Mymotech

When I wrote about Ditech using NOSCRIPT tags to put SEO’d content on their pages I used the word unethical a few times. In retrospect, unethical is probably not the best word for it. What a company decides to put on their webpages is not a matter of ethics unless it is breaking some law or something. Obviously, there is a little more water in that well, but I don’t want to get into it. Now, unwise or dumb may be a suitable moniker for what is happening on Ditech.com.

Well, a fellow named Chris commented on my blog asking the question:

Please explain this comment, “If nothing happens eventually the credibility of the organic results will erode.”

While I’m not for “spam” results in natural search please explain how this result, which is 100% relevant to the search term, in anyway hurts the user experience?

Well, Chris works for iCrossing. For those of you who don’t know, iCrossing is a very reputable and large SEO firm. It is also extremely likely that iCrossing is the SEO firm that put those NOSCRIPT tags on the Ditech.com website. (Since GM is a client of iCrossing, and Ditech is a GMAC subsidiary.)

So, what is my response:
I am not for spam in the natural results either Chris. My point was not one about the user experience. I fully believe that the user should have access to the Ditech.com website on page one for “home equity loan”. However, I do maintain that it is shortsighted to place NOSCRIPT tags with siginificant amounts of content on a website that could suffer a lot if Google changes their algorithm to ban methods like that which are clearly already in violation of the Google webmaster guidelines. I personally am not a Google abuse reporter. I don’t report stuff like that, but it is nice to get the attention of such wonderful people as iCrossing to help me promote my blog.

Ditech, iCrossing, Bad SEO, SEO

This is the first post in February. Suffice it to say that I have been super busy.

• I helped a national brand create measurement for all of their online marketing campaigns.
• I led an effort to create a complete online marketing strategy for a major financial institution.
• I watched many hours of NBC Olympics coverage

Life has been busy. So how have you been?

Here is a link to a funny post over at Wolf-Howl

have you ever pictured Google like this?

wolf howl, too busy to post

When I changed the focus of my blog, I wanted all the things that a starry-eyed blogger wanted:

1. A million bucks from AdSense
2. A thousand feed subscribers
3. and a daily mention on BoingBoing or Slashdot

Surprisingly, none of those things happened. Overall, I am happy with my lot in blogging. I have a small but growing audience and a trickle of AdSense income. But what about those successful bloggers that make all that cash? Are they happy? A new post over at Performancing by Chris Garrett gives some good for thought. More and more, bloggers have to face the challenge of who and what they are blogging for. Is my blog just a pass through for a bunch of ad-clickers? or is it a meaningful content web site where I make a contribution to the field that I am a professional in? and can it be both?

These are good questions. I think that the answers are as individual as the blogs that litter the internet.

One of the things that blogs help us do is collect vast amounts of new data in ways that were unavailable to us before. It used to be that for someones ideas to be distributed you had to write a book and get it published. Now, in the internet age, almost anyone can start a blog about whatever they want.
The result is generally a massive amount of blogs with some good quality content. Unless you are unemployed, you don’t have the luxury of sitting around all day reading blogs to find the content that matters the most to you. And so the answer has become RSS.

On the right side of this page is a link that says “Subscribe to Mymotech”. I would encourage you to do so. Not because I think that everything that I write is worthy of being read by you, but rather the opposite, you deserve a choice about what I write. So syndicate this site, and someday you will be glad you did.

RSS, syndication, blogging

Well, I am probably more in agreement with stuntdubl and EarlGrey on this whole contest, but I think I found a cause I can support.

The number of results in Google went over a million today, so it looks like we are in for the long haul. I am sure Google is using this as an opportunity to spot potential holes in the algo.

Anyway, I choose to support Gray Wolf. He is donating any winning to St. Judes Medical Center, and I believe the contest organizers have agreed to a direct contribution to the charity so there is no need to fear. Plus every body says the guy is pretty stand-up. SO, without further ado, I confer my link for v7ndotcom elursrebmem to the site that should win v7ndotcom elursrebmem contest. v7ndotcom elursrebmem. Hows that for v7ndotcom elursrebmem keyword stuffing?

v7ndotcom elursrebmem, SEO, Gray Wolf

One of the nice features of Google Analytics is the ability to filter certain information from the results. For instance you can filter all traffic from Slashdot so you don’t have to see in your analytics reports that boring old Slashdot effect over and over again. You don’t have that problem? Well, how about filtering yourself out of your traffic? That is a good first step. If you are a site obsessed loser like me you will find yourself visiting your own site multiple times throughout the day hoping that someone has commented or that, well I am not sure what, but you visit your site too much and it is starting to become a drain on your love life. Filter that traffic if you think you are man enough to handle the subsequent dip in the numbers. And now without further ado, here’s how:

1. In Google Analytics settings page click on the Filter Manager in the lower right corner.
2. Click the “Add a Filter” link on this page.
3. Give your filter a name. If you are like me you want a tough sounding name like “Chuck Norris Filter” or something like that.
4. From the pull-down menu select “Exclude all traffic from an IP address”.
5. Then enter your IP address in the box.
6. Coolness of coolnesses Google Analytics supports regular expressions so make sure to use escape characters for all the dots like so, 10\.10\.100\.212
7. Then select the web site to be filtered from the list of available profiles and click “Save Changes”.
8. Congratulations! You are now being more honest with yourself about your web analytics.
9. Next log in constantly to Google Analytics to see the latest reports confident in the knowledge that the traffic you see is pure internet traffic, not you reloading the page 150 times so you can get some advertisers.

google analytics, web analytics

It seems like everyone is using top 10 lists or top 13 lists or top 8 lists, and rumor has it that this is a good way to get linkbait. So, without further ado, here is my Top 9 sites/blogs I am reading these days.

1. Threadwatch – Threadwatch is a great place to find search news compiled in one place. That is useful to me.
2. Gray Wolf – Gray Wolf is an experienced hand at SEO and I like his take on many of the issues of the day. He could definitely hold his own in a Jim Rome style smack-off on SEO.
3. SEOmoz – Rand Fishkin is kind of like a 5 tool player in baseball. He may not hit 40 homeruns a year but he is an awesome addition to any team. He has a great site, and you can tell he thinks things through pretty well. One of the few people on the internet I have sent fanmail.
4. Guy Kawasaki – First of all, he has an awesome frickin’ name. But more than that it is rare to see someone sit down and start a blog so successfully. Great content. Good ideas.
5. Seth Godin – When Seth Godin says something lots and lots of people listen. We will see how his latest venture, Squidoo, goes. While we are waiting to find out, get over there and make as many lenses as you can get your paws on.
6. IncrediBILL – When reading his blog one word and one word only comes to mind, curmudgeon. I like what he writes.
7. Yahoo Web Analytics Group – This is probably the best place to read about web analytics on the internet. I have tried to convince Eric Peterson to move it to a real forum but he doesn’t want to, oh well.
8. Performancing – These guys are off to a great start with this new venture and they have some very insightful writers giving the rest of us tips on blogging success. Rock, Rock on!
9. Jim Boykin – The guys at We Build Pages have been doing SEO a long long time. For a long time I really didn’t read Jim Boykin’s blog, but I was reading late last week and maybe it was the alcohol, but I was really impressed with the content that he had on there. Don’t get me wrong, I like Stuntdubl too, but this list can only be so long.
10. *BONUS LINK* Click Herder – OK, shameless self promotion here, but I am excited about collaborating with these guys on ClickHerder.com. I guarantee that this blog will be fresh, because we are not educated enough to do it the way that other people have done it before.

Well, that went pretty well. I hope that you enjoy. Let me know who else I should be reading in the area of web analytics and SEO.

SEO, search engine optimization, web analytics, blogging, reading list

I ran across an interesting post on SEOBook today. It contained a link to a new site called 1000tags. This site is a new take on the famous Million Dollar Homepage idea that has been in the media a lot lately. This got me thinking about another conversation I have been having with Richard of Apogee Web Consulting. He maintains that while pixel ads are good, that tag based advertising like 1000 tags will not take off. Here is what he had to say:

I don’t think 1000tags is going to work. The first tag is 00000. That’s garbage, junk, spam. Tagvertising might work under a pre-defined taxonomy. Even one that can evolve but not one that’s completely free-form. Look at the tags on their site. It’s just garbage. The difference with pixel advertising is that people have been curious to click on the little pictures they see. Are you curious to click on 00000? I doubt it – you know it’s crap.

I don’t disagree with the fact that 00000 is a complete garbage tag, but there are some consequences to that, in my opinion. First off it only serves to emphasize a smaller pool of relevant tags. Also, I think a tag based folksonomy allows better targeting than a pixel ad. Targeted traffic is better than untargeted traffic, unless of course you are running a bunch of scraper sites. And since these tags will grow along with the amount of sites that invest in them, I think that over time the tag cloud will start to take the shape of the internet.
It will be interesting to see how these copycats of the Million Dollar Home Page fare over time.

Side note: Everyone knows that the original million dollar home page is sort of a hoax right?

pixel ads, million dollar homepage, apogee :), 1000tags

Google Analytics is starting to invite people on the waiting list to join. This is nice of them. I am pretty sure they learned a valuable lesson. In fact, if they had released Google Analytics the same way they released Gmail I think they would have had a PR bonanza instead of a stubbed toe.

It is also personally gratifying to see that they have changed their instructions to users on where to place the code, following my web analytics advice. Perhaps those folks at Google are pretty smart after all.

Google Analytics, Web Analytics

Turns out I am not the only one thinking about unethical SEO. On the same day as my post about Bad SEO habits, there were some other notable posts around the internet.

• Threadwatch recalled some Other Unnamed Editorial Fouls.
• Stuntdubl has a post about the editorial guidelines that SEs publish amongst other things.
• And Finally, Jill Whalen made this topic her forum thread of the week.

Frankly, this issue will probably not go away, but it is always a surprise to learn that some major corporations see fit to take the low road like this. Ahh, innocence, how fleeting.