Search Engine Marketing Blog: piloSEO

I still enjoy Digg but lately it has become almost unbearable with the political propaganda. I imagine it will only get worse as the US Presidential campaign moves towards election day. It’s not that I mind political news as much as I can’t stand hypocritical and biased news stories that may or may not be true. Hell, bias is fine IF the accusations being cast are truthful. Unfortunately much of what I am seeing on Digg is just baseless venom from Huffingtonpost, Thinkprogress, Dailykos, etc. and their army of (paid?) spammers Diggers.

This is not a rant against Obama or the left

Most everyone has heard the phrase “A picture is worth 1000 words”. The implications are very simple. A picture can sum up complex theories and stories much better than a bunch of text. In most cases this is true.  Text can become convoluted and confusing while a simple image is able to tell a story in a way that almost anyone can understand. The opposite holds true when it comes to SEO though. While pictures tell a story for humans when it comes to search engines they are essentially a blank canvas.

Images can’t tell a story to search engines

So last night the Problogger community was in an uproar. Problogger was hit with an auto-ban at Stumble Upon. None of his posts could get through and anyone who tried received a message stating that that Problogger had either been banned for abusing the service or have been asked for the site not to be included. Darren did not request his site not be included so it was obvious banned for violating Stumble Upon guidelines. After a Twitter campaign, Digg submission, and a number of emails were sent to Stumble Upon support the situation was reviewed by a community manager at Stumble Upon and the Problogger ban was lifted. This took a total of 1 hour and 44 minutes. I have to commend the community manager at SU for getting this resolved. I also have to give a hand to Darren and his amazing community for the way they came together and got this done.

David Harry, AKA The Gypsy, has decided to leave Sphinn and all other social media sites and I for one will miss his contributions. David wrote a blog post outlining his frustration with the various social media properties at his Fire Horse Trail blog. The post, titled Social Media Cash Grab, outlines his frustration with the fact that he and other active members provide valuable content and help to build these sites and essentially get no real recognition for it. I am not going to go into too much detail explaining it because David does a great job doing it himself.

Now I still like Twitter and think it has great potential. It has the largest user base among all of the micro blogging platforms. That being said I recently began spending more time at Plurk than at Twitter. While they are similar IMO Plurk offers more of what I am looking for in a micro blogging platform. Is it because Twitter has become more popular and more spammy? Is it due to all of the downtime that Twitter has encountered? YES.

Twitter is not only more unstable, it is also much more spammy

Over at Search Views there is some discussion over recent comments made by Steve Harty, Chairman of Bartle Bogle Hegarty in AdWeek. In case you are unaware, Bartle Bogle Hegarty or BBH, is a traditional advertising agency headquartered in Britain. They have developed some very notable ad campaigns in the last 20 years. While they may be masters of traditional media they still don’t seem to understand the power of search. This is evidenced by the comments of Mr. Harty in AdWeek stating that:

I have noticed that Amway, Quixstar for those in the US, is making a huge marketing push. It appears that they are spending a ton of dough on TV commercials in an attempt to distance themselves from their reputaton as a pyramid scheme. It seems to me that they are attempting to portray themselves as a business that actually earns revenue by selling products as opposed to making money through their MLM scheme. I question whether this marketing plan is going to serve that purpose or if they are wasting a ton of money.

Did they overlook the power of the web?

I have a problem. I really really like links. It’s getting out of control and I don’t know if I can be saved. As an SEO and X-List blogger I have an unnatural obsession towards links. I just can’t get enough. To most of my friends links are a utilitarian aspect of the Internet that allows them to access new content. To me links are that and so much more.

I am not normal

So I bought into all the hype and pledged to download Firefox 3 on Download Day. I figured that since I would download it eventually I would try to be part of the world record attempt. I have been using the latest release candidate at home for a while and I like it but I held out at work for a few extensions to be updated. Since those updates were made I had been looking forward to updating the 3.0 at work and I was ready to do it this morning when I got into work.

Good SEOs are not cheap but the rewards for an online business can be astronomical. Many businesses understand this but there are still a bunch of companies out there that try find the cheapest SEO provider available rather than paying a bit more for high quality SEO service. Of course, in the end these same businesses are getting walloped in the SERPs by their competition who conducted exhaustive research and found the best SEO. Their competitors realized that the additional cost associated with a professional SEO would bring them increased revenues and profits in the long run. SEO is a specialized service and while almost everyone who designs websites claims they do SEO, real SEO professionals provide a valuable service and bring extensive expertise that only comes with an immersion into the SEO world.