Developer Shed Weekly SEO News for 2008-07-25

Trouble reading this message? Read it online.

July 25, 2008 Welcome to the latest issue of the SEO Chat newsletter. If you're like me, you have more stuff than places to put it, and that's just as true of your digital possessions (images, video, audio, etc) as it is of your more material stuff. I can't help you with the physical clutter, but you might want to check out the article we're highlighting this week from eWeek for assistance with juggling all those bits and bytes. Home servers may have once been owned only by the geekiest of users, but nowadays we all use high technology to such an extent that we need some way to manage all that content. Check out the article; this just might be the answer to at least some of your organization woes! Speaking of organization, if you're looking to organize your web site or your online presence, you'll definitely want to read the articles we posted on SEO Chat this week. On Wednesday we took a look at some SEO myths. It's been a year since we ran our last article on SEO myths, so we figured it was time, especially when you consider how quickly things can change in this field. On Tuesday we looked at the topic of your online reputation and what you can do to protect it. Here's a free hint: don't post embarrassing content about yourself on your Facebook or MySpace pages! On Monday we took a look at the importance of text on a web site. Sometimes you get a client who thinks he doesn't need it. A picture might be worth a thousand words, but it's those thousand words that Google sees, not the image. Get the picture? You'll also want to check out the SEO-related tutorials we're highlighting for you this week on Tutorialized. Learn all about the basics of social media optimization, how to choose keywords, balance your inbound and outbound links, and more. While you're there, by all means check out the other great tutorials we've published on Tutorialized. Do you know what cloaking is? Did you know that there are sometimes "white hat" reasons for cloaking that probably won't get you penalized? If you didn't, you'll want to read this week's forum thread. It's short, sweet, and to the point -- but don't let that stop you from adding your two cents to the conversation. In last week's Spotlight, we covered something new from Yahoo. This week, just for readers of our newsletter, we're covering something new from Google. It will probably go away in a few weeks, and not everyone will see it. What is it, and how might it be connected to rumors of Google buying Digg? Scroll down to the Spotlight to find out. You will notice below that we have highlighted the Your Move Contest, brought to you by Moblin .org. Winners will be eligible to win free Mid Devices, $1000 USD, and two tickets to any open source event in the world. You can find more info about this great contest 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! As always, thanks for reading. Until next time, SEO Chat Staff

ARTICLES Popular SEO Myths Protect Your Online Reputation Text Sells 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 Can ClearCase and Subversion Coexist? Leveraging Both for Maximum Results Teams can connect heterogeneous SCM environments using tools like Subversion with an enterprise class SCM solution like Rational ClearCase providing the reliability, security, and stability necessary for the organization. Learn more. Hello World: WebSphere Service Registry and Repository Manage, govern, and share services across your organization by using WebSphere Service Registry and Repository. Follow the hands-on exercises to learn how to navigate the Web interface to publish, find, reuse, and update services. Learn more.

ADVERTISEMENT

top

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: PC to Mouse: Your time is up in five years. Cat seen chuckling in corner while keyboard lives on, mumbles something about those damned teenagers on his lawn. Juan Valdezburg is back and face it- you could care less what that handsome mustachioed man is talking about. Get your fill of this sweet eye-pinata. Yakov is back and is here to tell you about Ghostbusters the video game. Casper the ghost seen flexing his pimp hand. Watch the video!

ADVERTISEMENT

top

Popular SEO Myths by Terri Wells 2008-07-23 Search for the phrase "SEO myths" in Google (without quotes) and you will get 243,000 hits. With all the major search engines keeping their algorithms under lock and key, and making modifications without notice, it is no wonder that false beliefs get perpetuated. It is time to clear the air. We published an article here on SEO Chat back in June 2007 about SEO myths. These things do not seem to go away no matter how much you try to educate people. In fact, the search engines themselves contribute to their perpetuation in a sense. After all, they are constantly tweaking their algorithms so the things that used to work simply do not anymore - which leads to more myths when people stubbornly cling to old practices, or when a particular change makes it look like one thing is happening (i.e. a "Google 30" penalty) when the actual cause is something completely different. Many myths come from wishful thinking. My favorite along those lines is a variation of "if I just do X, I will score high in the search engines." And "X" can be anything from get enough links, submit your site to enough directories, get the magic amount of keyword density - you name it. The truth is that SEO is a process with no real shortcuts, and no ONE thing will guarantee you a top position in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Read Popular SEO Myths

ADVERTISEMENT

top

Protect Your Online Reputation by Barzan 'Tony' Antal 2008-07-22 In this day and age it should not surprise anyone that our reputation matters in the online world too. It is definitely a no-brainer that we should do our best not to ruin our reputation across the virtual world. But we all know that things can go wrong; others may intentionally try to degrade your image or brand, for example. In this article we are going to cover some of the most effective ways to protect your online reputation. Warren Buffett, the stock market investor that is currently the richest man in the world according to Forbes, could not have said it better: "It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it." If we think about it, our entire life depends on our reputation, the image through which we are visible to the world. And this applies to the online world as well. In fact, it is much more important and here is why. Recently, I had the good fortune to talk with the HR assistant of a significant company. She assured me that indeed, an online reputation must be protected and improved. The simplest scenario is that a potential candidate applies for a job, sending in his or her resume. The assistant told me that they do a "quick Google" search on the name of each candidate. And sometimes the results are shocking (and not positively). Read Protect Your Online Reputation

top

Text Sells by Terri Wells 2008-07-21 A picture may be worth a thousand words, but you still need the words to get the job done. That is what I found out when I read an article written by Robert Gorell recently about updating a website that sells to a niche audience. If you think you cannot improve the way your site sells its goods to your customers, keep reading. I love reading this kind of stuff, though I know I would hate to be in this situation myself. I like to think of myself as ready, willing, and able to write about almost anything (after doing the appropriate research, of course), but I have to admit the situation Gorell wrote about drew me up short. What exactly can you say about 100-ton drill rigs? A reader had written to the Future Now website with just that quandary. She was supposed to write copy that would do well in the search engines, and she was stuck. The client sells new and used construction equipment at live auctions. You have to trust that your client knows their business better than you do. Presumably, that includes the nature of their market - and that is where part of the problem sat. Read Text Sells

top

Tutorialized is dedicated to programming, designing, and many other tech related tutorials. Submit Your Tutorial Today! Balance Links for Page Rank Distributions Learn some techniques to balance Inbound and Outbound links. Read the tutorial. SMO Basics - Part 2 Harvesting the power of social media for website promotion. Read the tutorial. Improving your SEO A few SEO techniques to make your site list high in the search engines. Easy to implement and use. Read the tutorial. How to Choose Keywords Part of SEO work is putting golden keywords in your website. Read the tutorial. Social Media Optimization Basics - Part 1 The basics of using social media sites in website promotion. Read the tutorial. Duplicate Content Avoid duplicate content in print ready pages. Read the tutorial.

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.

Check out the amazing tutorials from IBM developerWorks and see what all the buzz is about! IBM Rational Project and Portfolio Management certification training e-kit Get free PMI training in the IBM Rational Project and Portfolio Management certification training e-kit. As a member of the Project Management Institute's (PMI's) corporate council, IBM has more than 12,000 PMI-certified project managers and has been honored for its educational programs. Now, you can learn more about the difference that IBM's project management curriculum makes with six free courses based on IBM's best-practices processes and tools. Download the updated IBM Web 2.0 Developer eKit today! Take advantage of open, flexible Web 2.0 technologies, like social software and mash-ups. The IBM Web 2.0 Developer eKit has been updated with the latest best practices & technologies from IBM. The eKit is available at no charge and provides resources to help you effectively build and apply Web 2.0 technologies to gain a competitive advantage. This eKit includes podcasts, developerWorks articles, demos, webcasts, case studies and alphaWorks emerging technologies. Rational Asset Manager eKit Learn how to do more with your reusable assets with the free Rational Asset Manager eKit. The eKit includes demos on how Rational Asset Manager tracks and audits your assets in order to utilize them for reuse. Plus you'll find white papers and a Webcast that discuss the challenges of a Service Oriented Architecture and how Rational Asset Manager can provide quick and effective solutions. IBM Rational ClearCase Innovator Series Learn from the best! Find out how developers use Rational ClearCase to be more flexible, innovative and deliver higher quality code in the Rational ClearCase Power Users eKit. This complimentary eKit provides a collection of materials, like articles, whitepapers, and demos that can help you become a power user of Rational ClearCase. Download the free Web Application Security eKit Discover how IBM Rational AppScan Standard Edition can help you detext vulnerabilities in your web applications in the Web Application Security eKit. IBM Rational AppScan is a leading suite of automated web application security solutions that scan and test for common Web application vulnerabilities. The new Web Application Security eKit provides you with valuable resources, including white papers, demos, and additional information on the benefits of testing your Web applications. IBM Rational Systems Development Solution eKit With IBM Rational Systems Development Solution, you can deliver products faster with higher quality. Within this kit, Read the "Model Driven Systems Development" white paper to see how to improve product quality and communication. Then check out the rest of the e-Kit to learn more about important topics that can affect the success of any software project through customer examples, tutorials, informative Webcasts, and best practices for designing, building and managing systems. From start to finish, at every stage in your projects, Rational Systems Development Solution can help your company reach its full potential. Download a free trial of Lotus Quickr 8.0 Visit IBM developerWorks to download a free trial version of Lotus Quickr 8.0, which enables collaboration by transforming the way everyday business content such as documents, rich media, photos, and video can be shared. Lotus Quickr makes it faster and easier to share content of all types (not just documents) within virtual teams. It is designed to make it easier to collaborate across organizational boundaries, while continuing to work within the context of familiar desktop applications. Evaluate IBM Lotus Sametime Standard V8.0 Visit IBM developerWorks to download a free trial of the latest release of IBM Lotus Sametime Standard V8.0. Lotus Sametime Standard V8.0 is a platform for unified communications and collaboration that combines security features with an extensible, open solution including integrated Voice over IP, geographic location awareness, mobile clients, and a robust Business Partner community offering telephony and video integration.

top

Ask a simple question, get a simple answer. Sometimes that's the way it works in the forums, though you see that all too rarely in SEO. So here's our simple Thread of the Week. Search engine cloaking dsouza Hi, I heard about search engine cloaking. Can somebody explain what it is? Ezhel Cloaking is a black hat search engine optimization (SEO) technique in which the content presented to the search engine spider is different to that presented to the users' browser. This is done by delivering content based on the IP addresses or the User-Agent HTTP header of the user requesting the page. When a user is identified as a search engine spider, a server-side script delivers a different version of the web page, one that contains content not present on the visible page. The purpose of cloaking is to deceive search engines so they display the page when it would not otherwise be displayed. Keiros SE cloaking means presenting a specific page to search engines and a different one to visitors. That can be done by testing the bot's User Agent, or the IP addresses range. There are legitimate (white hat) cloaking methods, like presenting a different page according to the visitor's navigator or country, that are not subject to penalties. And "black hat" cloaking methods used to manipulate search results that may get you blacklisted. Posts from this thread may have been abridged or removed. Forum members are responsible for the content of these posts. Read the full thread.

SEO Writers Wanted for SEO Chat Are you looking to write feature articles about SEO industry trends? In addition to being paid for your articles on SEO Chat you get your name in front of over 500,000 individual readers that access our site every day. Find Out More...

top

Google Plays with Users Rating Results CNet, Techcrunch and several other sites have reported something unusual that some users of Google are seeing when they do searches. Many of their results feature little gray icons next to them that can change the position of particular sites on the page. What's going on? It's a Google experiment. Users randomly chosen to be part of the experiment can boost a result to the top of the page by clicking on an up arrow next to the result. They can get rid of a result by clicking on the X icon next to the link. If they know of a better web page, they can add the address of that page by clicking on a link at the bottom of the page and typing it in. There's even a button that opens a text box and lets users make comments about particular web pages. You need to have a Google account and be signed in to it to see these features -- and even if you are, there's no guarantee that you've been chosen for the experiment (I wasn't). If you are, however, you will see that your changes persist the next time you do the same keyword search. There is also a button that reverts the results back to what they were before you made any changes, in case you don't want them to persist. Google has an FAQ about the feature; it currently shows up as the fourth result if you Google edit search results without the quotation marks. You'll also find some great reviews of the feature by those who were lucky enough to be chosen to be part of the experiment. So what is the significance of this? Google is constantly testing out new features, and many of them never go anywhere. But CNet notes that the personal touch might help make search results more relevant, especially if Google permits its use on hard-to-index areas of search such as images and video. They're not doing that yet for this experiment however, according to Justin Hileman, who has reviewed the feature. Is this just a way to make search results more personal, and for Google to improve its ad serving? Maybe, and maybe not. With rumors flying that Google is considering a purchase of Digg, it could be the first sign that the search giant is really beginning to see a point to harnessing the wisdom of crowds in certain cases. It seems unlikely that Google will allow something so blunt to sully its main search results but certain products, such as Google News, could use a breath of fresh air. Having already experimented with this approach might make it easier for Google to fold Digg into its universe if it buys the company. It might also make it easier for the search engine to say no to the deal if they like what they can accomplish in-house. It seems like an interesting experiment, but it's too soon to tell what the upshot will mean for Google and SEO.

Advertising Advertise in our SEO newsletter and reach informed SEO and search engine marketing professionals! For advertising information, contact us. Unsubscribe If you don't want to receive our emails, please unsubscribe. An email will be sent with additional instructions to confirm your unsubscription.