Everything Else

Web Geeky has been launched. It is a new search engine, internet marketing, and web design/development news community with a Digg-like interface. I think this is the beginning of the vertical news community type sites in this subject matter.

In the interest of full disclosure I should point out that I am a l33t editor at Web Geeky which means I help sweep up and wash out the tea cups before closing.

Gurtie spills the beans as to what Web Geeky is about. Well sorta, I think they don't want to put forward too many pre-conceived notions about what the community will be and just let it evolve.

Here is what I would like to see: 1. More reporting on good marketing/seo forum threads, 2. More reporting on good quality SEO blog posts - not sensationalistic stuff but the good solid posts. 3. Discussion.

It will be interesting to see where the first Web Geeky-it links appear.

You can now create and download your own free SEO trading cards at SEOTrumps.com. Here is one I created of myself.


I kind of get amazed at what Gurtie and Chris of GHN can come up with and how fast Chris can code and Gurtie can design. My hat is off to them both. Anyway SEOTrumps is great fun and a good laugh. I might just have to buy a color printer to print out my own set.

Source: SearchGuild

Michael Martinez has a new SEO blog called SEO Theory which replaces his previous Google Says blog. I always thought Google Says was too narrow a topic for Michael, and I always felt he was too constrained by it. Michael Martinez can talk intelligently about a wide range of topics and seo theory is a better fit, IMHO. It is already an interesting read.

I have listed SEO Theory blog in the web development directory.

Why does general directory submission persist as a link building technique? Because it is easy for people that want or need simple answers to understand. "Submit your URL to these directories and it will be alright." People want simple answers, when they have to do the work themselves.

Also directory submission is for shy people, it's like put-the-package-on-the-front-step-ring-the-doorbell-and-run submission and, most newbie webmasters are shy because they are on unsure ground. There is none of the negotiation required for reciprocal link exchanges and having to converse via email with a real live human.

John Andrews asks over at Threadwatch.org about SEO and The Curse of Boredom.

SEO has been changing reliably ever since I went solo, helping to keep back the boredom but I gotta say, innovation has sure slowed down and with this 2 horse race (Google and EveryOtherEngine). Things are feeling mighty stale.

This is something I have thought for some time. I have no illusions that the vast majority of traffic, comes via search engines, but IMO discussing the search engines and discussing SEO has become boring.
Now I am not an SEO and most of the webmasters I deal with are in the hobby categories launching science fiction, mystery, horror related websites. It seems to me that most of the webmasters in that audience have neither the time nor the desire to learn the increasingly more complicated art of SEO given the need to make a crawlable website. This is one of the main reasons MySpace is so popular.

So how do these hobby sites get traffic?

1. Links (exchanges, "affiliates", cliques, natural linking) - They have a vague understanding that links help in search engines but they know people do eventually click on links.

2. Webrings - Traffic from all sorts of webring hosts has slowed to a crawl these days but some traffic from very tightly defined rings is still important because other webmasters surf the rings so it can help in natural link development and the few visitors are pre qualified. However Webring.com is starting to go for a paid membership model which may well freeze out most webmasters.

3. Blog post links - blogs and CMS sites, RSS and the concept of constant content generation with links, is swiftly replacing the old static web page Geocities model of website. Includes link baiting.

4. Directories - once upon a time everybody knew what a web directory was. But a new generation of web users and webmasters is here who are totally ignorant that directories devoted to their topic even exist and that they can list their site in them. This is a marketing challenge for niche directory owners. With that said, a well run niche directory can generate some good traffic for sites listed.

5. Viral marketing - print your URL on your books, ebooks, print advertising, email signatures, etc.

6. Social networking - this is very similar to blogroll networking. It works because it is intuitive. The nice thing is it cuts Search engines out of the equation. The bad part is that, like blogging, it takes a lot of time. This is the area I think needs to be explored much more.
Search and Non-search traffic Combined?
I think the solution for hobby sites is going to be some sorts of combination of search engine traffic and non-search traffic (see above) working together. I am not sure what this will look like but I think it is what I want to return to talking about*, because talking about search engines alone is boring me to tears and is missing my target audience. See the demand for traffic is the constant, and if people do not, can not or will not learn how to get it from search engines they will either try other ways or give up.
Am I totally wrong, or am I right in thinking I (we) need to seriously explore web marketing by other means. Or maybe you are already there and know all about social network marketing?



* The truth is back in 1998 I used to talk about, explain and even publish a newsletter detailing most of the above methods back when search engines were not very good at finding or ranking websites. I later gave it up as search engines improved and seemed to sweep all other sources of website traffic away.

Two new interviews of Searchking founder Bob Massa:

Bob Massa Interview by UKGimp (who has a real talent for interviews).

Bob Massa - An Interview by John Scott.

Source: Threadwatch

Both interviews are very good but this part caught my eye in the interview with UKGimp where Bob talks about relaunching the Searchking network of search portals:

We are only days away from launching the network again including hosted portals and free portals. I still believe there is value in providing individuals and companies with the tools to build informational resources for a topic specific market. All they need is the tools and the support.

In some ways I still think Bob had a good idea with a search portal network after all the idea is not that far away from the weblog networks of today. But any directory network needs to have an income and revenue sharing component built in and that revenue needs to come from more than just pay for review fees - it needs a solid targeted advertising model too.

My friend and co-moderator with me at Spider Food Forums has a new search and SEO related weblog. First up is an interview with DaveN.

Congrats to UKGimp.

I deal a lot with books, ebooks, authors and publishing. One thing that has been pointed out about print book publishing is that the editors no longer decide which books get published, the marketing department does and that there is a warning there for ebook publishers to keep the editors in charge.

The way this relates to the Web:

Marketers decide which sites get the highest ratings in the search engines. Search engines are all about marketing. Per Searchengineblog.com:

If you do no SEO whatsoever, but market well, you can get a site ranking in the serps in days, not months. Getting users to bookmark sites, talk about sites, visit sites, engage with sites (marketing, in other words) is the way forward.

The editorial controlled Web was one driven by directories like Dmoz, which has editors deciding which sites are noteworthy based (theoretically) on quality.

It is important to remember that search engines are marketing machines and that the algo and software programs of the search engines are not a judge of true quality, but that they are driven by marketing forces. The second thing to remember, is that marketing devolves to the lowest common denominator and that further undermines quality. It is an essential weakness of search engines.

Related: SEOBook - Marketing Art on the Web.

Kim had a great post that took me down SEO memory lane last night. Of course Kim is responding to other posts by: Andy, Danny, stuntduble, Rand and Graywolf.

I think I share a lot of Kim's feelings for SEO in the old days in that there were so many engines and directories that it was endlessly facinating to learn how each one worked and then measure traffic from them. Even small general search engines and directories provided some traffic back in those days because most people still explored the web by surfing instead of searching.

Anyway, in the midst of this conversation something Danny Sullivan said got me thinking:

But it's also important to remember that if we do have A-Lists, B-Lists or whatever, no one's really going to completely agree on them. There are people at WebmasterWorld who simply live in that space look up only to those in the community there. Pick another forum, and you'll find the same.

Now the interesting thing is that there are certain people - voices - that I have found in the SEO community and I have pretty much kept reading their posts even though the communities where they hang their hat have changed over the years. I mean a lot of finding the good advice at SEO forums is about filtering out those that know nothing and finding those that are worth listening to even when all they have is a hunch or a theory. Not all these SEO and designers are famous, many like to fly under the radar, but these are the people whos opinions I have come to respect over the years. SEO forums rise and fall, but I find myself reading more at those communites where these folks congregate even though that has changed over the years. Of course it's all fluid - new people get added to my list and some people drop off, I have never met any of them and I have only had real conversations with a few, but as I look back there is a group of names that when I spot one I still stop and read.

Reminds me of the retirees my Grandfather used to meet for morning coffee most weekdays, over the years the cafes in the little twon would change, new faces would join and others disappear but there was always a group of duffers getting together somewhere for breakfast and coffee and some good gossip. heheh.

As I look at my stats I can see several key differences between what people searched for in 2001 and what they search for now in 2005. Back in 2001, I could get an easy 100 -120 visitors a day just for "science fiction search engine" (without quotes) across all engines, with ranking that were worse back then than they are now. You don't see that kind of traffic today. People don't look for specialized search engines, the same way they did 5 years ago. Google and Inktomi fed engines led for most of that traffic.

Given that everything is the same or better, it just seems that searching habits have changed.

I also notice a marked decrease in content site webmasters looking for niche directories to add their URL's too. I wonder about that, back when I started:

1. Most directories were free.
2. Search engines were not that good.
3. SEO was still a lot about submitting it was a part of the culture.
4. Google had not destroyed all competition.
5. The quality sites in the web were always listed in directories.

I do not think content webmasters look for directories as much, the main people that are looking are SEO's, commercial webmasters and submission spammers.

Now, this is neither good nor bad, and this is not to say that a well spidered well optimized niche directory does not get traffic from the search engines. Traffic can be very good indeed - but it is different traffic - people searching for different things and different keyword phrases than they used to.

Michael Martinez has a good post wherein he tries to explain the whole Google Trust and reputation thing:

Google can flag pages in its index as "Trusted", "General", "Penalized", or "Delisted (Do Not Show)". As many people have found, pages can "drop out of the index" but still be listed. That is, a page's URL will be returned for queries but no title or description are provided. These listings are regarded as "partially indexed" and often reflect pages that have not been recently fetched. Google knows about them through links. Activating SafeSearch in its most secure setting filters out uncrawled listings, but they are neither delisted nor penalized.

Previously speculation about this has been fragmented and scattered about many different forum threads and blog postings Michael Martinez tried to pull it all together into his take. Read the whole thing.

This sort of reminds me of the old Inktomi Best of the Web (BOW) index.