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It’s a necessary step if Google wants to have any realistic chance of breaking into the enterprise space with their Google Apps packages — security is a major concern for any business; and some specialized knowledge to find and fill those security holes will be very welcome. This acquisition is a huge step towards serious competitiveness with local applications.

• Google’s announcement on the acquisition.

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.

Building natural links is a fantastic way to build your business. If you have a serious web site, which has something serious and valuable to offer, then every single link you build is a whole network of opportunities.

A crappy link, on the other hand, artificially developed, is nearly the opposite.

It’s a healthy approach to think of your link network as a living, vibrant creature. Links grow by themselves. You do need to feed and water them in order to keep a healthy rate of growth, but they can grow on their own.

Every link to your site is an opportunity to build more attention. Each link offers three core benefits:

• The link increases the likelihood your site will be found through search engines.
• It creates the possibility your site will be visited from the linking site.
• It advances the likelihood that somebody else will link to your site.

Your links are opportunities to create more links.

People have a natural tendency to find leaders. They are searching for a person with authority — and they require evidence of that authority. Links are evidence. It may be very difficult to find the first link — that’s why simple directory submissions can be the best way to get started in link building. However, once you’ve developed a few natural links, more are likely to follow.

Voluntarily provided 3rd party links are the best. From a social and possibly algorithmic standpoint, they give the appearance of being the most authentic and authoritative recommendations of your site. Somebody’s considered opinion went into that link, which gives it great substance to a reader’s perspective.

But there’s a tipping point. One link, unless it’s truly exceptional, is not likely to send hordes of screaming fans to your virtual doorstep. You need to participate in the experience of creating yourself as an authority:

1. Create great content.
2. Participate in online discussions of your subject.
3. Speak when you’re knowledgeable; read when you’re ignorant.

If you build a strong natural linking profile, it’ll grow on it’s own. People will find links to your site, they’ll determine you’re an authority, and they’ll link to you because of your perceived authority.

Questionable links, however, will not in any way serve the same purpose.

Obviously purchased links, spammed links, cheap and dirty directories — these can potentially drive traffic or attention. But they will not in any way create authority. What is lost with these methods of link building is the potential to let your links grow.

Yet there are, for what it’s worth, very valid reasons to block pages some times. The trick is to make sure you’re only blocking the right documents.

One of the yet-to-come interesting features for stopping Google is the unavailable_after meta tag, announced by Google’s Director of Crawl Systems, Dan Crow at a Search Marketing New England event this week. This is one of the most potentially useful document meta options, although the value may not be immediately apparent.

The point of the unavailable_after meta element is to inform Google that a page should not be indexed after a certain date. This could be used in situations such as:

• Job Postings with expirations
• Sale announcements
• Special offer deals
• Expired auction listings

Basically, this would be great for any document which expires. From a user perspective, it’s incredibly dissatisfying to arrive at an expired sales page as the result of a search. From a business perspective, at best you’re providing no value; at worst you’re angering the customer. If you remove the page altogether, it may take months before the search engine catches up with you — leaving you with a hefty share of 404 responses. If you could inform the search engine right from the start that your page would cease to be valuable as of a specific date, you could avoid this whole problem.

For when and how the tag will be implemented, of course, we’ll just have to wait and see.

At the top of the list is the failure to actually use basic descriptive language in the text. You may think that it’s bloody obvious that your website sells socks, since the site is plastered with pictures of socks of all sizes and colors. (Normally, that statement would be “of all shapes and sizes,” but I’m electing to assume they’re all generally foot-shaped.) You need to realize, however, that Google is blind. You can help it, by providing appropriate alternate texts to the images, but why not just describe the socks? A simple description is what people are likely to search for. Unless you’re very lucky, searchers don’t know your brand name, they don’t get your inside jokes, and they won’t find you unless you’re using their vocabulary.

Even web sites which have been designed perfectly to be search engine friendly can fall down hard in this respect. Except in rare circumstances, it’s just not the designer’s job to write your content for you. Somebody who really knows their job and is invested in your success will absolutely advise you on word selection and these kinds of concepts, but they can’t make it happen without your help. You know your product better than anybody else.

One horrible example of this kind of problem can happen with sites where (I’m speaking hypothetically, of course) the consultant has been hired to build a search-engine optimized site which can then be maintained and edited by the business owner.
However much time you spend documenting what needs to be done, where the client can write unique page titles and meta descriptions, and what kinds of concepts need to be incorporated into text, it doesn’t mean that it’ll happen.

Yes, it’s frustrating.

The technical issues which can cause search engine marketing problems are many, but in the end your content is what needs to be present. You can remove every possible barrier to indexing and design the information to be perfectly navigable, but if the content is empty of your key words and phrases (or at least, empty of your key words spelled correctly) and you neglect to author any kind of usable title or meta description, you’ve lost the battle.

It’s not that you need to “write for the search engines.” You need to write for the people using the search engines, and be aware that if you aren’t using the terms those people are entering in the search engine, they won’t find you.

The concept of a long tail of keywords is hugely important. It is, however, still based on the idea that the phrase permutations people use to search include certain base keywords. In the above example, if you haven’t used the word “sock,” you have thoroughly emasculated your keyword tail in both the long form and the short.

Just a simple piece of advice: read your content. Read it in isolation, without any reference to your website or any contextual images. Does it make sense? Does it name and describe the product? If the answer is “no,” get rewriting. Now!

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.

But, for the moment, here are five reasons that I blog (cross-posted at Joe Dolson):

1. I like to write.

   I began to write articles during 2005 because I wanted to provide more information about my web design business and what I thought on my website. I also wanted to return to writing — having not written anything more interesting than a set of directions since I graduated from college. The process of writing something is very satisfying to me. Given a choice, I’d quite possibly choose to spend more time writing than doing hands on work with web design, honestly. My blog(s) give me a great outlet.

2. I need to refine my thoughts.

   In the raw, untamed lands of my brain, my thoughts run wild. Taking pen to paper (or, more accurately, keyboard to screen,) gives me a chance to domesticate my thoughts. I can spend my time writing down an argument in order to clarify, for myself, what it is I think. Sometimes, the results are inconclusive. The interactivity of blogging, however, enables me to gain very useful input from others who read what I wrote and provide their own viewpoints. Every refining detail is incredibly valuable to me.

3. I like to ask questions.

   It’s significant that a lot of what I write falls into the general category of “why” or “how.” I like to talk about the reasons for performing a task in a particular way — whether this is a question of search marketing, website accessibility, or some other topic I choose for the moment. In day to day practice, I only get to ask myself these questions — and I don’t always have the luxury of time to investigate further. My blogging provides a venue to ask these questions more publically. I don’t know the answers: but I’m absolutely willing to go out on a limb to make some statement, in hopes that others will make their own contributions.

4. I work alone.

   This is also the reason that I participate in forums — because my day to day work is solitary. I’m self-employed, and spend most of my professional time by myself. Sharing thoughts with co-workers is a valuable habit — having no coworkers, I try to share my thoughts with other members of the same industry. It’s a way of socializing. It may be very much on professional topics, but it enables me to form professional friendships which I would not be able to pursue locked into my home office.

5. I like to teach.

   Blogging is a good way to share my own knowledge. While being open about the fact that there are many specialists who know far more than I do, blogging gives me a pathway to provide solid information with others. I have no way to particularly guarantee that what I teach is accurate, but I’m far from the first teacher to be uncertain. Teaching helps me learn. All in all, the process of blogging is a very effective learning tool: I learn in the writing, others learn in the reading, then I turn around and learn from my commenters, who, with any luck, learned from writing their comments. Hey, it’s just a big educational orgy.

Who I’m going to tag:

• Pierre Far
• Liana Evans
• Mike Cherim
• Nadir Garouche
• Matt Bailey

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.

I can certainly see that it has a huge potential for marketing spontaneity: if your target market is the shopping spree/spontaneous spender type, you may have a winning possibility with Twitter. Woot! has jumped on board, and I think it’s probably got fantastic potential for them. I’m less certain how valuable it may be for others…

The characteristics Woot! has which make Twitter so useful?

• Very short term of availability. If you want to Woot, you need to know what’s up NOW.
• Very technological market segment — Woot sells a lot to gadget geeks. Twitter ALSO appeals to gadget geeks. Match made in heaven.
• Woot appeals to a sense of immediacy: if you make a decision quickly, you can get a great deal. Twitter appeals to the same sense of immediacy in human interaction, by keeping constantly updated about the activities of your Twitter friends.

There are definitely other companies who could benefit from Twitter — any business which makes heavy use of limited time offers, limited inventory sales, or daily featured items could probably make use of Twitter fairly effectively.

Outside of these? I’ve got my doubts. However, with the amount of attention it’s currently receiving in the blogosphere (and the search marketing blogosphere in particular,) it seems likely that we’ll see it applied in numerous creative manners in the near future.
It’s worth watching, at any rate. There’s no question that there will be plenty of very unique applications coming from Twitter.