I just installed the new version 0.017 of Snitter, the bug with the black bar on the left side described yesterday is gone, but now there is another one, the icons to send private messages and such behave funny, they cover the profile pics on hover. Besides that if I click a link it opens my TextMate, not my browser. Here is the Jonathan Snook’s blog, he is the Snitter developer.
Today Scoble said in one of his tweets “hello snitter goodbye twitterrific!”, Ok, I was just about to install Twitterrific, but than lets give Snitter a test run. Well, nice, but it has this strange black bar on the left side, and when I click on a link nothing happens, so Snitter seems to be a little buggy…
Yesterday I found a post about Engadget comparing Vista with Leopard on digg, of course I had to write a comment…
The operating system war - what is wrong with these people? Why does the same old story get so many diggs over and over again? So in my comment I dared to express my astonishment about this, of course I got dugg down…
One guy actually got it right though, sites like Engadget post such stupid things for the sole reason of getting more traffic from digg, they have figured it out I guess, one response to my comment was like “You are right, but if you don’t want to read this, don’t read it” - yeah, I got it, next time I will try to keep my mouth shut, it doesn’t make sense anyways… Go on and fight over your operating systems you fanboys…
Ok, things are getting back to normal here in San Diego, and I am back blogging my 2 cents… My dad was visiting me this week, for the first time since I am here, that was really bad timing for a visit… well, we still had fun…
So today I spend my whole day doing my homework, reading feeds about what’s going on in the world of web 2.0 - I really hate that term. Things are moving fast, just a few days is really a long time in this industry…
So, first I was checking Loic Le Meurs Blog trying to figure out what’s going on with Seesmic, I still don’t have an account (hey Loic, can you hook me up, please? I promise, I will have some interesting stuff to post), and I am getting anxious because we are going to the web 2.0 in Berlin beginning November and I wanted to post from there, telling the world what’s going on in good old Germany. Actually I already wanted to have a computer set up with Seesmic at the Bakersfield Business and Technology Expo this coming Tuesday, but Berlin, this would be really awesome. Seesmic is like a Video Twitter, so I am really excited to get a chance to test this.
I know, first I said this Twitter thing doesn’t make too much sense for me, but after playing with it for a while I changed my mind, it is really a cool way to communicate with each other, or to listen to what others have to say. Anne Zelenka posted a list why Twitter is a good thing, and Nat Torking also had some good points to add, yeah, you guys are right, I got it and I couldn’t agree more.
Well, while waiting for Seesmic I thought I’ll check out what else is going on, and Bingo, Robert Scoble had what I was looking for, there I learned about Utterz. Scoble is writing about Jeremiah Owyang testing Utterez. Utterez is a mobile blogging engine, the cool thing is you can tie it into your blog, and post voice messages, pics and videos from your cell.
Besides that I found another very interesting thing, Duncan Riley posted about Gooruze, a platform for online marketers, of course I created an account right away. Nice place to get news about SEO. Wow, what a day…
You probably think I am crazy to make such a statement, we are a company offering SEO services to our clients, I am in charge of online marketing, and I tell you that there is nothing new? Let me explain…
Yesterday night a friend of mine told me that he wants to get some videos up on YouTube, for SEO, so I asked him what these videos will be about and he answered it doesn’t matter.
“Well”, I said, “it actually does matter, even when you manage to get some hits from there, what will they be worth? How qualified will the traffic be you can catch like this?”
These are the kind of things I find frustrating, there is so much bs in this industry, so many self-proclaimed SEO experts announce new techniques to catch some hits every other day, without any understanding what the real deal is, wasting the money of their clients or giving worthless advice.
I think in the last couple of years not too much has changed in the world of SEO - it was and it still is all about the distribution of quality content - adding value tothe site, giving the visitor a real reason to come - and Bingo! The “me too” strategy won’t work.
If you want to optimize your website for search engines you have to think like a search engine. What is it what a search engine wants to accomplish? It wants to deliver relevant results to it’s users. Why? Well, delivering relevant results means the user will come back resulting in more possibilities to show paid advertising which equals more money. Google makes more then 90% of it’s profit with paid advertisement.
So, we shouldn’t optimize our pages for search engines, we should optimize them for the visitor, we should provide quality content, and we should make it easy to find the quality content on the site. This also means the search engine will find quality content on the site - and it won’t have a problem to find it.
Optimize your site for the visitor, and you will automatically optimize it for search engines. And all SEO really is about is the distribution of quality content, and to make sure that everybody can find it, and a huge part of SEO is actually to optimize the usability of your site.
Now you probably think I am even more crazy, because what I am telling you is you actually don’t need an SEO expert? Well, if your business is running by itself, then yes. But this is very unlikely in most cases, and the creating quality content and making sure everybody can find it is way more tricky than it sounds. Do you really have the time to stay on top of this game to know where and how internet users are actually looking for quality content? Probably not. So why don’t you do what you do best and run your business, and leave it to the SEO expert to figure out the online marketing part for you?
Talk to the SEO expert you trust, and if he/she can not explain in detail what he/she wants to do and why and is talking gibberish instead, well, then I recommend to reconsider your choice.