Nowadays there are a lot of websites and blogs about SEO and also a lot of books, videos and free passes from gurus and so-called gurus. Hell, I’ll even admit sometimes I recycle other people’s stuff (although I prefer to call it commenting and the stuff I do swipe is really interesting and worth debating, and I also try to add a bit more that there was initially). But the point here is, SEO is a business, and like any business if you really want to make a buck, you need to be up with the latest stuff. And I mean zero-day things, not necessarily black-hat, or even gray-hat (if one could image such things) but the newest white hat stuff.

In my opinion all SEO is gray hat because although the purpose is to optimize a website and help Google deliver A-grade content to its searchers, usually you get to use techniques which fool the search engine into preferring you over someone who technically may have more of a right to be there. However, just to make things clear, you will never beat the true A-players, like wikipedia and established sites from 1981, but you may get close if you invest a lot of time and a lot of money.

Having said that, there needs to be a change in the way people perceive the whole SEO phenomenon, and by that I mean a sort of Kansas City Shuffle, if you’ve seen the movie. You go left when everyone goes right. We live in an age of information, and that means it’s hard to get a serious advantage when everyone can take one look at your source code and figure out hours of work you put in. As I explained in the meta tags post, there’s no point in letting everyone know what you do. Sure, you can set up a sort of honeymonkey to look at competitors and flag you when they do make a move and see what happens when you search for them (although that may be a bit… unethical). I’ve seen people make entire directories of keywords, just to see what is where on the web, and all for what? To keep posted about what X is doing and match that, and then match Y, and maybe beat them…

But truthfully, SEO is just the beginning… At least in the classical sense. SEO is what every website should do before anything else. SEO is what a website needs to start with, it’s a way of thinking it so that not only people can navigate it. It’s a way of making a website for the web, not just for people. But then, that site needs to grow… That’s why a lot of people have started adding social networking features, which is pretty stupid… I don’t care who else buys furniture at the local supermarket, that’s not a crowd I want to meet. Sure, if I’m shopping for my next DSLR or high-end watch I may want to find people to network with, but still, I just want to buy it and maybe gloat to others, but not online…

A website is not just a notice board for the company, it’s a linear way of thinking… I mean, think of a car dealership. A website is like that, almost, with a bunch of cars, a guy sitting at an office, and flyers. But he sells you the car, not just you walking around, that’s boring and unintuitive… A dealership offers you the chance to drive a car, why doesn’t a website? I would spend half a day playing with a website which allows me to watch a 360 degree video shot from inside the latest BMW going through Slovenian towns for example. I’m sure someone will steal this idea, but the main idea is that why not make a website at least as interesting and useful as a real shop… I know full well that a virtual drive test is not the same thing as the real thing but it’s close… It’s a way of fulfilling a customer’s expectations. I mean all sites are photos of cars, which was ok in magazine ads, but that was because you could not do more… And the Audi R8 was the most amazing thing when it premiered but now that I think of it, the whole theme of the website was it going round a track, and how many buyers will take it on a track more than once a year? None, they’ll all be rich hip kids going to discos in them… And just think of the social media implications this would have… letting you see 360 full motion video from a BMW, I’m sure many people would like it… And given the option to zoom in on the dashboard or the scenery, with realistic engine sound… My mouth is watering from the idea. I know I’ve veered off the path of SEO, but that is what SEO is actually about: content.

Reinvent content. Reshape the website to be more than a collection of flat ads running in a bland browser. Think of the web and design for it, don’t just recycle offline stuff… Thing like a magazine marketer and say “what can’t I do in a magazine” and do that on the web. Add stuff customers want to see, if you’ve got a budget make the experience as interactive as possible… Do more than just cleaning up XHTML…

I hope you enjoyed this piece and I’m so busy I’m not sure when I’ll be able to post again, just scower the archive, there’s a lot of interesting stuff in there…

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This is a quick post since I’m in a busy period right now, with projects and all that, so I don’t have the energy or the time to write as much as I’d like here. However, I’ll try to post at least twice a week.

In other news, I am now a certified Project Manager. Visit my Linkedin page for more details. (under education)

Click here to go to the article about Google.

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While browsing through the news in Miro I heard something beginning with Google so I had to check it out. It was called Google Friend Connect and I had no idea what it meant. However, I did get a hint that this thing (whatever it was) helped you add social media features to any site. Umm, okay, where do I sign?

So I Googled it and found the Google Friend Connect page which is amazingly found at google.com/friendconnect/; I know, unexpected. And upon entering that page you find out it’s in closed Beta, or Alpha, or Phi-Teta-Delta for all I care, but it’s not for mere mortals like us. But what is it about? Well, watch the video:

Ok, if you’ve lived through that whole huge thing I guess you know everything, but if not, here are the highlights:

• you can add the ability for people to become members, through simple integration of a script into the page
• people can use their various logins to enter (google account, facebook, orkut, opensocial, and i think linkedin was somewhere)
• you can add a rating, commenting, and sharing gadget to your posts
• people can access friends from their social sites (and send them stuff)
• people get notifications on their social site profiles about what you did on the sites you visited
• easy to sign up after first account config (just click accept and you’re in)
• you can add widgets made by other people
• google will steal your soul and trade it in for a lot of cash

It’s fun to think of the advantages such a thing will bring to your website so get on their mailing list and wait like the rest of us to get awesome advantages free of charge from Google.

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I thought I’d do a bit on how an SEO should be these days:

1. Coding smarty - while being an SEO doesn’t usually need you to be an AJAX guru, you need to have at least basic knowledge about HTML, CSS, XML, DHTML, as well as stuff like PHP, SQL and configuring Apache servers
2. Copyrighter by blood - no one can do SEO unless they know how to write content, because SEO is as much about search engine optimization as it is about human optimization, meaning that people need to love those titles so that they choose them from a million optimized titles
3. Marketer - an SEO needs to understand product placement, and target users, and how to include the offline marketing plan as well as branding into the website
4. Restless - sometimes SEO campaigns mean working three days straight with one hour sleep because you need to meet a deadline, or because you need to catch an indexing date (however sometimes you need to wait for a customer to give you content which means dolce vita)
5. A pretty good salesperson - I don’t know how it is where you come from but here people fail to see how SEO is better than online advertising, so you need to teach them like you would a six-year-old and you need to keep pestering them until they say yes. And then you need to justify the cost, etc.
6. An Internet fanatic - an SEO needs to keep up with a lot of data to keep up to date and beat other SEOs. also, he needs to know what tools to use when, and how to find different ways and techniques through which to promote the websites he works on
7. Ex-podcaster, ex-blogger, ex-youtube poster, because he needs to have a background in social media, and an understanding of the problems and opportunities it brings as well as a thorough understanding of how to adapt to fast moving tech discoveries
8. Not on myspace - while I understand that it could be a marketing tool (in the US), it’s a place for immature teenagers and embedded crap. What happened to the personal website? Connect how you want, but try to make it look good (like LinkedIn, or Twitter, or even maybe if there is no other choice Facebook)
9. Launcher of at least one viral campaign which went - experience is key and social media is really starting to offer its perks to those interested in investing in it; just don’t get too attached to one site, they’re not usually meant to last
10. 100% white hat - if there’s one mortal danger in SEO it’s black hat techniques which if not completely brand new and unexplored as well as permanently maintained and refreshed can totally ruin months of hard work making a site usable (i’ll post in a few days about position 60 penalty for buying links)

That’s just a quick list I made to give you some ideas, naturally there’s a lot more and maybe there’s room for a sequel to this list, anyway, leave a comment, let me know Don’t forget to subscribe to the feed or who knows what you’ll miss out on. You can also subscribe by email.