Calendar
Network
Feeds
Cumbrowski
This list was build over time actually and I cannot be credited alone with it. The thanks has to go to numerous people in forums, other bloggers etc. :)
Nope, Sphinn users are search marketers after all and can't escape their own skin. I would suggest to Sphinn only the posts of yourself where you believe that they are specifically good or important. Don't submit every single one. Nobody will kill you, if you do that, but its just lame.
Story: Rev Up "About Us" Pages
Interesting post. I never did and wouldn't recommend to block/nofollow the "about us" pages of a site (there might be a few instances where it would be okay, but I cannot think of one right now hehe). Privacy policy, terms of service, DMCA notice etc. okay, Contact Us page .... maybe (in most cases also not).
The "About" page of my site is shown as "indented result" right after my homepage if you search for my last name (= name of my site). I like and want it that way, for the very reasons you elaborated in your post. ... People who don't know me and who I would like to make listen to me have probably a very important question in their mind when they look me up... "Who the heck is this guy?".
You should not hide and make it hard for people to find out about who you are and what you do. Especially in an online world where people will find stuff eventually. If your own about pages are not indexed or got no juice to rank for queries of your name, you better make sure that the pages on other sites that rank for it have something nice to say about you.
Story: Sphinn Stories By Domain
Make this also a list by "Author Name". Most blogs make use of this RSS attribute if they have multiple contributing authors. I would like to see for example Bill Slawski's post he made at SEOByTheSea.com and also the ones he made at SearchEngineLand.com.
Hi John, she does, she is just not a good writer or communicator. More will follow in a couple weeks btw. :)
Story: The Oracle of Mountain View
Good summary Andy. I also tried to break down the facts and separate them from the fiction and from my own thought about what I make out of all this. I hope this will help people to make up their own minds and what they should do in their individual case.
Story: The Oracle of Mountain View
Hi Michael, the Dollar versus Euro example was the first one that came to my mind. It's hard to find one that illustrates that some are not affected and others are, but that that the ones who are affected are affected to the same extend, unless one does more than the other. Do you know of any better one? I am all ear, because this is not over yet and good examples to explain stuff to non search folks are always handy to have around :)
Story: The Oracle of Mountain View
Remark: Actually the ones who are not affected directly will be affected in one way or another later on. A value shift between US Dollar and Euro also causes a "ripple effect" throughout the economy with everybody being affected to some extend... even if it is an almost not notable extend.
Story: The Oracle of Mountain View
"It makes a direct correlation between PageRank and Toolbar which IMO is erroneous."
I do? Where? If it reads like I would imply that, than it was unintentionally.
"It also suggests that because of Florida and Jagger, we should see a ig update any moment - but hasn't Matt Cutts already stated updates will run small and on the fly, rather than single big disruptive updates?"
This is just a guess of mine and I said that in the post. Regarding Matt Cutts statements. The "on the fly part" is one thing, but the "small" another. A small change that affects many sites (and links) would have a major impact on many sites as a result of it. Keep in mind that past major updates did not affect everybody but many webmasters. So "small" in terms of change of the algorithm .. okay. "small" in terms of impact on websites.. different story. I can say that I prefer not to be right and rather be wrong with this one.
Story: Sphinn Wishlist
Regarding Sphinn Stories by Domain
While you are at that suggestion, also think about a list by "Author Name". Most blogs make use of this RSS attribute if they have multiple contributing authors. I would like to see for example Bill Slawski's post he made at SEOByTheSea.com and also the ones he made at SearchEngineLand.com.
You can make more than just individual posts public with Google Reader. You can make all posts (blogs) assigned to a specific TAG public.
Just click on "Manage Subscriptions" at the bottom left of the Google Reader page, select the "Tags" tab and change any of the tags to be public. The feed URL is nowadays again easier to find out. It used to be very easy, then a technical challenge and is now back to "buried" and hard to find, but no technical skills required.
If a tag was set to public, three links appear next to the tag, "view public page", "email a link" and "add a clip to your site". Go to the first one "view public site".
Look on the public site to the right: "If you use another feed reader and would like to keep track of updates to these shared items, there is also a feed you can subscribe to."
Viola! Just FYI.
Carsten
Andy, my description does not hurt though :)
"The easiest page to pick up a shared tag feed from is actually under managing the labels. "
That used to be there at the very beginning when they launched the reader and a shared feed was the only option of sharing. Then it was gone, and stuff like the "shared page" came out. There was a time when the shared feed URL could nowhere be found in the interface. Then they added more gadgets and the reference to the shared feed appeared in the shared page again. The other options on the label management page don't reveal the RSS feed. It's either JS code or link to the shared page. I know that stuff, because I use the sharing feature for over 15 months already for a specific purpose.
I hear you regarding the privacy issues and the endless possibilities of errors not so savvy users can make. RSS was designed for distribution and not for personal consumption. Like Danny said, if you put out a feed, the content of the feed can make its way to the public in numerous ways.
There is no solution to the problem today. There are a number of things that can be done by online services and vendors to reduce the risk of accidental leakage, but that will not eliminate it.
Story: The SEO Reputation Problem
Hi Bob,
I mentioned in the comments to my post that SEMPO membership and the specification of some ethical rules and guidelines are two separate things. I won't repeat everything again, please read my last comment :)
Tetsuto,
You must agree that there should be limits and those limits should be defined by the industry itself and not by the lawmakers who don't know nothing about this subject.
Somebody commented at the blog and brought the Google Webmaster Guidelines up. No, the set of rules and guidelines I was talking about do not have anything to do with that vague and ambiguous written Google guidelines.
We talked about that in the past already, Google has their own agenda with their guidelines and made them on purpose not clear to introduce the level of uncertainty that might discourage webmasters to do something that would be perfectly fine from a ethical point of view, but not liked by Google.
They also keep themselves a lot of doors open for interpretation of their own guidelines depending on the case at hand.
I hope that makes sense. Make a comparison will help.
Shooting somebody without being engaged in a military conflict was okay in this country, roughly just a bit over 100 years ago. In the wild west was a duel between two armed man not against the law and killing somebody during such a duel was not considered murder or even manslaughter. It was rough out there back in the old pioneer and frontier days, but once "civilization" catch ed up with those frontiers, the law changed. Going out on the street and kill somebody in a duel because of a dispute about something more or less important is against the law today. It is considered manslaughter and by the general population seen as unethical.
This change did not remove the people's right to defend themselves.
This can result in the death of the attacker and there are plenty of people who are against this, e.g. the radical groups that are against any form of private gun ownership. Let's say Google represents that group and puts in their guidelines that the ownership of guns is regarded as something negative. Lets say Google is in the home security business. ... of course would they be against the ownership of guns, because a number of people will buy themselves a gun rather than hiring Google to protect them. So Google does not just have an interest in abolishing gun ownership rights for ethical reasons, but economic ones as well (just as they do with what they state in their SEO guidelines)
Does this analogy makes any sense at all?
Story: The SEO Reputation Problem
Tetsuto,
"No, I don't see any reason for limits. I say do whatever works, whether that be buying links, cloaking websites, or spamming Wikipedia. Google is responsible for setting limits through its algorithms by minimizing the effect of spam"
Fine, but you would not get a certification for being a SEO who is following the best practices and specified rules. You would be (or could be) a spammer and if people call you that, you would not have a problem with it, because it is true (or could be true. or was true or will be true hehe).
There are people who don't and I believe that this is actually the majority. It also creates a separation and draws clear borders. You can ignore any guides and rules and do what you want and live with the consequences. The consequences come in different levels from penalties over law suits to prison. :)
Story: The SEO Reputation Problem
So the idea is to provide the opportunity for people to put their money where their mouth is... litteraly. I like that.
As I said, it would separate the ones who mean it from those who do not and just pretend that they are for marketing and image purposes. If the second group is the largest then we know that this industry is even more crooked than the outside world ever claimed it to be. hehe
I like that too. hehe
None of the SEM's has an opinion on that? Strange... Have you ever heard about CPA or was it just filed under "affiliate marketing stuff, ignore"?
Story: Sphinn Beta: Known Bugs
[FIXED] Picasa Profile Name and URL in Sphinn Profile is saved, but not shown in profile page. The view profile page does not seem to check or read properly the Picasa information. Flickr works of course, the place where I don't have a pro account ... It's because it is Google, isn't it? :) ... just kidding.
Nice article and also nice category with keyword research related tools and resources at http://searchengineland.com/lands/search-marketing-search-term-research.php.
I also provide a page with tons of keyword research resources at
http://www.cumbrowski.com/CarstenC/seosem_keyword_research.asp
along side with competitive intelligence resources, which overlap with keyword research to some extend, since knowing what keywords your competition is after should be part of your own keyword research as well.
http://www.cumbrowski.com/CarstenC/seo_competitive_intelligence.asp
« previous1 next »
Story: 50 Questions to Evaluate the Quality of Your Website