed by the 301 redirection to access the single post web page.  You might consider that in a sense the blog has no Home page.

Note that this is the only web page that is no longer active.  All the other web pages on the blog are active and unchanged.  All the back links are assigned to some blog web page or other.  It is uncertain how the search engines might be working with all this but so far there appear to be no surprises.

SERP Results For The SMM Blogs

It is still early days but so far the results of keyword queries are extremely gratifying.  Entries for new blog post pages are indexed and displayed rapidly.  They also are appearing with high rankings and do appear with relevant titles and descriptions.  This undoubtedly gives an SEO boost and also means that it is more likely that searchers will click on the item.  The biggest boost comes from the fact that the single post page seems to be directly assigned the back links for the domain.  For a time, this latest blog post is really working as a Home page and will only be supplanted when the next blog post is written.

Blog posts have always enjoyed an initial visibility, presumably based on some recency factor.  This is now magnified by a large number of back links that are also assigned to that URL.

A Possible PageRank Benefit

This approach undoubtedly results in a better (more even) distribution of PageRank among web pages.  No one outside Google knows exactly how the algorithms work with PageRank at this time.  The basic view is that the Home page amasses all the incoming back links to the domain.  This link-juice is then distributed among the internal web pages with some discounting applying, perhaps of the order of 15%.

In this new approach those same back links that were all directed to the Home page now go in groups directly to each of the single post web pages as they are issued.  It would seem that the discounting factor no longer apples since these links are now all external.  It has also been assumed that external links carry more weight than internal links so this may be an additional benefit.  Since Google is very guarded in whatever is said about the search algorithms, it is unlikely that these surmises can be confirmed or denied.

A Pleasant Surprise In The Tail

The results of this approach as seen in the SERPs is that better items appear that give a much clearer indication to the searchers of what they may find.  The constancy of content for blog pages fits the Google mission better since it is easier to index correctly and deliver relevant results. 

One pleasing bonus is revealed in the image below, which shows a search done prior to this current post being added to this blog.  As might be expected, a search for the previous blog title, The Google Tango, did give that blog post as the #1 entry in the SERP.  Clicking on the link took you precisely to that single post web page. 

What is intriguing is that Google still shows the domain itself as the URL for that web page, even though that is not the specific hyperlink for the entry.  However that is probably the most useful way of presenting information to the searcher.

Post from: BPWrap

Higher Search Engine Rankings Without A Home Page

Related Posts

• October 31, 2009 -- Blogging For Maximum Google Visibility (4)
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Courtesy of Camille Cusumano

What we had in mind was the other Tango.  For those who are not into ballroom dancing, that’s the evocative South American dance with the rhythm, Slow, Slow, Quick, Quick, Slow.  That seemed an appropriate description of Google’s speed of action on a variety of operations.  Of course Google prides itself on delivering search results on complex keyword searches in a fraction of a second. 

Google can also react fast to signals that are sent directly to it.  This means that for blogs, indexing of blog posts can be very fast given that RSS news feeds provide an immediate signal when new posts have been added.

That is a process that Google finds very effective.  That is why Google is pushing for a new system that will allow the Google Index to Go Real Time.

Google is developing a system that will enable web publishers of any size to automatically submit new content to Google for indexing within seconds of that content being published. The PubSubHubbub (PuSH) real time syndication protocol, could be used by Google for indexing the web instead of crawling the links.  PuSH is a syndication system based on the ATOM format whereby a publisher tells the world about a Hub that it will notify every time new content is published. Google would ask every website to declare which Hub they push to at the top of each document.

So much for the Quick, Quick but why the Slow, Slow for Google.  This is because there are some processes that operate on a much slower time cycle. Perhaps one of the most extreme is Google Maps.  Google can partially blame the map database sources it uses. However there are some examples that are almost ludicrous.  The biggest local example of that is hard to miss.  The data for the Golden Ears Bridge across the Fraser River took almost 9 months of operations before Tele Atlas updated its map index as of March 31.  Mapquest picked it up immediately.  At the time of writing some 12 days later, Google Maps still has not picked this up.

The other area where Slow, Slow applies is the speed at which new web pages not included in RSS news feeds get into the Google index. In some cases, this can be measured in months.  Here the enormous and explosively growing size of the Internet limits what is possible.  Even if a URL to a web page is found, it may be some time before the spiders or crawlers can revisit to fully identify what is located at that URL.

In this case, Google had a choice on whether its index should be Big and/or Fast and/or Accurate.  In practice given the Internet dynamics, only two of these are attainable at the same time.  Google has chosen Big and Accurate and the result is as fast as they can make it, which is still very slow. 

We are now promised that a new process, Google Caffeine, is being slowly rolled out.  However this will probably deal with the way search results are developed rather than the way web pages are added to the index.  It seems likely that we must stay satisfied with the Slow, Slow rhythm for the speed at which web pages are included in the index.

Nevertheless Google offers sufficient processes that go at the Quick, Quick pace so must of us will continue to be happy with the Google Tango.

Post from: BPWrap

The Google Tango

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Outside.In for example is a new way of looking at what is going on around you using what has been called a hyper local news aggregator.  It aims to tell you: What’s happening. Where you are. Right now.  It is a much more evocative name than its major competitor EveryBlock from MSNBC.   EveryBlock is one of scores of competing services including Nozzl, Outside.in, Fwix and more that serve up public records, social media content and local announcements on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood, or in this case block-by-block, basis.

There are even more mind-blowing examples of that Outside In duo.  There is even a movie, Outside In, made by IMAX, which will show on massive screens and concert-level surround systems with a synchronized light show to audiences in planetariums, museums, galleries and limited IMAX release.

Using hundreds of thousands of still images manipulated to create full motion, «Outside In» takes the audience from the big bang to our present day. With visual and audio mashups & photo-motion collages, the camera journeys into the zeitgeist of our age of mass media but music carries us to Saturn. There, we soar around, into and through the incredible photographs of Saturn taken by Cassini using an «2.75D» photographic fly-through technique created using Adobe Photoshop and After Effects.

That stunning example of Outside In should not blind us to more interesting examples of these contrasting words.  The Outside In social service agency is dedicated to serving low-income adults and homeless youth. It began in 1968, and has continually revised services to meet changing client needs. Current programs include a community health clinic, a homeless youth program designed to help homeless youth obtain independent living, and risk education.  It has had outstanding success helping Portland, Oregon’s homeless youth transition off the streets and into stable lives.  80% of youth who go through their transitional housing program never return to the streets.

The final example of the Outside In contrast could well the one of the most powerful.  Many companies have bought into the notion that they should be more customer centric.  They interpret that as trying to focus on the customer and provide what customers need.  However this often results only in lip-service to the concept.  Indeed they often assume that they know best what customers should have and then strive hard to deliver that.

Cartoon originally appeared on CustomersAreAlways

HBS professor Ranjay Gulati, suggests a better way is to adopt an Outside-In Approach to Customer Service.  This is an excellent way of describing what is involved in becoming a more customer-centric selling organization.  The alternative is to remain a product driven company that nevertheless tries to make sure it produces high quality products.

The term Outside In makes a clear distinction that we are talking about what the customers on the outside see in the products and services the company delivers. Professor Gulati, an expert on leadership, strategy, and organizational issues in firms, believes that companies must evolve through a series of major transitions on the way to becoming more customer-centric. He covers this in his book, Reorganize for Resilience: Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business. Key.  There are many examples of where this process has brought success such as Best Buy, Cisco, Target, Starbucks, and Jones Lang LaSalle.

In a way it all goes back to that quotation from Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart, on customer service:

There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.

That customer is on the outside looking in.  It is important that she or he is enthused by what they see.

Post from: BPWrap

Outside-In For A Different Perspective

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Scalable was a word introduced in the Information Technology world but it raises some interesting questions in applying it in other contexts.

In IT it is a popular buzzword that refers to how well a hardware or software system can adapt to increased demands. For example, a scalable network system would be one that can start with just a few nodes but can easily expand to thousands of nodes. Scalability can be a very important feature because it means that you can invest in a system with confidence you won’t outgrow it.

Now we see it applied more generally to a company that many customers would rate very highly for customer service. Toyota Failure Proves Quality Isn’t Scalable.

A small operation can bootstrap itself into a medium or even a reasonably large company, via either organic growth or acquisition, and still maintain the quality which was the basis of its initial success.

At some point, though, whether you’re talking an automaker or a technology firm, size breeds insularity, which in turn fosters risk aversion. I haven’t even mentioned the corner-cutting mentality which occurs when making numbers becomes a (the only?) priority.

The author, Alexander Wolfe, points out that in the more open world created by the Internet, the quality stakes are very much higher.

Toyota might not have so fortunate a fate, and thus a swifter fall, because we now live in Internet time, where seismic shifts occur in timeframes too tiny for rational thought to stop that Twitter/Facebook/Cable TV train from running the business off the metaphorical track.

I believe the author identifies exactly why this problem occurs.

It’s true that the scalability doesn’t seem to be a limiting factor for manufacturing, per se. It’s not the manufacturing which is at fault in the Toyota crisis. It’s a management failure brought on by an inherent inability of human beings to scale up, beyond a certain point, the social interactions which grease the wheels of a smoothly running society. (And, in a very real sense, a company is a society writ smaller.)

The real reasons for the Toyota problems have yet to be pinned down, however a clear message is that Toyota was not willing to accept that customer satisfaction is determined by the customer. Undoubtedly the final bill for Toyota will be very much greater than if they had accepted that if a single customer is dissatisfied, you have to make it right. Of course there is a very small proportion of the population that are never satisfied. However unless you do as much for them as most people would accept is right and fair, then you may well be storing up problems for yourself.

Insularity is not an acceptable or justifiable company trait. There must be full two-way communication that both parties find acceptable. Setting that up and providing adequate resources for that is not somehting that is easily scaleable. However the hoped-for economies by providing less than satisfying customer service are completely outweighed by the market penalties when customers feel ignored.

On a personal note, I have been a most satisfied customer of Toyota for many years and will gladly pass on the word to friends and acquaintances. However my voice and the voices of other satisfied customers are lost in the huge noise created by those who it would appear have reasons to claim that Toyota just did not listen.

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Quality is not infinitely scalable

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Although you might assume we are about to discuss that new Ford Focus automobile, that is the resultant of what we really want to talk about.

The word focus is what Peter Drucker felt so strongly about that he emphasized it three times: focus, focus, focus. Although it is clearly essential advice for small and mid-sized companies, it is equally applicable in mega corporations too.

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, that is what Ford’s Renaissance Man is now pushing.

Alan Mulally, an engineer from Boeing, arrived three-and-a-half years ago when Ford seemed on death’s door. It suffered a $12.6 billion loss in 2006, when industry-wide car sales were strong. But in 2009, Ford became the only U.S. car company to avoid bankruptcy, and posted a $2.7 billion profit. After plunging below $2 a share a year ago the company’s stock is now bumping $12.

“Improve Focus, Simplify Operations,” is for Mr. Mulally a sacred mantra. Soon after his arrival Ford began shedding brands – Jaguar, Land Rover and Aston Martin among them – that the company couldn’t afford to support. Volvo will be next to go. Meanwhile, the core Ford brand got an investment infusion to replace aging cars and revive a model lineup that had been heavily tilted toward gas-guzzling trucks.

In the process, Ford cut its number of global platforms, or chassis, to eight from more than 20, and the number of nameplates to 25 from 97. Each platform and model involves hundreds of millions of dollars of engineering costs, which translated to billions of losses when Ford couldn’t sell enough of each model.

Product-development chief Derrick Kuzak is methodically implementing the “One Ford” strategy of developing cars in a single region (say Europe, or North America) and selling them globally, instead of developing slightly different cars in each region at enormous extra cost. The first of these, the subcompact Fiesta, was engineered in Europe and will arrive in the United States this summer. In 2011, we will see a new version of a slightly larger car, the compact Focus, also engineered in Europe and designed as a global car from the start.

It’s all another triumph for that KISS principle. As Albert Einstein said, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

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Ford Focus

Posts from the Archives

• September 2, 2004 -- Can You Order Your Cappuccino Through Your Web Page? (0)
• August 29, 2006 -- Internet Marketing Strategies – An Idea Whose Time Has Come (3)
• September 23, 2004 -- Think Local, Go Google (0)
• May 13, 2006 -- The metamorphosis of BPWrap (6)
• May 5, 2008 -- Microsoft should KISS more often (5)

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Most posts on this blog derive from incidents and events that come up on my radar screen. I was delighted to see that one of my online friends, Rand Fishkin, was Bringing SEO to Small Business in Scotland.

I spent a day with small business owners in Glasgow, Scotland teaching the basics of online marketing and SEO. It was a remarkable experience to be faced with such a different crowd than what I’m used to. As a comparison, the week prior, I’d been in Mountain View presenting to the Silicon Valley Search Engine Roundtable, comprised of heads of SEO and marketing directors from Fortune 500 companies – all very savvy operators.

This was all in support of a program, Online Xcellence, sponsored by the Scottish government and organized by Brian Mathers, a real enthusiast in the search marketing world.

Two things came to mind as I read this post. The first was that this is another example of the generosity that Rand Fishkin so often displays. This not surprisingly permeates the culture in the company he founded, SEOmoz. It is part of what they call the TAGFEE Tenets. The acronym stands for:

• Transparent and Authentic
• Generous
• Fun
• Empathetic
• Exceptional

Recently SEOmoz has taken a new direction and a new focus: The End of Consulting: A New Partnership & Our Focus on Software

Today I have two very big announcements. First, SEOmoz is exiting the consulting business to focus exclusively on our software model. And, second, we have an expanded partnership with Distilled (new US site: Distilled LLC), who’ll be taking over many of our consulting clients and opening offices here in Seattle. I’m going to … add detail on why we’re so bullish about the SEO software market.

I will have more to say on this change in a future post. What I wished to comment on in this post was the indication that Scottish entrepreneurs think online search engine marketing is central to future success.

Indeed it is. However there is a topic that is even more essential and must be discussed prior to this. It is the whole question of strategy. It can be called a marketing strategy since unless a company works well in its market place, it will not survive. I find that many companies slide by this question and do not answer the tough questions that deciding on strategy should pose. As Michael Porter, the strategy guru, said, strategy is about what you must say no to. It’s all about focus, focus, focus.

All this is by way of introduction to the E-Book, Marketing Right Now. This is now available as a free download. (This is a 1 Mb PDF file so please be patient.) Although it is intended for entrepreneurs and SOHOs (small office, home office), there are many big companies that could benefit from the rules set out in this slim book.

Some readers will find this book challenging. It has some very simple rules which most would accept as important and yet they do not apply them. Growing a business should take you out of your comfort zone. Unless you do that, you are not likely to succeed. This book’s chapter headings can give you a checklist of the key steps you must take to have a chance of being successful. Why not download it now and see what you should be doing differently.

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Marketing First

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Watchers of the Internet scene were aware, as Taiyo Johnson reported, that local businesses no longer need a website. In its Local Business Center, Google works hard to develop listings for all local businesses. Now the Google Local Business Center is turning into a small business blog dashboard. Each business has a Place Page.

As Google advises, you can now post to your Place Page.

Posting to your Place Page allows you to give Google Maps users recent updates about your business. These posts can be changed quickly, so posts to your Place Page allow the Local Business Center to keep up with the pace of your business. Once you post a message expect 5-10 minutes before it shows on the Place Page.

If you found that a somewhat surprising development, then hold on to your hats since Google now seems to be trying to supplant Facebook and Twitter in offering a new type of social media, Buzz.

Google Buzz is Google’s attempt at tackling the latest social networking craze. While Google has tried before at taking this market over with its own services such as Orkut, Knol, Picasa to name a few – none are even close to being true rivlas with the likes of Facebook and Twitter.

So Google Buzz will let you see all your contact’s status updates from a wide variety of networks and allow you to see them all from the comfort of your own Gmail account. This means it is in pretty close competition with sites like Friendfeed as well as Facebook – who has also started to integrate messages from other locations. I guess if you can’t beat them – join them, take all their stuff, put it all on your site… and call it Google Buzz!

Provided you’re happy to go with Google as your Internet infrastructure, it all looks pretty appealing. However the rocky progress of the Local Business Center shows that relying on computer based systems without human over-ride can produce very problematic results. It will be interesting to see whether Google can finetune Buzz and get it to appeal on a consistent basis to its users. First signs leave that as a big question mark.

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• March 3, 2005 -- The new J Walter Thompson – JWT (0)
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• August 16, 2004 -- No sex please, we're SEO's (0)