I was searching Google the other day for something and I had a hard time locating it. However, I saw a domain name which really looked promising so I wanted to get there. However, Google shipped me to some strange page with no links to home which really sucked… Well, for about 5 seconds until I used uppity (a firefox addon which allows you to go higher, like the windows explorer up button, pretty useful thing).

But that got me thinking, why doesn’t Google give us the ability to go straight to the homepage? I mean it would only take a small link near the URL to take us to the domain. And there’s a lot of cases where people remember an article so they search for that but what they really want is the main page. I know it’s a small thing to think about but I would find that useful.

Wouldn’t you? Lemme know

Now to keep this short, it’s the weekend Just a thought I had so I thought I’d share it with you. Then again, we could ask Gleb to add it in the next SeoQuake plugin.

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It’s not like this is any news, but it’s been speculated, and pretty easily proven as well that meta keyword tags are as useless to SEO as putting a 1500 keyword list at the bottom of the page: it may have worked in 1994, but not today. However, people still use them as there have been some cases where if the word was in the body text and meta keywords tag it gained a place or two.

Just to make it clear, Google doesn’t even bother with them. At all. Seriously. I’ve made my own tests and Google doesn’t care what you write there. Yahoo seems to, but in a limited way, and who cares about MSN anyway. But all in all, even if they do show up in Yahoo, they tend to have a really limited weight.

However, the legal field tends to misguide people into understanding that meta keywords are like billboards and that by adding a trademark into them you are in some way violating the safety of that brand because you’re telling people you’re them. I mean in theory that’s viable, even if it’s a longshot, but in practice those meta have nothing to do with that. I mean if someone’s searching for Coke, why shouldn’t Pepsi have a say in it. On the other hand, what’s Pepsi to do with people who search for Coke products? It’s debatable, but as a court has ruled recently, it seems meta keywords have zero to do with search optimization.

And that brings us to the main story here, it seems there was a lawsuit around 18th of April, Standard Process vs. Dr. Scott Banks (pdf file) where someone claimed“trademark infringement and false designation of origin” . It all started when the doc was denied resale rights to the products of Standard Inc. because they get their panties in a crunch if they’re sold online. All’s ok here, the doc resold them from pharmacies etc but kept the logo and stuff like that on the site (which I’d find normal since he sells their products) but he was forced to take them off because they “created the false impression that Dr. Banks was affiliated with Standard Process” which was again bad. He even went as far as to include a disclaimer that he’s got nothing to do with them.

However, the guys still sued him and it was their job to prove that they had a reason. But what we’re interested in is “Dr. Banks used Standard Process trademarks in the metatags of his website“. However this was a straightforward case where it was shown that “modern search engines make little if any use of
metatags.”. So a court has ruled that meta tags are literally unimportant. Also, it was seen that even when people search for the keyword and visit the doc’s site they get the original products, and also the doc is not a direct competitor.

It’s an interesting case so I advise you to read the entire PDF from the link above to see more details but all in all the bottom line is simple: don’t bother with meta tags. Actually, my advice would be don’t use the keywords tag anyway since a you don’t want to give your keywords to your competitors and b they aren’t useful for anything…

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For those following the blog, I’ve attended a conference about branding this Wednesday through the kindness of the people from Landor (actually I think it was Seed Consultants) after they liked my posts on online branding and brand protection.

The only thing I can say is it was really great, I mean the speakers were pros, and you really felt they knew what they were talking about. It was a great event, and there were some nicely done slides (for some colours were off and for some there were some detailed graphs of which you couldn’t really understand anything, but otherwise they were in excellent shape).

I loved the way they spoke, with passion, giving us an introduction in basic, simple notions, but which were really saying something. It was nice and I enjoyed it, although it did feel a bit like an ad for Landor and how awesome they felt they were. There was also a lady from the competition which asked a question which was rather rhetorical (giving her opinion that simple packaging was impossible to make here - which is crap if you ask me) and did not accept any of the answers (of which some were indeed vague) and then proceeded to waltz out of the room annoyed.

However, that was in no case the highlight of the conference, and there were 5 main portions. First we had a lengthy presentation from a man named Andrew who had the most convincing presentation of all because he looked like he had a lot of experience talking to people. He had a flawless presentation which was impeccably timed with the slides, and it was about the position of a Chief Brand Officer (CBO). While this role is rather ubiquitous, the name was chosen this way to represent the fact that the branding consultant (to use a more down to Earth position) is supposed to be a very important person in a company and at the same level if not higher than the CEO. And this is because the CBO should coordinate all the company’s efforts because branding is not a shallow thing, it must be embraced by all the people in the company and come out at all the touch points with the customer. An interesting principle but I’m sure that’s what all the people in the company feel. I’m sure marketing feels they’re the most important, and so does production, PR, sales, and even finance… While I agree there should be a free hand to branding, I don’t agree it should be the oh-so-important part. But they were selling a product so let’s move on.

Then a woman named Lori came with her presentation called Brand Engagement. And while the term is again one of those terms that make you go huh?, it basically means that all the people and processes in the company must be involved in branding. A great example they gave was that for people from the lower hierarchical level to embrace the new brand they gave them new uniforms (they were in petroleum mining). She talked about decision cards (basically a pamphlet which has a bit of advice for managers from the company as to how to take decisions in order to strengthen the brand - and not create a bad image in any way) and about brand books, and about brand values and about how basically people are what makes the brand and that they are the first to be convinced. And it’s true, people do make the brand, but as Andrew said, we must be careful that the CEO (or any other one person I think) not become the brand itself. Because then, if they leave, you’re screwed…

On we go and we had Alex who had a very very interesting presentation about design and the importance of symbols. I enjoyed it the most since I love design and it was exactly like a TED presentation (for those not knowing, go to TED.com and watch, you will be amazed…). It was a walk through history and into the meaning of signs and how symbols are so important and full of impact to us. He explained that just by using the heart symbol, a company saves a lot of money which it should’ve spent if wanting to convey the meaning of love otherwise. It was very interesting and ended with four clips about the future (one was Microsoft’s Surface table, one was that interactive bar you all know about, one was something I can’t remember and the coolest by far was something that he said was made by Intel and was a vision of the future of parties - there was instant iphone invites and videochat and everyone was connected, dancing in the street with headphones and to the outside world the party was silent - if you have any idea, please tell me because it was amazing).

And then there was Florian, who told us about brand names and packaging and going green and it was a really nice presentation but a bit less focused than the ones before. It was interesting and featured eye-tracking and the fact that on a package you can’t have more than two elements or people will get confused. It was also an interesting presentation, but you could see he was a bit less focused and experience than the rest at presenting.

The last part was Allen who was an american guy who didn’t even bother to come to the conference and just basically told us what was in the book they gave us.

All in all it was a really great conference, and I’m not doing it justice here, but it was really a western-styled conference with real pros talking about a hot subject which was really interesting and they really seemed to like it.

However, if there’s one thing I have to say against it, it’s that after it was all over, it felt like one big ad really, where they talked about how cool branding is and how necessary branding is, and how they have made cool branding, but without going into really specific items… And the videoconference was really one big ad for the book, which we already had so that was useless… I don’t know, I would feel ok if this were a free thing, they’re getting clients in exchange for their time, but for a conference with a rather large entry fee, I feel they said far too little about branding itself. It felt like something you write on a blog to get people to hire you but not at a premium priced thing. I shouldn’t be complaining since my entry was free, but still, otherwise the whole article would be too much of an ad, and I’m not that easy a sellout

I really loved it, and if you want me to go deeper into the specifics of the conference drop me an email, otherwise tomorrow there’s fifty-something tips about really good SEO and coming soon a case study about a customer who just didn’t get it… Hope you enjoyed the article and until next time, enjoy

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This week (April 23rd) there’s a really professional business conference at the J.W. Marriott in Bucharest and I wanted to go the moment I saw it was being held. There was this really teaser-like commercial on TV (which I rarely watch) about a branding conference and I was really interested in what it really wanted to say. I checked the website and it looked like a great thing to attend, but alas at a cost that was a bit high for my budget.

So I wrote a few articles on branding the other week, since I’m convinced that branding is to the online medium like advertising is to TV, something that fits the medium so well on so many levels. I sent them the articles (and nagged them with them a bit :)) and this morning I was thrilled to open my inbox and find an invite to the event free of charge. These guys are great. And since they deserve a bit of ad time they’re called Landor and they’re this big international branding firm that has supported some serious projects. Their website is Landor.com and the event’s website is BrandSimple.ro just in case you’re interested.

And, since they are really really great people they’re giving my friends and business associates a 10% discount for the conference. So if you’re in Bucharest, be sure to drop by the conference this Wednesday and get in for 10% less than the normal price.

The event is really great, featuring Landor execs from London, Hamburg and New York, and I’m simply thrilled to be able to attend. Especially after last week’s conference. I can’t wait to finally see what an international conference is really like, I’m thinking it will be like TED, but who knows.

And if anyone from Landor is reading this, thanks a lot guys, you’re great!

As for everyone else, I’ll let you know how the conference went on Wednesday, until then I don’t really know whether I have the time to write anything, got a bunch of projects lining up. Anyway, I promise you an SEO related post by Friday the latest.

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