SEO Blog - Internet Marketing News

More and more conventional link building methods, like directory submission are of less and less value, Google does not even recommend high quality paid directories any more. In fact soon we’ll see a situation where all artificial ways of link building will be frowned upon.

On the other hand former SEOptimise writer and renowned UK search marketing blogger Patrick Altoft reported a few days ago about companies which spend thousands on link buying budgets per month. This way of link acquisition is not allowed by Google for a long time by now and many high profile sites have been penalized already.

While the urge of spending money on links comes as no surprise it is met by an often low quality shady part of the SEO industry. Getting links naturally requires also an investment, an allocation of time and resources combined with know how in some Internet industries like web design or development but not solely.

The money gets spend not on the links directly but on a web venture that gets links naturally and sustainably over time. The allure of “free” is in most cases the key to get links but also altruism leads to a direct ROI in terms of links. So think twice before spending money directly on low quality links.

Stop link building artificially and use one or several of the following 30 ways to get links naturally:

1. Create a timeless or regularly updated resource list, example Web developer’s Handbook
2. Program a free tool or software everybody needs in a particular niche but not everybody offers yet (compare the query font tester vs color picker)
3. Develop a high quality theme or template for a well known platform like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla that gets updated along the software
4. Program a WordPress or other popular blog platform plugin, in the best case a platform independent one like Akismet
5. Develop a Firefox plugin for a recurring task or dealing with a widely spread annoyance like BugMeNot
6. Organize a genuine yearly recurring competition like the Web 2.0 awards
7. Organize a Recurring charitable event like the Blog Action Day
8. Forge a lasting partnership with a similar service provider, like a graphic design agency joining forces with a PSD2XHTML provider
9. Build a community like 9Rules where people “proudly” are part of and display on it on their sites
10. Support artists with free or cheaper web hosting (or anything else they need) like MediaTemple does
11. Mirror a high traffic site, for instance an open source software or an activist site
12. Offer a rebate for a particular group, especially students but also workers class families, veterans or whatever disadvantaged group
13. Offer free music or other audio downloads. or at least a way to listen to the audio online, that’s the secret of success of MySpace
14. Offer free ebook or better free ebooks (more than one) like O’Reilly for instance
15. Maintain a business blog updated regularly with high value resources, best example is Inside CRM
16. Get your content translated and republished in multiple languages and countries
17. Join a community and become one of the most valuable members like Maki of DoshDosh did on Sphinn and Digg
18. Offer high quality free icons for download and free use
19. Offer background patterns for free for web designers
20. Offer free wallpapers for download and invite artist to modify them
21. Create a Facebook application and maintain it over time
22. Create a CSS solutions for common tasks or CSS problems or even better are whole set of solutions
23. Offer free scripts and “chunks code” (like CSS as it’s not a script) for webmasters to use freely
24. Create a highly useful and visually appealing Flash application like SimpleViewer
25. Give away images using a creative commons license on your website
26. Publish recipes for healthy, Italian, French, Chinese or any other kind of desirable food not everybody can buy
27. Offer fundamental self improvement advice like hackyourself does
28. Start a green initiative, whatever it might be, there are thousands of ways to do that, carbon free websites is great example
29. Educate children, especially from poor families be it in the West or down in the “global south”, e.g. the 100 Dollar laptop gained huge recognition
30. Help animals and boast about it displaying images of them you don’t have to as obnoxious as PETA

As you see many of these ways of getting links naturally are projects based on market forces or in other words on what many or most people need. The best thing on the Web is additionally that even free things normally not provided by the market can be offered in a profitable way as by gaining links the investment is made profitable at last.

Of course all these ways of getting links also get you reputation and fans and thus traction in social media too. People hate companies and busineses overselling but they love free stuff and those who offer it. When everybody loves you also those who are willing to spend money will find you.

In case you wonder now “how can I achieve that, I’m no programmer, designer, content creator, artist, activist” you don’t need to be, there are plenty out there are they’re short on money especially those from India. Sometimes even 100$ are enough.

WordPress is the most popular blog platform for a while now and thus the main target of hackers just due to this fact. Also vulnerabilities pop up so often that you just can’t keep up with the hackers. Recently one of the many WordPress Blogs I look after got hacked again by an “online pharmacy”. Of course I’m not the only one. It was the second hack with 3 months of this WordPress blog.

This time the hackers (or more aptly crackers) even blocked my access to the WordPress admin so that it took really hours of work to get it clean and running again. Ironically this blog was the one I kept up to date quite diligently, uploading a new WordPress version as often as I could. Sadly you have to do it almost weekly, yes there are plugins now to do that, but nonetheless you have to take a look what changed (sometimes a major overhaul of the admin interface) and whether your plugins still work etc.

In short: It’s work and it’s tedious and it’s annoying but most of all, it’s dangerous!

So I really can’t recommend WordPress blogs to clients anymore unless you know they’d be able to do all that upgrading and fixing.

In case you need a reliable, easy to look after and secure blog platform for corporate or business blogging and if you want to host it yourself (still the best option for SEO etc.) you need a WordPress alternative.

I watch the blogosphere since 2001 and contribute since 2003 so I’ve seen plenty of blog platforms. There are at least 7 great self hosted blog platforms that are good WordPress alternatives: All of them offer clean URLs, semantic markup (h1, h2 etc.) and similar SEO basics.

1. MovableType: One of the most popular blog platforms. It has been bigger than WordPress a few years ago but it wasn’t Open Source and you had to pay for it so it lost market share. Now MT has open sourced and it is marketed aggressively as the secure alternative to WordPress. It certainly is more secure and has less upgrades to be performed. MovableType had some major spam problems traditionally, this might be a drawback though. Akismet on WordPress manages spam almost perfectly by now.
2. Serendipity/S9Y: S9Y was the upstarter when it comes to blog platforms. It’s relatively new as it hasn’t been around in the early day of blogging but has a growing community. Some people in the SEO industry use Serendipity so I’d be glad to hear their opinion.
3. Drupal: Drupal is more than a blog platform but you can set a blog with it comfortably. Also it has been hailed as SEO friendly for ages. Some pretty large sites that are not blogs use Drupal too and to be honest I’ve hear of any problems with Drupal.
4. B2Evolution: This blog platform has been around for ages but never got really popular. It may be name or the lack of character, B2Evolution even attempts to mimic Wordpress looks by using the Kubrick theme, but this might be as well an advantage. anyways, just the fact that it’s around as well as “alive and kicking” for a such long time makes it a viable alternative.
5. Textpattern: Back when I started blogging it was an easy decision, Wordpress o Textpattern. It was a choice like PC vs Mac, the more design oriented bloggers have chosen Textpattern. The community seems a little dormant by now but Textpattern is still a good choice it seems to me. Also there seem to be quite a lot of plugins for SEO.
6. Mephisto: This is a comparably unknown blog platform but if you look at the code, screenshots and and Wordpress-like URLs it looks very promising. Sadly due to lack of funding and only two developers working on it Mephisto is stuck at Version 0.8
7. Typo: In version 5.1 Typo introduced many of the features we’re accustomed to from Wordpress or MovableType. Now it seems to be a really good alternative. Like Mephisto the URL structure follows WordPress defaults and the markup looks great.

In case you want to build a blog on a more stable and less insecure and hackable platform than WordPress try one of the alternatives above. Of course I haven’t tried all of them so I’d like to hear some feedback from you:

• What are the drawbacks and advantages of your blog platform?
• Why is is good for SEO or why not?
• What do you miss or why did you dump WordPress or another blog CMS in favor of it?

I went for a drink with a friend of mine recently and she was telling me about an anti-wrinkle cream she had bought (I will not be naming her, she’d kill me!) which turned out to do nothing for wrinkles.

She had invested in Johnson & Johnson’s Complete Lift cream, only to have the Advertising Standards Agency ban its advertising a few days later for being “misleading”.

The watchdog was responding to complaints by the public that the £17.99 50 ml pot contained small print which stated it offered “no physical lift”.

Despite this, my anonymous friend said she is going to keep using it “just in case” because it can’t hurt to hope.

Now, I don’t want you to think that I spend my spare time obsessing over search engine optimisation (SEO), so let’s say I began thinking about spin, skin and search the next day.

A variety of studies and advertising bans have debunked most of the anti-wrinkle creams on the market as being pretty ineffective when it comes to turning back the clock.

Good for the skin they may be but none can simply smooth away wrinkles yet an astounding number of people buy them anyway.

Now, SEO works. Not for wrinkles, obviously, I mean in its own field it works. As a marketing technique, it increases targeted traffic, raises visibility and enhances the status of brands.

Despite this, optimisation has a terrible reputation.

If the public know about SEO at all, they often think of that terrible word “manipulation”.

SEO is often thought of as entirely black hat, a way of subjugating the usual search engine quality controls in order to present the searcher with marketing copy and nothing useful.

This is so unfair! How come a product which admits on its own packaging that it does not do what you hope it does, continues to sell in the thousands but there are businesses out there which are not investing in search marketing and optimisation?

I think there will always be great spin on some products and enthusiastic consumers to buy them, meaning wrinkle cream will not stop selling.

However, I like to think that SEO will lose its negative reputation and become recognised as the positive, consumer-friendly marketing tactic it is as increasing firms enjoy the great results it offers.

Earlier today I wrote a blog post over on e-consultancy which looks at how UK supermarkets are ignoring SEO for major keywords, most notably “supermarket”.

In my opinion this is a massive oversight and it appears that the leading supermarket retailers such as Asda, Sainsburys and to a certain extent Tesco are trying to overprotect their brand rather than optimise their website’s for very important keywords.

As outlined in the article, I’m not suggesting that they keyword stuff their h1 and title tags etc. But by emphasising terms such as “supermarket” they are clearly describing the website to users/customers and helping to generate very valuable targeted search engine traffic.

What do you think, are the supermarkets missing a trick when it comes to SEO?

Google has reversed a decision which saw it previously refuse to carry paid search adverts for a pro-life Christian group when the searcher types in “abortion”.

The Christian Institute, the group in question, (which must have received greater levels of traffic over this event than it ever has before because of this story) approached the search engine earlier this year requesting paid adspace.

Google refused, on the grounds that its policy on paid search advertising prevents it from mixing religion and abortion content.

Tricky. The group responded by asserting its free speech rights had been affected, noting that the search engine allowed advertising from abortion clinics and pro-choice websites which criticised religion.

Now Google has agreed to display these adverts, pledging to allow a “level playing field”.

A spokesperson said: “The issue of abortion is an emotive subject and Google does not take a particular side.”

Whatever your opinions on abortion or indeed any contentious issue, the search engine must exercise some editorial control regarding contentious subjects in order to protect its reputation.

To pick an extreme example, it could not place an advert for the BNP without provoking a storm of criticism (for our US readers, the BNP is a far right UK political party). Having said that, I have never seen a political advert, though, so perhaps it is avoiding politics altogether.

Then I began to ponder what contentious issues Google would carry adverts for. A search for “personality test” did not throw up any paid search results for the Scientologists.

However, a search for “scientology” or “L Ron Hubbard” brings up sponsored links for the religion many people consider to be a dangerous cult.

To be fair to Google, if it were to decide on a moral code and impose that upon its paid ads, it would be essentially forcing those principles upon the millions of people using its service.

It might seem fine to me to ban certain subjects from receiving additional visibility, but then many people could disagree. It would be problematic, maybe even downright wrong for the engine to inflict its views on people, even if the alternative is to give page time to contentious areas.

Currently, there are demonstrations against Google and Microsoft taking place in India.

This is because they have been carrying paid ads for tests which claim to inform expectant mothers what sex their unborn babies are, although they have both now ceased to do so.

India has issues with female babies being terminated and has outlawed products which purport to tell the parent what gender they are carrying.

How difficult must it be for a company this big to keep on top of local moral stance and law? Yet clearly it must do so - its corporate reputation would be harmed if it encouraged locally illegal behaviour - imagine if a search engine began advertising rabbit guns to British teens!

It is not just search portals that can be accused of bad practice. Earlier this year, Justin Williams, the assistant editor of the Telegraph Media Group, slammed the Guardian for buying sponsored links for the keywords “Madeleine McCann”.

“There is no phrase too sensitive, no taste that is too poor … apparently,” he sneered.

Where an organisation buys its adspace can clearly affect its reputation, just as it could potentially harm the search engine or website displaying the promotion.

I think what interests me about the entire debate is that these are issues few people could have predicted in the early stages of search. It makes me wonder how Google, or any organisation which publishes advertising, will retain its moral stance when ethics are personal and localised but the internet has no borders.

Sadly the future of SEO is mostly a topic for people outside the industry who grab attention by reinforcing prejudice. On the other hand we’re in the middle of huge changes taking place in the SEO industry or should I say… yes, what.

Already at present we rarely speak about SEO anymore. It’s always part of a composite term or a larger concept like search marketing. Here are the 5 most common SEO futures already visible right now:

1. findability
2. advanced SEO
3. SEO 2.0
4. web design for ROI
5. search marketing

Findability
Findability is a concept stemming rather from the web development community and usability experts. It’s almost all encompassing and covers not only SEO aspects of web design. It also reflects off site factors and new developments like social media. It’s been revived recently but it didn’t catch on as much as I’d expect yet. Findability is a great term for all those who struggle to explain SEO again and again. Findability is kind of self-explanatory due to the non-acronym nature of the term.

Advanced SEO
Advanced SEO has been highly debated recently and then it seemingly disappeared from the daily buzz. Is advanced the new better SEO or just a part of it like basic SEO? I don’t know, the pundits do not even agree on what advanced SEO really is. It certainly has something to do with programming and web analytics, examples like “ip delivery” and “ROI analysis” get mentioned in this context. Some bloggers dispute that advanced SEO is another term for “black hat SEO” but there has been no final agreement reached on this.

SEO 2.0
SEO 2.0 has almost gone main stream when Lee Odden coined it’s most popular definition of “digital asset optimization” in 2007. Others have come up with numerous other definitions. Then the talk of the town kind of subsided partly due to the growing wariness of everything “2.0″ and corresponding buzzwords. It seems that SEO 2.0 is not only SEO for Web 2.0 but a holistic new approach highlighting social media engagement and techniques like link baiting, reputation management as well as viral marketing. It hasn’t really gone main stream yet though in spite of many SEO specialists already adopting it.

Web Design for ROI
Web Design for ROI is a highly influential book that basically, like the findability concept, re-contextualizes SEO along the lines of larger business objectives. These get translated via web design and information architecture in order to realign them in favor of higher returns instead of “good looks”. While it’s not a term that realy caught on it really describes what SEO nowadays is about. PageRank, rankings and traffic are not enough as return on investment is key. The concept is already widely accepted and I’d love people to use a short version of the term like ROI design or something. They do not yet though.

Search Marketing
SEO and SEM are intertwined for a few years. some people even define SEO as a sub-discipline of SEM. While I prefer SEM to refer to paid search (PPC etc.) the term has morphed to search marketing recently. You rarely say “SEM” by now. Not only the term gained traction, the approach did too. Search marketing dropped the “engine” as it’s about reaching out to people who search, be it on search engines, static websites (Adsense!) or social media. You don’t need strictly an engine to search. You need a search marketer to help you perform on the various media and platforms though. This term ist the most popular right now as describing the whole industry.

These are possible ways that you can take. SEO in a way branches out in many directions. You can choose which one you’ll take. Also the 5 new SEO paradigms overlap and are used sometimes as synonyms. Which way do you go? Quo vadis SEO?

You may have noticed that, while Britain’s investment bankers may be facing a lean Christmas, SEOptimise has expanded its team. This is because, despite the credit squeeze, the search sector is growing rapidly.

Recession, it seems, happens to other industries - the rise in search marketing budgets is so inevitable that even with a slow or fall in economic growth, the sector continues to expand.

I am not even offering you anecdotal evidence. Research published by Jeffries and Company warns tough economic times are causing marketers to reconsider their online marketing budgets.

However, it suggests marketers are not looking to reduce their budgets but to ensure their money works as hard as possible.

“More and more advertisers are allocating a greater level of their budgets to more performance-oriented channels, particularly search, and away from brand building formats such as display and sponsorships,” the report states.

As budgets falter, many marketers are under pressure to justify both their spending and their jobs to employers, and a search marketing campaign could be the way to do that.

Jeffries argues search works because it is performance-based, offers clear returns and those returns are excellent.

In a difficult economic period, companies cannot simply bury their heads and wait for it all to go away, there has to be some marketing activity to keep them in the minds of their customers.

With effective search marketing, a firm can carefully control the amount it spends and generate business despite the slump.

I encourage potential search engine optimisation (SEO) clients to read up on the sector through the internet. I want firms to understand the role of our service so they can appreciate the benefits resulting from it.

However, there is a vast amount of information, opinion and sometimes startling-opposed conjecture scattered across the web and for a newbie, it can be pretty difficult to figure out what is sense and what is silly - or even potentially damaging.

If you are considering investing in search engine promotions to boost your businesses online, here are two good articles straight from the search engine’s mouths, covering both SEO and search engine marketing.

Google: Ethical SEO can benefit a website

Google recently admitted cautious approval of SEO agencies. It warned webmasters to be careful what company they use to avoid being penalised because of cowboy tactics – a sentiment I agree with wholeheartedly.

Yahoo!: Use Common Sense for Search Marketing

I like Yahoo!’s search marketing blog, it always offers very simple but useful commentary for new starters. This recent post holds nothing groundbreaking for those already working in the sector but is an excellent advice source for businesses considering search marketing. From bidding on the right keywords to filling pages with acceptable content, the blog outlines some basic search marketing tenets.

Some terms are even meaningless by now so that you have to change your mindset completely.

keyword density/stuffing - killer content creation
Back in the days the more you mentioned a keyword (keyword density) the better you performed in the search results. It was long ago. For years it’s the other way around. You create highly contentious and linkable killer content to get popular with users and the links push you in the search results, even if your keyword is mentioned just a few times.

PageRank optimization - authority links
Some people really say “PageRank optimization”. PageRank optimization is like Pen** enlargement. Bigger does not mean better performance. Recommendations by respectable websites still count but the simple fact that you are linked there often is worth more that the PageRank that gets passed.

metatag optimization - tagging/folksonomy
Like in the above example this is a term that was always disproportionally focusing on one aspect. This aspect is nowadays almost meaningless. The meta keywords tag can be dropped altogether. If you want to add keywords to your page, try tags or even better folksonomy (tagging by many people collectively) to enrich your content in the visible content area.

SEO copywriting for spiders - SEO copywriting for users
Are you interested in “SEO Services SEO Company India Search Engine Optimization (SEO) India”? Probably not, that’s why you are reading a “SEO blog” offering “Internet Marketing News” from the “UK”.

article marketing - business blogging
Article marketing was big when it was important to get many links from different websites and IPs. Duplicate content issues, low quality and other disadvantages made it less of an viable option. At the same time business blogging has really taken shape. It works far better for generating links than article marketing. Of course it’s a lot more reputable.

search engine submission - xml sitemaps, pinging
It’s amazing how some services still offer search engine submission (to hundreds of search engines sometimes). While in most countries Google is basically a monopoly, rarely more than 5 search engines matter at all. Three of them enable you to use XML sitemaps to “submit”. While this is a viable way of submitting to search engines, it’s still better to ping Google at it’s BlogSearch with a blog post instead to get instantly indexed.

checking rankings - checking 33 other metrics
Some people obsess about ranking as much as about PageRank (some even mix up both terms). Rankings differ though depending on the place you search from and your personal search history among others. So in short two people in most cases won’t see the same search results. You should consider measuring some of these above linked 33 website success metrics instead.

reciprocal linking - linking out
No, the modern version of reciprocal linking are not three way links schemes or something. As long as the link swapping works artificially on the premise of barter it’s outdated. It takes much more time and effort to attempt to find suitable link partners than just linking out to the blogs in your niche you favor. While not everybody will link back some will if your content is a king and not just a peasant. Some people even will link you even more than you linked them in many instances. These links will be perfectly natural too so they will count more than artificial exchanged links.

paid links/text link ads - sponsoring, charity
Some people just can’t get sex for free. It’s the same with webmasters. They want it now without the hassle, they still want to pay. Link love that is paid seldom works out in the long run, but there are ways to get valid links with a monetary investment. It’s indirect though. Sponsoring and charity done right will be great for both the artists, activist or non-profits receiving the funds and the company supporting them financially.

forum signature - homepage link on active social media profiles
Many people still use forums, especially forums that allow signatures that “pass PageRank”. Sometimes the signature is longer than the forum post itself and Google has taken this “SEO tactic” into account years ago. On the other hand there are lots of social media sites who let you add a link to your homepage in the profile. When you are contributing consistently to these your profile page gains more and more authority, also for Google.

footer links - content links
Just a few years ago people used to stuff their page footers with useless links to their link exchange partners. Bad news if you still do that: Google discounts those in most cases. What you need are content links. So make people write about you in their blogs by providing exceptional resources, up to the minute news or a unique analysis and opinion not repeating what everybody else said.

blog comments - trackbacks (comments on your blog)
Many people still comment on “dofollow blogs” as one of their major “link building” tactics. These links still might pass some Google juice but for how long and how much? It’s much better to write in your own blog about others bloggers or link and trackback them to get a response, a link back to your site or blog.

anchor text - topical pages/paragraphs
When people realized that you can rank higher if your link anchor text e.g. is <link>SEO blog</link> for a SEO blog they started to “build links” with the same anchor text over and over. Normal users don’t link with relevant anchor text, let alone the same anchor text everywhere. So soon Google adapted by discounting anchor text that is obviously SEOed. Moreover ever since Adsense appeared years ago, Google has been able to determine what’s around an element or on your page in the first place. So your “SEO blog” anchor text doesn’t matter much if the page is about dating.

noscript tag links - no flash or ajax versions
Webmasters discovered the noscript tag to insert lots of invisible links in pages that look legitmate to search engines. Unfortunately they do not for a few years now. You should provide an alternative version for non-flash or non-AJAX users though if you have a fancy menu for instance. Load the Flash or AJAX-free menu for those who have switched of scripts or haven’t Flash installed. These links are also useful for search bots.

hidden counter links - widgets with “more” links
Some free counter services still force you to add not only invisible links to the counter homepage but to completely irrelevant third party sites. Of course this is crap nowadays and won’t last. One user who reports it to Google suffices. In Web 2.0 times and beyond there appeared lots of widgets for blogs and websites though that use such a method in a legitimate way. They offer basic info in a widget and add some more of it after clicking a link.

WordPress themes links - Firefox Add ons
For a while footer links in WordPress themes made WordPress theme designers the most popular web personalities on the Web. This problem of blown up link popularity has been discovered and dealt with in 2007 so you won’t get a “PageRank 7″ just by designing or porting a few themes. What’s still very popular though are Firefox extensions. Millions of people use Firefox and add ons. As most Firefox users are quite web-savvy they feature their favorite add ons on their blogs so that you get plenty of authority links once you write a popular extension.

too many directory links - generating buzz
While directory submission to a few directories (like a 12) still makes sense to get a site indexed in Google via the directory links it does not make sense to submit to hundreds of directories as these are often low value. Create a buzz around your site by viral videos or even good old press releases to get for link power.

HTML 3.2 - XHTML 1+
for a long time SEO experts advised to use the simplest HTML possible for Google, HTML 3.2 for instance. Sites designed in in this archaic HTML version looked accordingly. While the simplicity argument is still valid I made the best experiences with XHTML 1+ strict. It limits the code size naturally and you end up with being simple to crawl for Google and other bots.

guaranteed positions - ROI and conversions
Some SEO firms still proclaim to offer “guaranteed top positions” in Google, while in itself a misleading claim it does not make sense anymore to rely on rankings as these differ from place to place and computer to computer. Focus on ROI and conversions instead. If you like to guarantee a ROI of 200% or a 10% conversion rate it does make much more sense on the business level.

link building - getting links
The concept of link building has an underlying assumption of links that are artificially “build”. Otherwise it would be called “getting links” or something else, but building implies an active involvement of the SEO and actual manual inserting links somewhere. In contrast link baiting and other more common methods nowadays rely on other means than sheer “building” to get links in a natural, organic way. Built links will always be subject to the search engine’s quality team’s scrutiny. Completely organic links can’t be filtered out obviously.

PageRank Sculpting - Making every page matter and useful
This one seems to be an accepted practice of many in the SEO industry while, others, whom I support, advise against it. PageRank sculpting means that some pages on a website are linked by nofollowed internal links to ensure that other, more important pages get more Google juice. While this seemingly makes sense, most people overdo it and in some cases even whole sites get nofollowed by accident. Recently I encountered several sites that were completely made non-indexable for search engines via noindex/nofollow for no reason. Many webmasters will for instance nofollow the contact page in order not to make it the most important page in Google (as it’s linked from everywhere). In fact in many cases it is though, people are searching just for your address or a company nearby, especially via iPhone or other mobile phones.

forums - communities
Do you consider adding a forum to your site? Well, think twice. Forums are problem oriented (people go to forums to solve a problem) and people using them are often aggressive. Social communities on the other hand add a far more positive enhancement to a site. Adding content is based on popularity and thus good content is submitted. Sphinn is the best example for that in spite of the fact that recently some try to superimpose their condescending and aggressive behavior on the community. It seems that with growing popularity you also face these problems with communities but it’s not a wide spread inherent problem like with forums.

outstanding frontpage design - landing pages, usable check out forms
Not a cool homepage counts, or at least not solely, but clean and focused landing pages as well as working and usable check out forms for visitors to complete a purchase.

cluttered portal like pages - white space and focused pages with no distractions
Do you remember portals? Google made them obsolete but amazingly enough some commercial sites still try to imitate the portals of the late nineties. These sites work by overwhelming the visitor with information overflow. The logic behind that is that the user will get stuck somewhere, find something out of the hundreds of links to click. This doesn’t work though. People bounce off the site and search for another one less cramped. You need to offer white space for strained eyes to rest and focused pages no distractions that offer exactly what the visitors wants one keyword per page.
DMOZ - Delicious Popular
Some people submitted their pages to DMOZ directory to get an authority link and they still are waiting after 2 years or more. DMOZ is an epic failure of an elitist directory system. Instead try to get on the Delicious homepage, here you get many more valuable links. Delicious killed the DMOZ star.

While on most of the above mentioned issues most experts will agree, some of them are debatable but nonetheless you have to face them and decide whether you keep with the old ways or adapt to new web environment.

Google’s recent tenth birthday has left me (and pretty much everyone with an opinion on search) pondering the extent of its power. In its short commercial life the engine has changed from quirky student project to a multi-billion pound business. It has spawned language developments, helped create the sector in which I work and inserted fingers into a startling number of pies – admittedly never quite replicating the success of its search facility.

So just how much power has it drawn to itself? Some people now access the web through their Google browser and check their GoogleMail before catching up with friends on GoogleTalk and maybe browsing YouTube (a Google property). The majority of web users in Britain frequently use the search engine to navigate the web, according to several studies.

If the internet is an extension of the world, Google is one of the top demigods. It can even punish sinners, throwing websites out of the top results if firms transgress its definition of acceptable search engine optimisation.

Many of us rely hugely on Google, to the exclusion of other, similar services. If I want to read a newspaper I don’t buy one, I visit Google News. If it were to suddenly prioritise right-wing news over the left, many people would fail to notice, at least for a while. Certainly a large number of my friends who give no thought the how exactly it picks the results it presents would probably not notice a political slant to the information they were presented with.

Now Google is putting 200 years-worth of newspapers online – a fantastic development which will fascinate people and facilitate research. This can only help further knowledge and yet it is one more tool we are likely to start relying on and which Google will control.

These thoughts are not unique and I am certainly not the first commentator to address them. I am also not proposing we do anything about it – the only thing more worrying to me than a commercial entity with all this power is a specific government in charge.

Google has not really abused its power so far. However, it is now a long way from the young firm sticking it to Microsoft. Don’t be evil, Google, you are much too big.