Christmas SEO

Things seems to be winding down before holidays so I thought I will do some Googling for Christmas and SEO. It is a very far fetched and unrelated search but few interesting results could be worthwhile to mention. First there is a Christian Web Masters Forum which expresses concern that "Christians should try and get a good explanation of the nativity and what Christianity is all about as the top search result for "Christmas" at Google." Yes I can see that, since Google shows as first result Wikipedia entry for Christmas and just below we can find North Pole Santa Claus website as a second result. But I think it will be hard to dismiss Santa Claus which has become very strong tradition. The other news is that we will be able to track Santa in Google Earth on Christmas Eve in real time.

Harmful Web Content

In order to combat browser malware installations and make Internet safer, Google is displaying a brief message in the search results next to offending website as follows: This site may harm your computer. You may succeed to get your website to top 10 results but if you get this kind of message next to it, you would want to quickly redesign the website in order to avoid further negative publicity. However not everyone is getting the message. This morning when I run a search for "seo consulting" the current # 4 result showed as follows:
SEO Consultant - Shimon Sandler Blog SEO Consultant ...
This site may harm your computer.
The SEO Consultant must start with understanding the clients’ business and marketing goals to develop the strategy and approach for a winning SEO campaign. ...
www.shimonsandler.com/?p=200 - Similar pages
The question is that - if Google is a search engine, should it have a role to pass judgement on the websites?

Kitchens and SEO

Article "How to scale Mt. Google" in Business 2.0 magazine described a story on kitchen cabinetry online store - Kitchen Cabinet Mart based in Northern California. From humble beginnings when a website ranked low on Google, the owner Giovanna Villanueva has managed to get to number one listing. By methodical application of many SEO techniques when searching for "kitchen cabinets" (very popular phrase in this category) her website pops up at the top of Google's very important first page, even ahead of one of the country's largest cabinetmakers, Merillat Industries. The small business website KitchenCabinetMart.com went up from few orders to $10,000 in sales per month and Villanueva says that she can hardly keep up with all the inquiries and orders.

Politics and Search Engines

Looking at important title tags of two major political parities in Australia it seems that Labour Party has updated their meta tags recently trying to present a subtle political message for anyone using search engines. Liberal Party has done nothing so far and we are presented with very boring and unappealing message. Liberals are not getting good advice on optimising their website for search engines, but at the same time they prefer to spend hundreds of millions of dollars mostly for TV ads. According to Labour Party website, by election day later this year, John Howard will spent at least $850 million on taxpayer funded government advertising.
The Liberal Party of Australia
Official site of the Liberal Party of Australia. Features news, events, current topics, contact information and links ... www.liberal.org.au
Australian Labor Party
HOWARD'S ADVERTISING BLITZ. John Howard is wasting taxpayers' money at record speed. By election day later this year, he will have spent at least $850 ... www.alp.org.au

SEO Consolidation

Recent article in Media section of The Australian has revealed that one of the top SEO companies in Australia - Found Agency is due to complete the sale of its business to specialist marketing services Photon Group Limited for estimated $3 million. Siimon Reynolds is one of the executive directors in Photon Group Limited so it is a definite sign that SEO is taken more seriously and becomes a major strategy for big marketing agencies. It is the second acquisition of SEO business in last few months. In December 2006 Chris Dimmock has sold his search engine marketing company - Cogentis to BlueFreeway Limited. SEO companies consolidation is a new trend in Australia but it should not come as a surprise since in United States, big Madison Avenue marketing agencies have been buying SEO companies for last few years. For more details see the article:
Link kings net rich pickings in The Australian.

Chief SEO Speaks

On a recent SES London conference Matt Cutts who is a software engineer and the head of the Google's webspam team has shared his vision for Google in a keynote interview. According to Matt the main theme for Google in years to come will be personalization and localization. The ambition is to organize the world information and store data at Google with Gmail and other tools. Matt was also asked about the spam issue: "Matt answers: There was this guy who claimed there is no way his cloaking could be detected because he used “super duper” cloaking. His “super duper” cloaking had pages name “Doorway-Page-Alta-Vista”, my mom could detect that." And more about the definition of spam: Matt: That can be tough. Litmus test: what was the intent and how was it done. Spammy techniques – sneaky java scripts, techniques that are use help to determine the intent. Measuring how happy users are is important. Spam can be defined as noise, noise from your signal. Off topic spam – you type in your name and get porn. That is not in anybody’s interest. Cookie cutter sites that don’t add any value – 50 sites that there’s no diversity. No value add for the customer. There are definitely shades – some are more serious and some less." Matt was also asked about his favorite Non-Google tool. Yahoo site explorer was the answer.

SEO and Public Relations

John Andrews and Todd Malicoat in their recent posts have attempted to describe 16 reasons why people hate SEOs. I think it is very funny insight about what SEOs struggle with on a daily basis. Expert SEO not only makes you feel really stupid but is a Scary Thing too. "Your Expert SEO comes in and immediately everyone can see she knows her stuff. And your stuff. And his stuff. And that guy's stuff. Nobody is safe. This SEO person seems to hold a very broad yet very, very advanced expertise *and* is one of the most creative people you have ever met. This is scary." And about sacred cows "In fact, SEO Experts know that Sacred Cows make the best hamburger. Your SEO Expert says sell the cows and buy a few plastic cows to put out on the lawn at Christmas." Find out more about 16 Reasons People Hate SEOs.

Thoughtful Comments

Thoughtful comments on a subject of the post may benefit your blog in more ways than one. If your comment is well-written the blog owner will follow it keenly. Adding questions in comments may enhance the post and start a longer discussion which will lead to clarification of the main subject. Your comments will also add quality back links to your blog which in turn will make your blog more visible on search engines. By adding comments bloggers feel encouraged to continue with their writing. On the other hand authors of nuisance comments know what they are doing. And their strategy never goes a long way, since they will be ignored at best or simply deleted and forgotten.