Developer Shed Weekly SEO News for 2008-07-11

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July 11, 2008 It's time for the weekly issue of the SEO Chat newsletter. So let me start off by telling you about the story we're highlighting this week from eWeek. I guess I must be on a privacy kick. Last week I linked you to an article about the privacy concerns raised by online health records. This week I'm linking you to an article about the Department of Justice being sued by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU to make them turn over records related to the government's program of using cell phones as tracking devices. Check it out; privacy should concern us all. We published a good mix of articles on SEO Chat this week. We kicked off the week with a look at some new features in Google Trends and how you can use them to check the popularity of your web site in several different ways. On Tuesday we wrapped up our review of Viewzi, the search engine with numerous ideas of what visual search should be. Most recently, on Wednesday, we showed you the warning signs for SEO clients to avoid, and explained why you should be willing, when necessary, to turn away clients that aren't a good match for your services -- or your temperament. Be warned, you might even catch yourself remembering a few unpleasant clients or bosses from your past, as I did while I wrote the article. We also have a nice assortment of SEO-related tutorials from Tutorialized for you to check out this week. Who would want to miss "Confessions of an Underground Link Building Ninja"? We also discuss how to brand online by way of SEO, and more. By all means check out the other great tutorials we've published on Tutorialized. Speaking of link building, this week's thread discusses a very specific link-building strategy: leaving links in forums. Is it worth doing? Does Google notice such links? Check out our "teaser" below and get some answers; then visit the thread and leave a few answers of your own. Our Spotlight, just for readers of this newsletter, talks about some exciting news from Yahoo. It looks like they're trying to teach everyone who's BOSS. Yes, that's an acronym, for something they hope will spread their technology -- and their advertising. What is it, and should you care? Scroll down to the Spotlight to find out. You will notice below that we have highlighted the Blackberry and GPS Webcast, brought to you by devCentral and Research in Motion. It will be available free to you in the comfort of your own home on July 10th. Be sure to drop us a line and tell us what you thought. You can find more info about this great event here! And last, but certainly not least, be sure to check out the fun and exciting SunQuest Chronicles: Ruby of Destiny choose your own adventure style book, brought to you by the good folks at Sun. Sign-up to the Sun Developer Network and play the game for your chance to win one of seven Sun Spots! Play now! Thanks again for reading. Until next time, SEO Chat Staff

ARTICLES SEO Clients to Avoid Viewzi`s Various Views of Search A New Trend for Google SEO on Tutorialized SEO Thread of The Week SEO Chat News Spotlight TOOLS Get Our Content on Your Site with DevText! New Articles, Right To Your E-mail Developer Search Maintaining QoS and Process Integrity in an SOA Environment This webcast outlines the best practices that must be instituted to gain the maximum benefit from SOA while maintaining high quality of service. Whether you are deploying new applications or managing and monitoring your existing infrastructure, learn how you can ensure high quality of services with SOA based solutions from IBM. All registrants who attend this live Web Seminar will receive complimentary access to a white paper titled "Maintaining QoS in an SOA Environment". Learn more. Accelerating Software Innovation with System z Attend this launch webcast with Scott Hebner, Vice President of IBM Rational Marketing and Strategy, where he will overview Rational's new offerings and programs to help customers accelerate software innovation on System z. He will discuss how these solutions help organizations extend their core business processes toward modern architectures such as SOA and web technologies to deliver business improvements that stand the test of time. Learn more.

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[Blackberry© and GPS Webcast] In this free webcast you will learn to build LBS applications for the Blackberry© platform. Host Brent Thornton, Channel Manager for Research in Motion, will cover the following topics: Introduction to BlackBerry Device GPS Capabilities Building Browser-based applications that leverage the GPS capabilities of the BlackBerry device Building Java-based applications that leverage the GPS capabilities of the BlackBerry device Those attending the seminar on July 10th, 2008 will be eligible to win one of two BlackBerry© Pearl 8110 smartphones from AT&T. So what are you waiting for? Register now!

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It's edgy! It's irreverent! It's all about technology! It's News You Can't Use, and you won't want to miss it! View this week's edition to learn the answers to these burning questions: Can you stay awake while Jennifzzzzzzz. Ninth grade mathematics teacher does not seem affected at all; cries himself to sleep at night because those who can do and those who cannot teach. Where does that leave substitute teachers? Drunk and broke, that is where. Why did Xbox Live ban the name Ben Dover? Mike Rotch and Ophelia Balls seen running in fear, cursing their parents for giving them such hilarious names. What happened to Yakov this week? Vinnie put the clamps on him. And you would be wise to keep your fat yap shut, capiche? Watch the video!

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SEO Clients to Avoid by Terri Wells 2008-07-09 No new business wants to turn down clients, and even older, more established businesses hate to do it. That is true in SEO as well. Unfortunately, it is sometimes necessary. In this article I will talk about the kinds of clients you should avoid - and if you are an SEO client, you will find out the kinds of behaviors you should avoid. There are plenty of articles about how to avoid bad SEOs, so I was not too surprised when I started my research to see how many articles have been written about avoiding bad clients. Many were eloquent, to say the least. They reminded me a little bit of a particularly bad boss I had once. He possessed three nasty qualities: first, everything was a crisis and had to be done immediately; second, he refused to use a computer or even a typewriter (so I had to print out his email and get handwritten replies from him); and third, his handwriting required about a month to learn how to read with any accuracy. I mention this because clients are short-term bosses. If your client wants you to work under conditions you would not take from a boss, you should not be working with that client. Clients are not spouses; you should not take them on hoping that they will change (you should not do that with a spouse either, of course, but that is a different article). If you turn down a client because it is not working, or it is not going to work, you end up saving both you and the client a lot of pain and misspent energy and resources. Read SEO Clients to Avoid

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Viewzi`s Various Views of Search by Terri Wells 2008-07-08 In the first part of this article I introduced you to Viewzi, a visual search engine that takes a different approach to visual search by suiting the interface to the type of query made by the user. I only showed you a couple of the views Viewzi had to offer. In this article, I am going to show you a number of the other views, compare results with Google, and finally discuss the possible future of Viewzi. Since Viewzi is a visual search engine, we will resume with a visual search. My search term is "brass goggles," and I am going to start with the basic photo view. This view now searches Flickr and SmugMug; at the time I wrote the previous article, it searched Riya instead of SmugMug. And by the time this article is published, it might search different sites, though Flickr will probably still be in the mix. Chalk it up to the beta status Viewzi is in and the hunt for the combination that will give searchers the best results. Anyway, here is a screen shot of my results: So what is awesome here? This is the view with small images. As you would expect from Viewzi if you read my previous article, you can hover your cursor over any image you want to see a large version of it, along with its title and URL. This is the default look of the basic photo view, with small images; you can change to large images with just a click of your mouse. Even after making this change, you can hover over images to view larger versions. In other words, you can view every image in three different sizes. Read Viewzi`s Various Views of Search

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A New Trend for Google by Michael Lowry 2008-07-07 After launching Google Trends in 2006 to great fanfare, Google has been busy developing additional layers that help users better view the various activities of the Internet. Google Trends for Websites is the newest tool in the shed. It lets people see just how popular individual websites are by ranking them across different geographical regions and comparing them to other related sites. This article will cover the pros and cons of the latest Google web tracker. In case you were wondering, Google Trends is one of the tools being explored in Google Labs. In a nutshell, it displays data about how often a search term is entered relative to the total number of searches and across various geographical regions from the beginning of 2004 to now. The first thing you will notice is a line graph; however, below that you will find different break downs based on region, city, and language. You can refine the data in the graph by region and time period while comparing up to five search terms at a time. One of its more interesting applications is using the "News reference volume" graph to see how specific events or times of year affect search popularity. Unfortunately, I am writing this article the day after legendary comedian George Carlin passed away, so his name is the most popular search term for June 23, 2008. Likewise, a search for certain holidays, like Ramadan or Pesach (Passover), will show peaks during their respective seasons. Read A New Trend for Google

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Tutorialized is dedicated to programming, designing, and many other tech related tutorials. Submit Your Tutorial Today! Steps To Successful SEO This guide will introduce a few of the simple steps to help beginners learn proper optimization. Read the tutorial. SEO First Steps Choosing your keywords is the most important first step to take. Read the tutorial. Confessions of an Underground Link Building Ninja Advanced link building strategies to increase your rankings. Read the tutorial. Online Branding by way of SEO Brand - a trademark or unique name to identify your product. Learn more. Read the tutorial. SEO for Beginners Guide Part 2 A second part in a series designed to give the new SEO person the upper hand. Read the tutorial. Secrets Behind Link Building On reading this post you should be able to build links with simple steps! Read the tutorial.

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How can this SEO Newsletter be better? What do you like or dislike about this issue? Is there a topic you want to learn more about? What issues in search engine news are important to you? We'll consider your suggestions and ideas for improvement, so please email us. Email us.

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How does Google value backlinks in forums? That's the question asked in this week's thread. You'll be surprised to see how many different answers were posted to that question. Be sure to stop by the lively thread and share your experience! Backlinks in Forums - Google Value Intravino Hi, Are backlinks in forums important and good to have? I almost have a thousand new backlinks in forums and I did not see any gains in my major keywords in Google. I know that a thousand backinks is not much but before I only had a few. Thanks for your time. ClickyB Are the links "nofollowed" in the forums you're talking about? Are the forums in any way relevant to your subject matter? Even if both answers are "yes" there's still not much value for Google (which is why I don't use mine)! Aleks My point of view is that forum back links are of small value to Google. why I think so: 1. Not only anchor text, but also surrounding text (and amount of it) is important for Google. 2. Low PR of forum's pages, or zero PR. 3. No doubt the page must be relevant. Still I understand why people use links in their signatures - if forum is visited by a great number or people, at least 3% of them click your link. And of course you need to be active on forums to gain more clicks ;) Posts from this thread may have been abridged or removed. Forum members are responsible for the content of these posts. Read the full thread.

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Yahoo to BOSS Around the Competition If you've ever wanted to build a customized search engine on top of Yahoo's technology, your wait is over. Yahoo's BOSS, which stands for Build your Own Search Service, just entered public beta. BOSS is an open platform that offers programmatic access to the entire Yahoo Search index via an API. In plain English, a developer can use BOSS to build a web site independent of Yahoo's with its own search box, pass search queries to Yahoo, get the results returned from Yahoo's search engines, process these results however they wish, and display them to their users. So what exactly can you do with BOSS? According Yahoo's search blog, you can re-rank and blend search results as you see fit; present search results using any kind of user interface you wish, without adding Yahoo branding; mash up BOSS search results with other public data sources; search several verticals, such as news and images; and, best of all, you can do all this with no limits on the number of queries per day. Yahoo said that they're already working on expanding the API functionality and providing more access to Yahoo! Search Technology. This is already more freedom than Google offered when they opened their web services API in 2002 (they unceremoniously closed the beta in 2006). And what does Yahoo get out of this beneficent act? Prabhakar Raghavan, chief strategist for Yahoo Search, notes that There is no payment of any kind we expect from partners, but we do say in the terms of service up front that over time we will require them as they build and grow out to use our search advertising. In other words, the more successful you get, the more Yahoo will expect you to use their advertising in your search engine. The venerable search engine hopes that this move will increase their advertising revenue. And with all the pressure on Yahoo, from irate shareholders, Microsoft, and trying to compete in the search arena, the company can use all the revenue it can get. In any case, Yahoo has lined up an interesting list of BOSS partnerships. These include Standford University, the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, social search site Me(dot)dium and natural language search engine Hakia. Expect to see more partnerships soon. What does this say about the future of search, search advertising, and Yahoo? It's hard to tell. Building a vertical search engine may become more economically feasible for more companies; they won't have to spend an estimated $300 million to cover the cost of staff and hardware to index the web and handle queries. Powerset sold out to Microsoft recently in part because, as a start-up, it could not afford those expenses. BOSS could make start-up search engines more financially viable another way: though they'll be expected to show Yahoo search advertising, they'll also share in the revenue received from the advertising. But will all of these potentially new ways to search be used by consumers and therefore be profitable to search advertisers? Raghavan acknowledges the unknowns. Will advertisers see better ROI resulting from more focused audiences, or will traffic quality take a nosedive because of audience fragmentation? Only time will tell.

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