I received this book in the mail.

It’s nice to be sent books. And it’s by Seth!

The book is called Poke The Box. It’s about making a start. Seth encourages us to just jump in and do things. It doesn’t matter if they go wrong, the important thing is to make the start. To break out of conservative patterns. It’s a scatter-shot rant about the death of the industrial revolution, with Godin inciting us, over and over again, to take action.

Gotta say, I was a little disappointed by the book. It skates over the surface, didn’t really hang together, and recycles some pretty tired themes. This review amused me.

Or maybe this book is the start of something else Seth has in mind. I don’t know. Having said that, I think the central point of the book is valuable, and that is to…..

Start Something

Do you ever regret not buying a particular domain name? Or a particular site? Do you regret not having started a site in that niche that is now taking off? Do you ever feel you’ve missed the boat on affiliate marketing? Do you regret not going harder at SEO in the days when it was just that much easier?

I think a lot of us can relate. There are always regrets and missed opportunities.

We *could* have done some of these things. But, for whatever reason, we didn’t. And we probably still find reasons not to make a start on things today. Chances are, we’re going to regret not having started them when we look back five years from now, too.

Take Seth’s advice, and just make the start on that thing you are thinking of doing.

Fail At Something

Often we don’t start something because we’re scared of failing. However, as we know, failure is a part of life. The old cliche about the only way never to fail is to never try anything – rings true.

In SEO, one thing that might be good to start, if you’re not doing so already, is some simple testing. Buy a few cheap domain names, add a little content, and try to get the site ranking for some obscure keyword term. As you don’t really care about the keyword term, you can remain focused on pure SEO. If it fails to work, it doesn’t matter. In fact, that tells you something about whatever technique you were using.Throw a few links at it. What happens? Does this fail to produce rankings? At least you know who not to get links from in future!

This is something I’ve let slip lately, so I’m going to make a new start on it, too.

Do Something Worth Doing

Seth mentions Tom Peters, who wrote “In Search Of Excellence“. Seth sees that Peters is frustrated, because people are hearing his message, without embracing the thinking behind it. Being excellent isn’t about doing what working extra hard at doing what you’re told, it’s about making the leap and doing work you decide is worth doing.

Sometimes, the thing that enables us to keep going with a site is simply that we believe in it. Nobody else might be paying attention. The rankings are mediocre. No one is linking to it. But if we feel what we’re doing is worthwhile, we’re more likely to work through the rough patches when there is no other reward on offer. If we don’t really believe in a project, it’s hard to find the will to work through the inevitable challenges.

Summary

Well, I guess should just say “Go!” ' class='wp-smiley' />

Why not – today – start something new.

Article source: http://www.seobook.com/poke-box-review

You may have noticed ads for shady products popping up in your Google Ads from time to time. In a post to the Google Public Policy blog recently, Kevin Walker detailed Google’s policy on handling counterfeit ads and some new changes they will be using to deal with them in 2011.

Kevin starts off the blog with some interesting figures, stating that AdWords is host to some “one million advertisers in 190 countries”. He went on to say that in the last quarter of 2010 they “shut down” 50,000 AdWord accounts sporting advertisements for counterfeit goodies.

No system is perfect and the team seems to have their hands full handling these types of accounts. However, Kevin (the acting Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Google), said that they were ramping up their efforts by making the following changes:

•     Respond to Counterfeit Complaints within 24 Hours: Introduced in 2009, Google created a complaint form users could fill out to report phony products being pushed in AdWords. Kevin says moving forward, response time is going to average 24 hours – or less.

•     Improving AdSense Anti-Counterfeit Reviews: Another step the company is making is to improve upon existing policies for reviewing product ads. Kevin promises they will work “more closely with brand owners to identify infringers” and extricate them from AdSense.

•      New Help Center Page: Finally, the company has created a new help center page where you can report counterfeiters. The Goog is hoping this will make it easier for clients to actually report fraud when they find it. Let’s hope that is the case.

To hear more from Kevin and the Google team and learn how this may or may not affect your website, visit the Google Public Policy blog .

 

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More By Jamesp

Article source: http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Search-Engine-News/Google-Cracking-Down-on-Fake-Goods/

If Microsoft used their primary product to bundle other free products they were giving away to gain market leverage Google would hoot and/or holler. Google demanded that Chrome be shown as an option in Europe when Microsoft was required to market their competitors via BrowserChoice.eu.

Yet if you visit YouTube with an old browser you can see that Google claims it isn’t an advertisement, yet somehow Internet Explorer didn’t make the short list.

IE9 launched as a solid product with great reviews and enhanced privacy features.

A new version of Microsoft Corp.’s Internet Explorer to be released Tuesday will be the first major Web browser to include a do-not-track tool that helps people keep their online habits from being monitored.

Microsoft’s decision to include the tool in Internet Explorer 9 means Google Inc. and Apple Inc. are the only big providers of browsers that haven’t yet declared their support for a do-no-track system in their products.

I have long been a fan of using multiple web browsers for different tasks. Perhaps the single best reason to use IE9 is that a large segment of your customer base will be using it. Check out how search is integrated into the browser and use it as a keyword research tool.

The second best reason to use it is that sending some usage data to Microsoft will allow them to improve their search relevancy to better compete with Google. As a publisher I don’t care who wins in search, so much as I want the marketshare to be split more evenly, such that if Panda II comes through there is less risk to webmasters. Stable ecosystems allow aggressive investment in growth, whereas unstable ones retard it.

Speaking of Google, Michael Gray recently wrote: “They are the virtual drug dealers of the 21st century, selling ads wrapped around other people’s content, creating information polluted ghettos, and they will become the advertising equivalent of a drug lord poised to rule the web.”

The problem with Google’s ecosystem was not only that it was running fast and loose (hence the need for the content farm update, a problem Google created, and a solution which had major collateral damage along with some unintended consequences, while missing the folks who were public enemy #1).

Beyond that, Google recently announced the ability for you to report counterfeit products advertised in AdWords. Their profit margins are pretty fat. Why did the problem go ignored so long? Why does the solution require you to work for Google for free?

In the following video, Matt winces, as though he might have an issue with what he is saying. “We take our advertising business very seriously as well. Both our commitment to delivering the best possible audience for advertisers, and to only show ads that you really want to see.” – Matt Cutts

How does this relate to Internet Explorer 9? Well let’s look at what sort of ads Google is running:

I am not sure if that is legal. But even if it is, it is low brow sleazier than Google tries to portray their brand as being.

If Microsoft did the same thing you know Google would cry. Ultimately I think Google’s downfall will be them giving Microsoft carte blanche to duplicate their efforts. Microsoft has deep pockets, fat margins, and is rapidly buying search marketshare. If Microsoft can use their browser as a storefront (like Google does) they have much greater marketshare than Chrome has.

Cory Doctorow’s excellent essay “Beware the spyware model of technology – its flaws are built in” is a great read warns where the above approach leads.

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Comments

Everything is fair in search and browser wars.

New to the site? Join for Free and get over $300 of free SEO software.

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Article source: http://www.seobook.com/download-ie9

“Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.â€�
Source: Google’s Mission Statement

Were you surprised by Google’s recent Panda/Farmer update?

You wouldn’t have, had your philosophy and approach to SEO been informed and guided by the reason search engines exist in the first place, which happens to match Google’s mission statement “… to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.â€�

The Panda update is just an example of the Goog’s web spam team doing their job, and making sure that it’s done well. Providing useful results to search queries is a tough and evolving challenge. There is a mind-blowing amount of high-quality, useful information on the web, but there is an equally staggering amount of useless content, and filtering that useless content out of SERPs is key to Google’s business model.

SEO experts with a primary goal of gaming or manipulating search engines to rank undeserving pages (information) in search engines had it coming. They have an uphill battle ahead of them as the Google web spam team’s ability to filter out useless information continues to evolve.

On the other hand, I would submit that a good primary goal for the “search engine friendly” SEO expert is to assist and provide technical expertise in making useful, deserving content (information) more accessible to search engines and users.

Great SEO Benefits Search Engines and Websites

That information may come from individuals, businesses, or organizations, and typically (not always) requires the assistance of SEO professionals because that information, more often than not, meets the following criteria:

• The information is on a website built with errors, restricting search engine’s ability to properly index and make that content available to users.
• The website containing valuable information is hiding somewhere on the web (or maybe it’s brand new) with no links, references, or means for search engines to become aware of that content.
• The information may be high in quality and usefulness, but hasn’t received a proportionate amount of attention on the web via social media and references, and special attention needs to be given to pushing that information to the right crowds who can then embrace, use, and reference (link to) it.

The key to future-proofing yourself against search engine enhancements evolution

With Google’s mission statement in mind, you won’t be surprised - and you shouldn’t be affected - by any changes Google may look to make in the future.

Helping a company that sells tires in Chicago to achieve better rankings for a keyword like “snow tires in Chicago� by improving the way their website is built, making content more relevant to key search terms, and encouraging more online engagement is neither manipulative, nor spam. You will never get penalized or become negatively affected by future search engine updates.

Why? Simply put, it’s because your goals match the goal of (the important) search engines, of making deserving, useful content “accessible and usefulâ€� to users.

Adapting to Social Media Influence

One last point: just one of the changes we’re seeing in search right now is the increasing involvement of Social Media. That is because it is becoming a mainstream way of making information easily “accessible and useful” to users. Search engines have been taking measures to adapt, and SEO professionals are smart to evolve in step.

Just keep those goals in mind, and put your mind at ease, because the SEO work that you do will last, and the deserving information that you are making more accessible will be used and enjoyed by internet users for a long, long time.

What are your thoughts? Is it possible for SEO professionals and search engines to share (and ultimately see rewards from) the same goals?

Tags: Google, Google mission statement, long-term SEO, seo, tips

Article source: http://www.seo.com/blog/googles-mission-statement-key-longterm-seo-success/

Whether you call it “Panda,” as Google prefers, or “Farmer,” as the media labeled it, one thing is certain: the search engine’s latest update sent shock waves through the Internet. Many sites lost their positions in the SERPs, while others were apparently unaffected. How can you maintain or regain your standing?

Before you can figure out what you need to change, it’s worth looking at what got devalued. There seems to be a consensus emerging. If a site’s pages are thin on content, or have a poor ad-to-content ratio, or contain content that has been copied from elsewhere, chances are they lost some Google love. So what is Google looking to reward?

Aaron Wall came up with a list of defining characteristics for “useful” content. These include the ability to pass a human inspection; not being a copy of another document, or ad-heavy; being well-linked externally; being created by a brand with a distribution channel that goes beyond the search engines; and not having “a 100% bounce rate followed by a click on a different search result for that same search query.” But how, exactly, has this change to the algorithm taught Google’s search engine to figure out whether the web pages it analyzes could pass a human inspection? That’s just one of many questions that Wall’s suggested criteria raises.

Nevertheless, there are certain things you can do if the Panda Farmer took a swipe at your rankings. Start by looking at your ad-to-content ratio. If your site seems to be ad-heavy, you may be able to improve your rankings by reducing the number of ads you run on your pages, or beefing up your site’s content. Feel free to do both in combination.

Vanessa Fox, writing for Search Engine Land, pointed out a telling quote from Google: “In addition, it’s important for webmasters to know that low quality content on part of a site can impact a site’s ranking as a whole…Removing low quality pages or moving them to a different domain could help your rankings for the higher quality content.”

The third thing you can do to help boost your website, according to Scott, is get involved in social media. This way, you’re interacting with customers and potential customers outside of search. That’s a good idea regardless of whether your rankings fell with the Panda Farmer update. With Facebook alone accounting for one out of every ten page views in the US, social networking and social media is one part of the Internet that is here to stay.

For more on this topic, visit: http://www.reelseo.com/lousy-advice-penalized-googles-farmer-update/ 

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More By Terri Wells

Article source: http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Search-Engine-News/Google-Panda-Update-Slams-Content-Farms/