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At some point, the idea that you ‘age’ a domain got entered into the brains of many people. When considering age, they consider solely ‘registering a domain’ and ’slapping some content, no matter how lame’ on it.
I am thoroughly sick of this concept, and have been speaking against it for months. I expect my life would be easier if I would sigh and give up, as the truth of the matter is so much more complex that the people I deal with would rather not entertain the concept.
Here’s the thing: At age 16, you can test for a driver’s license. You can pass the test. But you can’t necessarily get your parents to loan you the car. It’s not age; it’s trust.
The same is true with a web site. Having a domain with content on it? Super. A great start, in fact. But it doesn’t guarantee indexing. It doesn’t guarantee that future upgrades and content additions will rocket your traffic to the high atmosphere. It just means you have a domain with some content on it. It’s what you do with it that matters. Do you get links? Do you publish? Do you participate in topical communities, which is the very heart of what we like to call social media marketing? Or do you just wait?
Waiting is a useless game. It won’t do much for you. It won’t do what the people I know think they mean by ‘age the domain’ — establish trust and authority. The only thing that does that is participation and heavy lifting, over time.
Thus, the reason why these ‘genius SEO strategies’ will never work is because they are basing their expectation of creating web site empires on multiple ‘aged’ web site domains on ‘build it, and they will come.’ Nope. Build it, invite people, blow up balloons, make some party-type beverages and nachos, and THEN maybe people will come. Traffic takes work. But no one wants to hear that truth; they want fast, easily comprehended solutions to difficult problems.
And when they don’t get them…. we have the summary of why I will not give up my little crusade. When they don’t get them, I invariably end up having to deal with the fallout.
The Romney campaign is doing an advertising mash-up contest in partnership with some online software people and Yahoo.
The chirpy press release assumes that this will be done by supporters. I can’t quite tell if there’s going to be full editorial review of submissions before they post to the site. If not, this just screams ‘bad idea.’ It screams it as loudly and screechily as an auditorium full of tween girls watching the dreamy boy band of the month. Given the high negative ratings, uh, enjoyed, by Romney in polls, this has the potential to be either a big ouch or a big editorial time suck for some poor intern.
The greatest hazard of Web 2.0 is a failure to be genuine.
Today’s failure to be surprised moment is that WalMart’s back-to-school foray onto Facebook didn’t ’start a conversation’ on dorm decor. It got them slammed for labor practices. Mind you, they’re claiming future roomies are using the site to coordinate, but it just doesn’t look that way on the surface.
WalMart’s past ’social’ experiments have been a bit lackluster in actual result.
The real takeaways on this are first, it’s risky to be Web 2.0 when you have a lot of bad PR to start with. Second, you can’t change the conversation just by trying to participate. Web 2.0 actions need to be compatible with who you are, and recognize who others think you are. Sure, you can use Web 2.0 to ‘move’ who you are to who you want to be, but depending on where you start… it will take a while.
Google Maps has already updated its directional capabilities to not use the I35-W bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis.
Doubt they’ll keep up with all the surrounding road closures, given how day to day they are, but it shows a few things:
- Google learned from the outcry that occurred when the pre-Katrina satellite images stayed on Google Maps/Google Earth long past the destruction of the levees.
- There are clearly some mechanisms on the back end that can leave the appearance of a road in the map, but have it on a perpetual exclude.
Now, yes, you can still see a yellow interstate line where the bridge should be, and still is — albeit in the river, and not especially traversable. But if you try to set up a journey that would typically route you via that bridge, Google is automatically routing you via one of the currently preferred alternate routes. For instance, just route between Rosedale Center (10 Rosedale Center, 55113) and the Metrodome (900 S 5th Street, 55415). Google chooses a routing that has you exit from MN36 to Highway 280. If you attempt to drag the map line to take 35W, it will force you to exit at Stinson. It will NOT allow you to take the bridge.
Total distance, per Google’s preferred route: 8.4 miles.
I35W would normally be the preferred route. Note that MSN Maps still routes via the bridge, giving you a trip of 6.5 miles:
Given that some of the exits that Google will allow you to route via only re-opened Monday, this is fairly quick updating of the service. Certainly, this update is faster than the commute many Twin Cities residents will be experiencing for the next 12-36 months as the bridge saga continues!
I also note that Yahoo Maps and MapQuest, both of which are powered by Navteq/Teleatlas, also now realize that the bridge is a bad routing. Looks like MSN is late to the party… again.
Today’s big question: How long until Google Maps ceases attempting to route people via the I35-W bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis?
Now, given the national nature of the news coverage, most people getting a route via said bridge will know that it’s a bad idea. Google Maps routes are draggable to create variances.
A search on Minneapolis is driving a map, lots of headlines, and the following rapid-response PPC ad:
Neat.
Sure, we all know Digg. Search marketers have Sphinn to play with.
But every niche is getting their own social media site. A cyclist? Become one of the three people apparently using cyclecluster.com! I’m sure there’s something for every niche either in progress, or coming.
How long can search engines pretend this stuff is relevant? It’s a lot like the proliferation of ‘SEO Friendly Directories!’ in my mind.
I know that Squidoo finally got a bit of a spam-slap. I sort of hope to see the same with a lot of social media. I’m having bad flashbacks to UseNet back when AOL opened up access to the real Internet, and not just their locked-up version of things, when something that didn’t suck rapidly began to suck.
One of the top questions I get from well-intentioned new site owners concerns search engine submissions.
“I got an e-mail from a company that says they will submit me to 181 search engines for $(small amount of money). Should I do it?”
Truly, these people mean well. They see a low price tag and think/hope there might be value in it.
I always end up having to crush them. Assuming a $35 submission fee, that’s between 8 and 10 delicious gourmet schmancy coffee drinks. Mmm, caffeine.
Submission to the top 3 search engines — Google, Yahoo, and MSN — is technically unnecessary, as they’re all crawler-based, but if it makes you feel good, it can be done while drinking one of the abovementioned caffeinated treats. Yum. I actually tend to recommend submitting to MSN, because they’ve been totally irregular about indexing some of the sites I’m associated with even when we submit. Ask only recently started allowing submission, rounding out the top 4 properties.
Then, let’s look at Nielsen’s list of the top 10 search referring properties in the US, June edition. Pretty much everything in the 6 remaining entrants in the top 10 have some relationship or data feed from the top 4. So, with the top 4, you’re really probably reaching into about 96.5% of households.
So, what to do with those other 7-9 coffee drinks? I typically recommend making a coffee date with your web traffic reports, once a week, for 7-9 weeks with the rest of the money you saved by not using a submissions service. Check your referring sites and URLs. See if you see any chances for inbound link building. Get all happy inside if your search referrals start going up. Be a coffee achiever.
The WordPress Themes site did a massive housecleaning of sponsored themes the other day. Some of the users of WordPress are happy, some unhappy. Some theme designers are happy, some unhappy.
The basics of the situation is that many of the themes with sponsored links on the WordPress site got nuked. Most theme owners claim there was little notice to get themes updated and into compliance with new policies. Others claim that even themes that complied with new policies got nuked.
Reading some of the justifications from some of those happy about affairs shows quite a bit about myths surrounding the idea of inbound links.
I’ve seen a number of people claim that when you use a sponsored template, with links to the sponsor in the footer, you are ‘giving away your PageRank to this sponsor!’
I really see several issues with that assertion:
- Most blogs don’t have much in the way of PageRank to ‘give away.’
- Those that DO tend to create custom designs, or know enough about branding to want to avoid heavily spammy sponsored links.
- Most of the themes I’ve seen that have 3-4 sponsored links look really bad. Ugly = not likely to be downloaded.
- Providing a few outbound links on ANY site isn’t going to trash your own ability to rank. It’s all a matter of proportion.
I honestly doubt all that many sponsors of the spammy-class of sponsored themes (ie, themes with 4-5 outlinks on it) see a lot of rank help from the activity. It doesn’t fall into the same class in my mind as the people who comment-spam blogs on Bob Dole drugs, but it’s not altogether dissimilar.
The people who know least about sponsors and themes and etc. most likely use hosted solutions and don’t know how to download themes anyway. Those people also likely have the lowest PageRank, anyway.
Those who know at some level that all the footer links at least look bad, might be spammy, and might be intended as SEO (but kind of fall into Dunce Hat SEO in my book) are the people less likely to have downloaded these themes.
Those who are pretty sure, if nothing else, that the spammy footer links are ugly, and who have high-traffic blogs, are likely also the ones who get some customization done and don’t need sponsored links anyway. And those are the blog owners who could actually help a sponsor.
(And that’s before even calling into question if the links count for much anyway. Footer links are the dead real estate and code zone of a page, and are typically easy enough to discount in an algorithim the way most page code lays out. But I won’t even go there right now.)
resplendent taxidermist
soggy taxidermist
self-actualized paper napkin
hypnotic inferiority complex
twisted fruit cake
geosynchronous movie theater
Makes me want to go back to doing poetry slams with selected spam subjects.Apollo 13 hd
Google’s Webmaster Central Team just announced a new communications console within Webmaster Tools.
I think for both agencies and little guys, this is outstanding news. I’ve said before that I think some bad behaviors by little webmasters tends to occur from good intentions (the road to hell, etc.). Having clear communications when these good intentions really do lead into hell will benefit the perpetrators, and hopefully improve overall content quality within SERPs.
As far as agencies are concerned, I already think Webmaster Central gives the agency a better view of what the client may be doing on their own, especially as far as ill-conceived (well undoubtedly well-intentioned) independent link-building is concerned. Having a formal communications channel when penalties or removals occur helps deal with client confusion, and to deal with the inevitable questions:
- “You’re an SEO. Can’t you just call someone at Google and have them fix it?” (no)
- “How can you tell I’m penalized?” (duh, check your traffic and indexing)
Ought to be fun to see how this develops…
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