VBulletin Websites And Google Supplemental Results

12. October 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: Google

I’ve noticed for quite some time that Google is placing tons of forums posts made on Vbulletin software into their supplemantal search index. Undoubtedly Vbulletin does create a lot of duplicate content, by default, but even on websites where they use robots.txt exclusions to limit Google’s crawling, the trouble is rampant.

I’m sure the things I’m noticing aren’t related to using VBulletin software. It’s just that forums tend to have a ton of interior pages, and many of those pages won’t have deeplinks to it. Even the internal linking structure of the website will make it tough to pass around much PR, so it’s understandable that as time goes on, more unimportant pages may go supplemental.

I’ve reviewed a number of sites where this has gone on for the past few months, and I haven’t seen the slightest improvement.

Google Update Has Finally Settled In

11. October 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: Google

It’s been a few weeks in the making, but it looks like the most recent Google backlink and PR update has settled in. This one took a few weeks to run its’ course, and it has show itself to make quite a few changes in SERPS.

I’d say the index has been very volatile lately. I’ve seen a return of pages that have been gone since 6/22/2005, and I’ve finally seen some fixes of long overdue issues. This week has also seen the return of the crawlers in earnest, and some of the biggest deep crawl statistics I’ve seen in awhile.

I assume that Google is finally completely on the new infrastructure they’ve been moving to for over a year. At least, I imagine that to be the case. We’ll see if the results continue to shift madly, or if everything settles down.

Just Who Uses Social Websites?

10. October 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: Web 2.0

Recent reports concerning the demographics of social websites like Myspace have been showing different results than many people expected. In fact, the people were older than most would have expected. Myspace has a great number of people over the age of 35.

As top social networking sites mature and become more popular, their visitor age profiles are also on the rise. More than 50 percent of all MySpace users are now over the age of 35, according to ComScore Media Metrix.

The basic premise concerning the increase in age of the users is that MySpace has hit the “mainstream” to a degree, and more people are using it as part of business. Facebook, naturally, skewed towards a younger audience, because of their previously closed registration process.

Frankly, I can’t imagine what any of these over 35 year olds are even doing on MySpace.

Design Your Website For The Users And Usability

05. October 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: Internet Marketing

That’s always the cry these days, and it’s no wonder. People login to the internet in order to streamline some of the processes in life, and to hopefully find information quickly. If your website is hard to navigate, or people can’t figure out what to do quickly, they might leave quickly and never buy.

I enjoyed this post by Gerry McGovern, who was upset with SAS’s website, because he couldn’t use the website for his purposes, but instead was forced to watch a puff piece about company history. His reaction was unenthusiastic:

I could not care less that it’s your 60thanniversary! You didn’t send me a card when it was our anniversary, so why should I care about you? If you want me to care, offer me 60 percent off, then I will gladly say: Happy anniversary.

What sort of weird and wacky drugs were SAS on when they decided to create this mega marketing muck-brained monstrosity? Did they by any chance allow an advertising agency to advise them?

Frustration begins to set in when he can’t even quickly accomplish his task, and then the key statement to web developers everywhere:

The Web customer is always, always, always in a hurry. The Web is the land of attention deficit syndrome. People are improperly impatient. They just want to book a cheap flight as quickly as possible.

Repeat after me: “We are not the center of the universe. We are not the center of the universe.” It’s a big, bad world out there, full of unkind and cruel customers who care only about themselves.

Indeed. Placing the emphasis directly on the customer may be the only surefire way to make sure your website is really well-designed. If the customers can use it, and do often, then something is definitely right.

Edit And Share Video With Jumpcut

04. October 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: Web 2.0

If you’ve found yourself knees deep in Web 2.0 fun, here’s another website that looks very promising.

Jumpcut.com has just teamed up with search engine giant Yahoo! to make videos more available to users. Not one to be left behind I figured I’d register an account to see what it was all about.

Jumpcut allows registers users to create their own videos, complete with some basic editing tools for free. Their interface integrates with Flickr.com and Facebook.com so you can import images from your existing photo gallery or you can upload video from your computer.

After you’ve uploaded your video or pictures you can add music or other audio, as well as adding titles and special affects. (I don’t believe that any other website offers these types of editing tools for free or if there are, I’ve never found them.) The popular website Youtube doesn’t offer any sort of editing tools, just a place to upload them once you’ve finished them.

I’m planning on spending a little time there to see what they have to offer, and I’ll be sure to publish the finished product and any other feedback I have on this service. We’ll see how things go..

Google PageRank Still Holds Fascination For Most

04. October 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: Google

It’s true, despite the number of times that people “in the know” have said “PR doesn’t matter anymore”, it doesn’t really stop anyone’s fascination with the Little Green Bar. PageRank has been one of the greatest accomplishments in another form of PR (Public Relations) in the last 10 years. You take a proprietary formula and make it something that everyone’s interested in. That is the engine on which Google has built their business: free marketing through word-of-mouth.

The PageRank is hopelessly outdated by the time it hits the Toolbar. It’s a “snapshot” that is many months out of date. For this reason, it’s very tough to use the Toolbar as a visual tool to help determine rankings. It’s better to consider it to be a form of entertainment. Does this stop it from being of utmost importance to some people?

I actually don’t use the Toolbar anymore, but when the updates come, I still am curious to check. The current update is still rolling along, but should be complete soon.

Google Has Put Google.com In The Supplemental Index

03. October 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: Google

The Supplemental Index is enough to drive any webmaster nuts, even one who was partially sane when she started. And now Google’s own webmasters needs to figure their way out of Supplemental Hell. A view from the Google site command shows Google having a huge number of supplementals. This belies much of what has been said by Google about the index.

You’ll notice that Google even has a number of “session ids” in their URIs. I wonder if the webmaster over there will be in trouble today if the search rankings plummet?

Announcing The SEM 6 Question Interview Series

02. October 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: SEM

Search engine marketing (SEM), is a great field, filled with plenty of interesting personalities. The new SEM Interview Series is intended to shine the spotlight on leaders in the field. The format is a unique one I use on several of my blogs. I love to call it the “6 Question Interview”, which allows the interviewee to make in-depth answers, but is also short enough for the attention spans of most internet surfers. So far I’ve received a lot of positive reviews of the other six question interviews I’ve done, like the Blogger Interviews and the SEO Interview Series

If you know of a SEM who would be good for this series, let us know. We’d love to interview them.

The Power Of Permission Based Marketing

02. October 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: Internet Marketing

If you spend much time online, you begin to realize the importance of carving out a niche, and communicating with your customers. No one remembers a brand name that they’ve heard once, and most people won’t remember to visit a website, even if they’ve been there before and like it. This means you need a way to communicate with people who are at your website, encouraging them to return.

Permission based email marketing is a big boost to business

Everyone hates spam, but most people enjoy receiving email followups from companies, if they’ve requested it. Contacting your current customers by email can be a great sales booster, but you you have to do it right by following the rules of permission based marketing. The rules are tough, so make sure you take the time to educate yourself. It’s probably easiest to set up an account with a company who manages newsletters.

Permission based marketing offers an improvement over asking people to Opt-Out

The term was orginally coined by Seth Godin and according to WikiPedia means:

Permission marketing is a term used in e-marketing. Marketers will ask permission before they send advertisements to prospective customers. It is used by some Internet marketers, email marketers, and telephone marketers. It requires that people first “opt-in”, rather than allowing people to “opt-out” only after the advertisements have been sent.

Once you have people’s permission to email them, it’s a more powerful marketing tool than many others. Sending a weekly newsletter gives you a chance to stay in touch with your customers, and to introduce new products or services as they’re developed. This will give a boost to sales, without you having to increase your marketing costs. That’s a win-win for any internet marketer.

I can admit I’ve been remiss in my duties concerning permission-based email marketing. I two-plus years I haven’t done nearly enough of it. Well that era is changing. I’d love to invite you to join the Sootle Internet Marketing Weekly Newsletter, which is my new Internet Marketing Newsletter which will be delivered to you once weekly.

Join Our SootleDir Search Marketing Mailing List
Email:

Emilio Estevez Quit Googling His Own Name

28. September 2006 · Comments Off · Categories: Google

One thing I learned from blogging, is if you mention a person’s name, they come’a'running. I’ve seen this over and over again. It’s not a surprise, people use Google Alerts or something similar to scan for mentions of their names, so any post you make will be found by the curious. Well Emilio Estevez used to Google his name, but no more.

In his more masochistic moments, Estevez admits that he types his name into Google. “It’s a cruel world out there. I’ve been at the unpleasant end of that poisoned pen. When journalists think that actors don’t read what is written about them, they are mistaken. I would put my name in a Google site and see what came up and often it was very hurtful. Hollywood is guilty of turning out shit. I’ve turned it out myself, but what the journalists don’t do is to take a moment to think that maybe this actor has got a family and he has got to feed them.”

Sort of a sad viewpoint, really. We should understand that sometimes Emilio Estevez has to put out “shit” because he has to “Feed his family”. Poor guy.

But this just goes to show you that even celebrities read blogs, and they cry.

« Older articles
Newer articles »