It’s Important But Not The End

PageRank is probably one of the first signs your site has landed. Established a user base, good content, and most importantly is legitimate. Unfortunately Google has done a bit of flip flopping. Page rank info has been removed from the web master tools. So why?

Well pagerank is not as important as first thought. While it’s important, it should not be the central focus when building a new site. So content > design > PR? Just another part of the battle between SEO experts and search engines as they attempt to capture more of the advertising revenue. While it still holds an important status page rank is no different.

So the bottom line is: build a good site and page rank, search ranking, and money will naturally follow. Don’t let the SEO game slow you down and remember PageRank is just a number.

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Web Traffic Numbers

6% of all Internet traffic may seem small but it’s actually significant for one company to hold. Some other interesting numbers: 150 networks (ISPs) control 50% of the traffic, 30 companies (including Google) account for 30% of the content, 20% of the traffic is video, 18% of the content if file sharing, 52% is web based. For the rest of the NY Times story click here.

Changes in store for blogging disclosure

Uh oh. Things are about to change for fellow SEO consultants. Fresh changes to FTC guidelines may put the brakes on this lucrative business. Review, endorsements, even the “sponsored post” may soon be under the scrutiny of the FTC. So called misleading consumer reviews and positive product placement should shake things up in the industry. So many questions to follow. Will the changes be retroactive? Will I have to go back and change every comment, post, review, query, statement I’ve ever made both positive and negative about products or services? What happens to those who get caught? How strictly will it be enforced? Are we going to have “net police” tracking down the bad apples? Sounds like the FTC is biting off more than it can chew. I’m guessing they will end up passing the responsibility on to service providers and content managers. Think of it as a major “make work” project. Enjoy.

Bigger and bigger

More and more everyday Google is becoming a major corporate entity. At some point Microsoft stopped growing but Google just keeps on going. Here’s some recent activity from the big guy.

Google expands search meta data. Call it “fine tuning”. The new and improved search allows for users to pinpoint exact locations within pages that contain the information they are looking for. Instead of just arriving at a page, Google search with take you to the location on the page even the paragraph. Very helpful indeed. Can it get any better?

AT&T not happy with Google. So perhaps it was AT&T that had Google Voice the thumbs down for the app store? Hmm, this story gets more interesting all the time. AT&T complains that Google is ignoring the rules while Google says the rules don’t apply to them. Sounds like someone is just whining because they aren’t making money off long distance calls.

Yahoo makes one more attempt

Yahoo is spending $100 million to try and save their advertising business but is it already too late? This time they are taking the message directly to consumers through their tvs, online, newspapers, billboards, everywhere or until the money runs out. Yahoo’s advertising has been on a steady decline from stiff competition with Google and Microsoft and never really recovered.

Just some numbers:
Market value: Yahoo $24 billion (Google $160 billion)
Share value: Yahoo $16-17 (Google $500)

Links and no follows

So you’ve been building links slowly and safely. Great. You’ve been building great content, articles, social networking, great! So why are you still not ranking? Google can be funny like that. Simply copying the formula of getting links won’t always work. Sometimes the keywords are simply too competitive for new entrants to make a dent. Thus ranking well can be very difficult. And there’s no shortage of “free” advice experts are willing to offer you, but it’s always the same: links, content, networking. Results may vary. All I can say is don’t give up. Try some podcasting. Heck, try some new radical approach. Perhaps you will start a new trend. It’s not easy but then again success has never been easy either. Anyways that’s my rant for the day.

Be wary of SEO “experts”

A few things to know when going the SEO consultant route, there are many fish in the sea however, few of them are actually sharks. Be wary of who you decide to go with. Red flags should be catch phrases as “#1 ranking” and “guaranteed results”. Nobody can stand up to those claims without knowing the search battleground for the keywords your specific company is competing on. Some markets are more competitive than others. For example the arena for “viagara” is probably much more difficult to invade than say “pumpkin farm”. Yes, extreme examples but this is what I’m talking about. A true SEO consultant needs to ask some qualifying questions & do some research before giving you a proposal and projected results.

Don’t be fooled by big promises because the SEO game is constantly in flux. What works today most definitely will not work tomorrow.

Fix Your Own Interweb!

The communist state of China has been struggling with the free flow of information granted to it’s citizens via the Internet. This does not make the government happy. As you know controlling information provides control over your flock. If you only provide them with rice, they’ll eat it up and think it tastes like candy. However more and more everyday the Chinese government loses it’s iron grasp over it’s citizens thanks to the Internet. The free flowing lifeblood of all that it is good and bad. In China’s case they squarely place the blame on porn, which of course is to be blames on companies such as Google and Yahoo, which of course are part of a larger conspiracy by the U.S. to undermine their authority. Sadly this is the Chinese way, blame others for your own mess.

Fix your own Interweb! Or better yet, make your own porn. Let your sex craved citizens see other asian folk going at it rather than some blond white chick and some big black guy! Isn’t that the real problem? The Chinese government is upset that THEY didn’t come up with the whole bangbus idea? Or would the China version simply be the bang-bicycle? How about this for an idea: the setting, a pirate dvd factory. You’ve got one hot chick slaving away at the dvd line, then she drops a dvd, she bends over then of course you know what happens. There you go, one great idea for a home grown movie that is both relevant and uses local talent. How about this one: the setting, government office of a high ranking official, say the guy in charge of milk products. Then have his young hot secretary come in to give him the latest test results from various factories under investigation. She drops the report (oops!) bends over to pick it up and then bang! You know what happens! Ok, so it wouldn’t have to be so scripted, so let’s just call it a documentary then.

I got tons of ideas. Hey, listen up China! I got the answers to your Internet problems. Make your own porn! Asian porn. Green dam getting death threats.

Get Paid While You Can

The jig may soon be up for sponsored blogging. The Federal Trade Commission is looking into the business of sponsored blogging. Which means the way you get paid for doing your SEO magic might soon end. The practice has seen increased activity as of late but the economy sucks, you gotta do, what you gotta do. So your hands get a little greased when you give a favorable review for a product, big deal. Since when did that become a crime? It might come down to a simple disclosure statement. Something like “I got paid to write this review”. In any event, it’s a huge market to try to police, and if the FTC has it’s way, it will be delegated to a 3rd party to do the dirty deeds. So get paid while you can!

Should Yahoo Just Give Up?

Google continues to dominate the search arena. Microsoft search (re-branded to Bing) made a bit of a splash with a friendlier looking page continues to toil away at the search biz. Yahoo just continues to plug along. Should Yahoo just give up already? More and more it seems that Yahoo will never recover to it’s glory days of dominating the search industry. Don’t get me wrong. Yahoo is still a valuable piece of real estate and can earn revenue from it’s other sources but the search game may already be over. Perhaps it’s time to move on and spend those dollars developing other segments of the Yahoo portal. The growing mobile search was a feature Yahoo was late to join and perhaps is only now realizing the mistake. Strategic blunders continue to plague Yahoo management and the stock is slowly slipping. At least they had their moment at the top.