Schoolkids Records in Chapel Hill, NC is closing, after 33 years in business. Apparently the store isn’t getting enough foot traffic, which is insanely difficult to believe considering it’s on the main drag of a massive university town that has a thriving music scene. There was little competition here as far as I can tell, but somehow they’re unable to survive even in the midst of over 30,000 college kids who, by all acounts, listen to music quite a bit. I guess the problem is that these kids aren’t actually BUYING anything in stores. Whether you can blame the high prices of CDs or the ease with which people can quickly download the music that they want, brick and mortar record shops are quickly crumbling. (cough)
I wrote a post awhile back about how the indie music scene didn’t need SEO…my point was that independent music was, so far, mostly disconnected from mass media coverage and, as such, remained true to its very spirit. In this post, I stated that people should personally get up off their arses and seek out new music by actively searching for it without going online, by getting their music news through word of mouth, or by showing up at the local punk rock club for a night.
As I was moaning about Schoolkids closing, even though I haven’t shopped there since 1995 and that was to buy a cheap poster, I started to think about something: has our industry actually been a contributing factor to the demise of my beloved physical record shops? I freaking think so (at least I do at THIS moment) and here is why:
If you do a search for most bands, and let’s take Grinderman as an example since I am such a Nick Cave fan (although I can’t tell my mom the name of their new single (like she’d ask) since it’s got a dirty word in it that rhymes with wussy), you’ll likely see tons of results for their videos on YouTube, their MySpace page, their Wikipedia entry, their Amazon listing, and their actual website if they happen to have one. Nick is well represented in the SERPs, to summarize. You can hear and watch the videos for free, and you can listen to new releases for free. If you happen to buy from iTunes, you can quickly grab a digital song or album and the whole thing’s done in less than a minute. Gone are the days when you accidentally buy an Assuck cd because it was mistakenly put into the Avail section, the store was closing, and you ignored the record clerk who said, looking at your other purchase of The Smiths, “boy you’re all over the place aren’t you!” Your main concern now is that when you got the download of The Mission’s Deliverance, it was actually Tower of Strength which you don’t really like and now you’re out 99 cents. Record shops are closing because of people like you. And me…ok and yes, the photo of Grinderman is only necessary in order to show you how insanely cool Nick Cave is. Sorry.
Seriously, why would you leave the house and go out, in PUBLIC, to risk the flu and ebola and lice and panhandling punk rock kids with $100 nose rings, not to mention having to be chatted up by an overweight and unwashed college dropout wearing a faded and hole-ridden Pixies tshirt who only works at the record store to meet chicks that look like Kim Deal and get a 10% discount on bumper stickers, when you could sit at home in your salt-bagel-encrusted chair and stay safe? Thus, you order online and this record store clerk gets fired, the store owner tries to keep the shop open by showcasing crappy local bands until the landlord sues him for back rent and the only bands they can book are ABC and The Lick Stick (ok I made that one up), and then it all truly goes straight to hell and the next time you show up for your used record fix, you’re greeted by a giant padlock on the door.
When I saw Polyphonic Spree a few months back, the lead singer made a great statement at the end about buying their t-shirts and robes (yes, robes and let me just say YIKES) because they didn’t make a lot of money on CDs anymore and needed the support. Whether or not that’s true isn’t my concern of course. I like the idea behind finding other ways to keep these artists going. He also pleaded with the audience, in his cultlike manner, to support other bands as well by going to shows and buying their assorted rubbish there. For the record (HA!!), I did not buy a robe from P. Spree, since that would just be stupid. I did, however, buy a tshirt in a wildly unflattering shade of light blue.
It’ all evolution, of course, but it does make me a bit sad. This certainly won’t mean the end of music, of course…just maybe the end of walking into a store and spending hours poring over the bins to find something amazing. And what I do for a living is partially to blame.
It was a dark and stormy night. Somewhere in Pakistan, a turmoil was brewing. ‘These search results must be stopped! They are offensive! BAN YOUTUBE NOW!’
Sensing urgency, the various responsible parties requested an urgent and immediate ban on YouTube redirecting all requests to a holding page. Job done, they went back to whatever other important things they were doing.
Winging its way across the internet, the ban request was taken up as urgent on a Sunday. At an odd hour of the day. Coherence was not necessarily present but urgency was understood. The ban spread.
Time marched on (as it does). Chocolate and other terms previously graced with universal search results lost them. No more YouTube meant no video results. Sadness was spreading across the world.
The ban spread and people with nothing better to do than visit YouTube by doing a search on the name in Google instead of typing the URL in the browser window entered the fray. Cue me searching for stuff for a talk…
Wha…? An SEO using Google search instead of typing the proper URL in to the browser address bar? Fear not, dear readers, I was not just being lazy! I was just trying to find a universal search result for a talk I’m giving to some journalists on writing for search and I couldn’t find any video results. Honest! Even my beloved chocolate universal search result was sadly missing
BUT WAIT! Patience is a virtue and so I sat and I waited and I sat and I got a coffee and I sat and I waited and I wrote a bit more and LO AND BEHOLD it was BACK!
*phew*
That was close!
Just goes to show you – when someone requests something, don’t just rubber stamp it no matter who requested it!
I would have included the actual ‘chocolate’ USR but the second image was… well, the guys reading this blog would have appreciated it I’m sure
This event is open to ANYONE! $40 gets you open bar and snacks from 8pm-midnight at the Black Finn NY. This will likely sell out, so if you are interested in coming, shoot me an e-mail (Lauren [at] lvlogic [dot] com) and I’ll put you on the guest list – just remember to bring your money. There will also be a raffle with some great prizes that I’ll tell you about before the event gets closer.
UPDATE: It has come to my attention that this post looks rather weird if you’re viewing it through a feedreader. So don’t. Click through, I tell you!
To start, I’d like a show of hands. Who uses Gmail? I hope everyone in the room has their hand up at the moment, because Gmail is one of my favourite things in all the world. It has its problems, it’s had is security flaws, but it has always treated me very well. Believe me: I’ve been around the block when it comes to email providers. I was a long-time user of Yahoo! and I was also one of Yahoo! Mail’s more loyal fans. Y! Mail just wouldn’t do all the things I wanted it to, and its constant badgering that I should “upgrade” to its newer version drove me nuts. The newer version also made me want to put a fork through my face. About two years ago, I beat out all the other Jane Coplands and snapped up a desirable Gmail address. It was heavenly.
However, there is always a little price to pay for lovely free things, and Adsense is that price when it comes to Gmail. Targeted Adsense is always a source of amusement, but it’s even more amusing when it thinks its targeting your personal emails.
I was going to just post screen shots of the ads that have made me laugh, but this would be far more interesting as an interactive game. There are no prizes for doing well… I’d promise to send you an SEO Chicks tee-shirt but I have no control over such things and I don’t want to get in to trouble with Lisa.
Honestly, I know you come here to learn. But you can learn all you like next week at SMX West, or by reading the recaps. Thus, I present to you, Jane’s Amusing Gmail Adsense Game.
There is no question associated with this advertisement. I believe it speaks for itself.
Question 5:
Question 6:
Question 7:
Question 8:
In all seriousness, you sometimes cringe when you think about the content with which your ads might be associated.
However, that was fun, wasn’t it? You have no idea how long it took me to make those polls not mess up the pictures’ alignment, so please look grateful. Have a nice Sunday and see some of you next week in Santa Clara!
I’ve never really understood why these niche search engines keep cropping up until now…and it involves one of my favorite things in the world. Yes, it’s wine. Glorious, spellbinding wine.
Doug Cook, a former search executive at Inktomi (for those of you who’ve been in the industry more than a few years, you’ll remember them fondly) and Yahoo has just rolled out the beta of Able Grape, a search engine that scours wine sites. The database already contains almost 10 million pages. To use this engine properly, you don’t need to add the usual wine-related terms that would normally be necessary in a regular engine like Google. The example given on the Able Grape website clarifies this point:
“While you need to type Spanish Wine on Google to get good results, on Able Grape, you will get better results than Google by simply typing Spain. Similarly, instead of needing to type Argyle Winery or Argyle Vineyards to get just wine-related results, try simply Argyle. And instead of climate change and wine, try simply climate change. (We have included some great general resources about climate change, but you’ll find that most of the results are wine-specific. Moreover, Able Grape knows that global warming and even cambiamento climatico mean the same thing).”
How successful will a niche engine like this be, if users need to use different search terminology than they would on a traditional engine like Google or Yahoo? There’s no convenient toolbar (yet) and unless users read the bit about how to best use the engine, they may not get the best results.
A search for “Spanish wine” on Able Grape reveals this: and in case you can’t see it there were 348,422 results returned.
A search for “Spain” on Able Grape reveals this: and again if you can’t see it, there were 645,402 results returned.
The recommended “Spain” search gives the user almost twice the amount of results as the search for “Spanish wine.” Obviously, if you learn how to properly use the engine, you’re going to get the best results. Now, the previous example isn’t the best one to use for why Able Grape is better than Google but think about this one:
“If we type in “Barbera,” we don’t want to know about “Hanna.”"
For those of you who don’t know, and I counted myself amongst that group until just a minute ago, “Barbera” refers to an Italian red wine grape variety. If you do a search in Google, the first result returned actually is one for the wine, but most of the other results on the first page deal with non-wine Barbera entries. Bypassing Google and going straight to a niche engine is definitely going to prevent you from having to weed out all those irrelevant results. However, if you have the convenient Google toolbar with the handy dandy search box on your browser at all times, are you going to actually go to another engine like Able Grape? Or are you going to simply take your chances and quickly skim over all of the irrelevant results that are provided? That isn’t too difficult, honestly, and if it’s a choice between letting an engine filter out so-called irrelevancies or doing it myself, I’ll take my chances since I’m a massive control freak.
I am definitely not suggesting that niche engines are a bad thing, of course, but I have to wonder about their popularity. I love wine and buy it often, but if I am looking up a bottle to see how it rates, I’m going to use Google because that’s my default engine. The time it takes to go to a niche engine is time that I could be spending on uncorking that sucker at home you know.
There are a ton of other niche search engines, and I’ve written about them before on this very blog. However, what’s not previously been explored (at least not by the SEO Chicks) is how you can use these engines to your advantage from an SEO’s perspective, NOT from a user’s perspective. How, exactly, does one go about being listed and performing well in one of these engines? Since Google, Yahoo, and MSN all like different things, why would a niche engine be any different? Will optimizing for a niche engine cause you any harm in the main three engines? There isn’t that much information out there about this, unfortunately, at least not that I could find during my 5 minutes of digging. OK that’s a complete joke. I spent a full hour of my valuable time trying to search for data on what these types of engines look for in a site, how they determine the most relevant results…and I’ve come up about as empty as my current wine glass.
As much as Google annoys me, it’s fairly easy to understand their guidelines. The same holds true for the other two engines as well. With such a large presence on the web, there is a literal ton of data out there that tells you how to do well in these engines, what to do and what NOT to do, etc. This isn’t the case, at least not yet, for most of the niche engines. Obviously, in the case of Able Grape, wine-related sites will be the ones that are indexed in the database, but what factors influence the order of their SERPs? If these niche engines want to grow, will they have to drum up this type of information for us, so that we can all try and conquer yet another engine? My head is splitting, and it’s not just from the seriously poor chianti. What’s the future, then, of small engines of any sort? Do they have any chance at all against the big three? Is it possible for me to ask more questions in this post?
There is always one question on my mind when I am working on Social Media; How am I going to track my efforts? And what is a waste of time? It is very difficult to perfectly determine what type of Social Media pieces have potential to go viral without practice and patience. Thankfully, there are people out there who put a lot of time into this research.
Yesterday on ReadWriteWeb, Dan Zarrella wrote an article about the new tool he developed which helps Diggers test out keywords, before they submit a story. The tool researches the keywords from within the title and description of the top 33,000 front page stories that made it to the Digg holy homepage in 2007. This is quite an impressive database!
Obviously we are all aware of the benefits of Digg, but there are also hidden dangers. If you are in the Brand Management field you might be afraid that people who find your story on Digg want to blog negatively about it, or leave tons of negative comments, etc. Of course this is a possibility on any social platform and needs to be monitored.
By using the tool that Zarrella has created, we might have found a safe tool the check the history of similar content. In the end this might save us a lot of time doing research, and having failed attempts.
Many clients and even some of our peers don’t really understand the space that is Digg. This tool might help to explain some efforts that are used. And naturally… new tools are a lot of fun!
Firstly, let me say, I’m excited to be here with a group of such talented women. Secondly, the the two sentence intro on me is that I’ve been doing SEO, ppc and analytics in the forex industry and for myself at lvlogic for a little over 3 years. I can often be found hanging out at the bar with several of the guys from IM-NY talking shop over a ketel one on the rocks or a nice glass of wine.The bar is also where I met Lisa (running theme possibly) and after several drinks, a few games of craps and some tequila and eggs, she asked me to be a chicklet. So, here is everything you ever wanted to know about how to build a brand in 5 easy steps (more or less).
As a new business starting out, getting market share can be an overwhelming task. You need more than just an out of the box website and big dreams. You need a game plan.
How to make one is what we are going to discuss through research and development of a story that sells, how to rank for your brand name and what to do next.
Remember, you may not be Coca-Cola, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t think about branding your product from the start.
1. Competitive Research
I know what you are thinking – why am I doing competitive research? I am branding my product not trying to get links. Competitive research is one of the most, if not ‘the’ most important(and often overlooked) steps when you start any online project.
Figure out who the competition isand what they are doing. Learn the key terms for your niche and make a list of who is ranking for them. Once you discover who your key competitors are, figure out what terms they are ranking for (I recommend using www.compete.com) and what you can do better.
The keywords give you direction and online are an important ingredient in branding. Knowing where your competitors are getting their traffic shows you what is in the mind of potential visitors. Gear your site to these queries and you position yourself, over time, in the minds of your potential customers. If they always see you everytime they search for what you offer you become associated with the terms and all they suggest to the searchers.
2. What is your story?
Now that you have completed Step 1 and found out who your competition is and what your future clients think about when looking for your niche, you should have an idea of what stories the competition is telling and to a degree what your clients are looking for. Remember consumers buy the stories behind the product, not the product itself. You as a new brand are at a clear advantage here. You have a bird’s eye view of your competition and where they are succeeding and where they are faltering. Now figure out what your story is and how to sell it better than anyone else.
3. Create your content
As we all know, in the online world content is king (and Google is the emperor, but that’s another article). Build content based around the key terms in your niche and become an authority. This will take time, work and resources, but it will pay off. Do not try and make one page that adddresses all the keywords. Make individual pages for each keyword (or at most three keywords a page). This gives you more pages - which adds to the size of the site and the impact it will have in Google, as well as possibly pushing you up in search results for many keywords - thus grabbing clients who are looking for your products through different perspectives.
It is good to remember that people rarely share how they get information, but they do share the information.
4. Rank for your brand name
Make sure you rank highly for your brand name. If your name is something generic that will be near impossible to rank for, change it. No, seriously, change your company’s name now. It will be cheaper to re-file some paperwork than it will be to lose out on all those sales because no one can find your site.
Whether you are a small company (and even if you are a large company) you should also be taking advantage of social media and using it to help dominate the SERPs for your brand name and brand specific products. Create and interlink various social media profiles like linkedin, naymz, squidoo, and myspace.
When choosing a name remember to consider something easy to remember and that Google likes domain names that are a reflection of the search term. In other words, you can rank well with a domain that is the same as a search term (try doing searches and see the domain name there should be a listing that matches keyword and domain).
5. Promote brand loyalists
Create frequent visitor/buyer discounts and rewards programs. This is where the cell phone companies have it backwards. They offer all kinds of promotions to new customers to try to entice them to make the switch over rather than creating customer loyalty programs to keep clients. This is why most people have no brand loyalty when it comes to cell phones and they often leave when their contract is up because another brand is offering them the best new phones free if the jump ship. Don’t let this happen to your brand. Keep customers happy.
This all seems fairly straight forward and it is. It just takes time and commitment, which if you have, it will pay off.
One of the absolute worst songs ever recorded, in my opinion, is Timbuk 3’s “The Future’s So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades.” While I could make a lengthy post out of my utter hatred of this song, I will spare you for now BUT since I seem to have a pathological need to cross reference music in these observations about SEO that must, by this point, seriously annoy many readers, I thought this truly abysmal attempt at music would be a good one to use. I mean really, it’s not good for anything else…certainly not for listening, or anything remotely like that.
Well, I sure as hell don’t think that the future of paid ads is full of sunshine and light. I may indeed have to wear shades, but it’s to hide my cryin’ eyes. Honestly, the future of paid ads scares the bejaysus out of me and there are three handy reasons for it:
1. Money’s involved and people are really, really stupid when money is involved, especially when there is a LOT of money involved. Stupidity is bad enough on its own, but coupled with the attempt to make more money, it can make you feel like the one vaguely attractive girl at a meeting of the county chess club. 2. Many traditional marketing methods no longer work well, so advertisers are forced to look for alternatives. These alternatives tend to be freakishly invasive and creepy. Just check your Gmail ads sometime after you’ve been emailing your favorite transvestite friend. Ick. 3. Machines will be forced to make judgment calls about what they think you want to see (like with the Gmail ads), and that’s going to be enough to make a freight train take a dirt road. God forbid I ever refer to a cat by the p word.
The Money Plus Stupidity Equation
This usually equals disaster, if I may have a mathletic moment. A Paris Hilton/Jessica Simpson/Lindsey Lohan reference would be too easy here so I’ll spare you. The point here is that when lots of money is being sought or held by people who aren’t overly bright (see above), the world could easily end. I’m sure Timbuk 3 had money, and look at the stupid song that they unleashed upon the world. I wish I had more of a point to make here but I really don’t.
The Personal (AGHHHHH) Touch
Few companies are as high on the shudder factor as Microsoft. They are apparently really interested in audience intelligence, which is defined as “figuring out what kind of person the Web user is based on their surfing and searching habits — and display[ing] ads including video.” Based on my surfing and searching habits, I am one bad seed, let me tell you. I like Cabaret Voltaire videos, knee high leather boots, strawberries and cream, cursing, and the Fibonacci numbers. If I’m being shown ads based on that, god help me. I’ll be expecting some perverted math fetishist to be knocking on my door at any minute. Actually, that doesn’t sound so bad…
Process This!
Think about how you slow down when there’s an accident, and you try to get a good look. This certainly does not mean that you are sexually turned on by car crashes like someone in a J.G. Ballard novel does it? Well, if it does, keep it to yourself please, you pervert. Speaking of J.G. Ballard and his infamous novel, aptly titled Crash, if I’m searching for it and buy it, does anyone know who I’ve purchased it for, or does a machine simply “assume” that it’s for me? Will I then be shown ads that tell me where to buy footage of car crashes? Or how to connect with others who so obviously enjoy car crashes? There’s no way of telling the machine that hey, I’m not the perv, JON is the perv, is there?
It’s a grim future to consider, isn’t it? It’s the same feeling that you get when one of your favorite novels is being made into a movie starring Ben Affleck. First you’re incredulous. You quickly become agitated and try to convince yourself that actually, it’s not Ben, it’s most likely Tom Wilkinson and someone’s gotten really confused. Then, once you accept reality, you cry yourself to sleep after a few vodka tonics. It’s not pretty.
What worries me the most is the invasive bit of this…normally I prattle on (and on) about machines not being able to properly interpret meaning from simple words, and while that’s frightening enough, it’s the invasion that freaks me out the most. I’ve been listening to someone on the radio for 45 seconds and not realized that he’s plugging a product. It’s all become so NATURAL, like those pesky product placements in films that gently suggest to you that, since Bruce Willis likes 7-Up, you should go out and get some. I can look away from billboards, and I can completely ignore ads in magazines or on the sides of the SERPs, but it’s really becoming difficult to completely avoid all forms of advertising. And, as you may have been thinking, marketing is kind of the industry that I’m in right? Most likely that means that I’ll become a creepy (or creepier) and invasive presence in someone’s life at some point in the near future. Go ahead and get some restraining order templates ready because you’ll be needing them.
Yep, just because I’m feeling a bit controversial today (yes that IS one hormonal privilege extended almost exclusively to us - the fairer sex), I’ve decided to pose a discussion question.
Actually, my other reason is because the initial answer to the question is by none other than Mr Godin… so you see I just couldn’t resist.
The Question:
“Social Networking sites are incredibly popular - what are the benefits of this new medium, and is it set to continue to rise in popularity?”
The Answer:
“Social Networks - if you try to glue a brand on top of a social network, you get a meatball sundae. Once again, the networks make it easiest for those who actually have something to say.”
My View:
I’ve come around to respect social networking sites as a good marketing tool - although not very targeted. Steph has had a lot to do with that - thank you :o) I can totally see it as a tool in my marketing toolbox. But I, as I think most of you, believe that it can’t work in isolation - hence Seth’s response. I also don’t believe that any single technique in marketing should exist in isolation.
Your View:
Well, this is the bit where I’d like to hear your views on the question above - just a little bit of healthy discussion…
The response and question are taken from an interesting interview with Seth Godin that I got from Wordracker’s site. The interview precedes a very exciting moment in my life… ok, I’m not THAT sad… but I’m excited… The release of Seth’s new book “Meatball Sundae“. Will get me it ASAP.
Anyway, here’s the article, and please let me know what your thoughts are.
P.P.S. A good quote that’ll get some heads nodding:
“SEO is not a black art. It’s often clients who want shortcuts rather than hard work that are the problem. The best SEO is great content and if you don’t create that you won’t get search engine traffic.”
No, not really. I just spent ten minutes thinking up awful, topical titles so I chose to go with a completely unrelated one instead.
My first post as an SEO-Chicklet (or Guest Blogger, for those of you who like proper titles) and I’ve sat here for two commercials with my fingers on the keys, unsure of what to write. Since getting into SEO eighteen months ago, I’ve only ever written for one SEO site. It’s like I’m leaving my favourite bar for the first time and stepping into a new one. How to you talk to people here? Do they like the same jokes as you? At least I’ve started off my tenture as a Chick well: talking about booze. Hi, Lisa and Julie!
Just in case you missed Lisa’s introductory post, I’ll recap who I am and why I’m writing here: I’ve been working at SEOmoz in Seattle for the past year and a half. I’m from New Zealand, moving to the U.S. in 2002 in the typical style that my family tends to embrace: because it seemed like a good idea at the time. By the sheer grace of God and relatively good social skills, I landed a job at SEOmoz in September 2006 after enduring the most inventive and completely horrifying job interview process known to the Internet. My only previous experience with SEO was the complete delight I experienced as a college Junior (Third Year) when a classmate explained to me how the Googlebomb worked. I remember sitting in my apartment and thinking, “Christ, that’s awesome.”
In case you’re not interested in reading the very long article about how SEOmoz hires people for entry-level jobs, here’s a run down of how I came to be an SEO: the six finalists for my position had to write blog posts that were published on SEOmoz’s blog. Readers voted on which one was best, and they also commented on them. I knew enough about online communities to truthfully believe that I was going to be torn apart. I didn’t know how to blog. I knew how to write upper-level English, History, Political Science and Sociology papers. I knew words that only existed in Roget’s Thesaurus but I didn’t know how to talk to people, rather than write at them. The post I wrote is cringe-worthy. It isn’t badly written and its contents aren’t awful, but it’s the work of someone who knew she was in over her head. People who are now my friends commented on it and said much the same things that I’d say now if it had been written by somebody else.
Given that I knew next-to-nothing about SEO when I first took my seat in the offices, I am the typical one-company employee. I brought nothing with me and thus learned the SEOmoz way of doing things. Less kind individuals may say I drank the Kool-Aid. However, coming into the industry with no experience and figuring out everything while I worked has been a fantastic way to learn.
Obviously, I learned a lot very quickly about search. I distinctly remember the moment when I learned that underscores didn’t serve the same purpose as hyphens. I remember the first time I heard the term “duplicate content”, and I didn’t immediately realise that I’d hear it again every day for the rest of eternity. I learned how to write basic HTML in about two and a half minutes after finding out pretty quickly that it was easier than expecting Dreamweaver to do it for me. When you’re learning something that’s quite foreign to you, you go through phases of thinking that you’ve gained no knowledge at all. Then, out of nowhere, you realise that you have acquired more knowledge in three months than you did over four years at college.
Just over a year ago, I wrote a post titled The Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know and I’d like to update those ten bullet points now to include things I’ve learned about SEO and the Internet Marketing industry in the past thirteen months.
Most “penalties” are nothing of the sort. I hear a lot of questions about people’s sites experiencing “penalties” when their rankings have dropped two or three places. Most recently, the “-6 penalty” had webmasters up in arms. I was quite proud of my guess that it wasn’t a penalty, but an unexpected result of bigger changes.
The best defense is not a good offense. It’s knowing when to close the comment box and proverbially STFU.
Google is great at eliminating spam, unless your search term contains the word “lyrics.” I want to be the person who does SEO for abc123lyricsmp3sfreedownloads.com. They could spam mattcutts.com and not be penalised.
PageRank doesn’t really matter to you when yours drops. Pah! It’s not even accurate. How silly to get upset about such a ridiculous little piece of Google propaganda.
PageRank matters a lot to you when yours goes up. You knew those whitehat efforts would pay off at some point.
It’s a good thing when people spell your name incorrectly… if they’ve written something unflattering about you. Google doesn’t have a “did you mean?” for Copeland versus Copland
People whom you see on the Internet also exist in real life. Those of them who use weird screen names and odd avatars also expect that you’ll know exactly who they are when their human form bowls up to you and says, “Hi! I’m John!” when they should say, “Hi! I’m herbo_29 from the blog. My picture is a squirrel riding a German Shepherd.” Then you’ll not just stand there with that look of stupor and embarrassment on your face.
Nofollow has many purposes. Siloing. Editorial discretion. Comment protocol. Pure spite isn’t a great reason to nofollow something. Unless it’s a link to Wikipedia, and it’s not like they need it. Some social media sites don’t nofollow anything. It’s not spamming: they should just know better.
Each search engine is very very different, but when people ask your advice, use your consulting services or comment on your writing, they only talk about Google. I’ve seen instances where people really don’t care that they get next to no traffic from Yahoo! and only a small amount from Live. Learning more about how Yahoo! and Live work looks to be a great idea: you may well be one of a small number of people who really pays them the attention they deserve.
Jericho just came on the TV. I’ve been waiting for this series to come back for about a year so this list is one point short. Although Jericho is still kind of relevant to what we do: it was teh internetz that brought the series back! And the ads are telling me to “keyword search “Jericho” on my Sprint mobile phone”, just as a commercial last Friday advised that I should “look it up on Yahoo!” Cute.
Thanks for letting me join the SEO Chicks community, everyone. Until next time, enjoy those meta tags.
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