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The shift for Netscape.com from an information portal to a social media site? Infinitely logical, great way to build on old traffic and renew the site for the “Web 2.0″ audience.

Building the site, making it somewhat popular, then shifting it off to an unknown domain? Not so clearly logical.

Re-branding is a common enough thing to do. Companies frequently engage in that kind of activity when their brand is suffering — either the product the sell is no longer popular, or their service isn’t really desirable, etc. Rebranding sometimes means a change in name, but more often means a refocusing of priorities. This is what Netscape did, very aggressively, when the created the Netscape.com social media portal.

Now, of course, they are shifting right back to where they were before – Netscape.com will become and editorially driven portal (sounds very familiar) which will be redirected to AOL. Yes, the Netscape.com domain will be effectively gone: netscape.aol.com just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

And might I also say that it seems incredibly foolish to announce a major change like this but not actually place any kind of information at the new Propeller.com location. Are they actively trying to avoid getting links?

It’s possible that they’re just overloaded at the moment…I guess…although this strikes me as unlikely. However, what I see when I visit Propeller.com right now is a big fat error message: server can’t be found.

I can understand not wanting to confuse the issue by launching early — but come on, people. At LEAST provide a “Coming Soon” notice.

How does AOL stay in business? Seriously.

To state it bluntly: you need to write sense in order to sell your service.

This complex brand of language does nothing for your marketing. If you write a description of what your company does which is easily understood, but not perfectly accurate, you’ll be far more successful than if you perfectly describe what you do using language which requires a PhD in semantics to comprehend! It’s not necessary to describe the nature of your business in that kind of precision — you’ll have the opportunity to explain exactly what you do further while you discuss projects with your prospective client.

I’m not suggesting that you deceive your audience, however. There’s a huge difference between imprecise descriptive text and deceptive descriptive text.

Take, for example, a company which provides, as their principle service, management of pay-per-click campaigns, but also provides consulting on a wide range of search marketing issues. It is inaccurate to say that they are a PPC management company, because this is not their SOLE occupation. It does, however, efficiently convey two things: the company’s specific specialty and the industry that they are involved with. Deception would involve making a claim about the company which was false, rather than simply incomplete.

If you want to draw somebody in to further investigate what you offer, they need to understand some level of what you offer from the beginning. When the first scan of your copy leaves them wrinkling their brows with confusion, you’ve possibly already lost the sale. If that first look tells them that you provide at least an aspect of what they’re looking for, they’re much more likely to investigate further, initiate a conversation with you to explore services, or establish a contract.

Always let somebody who doesn’t know what the company does read your copy and provide feedback. Distance from the subject is priceless — and nobody inside your company has it.

Using nofollow on yourself seems to be one pretty obvious way of sending the wrong signals — it may or may not be directly read as a “bad thing,” but it absolutely suggests something manipulative or untrustworthy about your site.

By using a NoFollow attribute to link to these [about, contact, privacy, etc.] pages, you’re basically telling Google that you do not trust yourself, you are not real, and you do not honor user privacy. Hence, the drop in ranking.

Loren Baker

There are plenty of ways you can leverage search engines. Why make use of a tactic which obviously sends a message of manipulation? It seems pretty straightforward to me: your code should reflect your intentions. Nofollow suggests that you don’t have faith in a page; that you don’t actually WANT to help people find it. If you’re using it to point to your own contact page, you are effectively saying that you don’t WANT to be contacted. (Or maybe you just don’t trust that lousy contact form you’re using?)

You have little chance of making your business a success if you are unwilling to trust yourself. You may not have intended to send that message; but it is definitely one signal which can be picked up from the use of nofollow.

The idea behind using nofollow on your own pages was, I believe, to focus attention on your other pages: your content bearing, keyword rich pages. It’s the myth of “conserving PageRank” — I don’t know where it started, but it’s been talked about many times. This particular idea about nofollow is described by one publication as follows:

The other side of the nofollow tag, is that you can take advantage of it inside your own web sites. Think about all the low value, or no money pages on your site… pages like about us, where to find us, contact us. Every link leaving your home page “bleeds” PageRank to those pages and you’ll want to stop that!

Instead of using normal static hyperlinks you can use nofollow links instead. This lets the “human mouse clicking visitor” find the pages on their own, but totally blocks the search engine from finding them.

So not only can you provide visitors with a rich user experience, you can conserve your PageRank and link popularity within your home page.

“Bleeds PageRank,” eh? Simple point: PageRank doesn’t “leak.” If you link out to a page, that page gains a small portion of your PR — that portion is not, however, subtracted from your page’s rank. Even if PageRank were a meaningful metric, this argument would be patently absurd. (And I’m not getting into that argument right now….)

Every page on your site is important. Do you think that your “About Us” page isn’t significant because it doesn’t have any products listed on it? It’s not a call to action? Well, think again. You’re not just selling your product: you’re also selling trust in your company. People will buy from a company which they think will deliver on their promises. These “no money” pages convey important information to give your potential customers faith in your company. Don’t try and sell them short.

What Search Engines DON’T do about Duplicate Content

Search engine spider to website:

“Hi! It looks like you’ve got two copies of the same document here! Well, humph. I’m not going to index EITHER of them and I’m going to dock your rankings while I’m at it!”

What Search Engines DO about Duplicate Content

Search engine spider to website:

“Hi! It looks like you’ve got two copies of the same document here! Well, it looks like this one is the more original, so I’m just going to try and index it. I might get confused, though, and sometimes try and serve up results for the other page.”

This applies to any duplicated documents — whether it’s multiple addresses for a document on your own site or a document which appears on several different websites. The search engine wants to pick one copy to point people towards, and they’ll try and pick whichever is most original.

The “penalty” that you’ll see is actually the fact that a) some copies of the page may be missing, b) search engines may not pick the version of the page which you want them to, and c) if you’re syndicating material, they might pick a copy on somebody else’s website. The fact that an off-site copy gets picked up ahead of yours isn’t necessarily a bad thing, however, since that copy may be on a site with more authority and still drive traffic and reputation to you.

So, there it is. Duplicate content in a nutshell.

This book, an excellent guide for the self-motivated search engine optimizer, won me over on page 54. Not that I wasn’t already convinced that Jennifer and Gradiva had a lot to say: but page 54 contained the single statement which demonstrated a perfect understanding of what it takes to understand the search marketing industry.

I wonder why that’s happening.

As they say, this mantra will keep you working through all the intellectual challenges of SEO. It demonstrates that critical characteristic of the successful search marketer: curiousity. They make a concentrated point of telling their reader that their own curiousity, coupled with a bit of experimentation and a strong willingness to learn, will keep their site moving continuously forward.

SEO: An Hour A Day is a great book. It’s honest in recognizing where it can’t help you, by differentiating clearly between "eternal truths" (things you can always count on – like change) and "ephemeral truths" – those facets of search marketing which are constantly in fluctuation.

The authors focus consistently on your business needs. They’re not trying to tell you that you need to do something for the good of the world – they’re telling you that you need to do something to accomplish your specific business goal. That practical and realistic emphasis on business oriented needs makes the book a great reference.

Of course, SEO isn’t just a matter of fixing your site and finding some marketing – and the authors are obviously aware of this. They’ve included chapters on convincing your company – everybody from the graphic designers and IT guys to the 5-martini lunch executives gets their mention. Even better, for the time-pressed small business owner, you’ve got an entire chapter on slacking off. What could be better than knowing exactly what you can go ahead and leave until later?

The book isn’t necessarily going to move somebody into the top ranks of search marketing, of course. No single text is capable of providing the breadth of experience and knowledge contained in 10 years of practical use. But if you want to understand what your professional consultant is doing, or use this book as a kicking off point to learn how to promote your own sites, you’ll have made a great choice.
Personally, I think I’m likely to recommend this book be on the bookshelves of my own clients – they may not ever read it, but one can always hope!

I’ve had too many cases where, in an otherwise beautiful design, I’ve had to work with clumsy, out of focus, poorly optimized images. All the copy in the world may not help you if you’ve got low quality pictures.

The internet is a place where people can make decisions based on concrete issues – they can look at how an item is manufactured, what materials it’s made of, whether it’s non-toxic, and read reviews. But at the end of the day, gut feeling will inevitably play a part – and part of that gut response is going to be based on whether they can visualize your product in their life.

When you’re purely dealing with issues of search optimization, your written content is absolutely the most important single issue to focus on. But that only solves part of the overall marketing question: getting targeted visitors to your site. Convincing them to purchase your product can be greatly helped by strong visual impact.

Tips for Better Images

1. It’s not JUST about the product.

   Setting the stage for your product isn’t just a matter of going into your shop and taking a picture of it on the shelf. Do your storage room’s utility shelves help sell your product? NO. Depict your product either in use or in an appropriate abstract environment.

2. It’s ABOUT the product.

   Yes, I know what I just said – but even though the picture isn’t just about the product, it is mostly about the product. Don’t make people search for the product in your picture.

3. Work large.

   Assuming you’re not going to have a professional take your pictures, don’t make the mistake of reducing all your images yourself. You should always do any editing work at full-size – and you should always deliver full-size originals to the web professional who’s working with your site. You may think that they’re just too big to be useful, but trust me – your marketing team wants the best possible image to start from!

4. Never get rid of the originals.

   Thought you’d save yourself some hard drive space by deleting all your full-size digital images or scans? Whoops! Now all you’ve got to work with is your web-scaled .jpg. Face it – you never know when you may want to re-purpose an image.

5. Don’t be satisfied with just one shot.

   How do professional photographers work? They take a lot of pictures. Yes, professionals also have the benefit of years of experience and training in photo composition and lighting, etc. But anybody can take a great picture with patience.

6. If you don’t like the picture; don’t use it.

   You are a good judge of your product. If you don’t think that your picture is presenting the best view of what you’re selling, you’re probably right. Sometimes deciding between different great pictures is difficult – but you should always be able to eliminate the bad ones right away.

Take the time on your images that you do on your copy – it’ll pay off. Remember that a picture is worth 1,000 words. Google can’t read them, but your customers can.

The vast majority of customers for any web site are amateurs. Amateurs buying ski gear, amateurs buying computer equipment, amateurs looking for medical information. They aren’t likely to be professional researchers, either. So you should never assume that they actually know anything specific about your product.

After all, why would a beginning canoe enthusiast know that your particular brand of tortured plywood kayak is the best? For that matter, do they even know what "tortured plywood" is? Probably not. But they do know that they’re looking for a boat which is light, easy to portage, hard to overturn, and they may even know whether they’re going to be using it on whitewater or flat water.

Even assuming amateur customers, you’ve got to assume some knowledge at some point…

But the key point here is that you can’t just describe your product – also describe how it’s used and what advantages it has. Not only will this provide you with a wider variety of search phrases to be found for, but your potential customer will be able to learn more about your product sooner. It’s a win-win situation.

A good practice technique to use when thinking about product searching and product descriptions is to go shopping for something else. Specifically, some product you don’t sell and don’t know a lot about.

Searching for gifts is a great way to explore this whole avenue of thought. You’re looking for a product which you know little about and you can’t ask the nearest expert without giving away the secret – the perfect opportunity to try and discover what a good product description is in this industry.

Escaping the barrier of your own knowledge is such a challenge in writing product descriptions. When you are an expert in your product line it’s easy to find yourself focusing on the nitty-gritty details and ignoring the more widely known characteristics in your writing.

Providing your detailed specifics certainly doesn’t hurt you – but don’t write your description just for the product’s designer.

Web site traffic statistics are famously variable in interpretation. Since no traffic service has a handle on the actual statistics for all website traffic, the numbers are usually based on particularly selective data sets. Rand Fishkin gave his detailed report yesterday on Alexa and Hitwise data, comparing them to the data provided through Feedburner and Indextools. The numbers tell it all – different statistics services provide vastly different data.

Imagine that all the webdev category sites receive 9 million uniques per day.

Pimpyourpro.com – 9 mil x 2.07% = 186,300 visitors per day

SEOmoz.org – 9 mil x 0.01% = 900 visitors per day

In reality it should be something like:

SEOmoz.org – 9 mil x 0.085% = 7650 visitors per day

7650 visitors a day is based on SEOmoz’s real visitor traffic. The other data is based on percentage of traffic as reported by Hitwise – see a problem?

So, given that the easily available data is, for practical purposes, only usable as a very general guideline, what kind of data should you actually report to your clients?
Recently, this question was asked at Cre8asiteForums. The answers vary – but the essential focus is that the only meaningful statistics to report must be based on the site’s business goals.

1. Focus reporting on specific metrics: income earned, referrals, registrations, whatever is considered a success for your site’s conversions.
2. Establish objectives for the campaign. The more specific the goal the better – and be realistic.
3. Don’t depend on any statistic that you need to convince your client is relevant. If they don’t understand that tracking campaign revenue is relevant, it may be that you don’t want to be working with them!
4. Identify the characteristics of a successful conversion. Differentiate between visitors who purchase the product and those who don’t. Determine everything you can which is different about these two key groups of visitors.

Pure traffic has some place in reporting – even if the traffic isn’t converting, a lot of traffic means greater exposure for your web business. But pure traffic numbers shouldn’t be the highlight of your statistics analysis. It’s worth mentioning any increase, but the bottom line is not directly related to visitors – it’s all about sales.