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So the title of the article begins with "Branding is Dead" and the last paragraph begins with "So branding isn't exactly dead yet."
I don't think branding is going away any time soon. Even if people aren't concerned about the brand name of a product they buy (and I believe they still are), they're going to pay attention to the brand of the vendor, or the critic, or the community on the web 2.0 site where they gather various opinions (and where members become branded over time within that community) before making their own decision.
This is also being discussed at http://www.seomoz.org/blog/why-dont-we-read-and-how-much-do-we-read-on-the-web
We may need to redefine the term "long-tail" if we're going to talk about targeting long-tail keyword phrases. To me, the long-tail consists of terms you don't actually optimize for -- they're not competitive, so just having them on a page should suffice. You find your long-tail phrases not by picking them in advance, but by looking at searches that are bringing in just a few readers. You may choose at that point to push the phrase a bit more, but I still wouldn't go so far as to call that "targeting" the phrase.
If you're actually targeting a phrase, intentionally creating content to rank for it, no matter how long, specific and non-competitive it might be, I don't think you should call describe it as "long-tail."
There's a pretty wide area between a niche's top keywords and the long-tail, and the phrases that sit in that area are certainly worth planning and optimizing for.
Of course, if you recognize that this is a loophole, you have to assume it's going to be closed at some point. The question is whether, once it's closed, a subdomain is going to be treated like a subdirectory (meaning in the long run you could have just put the content in a subdirectory), or if it's going to cause you some degree of pain (meaning you got some benefit, but you may have been better off putting the content in a subdirectory in the first place).
I really don't think SEMPO is the organization to do this. They've been clear from day one that they're not a standards body. If they became one now, would they throw out any members who fail to comply with those standards?
There's a firm here in the Boston area that used to specialize in optimization for the pharmaceutical industry, but I just checked their site and it looks like they've moved toward a more general client base.
Story: Keyword placement in search
I'm not convinced that getting the keyword into the first line of your on-page content is essential, but I certainly wouldn't intentionally avoid doing that.
Not to be overly picky, but there is no nofollow tag. There isn't even a nofollow attribute. Nofollow is one of the variety of values that can be given to the rel attribute.
While I love that you, my dear reader, are reading this post - the fact of the matter is that reading this post is not making you any money. Hell, it isn’t even making me any money. It is the equivalent of eating Oreos when you - and I - should be doing something more productive.
Well, at least I'm reading a post about getting work done, rather than watching a video from the 1950s on how to make a sandwich. That's next.
Story: Matt Inman - an Evil Genius
Yeah, but "evil genius" just has that special je ne sais quoi about it, you know? I suppose "super genius" would work too, but there's the danger of obsessing about the way it rolls off the tongue, and who knows what might happen while you're just standing there repeating, "Matthew Inman, Super Genius" over and over.
Story: Death of SEO Transparency
If it's laudable for veterans to share their knowledge, why are the people who pick up that knowledge from them leeches? I think of myself of a 2nd or 3rd generation SEO. I know who came before me, because they're the people I learned from, and over time I've helped a number of people learn the ropes myself.
Story: Death of SEO Transparency
Rhea - No, of course I didn't take it personally, and I see your point. But (devil's advocate cap on) what about the people who learn the right way to do things from the right people and go on to do good work that helps the image of the search marketing industry, but don't choose to share their knowledge with others?
Is this just something they send to "premium" members? I have a cheapskate account over there, and I haven't received any newsletters.
How about this: Rebecca should apologize, or we'll dock her sphinns -- Negative votes on comments, desphinns on posts, whatever it takes.
That'll learn ya.
Isn't it odd that Microsoft would be offering this service, as opposed to the other SEs? I mean, what kind of inside information do we need to rank on MSN? Put the keyword on the page... done.
And shame on them for using the phrase "alt tags".
I've never cared for articles that are basically just announcements of new clients. Had it been about the changes they'd made to the site and the results they'd achieved, I'd have been more interested.
There may not be universally accepted leaders in the community, but I (and I expect this is true for most of us), do have a number of people I've grown to rely on to give me trustworthy information. On top of that, I try to keep an open mind about others, since you never know where some good piece of information might come from.
I lost! My life is over! But congrats to the winners. There's some great stuff in there.
So PageRank doesn't matter - except when it comes to dupe content, deep indexing, supplemental results, siloing, canonical issues, paid links...
Sure PR matters. It doesn't matter a lot, but if it's one of a very few factors that differ between two documents, then that little bit might make a difference.
Story: The $350/hour SEO expert
The guy's clearly a shyster, but FWIW, he'd have to be billing them for about 40 hours a week to charge 700k annually. If all he does is tweak meta tags, it'd be pretty tough to pad out his invoices quite that much.
They definitely still work. This example was ruined when some fool edited the target page to include the keyword phrase, but it was working just fine up to that point.
While I'm definitely pro-CSS and anti-table when it comes to layout, I don't think the analogy quite holds up. Waking up in the couch reminds you of why you would have been better off in bed, but what is it about having a site in tables that leaves you with a feeling that you should have gone with CSS? I don't think you get that feeling unless and until the time comes to do a redesign.
It's a valid question, but of course we're all just giving educated guesses at best when we try to answer it.
Story: Is Onsite SEO Dying Down?