Central Perk

marți, 12 aprilie 2011

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

Posted: 11 Apr 2011 01:56 PM PDT

Music selection to enjoy with this post: The Unforgiven (Metallica)

In October of 2007 I was standing in front of a full house at the Yahoo Sunnyvale headquarters. I was on a mission to try to explain, with very little actual evidence, that SEO is more than just site “optimization”. I could see what was coming down the pipeline loud and clear. SEO isn’t SEO anymore, it’s different. SEO (especially for enterprise-level sites) equals a damn good product.

Here’s a slide from the presentation:

Search engines vs. spam timeline

See the point here? It’s the epic frenemy battle of SEOs vs. Search Engines that whittles the SEO techniques down to what eminently points to no other option but to have a great product. What is a great product? It’s a site that people want to go to, return to, share with their networks, email their friends, etc., (aka building natural links and “buzz”). Get it? Great content and natural links and buzz = the new SEO. But it’s not actually new, it just hasn’t always been adopted very well.

Until now. Remember what it’s like when an algorithm shift changes the rules of SEO? Of course you do.

Since this timeline I threw out there in 2007, not a lot has changed on the “spammy methods” side of things (and doesn’t that just tickle the “SEO is dead” funny bone). But wait, do you know what popular widely-preached tactics since 2007 are missing since this chart? C’mon, think Panda/Farmer update. In the current days of black-hats-gone-grey, what’s the spam tactic to be battled at this point?

If you’ve ever bothered to follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines or anything that Matt Cutts has ever said anytime in the last x years, you’ll see that you, my build-content-for-search-engines friends (I still love you, you tried), have had warnings sitting out there as clear as day. Might I show you a select few?

Google Webmaster guidelines on content

Matt Cutts blog post snippets on quality content

And I quote: “Great content has to be the foundation of any good site, because mediocre content tends not to attract exceptional links by itself. And if you’re trying to get exceptional links on really really crappy content, you’re going to be pushing uphill.” “You want to have a well-rounded site, and one of the best ways to do that is to have fantastic, interesting, useful content, great resources, great information, and then that naturally attracts the links. And then search engines want to reflect the fact that the web thinks that you are interesting or important or helpful.”

But I build exactly what people are looking for in search, how can that be bad?

There’s a difference between building content to attract your audiences and building content to attract search engines. But, your audiences are doing the searches in the search engines, right? So what is the difference? Someone asked me recently why ‘content-rich’ Suite101.com was on the Farmer update loser list. Here’s exactly what I sent back to him in an email:

Its obviously created for *search traffic*, meaning the company goal isn’t to invest everything into creating something rich and meaningful for their audiences, but instead the primary goal is to create content for search traffic, THEN maybe throw a little investment into the rest of the site experience. That's a Google no-no.
When there's "shallow content", the site likely isn’t the best resource for anyone researching something through search. Do you want your search results for how to cope with your depression to be this article plastered with ads from Shauntee Jackson (mother of two rambunctious toddlers in Ft. Worth, TX) who even says in the article "I'm no expert in depression" or would you rather have a site that not only has experts dedicated to helping you learn about and cope with your depression issues, but also provides hotlines, medical information, community support and resources, maybe even tools for diagnosis or self-treatment options.

Get what I mean? Suite101, like every client that says their number one company goal is to get search traffic, is doing it wrong. Their number one goal needs to be providing value to audiences. Which in turn provides valuable content for search results. And on top of that, it provides a cleaner, less spammy and more useful web overall. Leave it to Google.

Learn from past mistakes

You’ve heard about the “quality content” mantra, right? If you’ve been in SEO for ten minutes you’re preaching it. So where did we all go so wrong? How can an entire innovative, on-the-ball SEO industry have let this go right over our heads? How can the warnings of the Do No Evil Silicon Valley giant have been so blatantly ignored as if nothing would ever come of them?

If you sit back and think about it (and if you’re old enough), you might get an eerie sense of those dotcom bubble burst days when millions of investor dollars were thrown into internet companies with no staff, no experience, no plan, and only existed as an overblown trend-following idea on paper. Some people had some new ideas and made some money online and all of a sudden everyone’s building online businesses, with dreams of (being) sugardaddies dancing in their heads, forgetting a very basic, fundamental core of a good long-term business model – providing actual value to their audiences. Shallow much?

The 2011 spin on quality content

This is the deal. We know that search engines want to provide sites that people (aka audiences) find valuable. We know that they use signals like social mentions and influence, and clickthroughs from search, and potentially dozens of other buzz-measuring indicators that go into determining if a site is something that people are really into or just some shallow content hanging around the web trying to feign legitimacy like Snooki at a Mensa convention. How to be one of those sites that people are into, that seeps of naturally linkable, sharable, emailable, tell all your friends, come hither, and come hither again content is fodder for another article. But as you create any content online ask yourself this question: “Self? How will this be more valuable to my audiences than what my competitors are doing?” If you are lucky enough to not have any competitors, then just take that part off the sentence.

But I don’t have to tell you that, because if you’re listening…

Google Panda update announcement

…Google already told you so.

Stay tuned for my next post on how this update doesn't just change an algorithm, it changes the web.

xo, Laura

Technorati Tags

google, seo, search engine optimization, panda update, farmer update, trends

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Will you join forces with us?

Good afternoon,

I'm writing to make sure that you know about an unprecedented national campaign to support our nation's military families called Joining Forces.

As First Lady, I've had the privilege of meeting with Americans in uniform around the world. These brave men and women would be the first to tell you that they don't serve alone. Every day, they are joined in service to our country by military wives, husbands, children, siblings and parents.

Joining Forces is about all of us joining together, as Americans, to give back to the extraordinary military families who sacrifice so much every day. Our motto is simple — everyone can do something. So take a moment to find out how you can play a part:

Like their loved ones, military families are proud to serve. But that doesn't mean it’s easy. Indeed many Americans may not realize how difficult it can be to have a parent or spouse deployed overseas.

That's why Joining Forces is so important. We're going to match the unique needs and strengths of America’s military families with specific ways that Americans can offer support.

So on behalf of the President, as well as the Vice President and Dr. Jill Biden, proud military parents themselves, let me offer a heartfelt thanks to not only our troops and their families – but also to the rest of you for joining forces to support them.

Sincerely,

Michelle Obama
First Lady of the United States

P.S. We've created a special email list for more frequent updates about the Joining Forces campaign. You can sign up here:

WhiteHouse.gov/JoiningForcesEmail

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A Surprise Visit from the President

Your Daily Snapshot for
Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Photo of the Day

President Barack Obama returns to the Oval Office through the Rose Garden after surprising students from Altona Middle School in Longmont, Colo., April 11, 2011. During his statement Friday night, President Obama mentioned a letter he received from the mother of an Altona student who worried that her son's trip to Washington, D.C., would be canceled if there was a government shutdown. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Seth's Blog : Wasting the digital dividend

Wasting the digital dividend

The internet means that many time-consuming forms of white-collar drudgery have disappeared, or at least been offloaded to cheaper people who aren't you, permitting you to spend more time on things that are actually productive and highly leveraged.

No more standing in line at the copier, trudging to the Fedex box, waiting two weeks for a letter to be returned, leaving voice mails, searching for the right person to contact, waiting months to learn a skill or a fact, discovering that a project is hopelessly broken, and on and on.

It's a little like the bump we got after the Cold War ended. The peace dividend was there, just waiting for us to repurpose our military, our military budget and our military research. We didn't. We squandered the window, wasted the money and didn't rush to fill it with the sort of top-down industrial projects (like high speed rail and efficient new forms of energy) that could have changed everything.

So, what are you going to do with the digital dividend? Cruise Facebook?

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luni, 11 aprilie 2011

Damn Cool Pics

Sexy Celebrity Shorties
Top 10 Ghost Towns in America
Bureaucrats, Сivil Servants and Their Salaries
How to Open a Bottle with a Helicopter

Sexy Celebrity Shorties

Posted: 11 Apr 2011 05:56 PM PDT

These miniature celebrities look sexy despite their short height. Maybe they won't confess how short they are in real life, but we still know their little secret.

Snooki, 4 ft 9 in (1.45 m)

Natalie Portman, 5 ft 3 in (159 cm)

Kylie Minogue, 5 ft (154 cm)

Kristen Bell, 5 ft 1 in (155 cm)

Rachel Bilson, 5 ft 2 in (1.57 m)

Scarlett Johansson, 5 ft 3 in (160 cm)

Eva Longoria, 5 ft 1 in (1.55 m)

Elisha Cuthbert, 5 ft 4 in (162 cm)

Kim Kardashian, 5 ft 3 in (160 cm)

Hayden Panettiere, 5 ft 1 in (155 cm)

Hilary Duff, 5 ft 1 in (155 cm)

Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, 5 ft 1 in (155 cm)

Shakira, 4 ft 11 in (1.50 m)

Kourtney Kardashian, 5 ft (1.52 m)

Tila Tequila, 4 ft 11 in (1.50 m)

Salma Hayek, 5 ft 2 in (1.58 m)

Nicole Richie, 5 ft 1 in (155 cm)

Top 10 Ghost Towns in America

Posted: 11 Apr 2011 03:55 PM PDT

These are some real ghost towns in the United States. Most of these towns were thriving at one time or another. There are various reasons for their demise. Now they are simply ghost towns.

Ruby, Arizona

Bodie, California

Centralia, Pennsylvania

Flagstaff, Maine

Virginia City, Montana

Cahawba, Alabama

Rhyolite, Nevada

Glenrio, Texas/New Mexico

Goldfield, Arizona

Gleeson, Courtland and Pearce, Arizona

Bureaucrats, Сivil Servants and Their Salaries

Posted: 11 Apr 2011 03:17 PM PDT

It is amazing how much civil servants and bureaucrats make in different countries. Some of them make as little as $11 per month. Usually, these people have extremely large families.

Liberia, bureaucracy, 2006. Liberia-04/2006 [Mon., AD (b. 1940)]. Major Adolph Dalaney (b. 1940) works in the Reconstruction Room of the Traffic Police at the Liberia National Police Headquarters in the capital Monrovia. Monthly salary: barely 1,000 Liberian dollars (US$ 18, euro 17). Traffic accident victims at times are willing to pay a little extra if Dalaney"s department quickly draws up a favorable report to present to a judge.

Liberia, bureaucracy, 2006. Liberia-29/2006 [Car., ADT (b. 1946)]. Alfred D. Tartea (b. 1946) is administrative assistant and acting superintendent (highest civil servant) of Careysburg district, Montserrado County. Monthly salary: 750 Liberian dollars (US $ 13, euro 12.50).

Liberia, bureaucracy, 2006. Henry Gray (1940), acting commissioner for Gbaepo district, Kanweaken, River Gee County. During the Civil War, the office was completely looted and destroyed: only one wall remained. Gray has 11 personnel, of whom only 4 are paid. The rest are volunteers. He has no budget and over two years salary owing. Yesterday, he went to the capital Fishtown to collect last two months salary, two times 975 Liberian dollars (2x US$ 17, 2x euro 16). All he got was 600 dollars (US$ 11, euro 10). Gray is father to 34 children (sic), 13 of them depending, and has 18 grandchildren.

Bolivia, bureaucracy (police), 2005. Marlene Abigahit Choque (1982), detective at the the Homicide Department of the Potosi police. The department has only broken typewriters, no computer, no copy machine, not even telephone. It shares a car with the Vice Squad: "If there is no petrol in the car, we have to buy it from our own money. If the car is gone, we take the bus. We have to pay the tickets ourselves." The head on the cupboard to the right is used to make witnesses of murder cases show where the bullets went in or out.Monthly salary: 920 bolivianos (euro 102, US$ 114).

Bolivia, bureaucracy (police), 2005. Josué Galarza Mendez (1969) is police constable in Betanzos, Potosi department. The police post has 5 men, among other things responsible for safety on the main road from Potosi to Sucre. And they try to solve thefts and burglaries. The bureau has one motorbike. The typewriter is Mendez's private property. In emergencies, he uses his own mobile phone. Policemen have only truncheons for weapon. Whoever has a gun, has paid that himself. His monthly salary: 977 bolivianos ( euro 109, US$ 122).

Bolivia, bureaucracy (police), Potosi, 2005. Bolivia-08/2005 [Tin., CAVC (b. 1950)]. Constantino Aya Viri Castro (b. 1950), previously a construction worker, is a police officer third class for the municipality of Tinguipaya, Tomás Frías province. The police station does not have a phone, car or typewriter. Monthly salary: 800 bolivianos ( euro 189, US$ 100).

Bolivia, bureaucracy (c) Potosi, 2005. Bolivia-22/2005 [Pot., DRC (b. 1972)]. David Ruiz Doro (b. 1972) is chief of urban and environmental projects at the Department of Public Works' Technical Division of the municipality Potosí, the capital of the department by the same name. Monthly salary: 2,400 bolivianos (euro 267, US$ 299).

India, bureaucracy, Bihar, 2003. India-01/2003 [Man., RY (b. 1970)]. Ram Prabodh Yadav (b. 1970) is sub-inspector (deputy inspector) of police in Maner Block, Patna district, State of Bihar. Monthly salary: 10,000 rupees ($ 220, 200 euro). Rp Yadav (b. 1970) is sub-inspector van politie in Maner Block, Patna district, State of Bihar. Maandsalaris: 10,000 rupees (euro 200, US$ 220).

India, Bihar, Bureaucracy, 2003. India-28/2003 [Mak, OP (1963)]. Om Prakash (1963) is Block Development Officer (BDO) in Makhdumpur Block (200.000 inhabitants), district Jahanabad, Bihar. Prakash has 45 subordinates and is responsable for public order and the development of his block. As the highest civil servant in Makhdumpur, he has a towel on his chair. The plate behind him contains the names of his predecessors. Monthly salary: 12,000 rupees (euro 240, US$ 263).

India, bureaucracy, Bihar, 2003. India-29/2003 [The., HDP (b. 1947)]. Harsh Deo Prasad (b. 1947) is panchayat chief (village head) in the village of Tehta, Makhdumpur block, Jahanabad district, State of Bihar. He informs local farmers about the use of fertilizers, irrigation and other ways to achieve efficiency in agriculture. Monthly salary: 9,100 rupees ( euro 181, US$ 199).

China, bureaucracy, Shandong, 2005. China-10/2007 [Cui, CW (b. 1943)/CG (b. 1969)]. Cui Weihang (left, b. 1943) is village chief of Cui, and Cui Gongli (b. 1969) is party secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in Cui (population 2,300), which is in Tuanli Town, Jiaxiang County, a part of Jining City, Shandong province. Monthly salary for the village chief: no payment. Monthly salary for the party secretary: 280 renminbi (US$ 35, 26 euro).

Yemen, bureaucracy, 2006. Yemen-28/2006 [Shi., MHA (b. 1962)]. Mohammed Hamid Azein (b. 1962) collects the monthly water bills in the district of Shibam, Al-Mahwit Governorate. Monthly salary: 21,600 rial (US$ 121, euro 83), but he had not received a salary for five months.

Yemen, bureaucracy, 2006. Yemen-35/2006 [AIM., AAN (b. 1982)]. Alham Abdulwaze Nuzeli (b. 1982) works at the regional office of the Ministry of Tithing and Alms in the city of Al-Mahwit, Al-Mahwit governorate. Monthly salary: 12,000 rial (US$ 67, euro 46). Behind her a portrait of president Saleh of Yemen.

France, bureaucracy, Auvergne, 2006. France-16/2006 [Cle., RV (b.1957)]. Roger Vacher (b. 1957) is a narcotics agent with the national police force in Clermont-Ferrand, Puy-de-Dome department, Auvergne region. Monthly salary: euro 2,200 (US$ 2,893).

USA, bureaucracy, Texas, 2007. USA-11/2007 [Ozo., SF (b. 1961)]. Shane Fenton (b. 1961) is sheriff of Crockett County (about 3000 inhabitants), Texas, and based in Ozona, the county seat. Monthly salary: US$ 3,166 (euro 2,356).

USA, bureaucracy, Texas, 2007. USA-18/2007 [Pal., RF (b. 1963)]. Rudy Flores (b. 1963) is one the 118 Texas Rangers state law enforcement officers, who cover 254 counties between them. He is based in Palestine, Anderson County, Texas. He is responsible for three counties. Monthly salary: US$ 5,000 (euro 3,720).

Russia, bureaucracy, Siberia, province Tomsk, 2004. Russia-19/2004 [Tom., MNB (b. 1962)]. Marina Nikolayevna Berezina (b. 1962), a former singer and choir director, is now the secretary to the head of the financial department of Tomsk province"s Facility Services. She does not want to reveal her monthly salary.