Christmas SEO

5:00 PM
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

6:16 PM
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

10:33 PM
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.

Chief SEO Speaks

8:28 PM
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

4:36 PM
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

10:34 PM
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.