Between Stations » alcohol

Photos: Holland

Julie — Sat, 19 May 2007 19:36:02 +0000

Westerkerk
Originally uploaded by Days Between Stations.

I have uploaded the whole set of Holland photos.

Things that are true:

Julie — Tue, 15 May 2007 14:02:48 +0000

1. I went a full 10 days without omnipresent wireless Internet.
2. I went a full 8 days without checking any of my e-mail.
3. I went 10 days without checking my work e-mail. (ha ha ha!)
4. I haven’t read any of my RSS feeds in 10 days. So if anything has happened in the world, I don’t know about it.
5. Cherry lambic is the bomb.

SEO 12 Step Program: Rank-Checkers Anonymous

Julie — Wed, 02 May 2007 19:35:12 +0000

1. We admitted we were powerless over search engine rankings–that our obsession with Googling ourselves had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to high rankings.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines as we understood Them.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of our web sites.
5. Admitted to Google’s reinclusion request form, to ourselves and to our SEO the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have our SEO remove all these defects of web development.
7. Humbly asked Google to forgive our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all web pages we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such web pages wherever possible.
10. Continued to take link inventory and when we reciprocally linked with link farms admitted it and removed said links.
11. Sought through link-baiting and white hat methods to improve our conscious contact with Google, as we understood It, praying only for knowledge of Its will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to all web site owners, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

(with apologies to all AA members)

Paid Link Crackdown

Julie — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 16:01:07 +0000

It’s all over the place: Google is looking at ways to get bitchy about paid links and hidden links.

I hate hidden links, simply because playing games with CSS to hide links from users is a clear sign of some form of dumbassery occurring.

But paid links are a really messy area. There’s a billion comments in a billion forums right now pro-killing paid links, con killing paid links, etc. An argument is being made that when you buy directory links, such as Yahoo! Directory, you’re not paying for the link, but for having the link reviewed.

That strikes me as complete poo. You mean to tell me that it really costs Yahoo! $299 to ‘review’ my submission? Man, their reviewers must be pulling amazing hourly rate. I want to be a reviewer. I could sit at home with the cats and wear sweatpants all the time. I could bike all day and review all night while drinking beer and watching the Fox Reality Channel on cable.

The only way the $299 makes sense is if Yahoo! is in fact charging on the basis of the value of the link. Which, as we’re all aware, is the truth of the matter, or else none of us would ever pay the going rate.

Other types of paid links are similarly sticky. Text link brokerage is sort of sleazy — it’s rare that I see an example where brokered text links don’t look spammy on a site. But what of a paid review? Sure, most reviewers won’t give quality reviews just for the freebie or the cash, but everyone lies if they claim the gift or the $$ doesn’t make an impact. It’s a truism of public relations that schmoozing works.

I just feel like, of all the dodgy techniques to go after, paid links are both hard to justify the various nuances, and likely difficult to build into an algorithm. How about devaluing Squidoo and MySpace linking? That would be super-easy, and probably have more immediate merit.

Edit: One of the my favorite summaries to date: The Real Reason Google Doesn’t Like Paid Links. It suits my sense of tinfoil-hattery.

Character Traits of SEO Pros

Julie — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 19:15:35 +0000

It’s hiring time again. Interviewing candidates always gets me thinking about what traits make for a top SEO practitioner, or someone who could become a top SEO practitioner, given several hundred sites to work on.

This is a really brief list, relative to what’s in my head:

Ability to understand human behavior and psychology — both from an optimization perspective, and to be a usability guru
Knowledge of domain set-up and domain issues
HTML skills
CSS skills/knowledge enough to work with design gurus
Ability to multitask
Strategic orientation to balance short-term and long-term factors
Voracious reader (education)
A strong liver (for conference attendance, a must have!)
A strong problem-solving orientation

I think there are several nice-to-haves, such as the ability to explain what you’re doing to the ‘normals,’ which can include business sponsors and people with checkbooks. While, in theory, if you’re in an agency where Account Reps are the external facing staff and you’re an SEO-in-the-closet, you’ll still have to educate the Account Reps.

Also, these days I think people who come from a content perspective have something of an advantage on those from other disciplines. Local Search, Public Relations, and Social Media all work best when someone has a strong command of branding and content strategy. However, that’s certainly not mandatory… yet.