SEO – 1939 Style… “The Call of Duty”

Classification – Ultra Mega – Above Top Secret

“Gentlemen! We have identified a new threat! Jerry is getting ready to make his move and Cyprus is facing an invasion of unprecedented proportions which is threatening to destroy our very business infrastructure.”

As you all know, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a relatively new term not only in the Republic of Cyprus, but in much of the remaining Mediterranean region also.

In fact, it is only in the past year or so that the term SEO has been used by Cypriot operatives as a means of bringing their services to the attention of the general public.
But SEO-Jerry has been watching us with envious eyes and he considers businesses on our sacred isle to be virgin territory, there for the taking.

Who is SEO-Jerry?

Torpedos, Cats & Wireless Networks

It all sounded simple enough:
“Could you come to the International Conference Centre in Nicosia and cover the 2007 FIFE cat show for the Pan-Cyprian Cat Club’s forthcoming web site?”
“Certainly; I’ll need an internet connection though.”
“Oh that’s no problem; the conference centre is fully wireless.”

How many times has someone uttered the words ‘no problem’ to you and you’ve just known that there’s trouble on the horizon?

As those of you who have been to Cyprus will most likely know, the island only gets about forty days of rain each year, and most of these happen between the end of November and the end of February.

Today is one of those rainy days…
Ok, so you may be asking yourself around about now just how exactly we got from a cat show in Nicosia to a weather report.

The point I’m so laboriously working towards is that Cypriot drivers are not used to wet roads; a little bit of moisture on the asphalt and drivers get cautious, a heavy rainfall with soaked roads and their behaviour becomes downright panicky (sort of like the UK if someone spots a snowflake).

Buzzwords, Fads & Web Promotion

“The road to successful web promotion is littered with the corpses of buzzwords from years gone by.”
F. B. Guntherson – Jan 2007

You have to admit that few industries are as prone to attack by buzzwords, fads and the occasional Americanism as web promotion (well… anything related to the internet really).
At the moment, flavours of the month include ‘Web 2.0‘, ‘Authority Sites‘, ‘Ajax‘ and my all-time personal favourite ‘SEO‘.
There are others of course; but if I were to try and list them all, I would still be writing this post next month.

It seems that, like alcohol and tobacco, buzzwords are addictive and, worse still, they are also highly infectious.

How many times have you heard the term Web 2.0 thrown into a conversation* without the speaker having any clear idea of what it actually means?
Actually; what the hell is Web 2.0?
Did Timothy Berners-Lee** suddenly invent another internet while no one was looking?

As buzzwords go, the term Web 2.0 is an absolute corker, since it conjures up the image of an entirely new stage in the internet’s architecture, when it is in fact merely an approach to building web sites which finally takes advantage of the fact that most users now have high-speed internet connections.
Ok, so new technologies are involved to a certain degree, but there is nothing much here which couldn’t have been done a few years ago, except that in those days you would have waited about six hours for the video of ’That guy falling off the trampoline‘ or the ‘Groovy New Web-App‘ to finish loading.

‘Ah but…’ I hear you cry, ‘What about the fact that Web 2.0 is so much more community orientated?’
Collaborative online communities are hardly a new invention.
In fact, I still remember the launch of Alphaworld back in 1995 (I’m showing my age now), so in that respect Web 2.0 is very much a case of it being the same old thing wearing a new pair of trainers and sporting the latest hair style.

*Assuming of course that you’re nerdy enough to hang around where this sort of thing is being discussed.
**At this stage you may well ask who this Berners-Lee character is, and if you do, I’m not going to tell you.
Look him up on Wikipedia if you’re interested.

Damn! I was talking about web promotion, wasn’t I?

But anyway… What about Authority Sites then?
These days we are told that we must build Authority Sites if we are to stand any chance of success in the search engine wars.
Yet surely if it had not been for the continuing interference from spamshiners infesting search engine listings with anything from Viagra to Gambling and Black Hat SEOs gaining high search rankings of questionable relevance, any site out there would be an ‘Authority Site’ to a greater or lesser degree?

Surely nobody in their right mind would launch a commercial web site which made them look like a complete idiot?
Well… but moving swiftly on.

Next we have a delicious recipe, easily prepared from common ingredients:
Take some XML, add CSS, sprinkle with JavaScript to taste and give it a stir.
‘Mmmmmm… I’m lovin’ it!‘

Wait… We need to give it a name.
Mc WebApp? XM-ava? Jav-ml? How about Java-X?

No, of course not… Let’s name it after a household cleaner*.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you ‘Ajax‘.
Note: Wherever you find an Ajax, there is usually a Web 2.0 lurking nearby. The two are practically inseparable.

*Or for those of you with a background in mythology, the ancient Greek hero from Homer’s** Iliad.
**No, not Homer Simpson.

This was going to be a really quick post about buzzwords, fads & web promotion which has turned into a bit of an epic, if not an outright Geek Tragedy. 

And so, last but by no means least, we come to SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).

‘Ah! That fairest of web promotion maidens wafting the sweet perfume of search engine success in the direction of eager online business owners.’

Like an experienced stripper teasing her audience with tantalising glimpses of what is to come before shedding each layer of clothing with deliberate slowness, she draws in her admirers, prompting each member of her audience to leave as many bank notes as possible in her custody before the show ends.

Unfortunately for many SEO customers, the show is over all too soon, the drinks are overpriced and the stripper isn’t much to look at once she gets her kit off.

Don’t get me wrong.
I have nothing against ethical SEO companies working to genuinely improve their client’s search engine rankings and achieving long-term results.
My problem is with the fly-by-night SEO crowd which employs a fast-talking sales force and plays on prospective customer’s fears, paranoias and ignorance before absconding with a load of their cash without delivering any results whatsoever and giving the rest of the industry a lousy reputation in the process.

When I first became entangled in the computer industry (well before the launch of Alphaworld), the internet was a meeting ground for geeks, nerds and scientists. Later, as the internet began its evolution into the buzzword-laden global mass-marketing leviathan it is today, we used to call it ‘web promotion’ or even ‘website promotion’.

Then, during the course of 1999, some clever American bugger (there is still an argument about which one) coined the phrase ‘Search Engine Otimization’ and the rest, as they say, is Home Economics.

Still… In spite of my lengthy rant about buzzwords and Americanisms, there is a ray of light upon the internet horizon.
If current trends persist, there may just be a movement on the web leading back to the ‘old values’ (he says laughingly) of providing visitors with the information they are looking for instead of simply spamming them onto a web site in the vain hope that, although they were actually looking for a new lawnmower blade, they could do with some Viagra after all.

Food for thought?
Let’s hope that ‘Authority Site’ turns out to be more than another buzzword.

So you’re gonna spam a blog, eh?

After all; it’s easy, isn’t it?

All you need to do is rip off someone’s articles, post them as “original content” in your blog and interspace their paragraphs with meaningless links to whatever the trash site of your choice happens to be so as to  increase its link popularity.

But what of the human tragedy and sheer misery this approach causes, not only to the article’s authors but also the poor saps unfortunate enough to blunder along in search of something worthwhile to read?

No, you’re right.
To hell with tragedy and misery.
Nobody gives a damn about those anyway*.

*Unless they happen to make headline news.

Well… as nobody cares about the suffering of hapless article authors or unsuspecting readers, let’s take a quick look at what this particular approach to blogging actually achieves.

The theory (as close as I can make out) seems to be getting a wagon-load of incoming links to their sites without the actual effort of providing ‘value for visitors’ or having the hassle of building quality links in a sensible and coherent fashion.

Whilst on the face of it, blog spamming might seem like a good way of getting those all important inbound links, the approach is fundamentally flawed in a number of ways.

For starters there is the old ‘duplicate content‘ trap.
Since these brainiacs haven’t even gone to the trouble of writing something by themselves (written language not a strong suit I guess), all they’re doing is propagating content which has already been indexed by search engines a thousand times elsewhere and will hardly be counted as ‘original’ by any visiting search engine spider.

Then there is the sheer number of Spam-Links in the post.
Rather than taking the accepted and ethical route of wording their post in such a manner that a relevant link to their web site can be inserted into their text such as this utterly appropriate link to IceGiant web design (You see? It’s not hard.), blog spammers will drop in a link after every paragraph without considering that search engine algorithms have long since become wise to this rather old link spamming technique.

Smooth move, ExLax…
Here’s a little tip:
Any half decent SEO guide will give you a rough idea of what’s likely to be penalised and what isn’t, so you might want to do a bit of reading.

And of course, let us not forget the general public.
These days, most blogging sites offer bloggers and visitors the facility to report spam posts and, whilst not every visitor will go to the trouble of filling in a spam report form, you might be surprised at how quickly most of these posts are dealt with.

In the greater scheme of things, there is really precious little mileage to be had from spamming blogs; which makes me wonder just how long this particular fad will last.
Still… the spam trend now seems to be moving in the direction of Digg, Del.icio.us and even “gasp” the mighty YouTube, so maybe we’ll be left alone over here in due course.

I have long suspected that computers are infinitely smarter than humans and are merely biding their time.
This latest blog spamming craze has only served to convince me that my initial assessment is correct. 

Food for thought?
I’ll leave it to you.

The Kraut, The Bigwig and the Speed-Trap

Unlike Germans, who are famed for their subtle and well-developed sense of humour, Cypriot traffic police officers generally display few signs of impending hilarity.

A little while ago I was on my way from Larnaca to Paphos on the island’s west coast to meet a new client for an initial assessment of his needs.
The journey takes about an hour and a half and on this occasion I might have been just a teensey-weensey bit on the late side.

Since speed was of the essence (Well you don’t want to blow your first face-to-face meeting with a new client, do you?) I decided to wait for an opportunity to ’shadow’ a passing bigwig.

The theory is simple:
Wait for a large vehicle such as a 4×4 or MPV to race past you, then follow it closely, but not too closely.
Should some inconsiderate traffic policeman (and yes, before you say anything, in 16 months over here I have yet to see a policewoman*) have set up a speed trap, the large and usually expensive vehicle in front of you will brake sharply and bear the full force of the police’s wrath whilst providing a human shield, so to speak, for you to slow down behind without attracting attention.

*This is not strictly speaking true. There is at least one police-tealady in the canteen at Larnaca police station, although I’m not 100% sure she would qualify as a policewoman.

Be this as it may…
On this occasion there was no human shield forthcoming until I was well past Limassol, by which time I had more need for speed than an Olympic sprinter on ExLax; so when a brand spanking new Mercedes Limo cruised past me doing altogether too many miles per hour, I promptly planted myself behind it and settled into a steady pace.

Little did I realise that said Limo’s driver had obviously found his (or her) driving licence in a box of corn flakes, since after a couple of miles they changed lanes suddenly and without any obvious reason, just in time for both of us to be caught by a speed-trap cunningly concealed behind a large roadside shrub*.

*Cyprus Traffic Police have no sense of shame either and will often camouflage themselves to catch innocent motorists. Then again; with crime rates in the Republic being as low as they are, I suppose there’s nothing better to do.

Seconds later I found myself in the breakdown lane, a couple of yards behind my ‘human shield’ with the long arm of the law striding purposefully towards us.

To make matters worse, the officer paled visibly as soon as the limo’s window was lowered, apologised profusely and waved the driver on hurriedly.
I can only assume the car in front (which contrary to the old adverts was not a Toyota) contained a government minister, celebrity or possibly the local chief of police.

Needless to say that when this defender of the Republic’s roads then turned towards me, he was looking both extremely embarassed and angry.
Speed Trap Nightmare Scenario!

It has to be said at this point in time that I have sadly neglected my study of the Greek language since my arrival in Cyprus, thus leaving myself vulnerable to verbal attack by angry, embarassed officers of the law.
So after a short and somewhat ear-splitting tirade of what I can only assume represented the more ’ripe’ aspects of Greek vocabulary I responded in the only way I could think of; loud, slow German.

“Was wollen Sie von mir? Können Sie mir bitte den weg zum Bahnhof zeigen?“

This had a totally unexpected effect; it stopped my attacker dead in his oral tracks and left him looking rather baffled.
With hindsight, I think that at this point he was probably ready for just about anything except a Kraut asking him for directions to the train station (I am profoundly grateful he didn’t speak German).

What had started as a promising haul with two drivers at once was obviously turning into a ‘once in a career’ headache.
After conceding a few words of broken English I was informed (amongst much repeating and misunderstanding) that I was traveling at a speed somewhat in excess of local limits and should be more aware of my speed in future.

Eventually, after enduring a stare which calculated the amount of paperwork and awkward questions shooting me would cause, I was very firmly told not to do it again and to be on my way.
As I was pulling away, the officer seemed no less angry than he had been at the start of our encounter.
He did however seem less embarassed at this stage, looking as I recall, rather confused by what had just happened.

In conclusion, I would like to say a couple of things in all fairness.

1. I was horrendously late for my appointment that day, much more so than if I had stuck to the speed limit.
2. My heart sincerely goes out to the next person stopped by that particular speed-trap.

Food for thought?
There is a lesson in here somewhere…

Wheelchair Ramps for the Web?

Anyone who’s run across my articles online is likely to know that one of my pet subjects is accessible web design.

Most conversations where the topic of disability access on the internet rears its head will usually go something like this:

FP: “Accessible web design? What? Like wheelchair access or something?”
IG: “No (you foolish person), I’m actually talking about blind or partially sighted web users.”
FP: “Blind web users? How the hell do they see what’s on the screen?”
IG: “They can’t.  They’re blind, remember? They use Braille keyboards and software which reads a site’s content out loud so they can hear it.”
FP: “You’re winding me up.”
IG: “Not at all. Look it up online. The best known screen reader is called JAWS.”
FP: “Stop taking the p*ss. Jaws is that bloke out of that Bond film.”

Things normally deteriorate rapidly at this stage, as most people who know me are aware that I’m prone to the occasional wind-up such as sending my brother in law hunting up and down Colchester high street in search of the “Viking Helmet Shop” after making a rather convincing case at a party the previous night.

But that is another story…

In any case, whilst wheelchair access for the web is certainly a novel idea, the example above does illustrate the general public’s level of ignorance with regards to disability access on the internet or the available technologies to aid disabled web users. 

Let me get this straight; our technology has put a man on the moon (allegedly), given us enough nuclear weapons to destroy humanity several times over and produced the USB powered coffee warming plate, yet you doubt the existence of a simple piece of software which is able to read written text out loud?

Worse still, many internet professionals are still largely unaware of accessible web design standards or choose to simply ignore them since they are seen as too much hassle and an unnecessary expense during site development.
All in all this is a sad state of affairs, especially in light of the many promotional advantages properly implemented accessibility brings with it.

I recently found myself in a chat forum where someone was spouting on about the complete and utter irrelevance of disability access standards since blind internet users only account for, as he put it, ‘an infinitely small and completely unimportant percentage of total users’.

Sometimes I do ask myself whether ignorance is truly bliss, since the individual in question seemed anything but blissful.

Ok, to be fair, the disabled do represent a very small proportion of total web users, but this is not exactly a good excuse to totally ignore them, especially as every other aspect of society has to make provision to give the same levels of access regardless of a person’s disability.

If this is not a good enough excuse to make provisions, there’s always the comparatively little known fact that search engine spiders sent out by Google, MSN, YAHOO and others will view a web site in much the same way a blind visitor’s text only browser would and will therefore find the task far easier if disability access provisions have been made.
So… if you, as a web designer, ignore the needs of blind internet users you’re making a your own life difficult where web promotion is concerned.

I love the smell of poetic justice in the morning.

Furthermore, a recent court case launched by the National Federation of the Blind against U.S. online retailer Target.com has highlighted the fact that accessible web design can no longer be ignored by web-based businesses.

Should you want further information about disability access on the web, you can visit the World Wide Web Consortium site’s ’Web Accessibility Initiative‘ section.
The IceGiant web site’s article section also contains further reading material on the topic of Web Accessibility.

But enough of this.
It’s getting late and I have to talk to my brother in law about Bonsai Volcanoes.

Food for thought?
I think so.

How to get it wrong with article marketing

Oh my!

Where to start with this one…

As a buzzword, the term article marketing has gained no end of momentum over the past couple of years or so.
Much like an avalanche, things started in a very gradual manner a few years ago with a handful of clued-up writers providing valuable information to less knowledgeable individuals whilst craftily promoting their own web sites in the process.
Blinder!

Not only did these articles get spread all over the web and provide endless sources of fresh traffic to their author’s site(s), each article would also act as an inbound link to add to their overall link popularity score.
Double Blinder!

During the early part of 2005, the movement had finally gathered enough momentum to attract the attention of the mainstream promotion crowd, which promptly leapt upon the bandwagon with much gusto.
The result was a growing torrent of badly written (yet still mainly informative) articles joining the rest on its journey down internet mountain.

By itself, this would have been easily sustainable, had it not been for the appearance on the scene of the sort of monosyllabic slack-lipper who is incapable of writing even a bad article.
Aided and abetted by shoddy pieces of software* promising to ‘Rewrite Articles Automatically’ to produce original content, these idiots are flooding the web with a barrage of toot which is not even remotely readable - in the full expectation of getting a huge number of inbound links to boost their site’s standing with the major search engines.

Here’s a quick newsflash: “Keep on waiting for those inbound links boys and girls, because nobody in their right mind will want to embarrass themselves by subjecting his or her visitors to the kind of incomprehensible waste you’re producing.”
“Oh, and if you’re relying on automatic links, these aren’t really worth anything much in the greater scheme of things, so you’re wasting your time there as well.”

A well written, authoritative article will still get far more exposure and expert standing than an entire week’s worth of automatic output.
If software could write coherent articles, authors and journalists would be out of business.
The last time I looked, they were still honourable (sort of) and well paying professions. 

*These programs rely mainly on substituting synonyms and jumbling the original’s grammar to produce something ‘original’.
On a readability and comprehensibility scale from 1 to 10 they score somewhere around minus 267.

Now, as this avalanche is nearing the unsuspecting village at the valley’s bottom, it is a mess of blinding spray, sticks, boulders and other assorted detritus which hits the unsuspecting web-mountain folk full in the face and buries them under a heap of meaningless junk, to suffocate slowly amongst the nonsense and grammatical errors whilst searching for something worthwhile.

Thank heaven for Alpine Rescue in the form of Social Networks like Digg and Delicious which allow users to rescue worthwhile efforts leaving the rest buried under a pile of their bretheren.

Food for thought?
Damn Right!

What’s in a passport? The cost of Biometrics

Although I don’t normally make a big deal about it, I am in fact a Kraut.

Sorry about your chippies and all that.

If it vill help I kan type wizh a German akcent, but zhat vill only make it hard to read.

Anyway, as all you Brits out there will be well aware, we Europeans (See? We’re all friends now.) are now living in the age of Biometric Passports.
Whilst I could say plenty about biometric identification being just another way for Big Brother to keep track of us all that little bit better, my point approaches this topic from another angle.

If we’re all one big, happy family with one government, one set of laws and one red European Passport (one each obviously, not one between all of us), why are the British charging such outrageous prices for this document compared to us Krauts?

• British European Biometric Passport – Cost £66.00 (€97.66 approx.)
  If the passport is issued by an embassy, such as the one in Cyprus, this fee rises to about £96.0o.
• German European Biometric Passport – Cost €59.00 (£40.00 approx.)
  The German embassy in Nicosia will quite happily issue the same passport for approximately £49.00

It’s the same type of passport, except for the fact that the German one is so much more stylish you understand, the same type of biometric identification, the same everything.
There is no place your British passport can get you into which our German one can’t (although you’ll probably be a bit more popular than us lot when you get there).

Do I detect the subtle aroma of ‘Rip-Off Britain’?

If anyone actually bothers to read this and manages to look past the fact that it was written by a ‘Hun’, I would love to hear your opinions on this matter, since it is just another example of the British government taking advantage of the country’s citizenry.
Small wonder that so many of you are emigrating away from the place.

Also… what are the passport fees for other European countries?
It could be quite entertaining to find out, since most of us will rarely look beyond our own borders to see what other countries are up to.

Food for thought?
I jolly well hope so.

Domain Name Comedy – The Joy of Sex?

I was talking to an old friend/colleague in the UK the other night when the topic of comedy domain names reared its head.

The fact is that by design or error, there are more than a few domains out there, jam-packed with the juicy goodness of innuendo or outright misunderstanding.
In most cases, the sites belonging to these domains are ’serious’ enterprises, as is the case with Cumbria Storage Systems Ltd in the United Kingdom; a company which represents itself online with the name cumstore.co.uk.

Ok, I admit that this is hardly an original topic, but it makes for a cheap laugh nonetheless.

Most of us have heard of the Sex Change domains (oddsexchange.com, veteransexchange.com, kidsexchange.com, etc.) or the rapist finder (sorry, I meant to say therapistfinder.com of course), but alas, the rot runs much deeper than that.

After having a bit of a look around, I’ve put together an initial top 3 of comedy domain names.
If anyone finds other, even more unfortunate domains, I’d love to hear about it.
Nothing gets a cheap laugh quicker than an innuendo or a reference to sex organs (powergenitalia.com; see?).

• Mole Station, a 2000+ hectare sheep and cattle property in Tenterfield, New South Wales is also home to a nursery specialising in the cultivation and sale of native Australian plants.
  So far so good.
  It’s at Mole Station and it’s a Nursery, so what better name to call it than molestationnursery.com?
  Maybe in light of the recent global paedophile exposures (no pun intended), they could have thought about it before buying that particular domain.
• Unsurprisingly, site number two is an American offering, although on reflection, I am not entirely certain they didn’t do it on purpose to take advantage of the publicity the name generates.
  In any case, this company which manufactures customised pens for businesses around the United States, trades under the name Pen Island (You can see what’s coming a mile off, can’t you? [once again no pun intended]), so when they needed a web site, the obvious name was chosen; penisland.net.
• And finally…
  You want MP3s?
  You want Hits?
  mp3shits.com
  There’s not really a busting lot which can be said about that.

Whilst nothing feels quite the same as having a cheap laugh at someone else’s expense, I cannot help but wonder if the sites I’ve listed haven’t benefited from their kooky names.
As they say: “All publicity is good publicity.”

Then again, although the molestation domain name is still active, the official URL has now been changed to molerivernursery.com, so maybe someone finally noticed.

Food for thought?
I rather doubt it.

The IceGiant has landed; with a bellyflop as usual

So here it is; just another blog launched by a web developer in the vain hope it will increase his web site’s search engine performance and bring in a multitude of new clients?

Not really…

While it’s true that everybody and his brother have been
flocking to blogging (whoever came up with that one?) in order to boost their web site’s performance, this will be more of a tongue in cheek look at human nature and the continuing tendency for the commercial moo cows on the web to jump on the latest bandwagon without any real understanding of what the hell is actually going on.

And trust me, there are an awful lot of moo cows out there, happily following the nearest Judas Goat into the slaughter house, figuratively speaking of course.

Then again; by and large, some web designers, developers and especially SEO professionals (these have a special place in my heart) are not exactly blameless where the present situation is concerned.
With what is best described as a ‘Secret Squirrel’ attitude, a certain proportion of operators in the web promotion industry seem to positively revel in the secure knowledge that they know something their clients don’t.

Strangely enough though, this quasi-magical SEO knowledge is rarely grounded in anything more than educated guesses or the instructions of promotional software which tells ‘the professionals’ what they should be doing.

But what the hell… as long as the customer doesn’t know; who cares, right?

Damn!
Did I say this thing was going to be tongue in cheek?
Sorry about that; I shall endeavor to be a bit more humorous in future.

The fact is that although most operators in the web design and promotion industries are competent professionals, there is a small percentage of cowboys which has given the rest a bad name.

Then again, these days it’s usually easy to spot black hat operators in this game.
They’re the ones who give over-the-top guarantees and refuse to discuss any aspect of their methods.

If confronted with such an individual, my advice would be to avoid eye contact and make good your escape before they get their hands on your cheque book.
In extreme cases, resort to the nearest heavy object.

Seriously though; there really is no need for operators in the industry to take the ‘Secret Squirrel’ stance.
Ultimately, the overwhelming majority of clients have no interest in discovering industry secrets or indeed any desire to learn about the more technical aspects of things.
They are merely looking for competent professionals to carry out the required task and deserve to be treated as valuable clients rather than idiots.

Food for thought?
Damned if I know.