Remembering GeoCities (1995-2009)
I would be remiss if I didn’t make mention of the fact that Yahoo pulled the plug on GeoCities today. If you are wondering what GeoCities was, my best guess is that you weren’t around in the 90’s. Before social networks were all over the place, and before there were even web development firms and hosting companies all over the web, there was GeoCities…
GeoCities existed as a place where you could go on and host your free website, of course they were covered up with advertising that you had no control over, but it was a free website nonetheless. One of my fondest memories of GeoCities was all of the animated gif files that seemed to be synonymous with every page, and if you saw one that you didn’t have on your page, you became instantly obsessed with stealing it and calling it your own before any of your friends beat you to it.
I can remember having one of the guys that helped out with my computer business set me up a GeoCities page for the business somewhere around 1996 or so, it was extremely new at the time. Of course, as business websites go today, this was not what you would call a “business website” but to us, it was awesome!!! I think we even registered a domain name from Network Solutions (they were the only game in town at the time too) and we pointed it to our page to make us look even more professional. I wish there was some kind of way to go back in and time and see that page and see just how far we have come, it would be like the first chapter in a history book.
I can also remember having my own personal GeoCities page which would lay the foundation for the website you are on right now. I can also recall meeting some pretty intuitive pioneers online back in the day that were using GeoCities for everything from sharing their hobbies to pornography, the web was wide open back in the day, a lot less restricted than today in a lot of ways!
Sadly enough, I don’t think that GeoCities ever had a business model that would have worked, and probably the only people that ever actually made any money off of the project was probably the group that sold it to Yahoo back in the day. Once Yahoo took over the project I don’t think they ever did anything with it either in terms of making any money. I know that hindsight is 20/20 but had they had the vision of social networking before anyone else, this might be a completely different world we live in. There was a time when Yahoo was king, I can remember the first time that I ever heard of Google, most people didn’t have a clue what it was, there was also Lycos, Excite, and AltaVista, DogPile came along later as well. It’s a shame that they weren’t able to keep this running but I am not too sad about it all. There comes a time where sometimes things have to go away to focus on new and more viable products, and I guess in the end this is what happened with GeoCities.
Just for old time sakes, here are some of the funny animated gifs from back in the day…
What are some of you favorite memories of GeoCities?
Agile Messenger for the iPhone
My business partners and I frequently jump in between Google Talk and Microsoft Messenger to discuss projects during the day. When we are out of the office however we usually are forced to call one another if we need to ask a question about a project. In the past I have used a few mobile messenger applications that allowed me to connect to my partners at their computers using my MSN Messenger account or my Google account but I haven’t found one yet that does as good of a job as the Agile Messenger for the iPhone.
The Agile Messenger allows you to plug in your account information from MSN®, Yahoo!®, ICQ®, AIM®, GoogleTalk® and Jabber. It also does a good job importing your buddy lists from each of these services so you can easily see who’s online. The application also utilizes push technology so even if you are not in the application it will alert you if someone is trying to reach you for instant messaging.
With the Agile Messenger you can also do photo and video messaging. There is also a push to talk feature that allows you to use your phone as a walkie-talkie to send instant voice messages while on the road. It’s a little pricey but if you rely on messenger to connect to your co-workers, it’s pretty easy to justify. Here are some screenshots from the app that I have installed on my phone:
Click here to Learn More Agile Messenger in the App Store
Great Blog Content –vs- SEO
A while back I did a post on Social Saturation and Search Engine Optimization, in that post I emphasized how important it is to get your content onto the social networks. I was reading a post today by Dawn Foster at Web Worker Daily and she brought up some points that I also agree with and I wanted to share it w/ you.
In her post she mentioned a discussion panel that she was a part of where there were 2 content people and 2 seo people that do seo full time. She hit a home run in the first few sentences on this post and I could not agree with her more:
This weekend I was on an “SEO Smackdown” panel at our local WordCamp Portland. Two of us were from the content side, while the other two panelists were SEO experts. My take on SEO is that writing compelling, interesting blog content that people will want to talk about and link to will get you around 95 percent of the way to good search engine rankings. If you don’t have great content, SEO is not going to be very useful for you. You might be able to do some SEO trickery to get people to your web site, but if they aren’t impressed by the content when they arrive, they won’t stick around long enough to have any impact.
Now, I want to emphasize that I am not advocating abandoning SEO, there are some basic principles that you should adhere to, you can find some of my thoughts on SEO in a post I did a while back, that’s not what this post is about though. You should pay attention to key things such as page titles, descriptions, etc., but you should do that on everything you publish to the web. Much more than that though, you need to focus on your content. Here are some valid points that Dawn brought out in her article…
Write Great Titles
Keep in mind that you are writing titles for human beings, so your title should be catchy and convey the meaning of the post as a first priority. While you write the title, you should also be thinking about the keywords that people might want to use to find your content and make sure that you have included a keyword or two in the title. I’ll illustrate this with a couple of examples of good and bad titles.
- Bad: Dawn’s Thoughts for March
- Better: Analysis of Facebook and Twitter Demographics in March
- Bad: Day 1 of LinuxCon
- Better: Mobile Linux and Open Standards on Day 1 of LinuxCon
Write New and Interesting Content
Write content that people will want to link to and discuss. If you are rehashing the same stories as every other blogger, people are much less likely to read and respond to your content. Write posts that are new, fresh and unique with analysis and insight from your unique background and perspective. You can talk about a news story that other people are blogging about, but spend some time writing about your experiences and ideas that offer a different perspective than the rest of the crowd. Use research in new ways, interview interesting people, and talk about your experiences. By offering something new, people are much more likely to read your blog post and link to it, which is where the real SEO magic is found.
Include Personal Anecdotes
Nothing makes a post unique quite like personal anecdotes based on your experiences. I saw this first-hand when I started writing for WebWorkerDaily. I wrote what I thought was a brilliant post on using Yahoo Pipes and then I wrote a short, quick post about how I dread answering the question, “So, What Do You Do?” during the holidays when talking to non-technical family and friends. The “brilliant” post got a few comments and some traffic, but nothing like the short, personal story about how to answer that difficult question. Human beings read our blog posts, and personal stories resonate with people in a way that technical facts and figures never will.
I just thought that this was very good information and thought that I would share it w/ my readers. Of course, if you work in this industry you well know that getting clients to write content is a lot like pulling teeth, but the ones that do put forth the effort usually see the results from it.
Tools for Managing PPC Campaigns…
If you are using the Internet as a vehicle to market your products or services through PPC campaigns I strongly recommend ShoeMoney Internet Marketing Tools. And trust me, I know that when you are running PPC campaigns that you often find yourself on the front end getting ready to shell out some serious cash, and it’s intimidating. I also know that the last thing you are looking for when getting into PPC is another online service that is going to cost you money, but if you take into consideration that by investing in a service such as this it can actually save you money in the long run, or allow you to get the most bang from your investment, it really makes a lot of sense.
Managing PPC campaigns is a service that my partners and I have offered for a number of years now, and the sheer amount of buys that we have made on our clients behalf over the years is amazing, and the management fees that we have made from our clients for providing this service is substantial, so trust me when I tell you I would not recommend using anything that I didn’t believe in because honestly I would just assume to sell you our management services, but I know that in a lot of cases clients don’t have the budget to do PPC and to pay a company like ours to manage it for them, and I hate to see our neccessary management fees cut into what the client could be investing into PPC buys. But this program works, I have seen it in action and I can say that ShoeMoney know’s his stuff. Here are just a few of the features that come along w/ ShoeMoney Internet Marketing Tools that you should consider:
Generate Ads – Ever wonder if your competitors’ ads are working better than yours? With the PPC Ad Generator, simply input your keyword, display URL and click URL. Click the Generate Ads button and receive sample ad copy for that keyword. This ad copy comes directly from actual competing ads currently displayed on major search engines. Select the ads you like and save them for your future campaigns.
Manage Ads – Increase your efficiency by managing all of your PPC ads from one location. Use the PPC Ad Manager to create, edit and delete your saved ad copy. You can then export your ads to Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter.
Manage Keywords – Easily manage all of your keywords from one place! After using the ShoeMoney Keyword Generator, Grabber and Suggestion tools, use the PPC Keyword Manager to create, edit and delete your saved keyword lists.
Generate Keywords – Are you looking for great keyword ideas? Type a niche keyword into the Keyword Generator and create a list of possible PPC keywords. Once you’ve edited your keyword list, you can simply save it to your ShoeMoney Tools account.
Get Your Competitors Keywords – What if you could get your competitors’ keywords? Now, you can! Other people have tried to imitate this tool, but none with our accuracy. Use the Keyword Grabber to reveal all of the keywords being bid on for a particular domain.
Get Keyword Suggestions – You can get quality keyword suggestions from various search engines. But where else can you get keyword suggestions from multiple search engines all in one place? With the Keyword Suggestions tool, simply enter a base keyword and the tool will expand upon the keyword using five different databases including Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Ask and Cuil.
Build PPC Campaigns Instantly – Maximize your efficiency with the Instant PPC Campaign tool. After you have generated quality keyword and ad lists in your ShoeMoney Tools account, choose the lists you would like to use, name your campaign and determine your maximum cost per click (CPC). Ad files for your Google AdWords, Microsoft adCenter, and Yahoo Search Marketing advertising accounts are then instantly generated! Start earning more PPC cash now.
Build Local PPC Campaigns – Pay per click marketing on the local level is like shooting fish in a barrel! When people search locally, they typically use the keyword mixed with a zip code, city, state, or a combination. Input your keyword, zip code, and the radius you would like to target. With the Local Keyword tool, you can then develop a solid, local keyword list targeted towards specific geographic areas – perfect for local PPC marketing!
Find Local Keyword Competitors – Often times when people search for local businesses and services, they do so by searching for specific brands, stores, companies or professionals. By using ShoeMoney Tools’ Local Brand tool, you can find the names of local competitors to add to your PPC keyword list. When you’re done editing your list, simply save it to your ShoeMoney account.
Build Google AdWords Campaigns – Maximize your PPC profitability in four simple steps! With the Google AdWords Campaign Builder tool, you can instantly build a PPC campaign that gives you great, competitive results. First, select your campaign name and bidding options. Next, choose your keywords and keyword mixing options. Third, determine your display and click-through URLS. Finally, input your ad copy and click the Build PPC Campaigns button. Upload your campaign directly to your Google AdWords account and within minutes, you can start generating cash!
ShoeMoney Internet Marketing Tools
Tools for Managing SEO…
One of the popular services we offer our clients at Pleth is SEO, or search engine optimization. I know that lately I have made profound statements saying things like SEO has taken a backseat to social saturation, etc., but honestly SEO is still something that your company should take a look at and track pretty closely. One of the worst things that can happen for your online presence is for your search engine rankings to deteriorate, especially after all of the time and effort you have put into your rankings.
As I mentioned earlier, my partners and I manage SEO for our clients, and it’s something that keeps evolving over time. For example, things that we used to do a year or two ago to help our clients outrank their competition have changed dramatically in only a short period of time. But, for the most part there are things that remain constant also, these elements are somewhat easy to track. If you are a do it yourself SEO person, I have one set of tools that I recommend, and that’s it. These tools are provided by ShoeMoney. Here are a few of the high points included with the tools if you are interested:
Analyze Your Backlinks – More links equal higher search engine rankings! It’s that simple. The Backlink Analyzer tool allows you to see first-hand where your competitors are gaining links from and the exact anchor text being used in the links. Now you can use their same tactics! With this tool, you can also find out how people are linking to you and increase your rankings by contacting those sites that have misspelled your link.
Buy Valuable Backlinked Domains – Want to give your domain a boost in the search engine rankings? At the ShoeMoney Tools Domain Marketplace, you can find thousands of currently unregistered sites – each one with a valuable amount of powerful links pointing to them (including .edu, .gov., .mil, and .org). Purchase and redirect 5 to 6 of these domains to a site you already have in a particular niche for a ranking boost.
Find Backlinks – Want to see if a site is worth pursuing? Want to find some quality places to purchase links? Want to view your competitor’s backlinks? With the Backlinks Finder tool, simply type in a keyword for any niche. You will then be able to view the top 10 Google results for that keyword as well as each site’s backlinks along with corresponding PR and Alexa data.
Find Out Your Keyword Density – See how your competitors are using keywords and compare it to your current strategy. The Keyword Density tool allows you to compare one keyword and one domain against the top 10 Google competitors. The tool analyzes the keyword density of on-page text and also whether or not the keyword is in the title tag, meta tags and even heading tags. Improve your keyword strategy today.
Find Most Linked to Pages – Analyze any domain to see which pages are the strongest, or the ones with the most "link juice" from incoming links. With this tool, you can view the top 10 most linked to pages for a specified domain. Now you can see what sort of content is working for your site and others when it comes to gaining links.
Optimize Your Text – Ever wondered if your website copy was keyword rich? Most well ranking pages have at least 11 to 20 repetitions of a keyword. With the Text Optimizer tool, simply paste copy into the text box. Then input the keyword for which you would like to optimize the text. Within seconds, the tool analyzes any page or article text for that particular keyword’s density. Optimize your text today!
Find Your Outgoing Links – Before approaching a website about a potential link exchange or purchasing a link on the site, it’s good to see what other sites they have already linked to. With the Outgoing Links tool, enter a specific domain and you will instantly see all the websites this domain is linking to.
Track Your Keywords – Enter the domain that you would like to track keyword rankings for. After you have entered the domain you would like to track, enter the keywords you would like to track for that domain. The system will then determine what URLs rank for those keywords.
ShoeMoney Internet Marketing Tools
Yahoo CEO to Resign
I have to admit that I wasn’t too surprised when I learned yesterday that Yahoo Founder and CEO Jerry Yang was going to be stepping down as the CEO of Yahoo.
This comes on the heels of a wicked 12 months for Yahoo where they have seen their market share decrease sharply as well as a potential Microsoft merger fall through the cracks. All along I have felt that Yang was the sole reason that the Yahoo / Microsoft thing never happened and that’s an opinion I think I share w/ a lot of other Yahoo shareholders and employees. Employees make up a large part of Yahoo’s shareholders too so I bet that company morale this morning is at a 12 month high! This morning at the open, Yahoo shares were up! Someone tell Mark Cuban, he loves to bank on these search engines! (sorry couldn’t resist)
November 18, 2008 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Yahoo (www.yahoo.com) co-Founder Jerry Yang has stepped down as the company’s chief executive officer, ending a tumultuous almost year-and-a-half long post as the head of the second-largest US Internet-search engine company.
After being named CEO in June 2007, the Yahoo board of directors announced Monday that 40-year-old Yang will be replaced and will continue his former role of “Chief Yahoo!” and continue to serve on the board once his successor is found.
Yang has led Yahoo! through a strategic repositioning and transformation of its platform, marred by failed mergers and partnerships, and dropping stock prices.
Six months ago, Yahoo failed to negotiate a Microsoft (www.microsoft.com) merger, causing Yahoo’s market value to fall by more than $20 billion. Added to the company’s troubles has been its failed partnership with AOL (www.aol.com) and only two weeks ago, Google (www.google.com) walked away from an advertising revenue-sharing deal.
However, its value rose as much as 13 percent in Nasdaq trading following Yang’s resignation. Just half-an-hour after markets opened, Yahoo’s stock climbed $1.38 to $12.01, the largest gain in a month. Bloomberg reports that Goldman Sachs Group suspects Yang’s resignation may renew talks with Microsoft and other suitors.
“Over the past year and a half, despite extraordinary challenges and distractions, Jerry Yang has led the repositioning of Yahoo! on an open platform model as well as the improved alignment of costs and revenues,” Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock said in a statement. “Jerry and the Board have had an ongoing dialogue about succession timing, and we all agree that now is the right time to make the transition to a new CEO who can take the company to the next level. We are deeply grateful to Jerry for his many contributions as CEO over the past 18 months, and we are pleased that he plans to stay actively involved at Yahoo! as a key executive and member of the Board.”
Yang said that he also felt it was time for the company to transition to a new leader.
“From founding this company to guiding its growth into a trusted global brand that is indispensable to millions of people, I have always sought to do what is best for our franchise,” Yang said in a statement. “When the Board asked me to become CEO and lead the transformation of the Company, I did so because it was important to re-envision the business for a different era to drive more effective growth. ”
The CEO position could possibly be handed to current Yahoo president Sue Decker, however, Sanford Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay told Market Watch that former Time Warner executive Jon Miller will be a more likely choice.
Web Host Industry News | Yahoo CEO to Resign
Yahoo Email Vulnerability
This is yet another reason why premium email solutions, like those offered by Pleth Networks, are a wise investment even for personal usage over free hosted email solutions.
I ran across this security notice this evening on Netcraft and thought that it was a pretty big deal. If the media wasn’t buried so deep in the presidential race I suspect this would have been pretty well publicized but it turns out, most of you are probably learning about this for the first time here.
Turns out that Yahoo email user account information was recently exploited. Details of this exploit from Netcraft can be found below. I should also probably state for those of you that aren’t already aware that I co-founded a company, Pleth Networks, LLC, who sells a premium email solution for individual and enterprise level accounts. If you are interested in email solutions for your business or even a personal email account that you can have peace of mind about, click here to contact us.
Here’s some info regarding the exploit / vulnerability taken from Netcraft’s website.
The Netcraft toolbar community has detected a vulnerability on a Yahoo website, which (at the time of writing) is currently being used to steal authentication cookies from Yahoo users — transmitting them to a website under the control of a remote attacker. With these stolen details, the attacker can gain access to his victims’ Yahoo accounts, such as Yahoo Mail.
The attack exploits a cross-site scripting vulnerability on Yahoo’s HotJobs site at hotjobs.yahoo.com, which currently allows the attacker to inject obfuscated JavaScript into the affected page. The script steals the authentication cookies that are sent for the yahoo.com domain and passes them to a different website in the United States, where the attacker is harvesting stolen authentication details.
When websites use cookies to handle authenticated sessions, it is extremely important to protect the cookie values and ensure they are not seen by other parties. Cross-site scripting vulnerabilities often allow these values to be accessed by an attacker and transmitted to a website under their control, which then allows the attacker to use the same cookie values to hijack their victim’s session without needing to log in. This type of attack can be mitigated to some extent by using HttpOnly cookies to prevent scripts gaining access to the cookies — a feature that is now supported by most modern browsers.
Earlier this year, Netcraft blocked a similar flaw on another Yahoo website. The previous attack targeted a cross-site scripting vulnerability on Yahoo’s ychat.help.yahoo.com site, which was served securely using a valid SSL certificate, adding further credibility to the attack. The attacker used the vulnerability to inject malign JavaScript into one of the site’s webpages. Unlike the current attack, the injected code was sourced from a server in Spain, but also resulted in the victim’s cookies being stolen and transmitted to a PHP script on the same server.
Netcraft found that the Yahoo cookies stolen by the attacker would have allowed him to hijack his victims’ browser sessions, letting him gain access to all of their Yahoo Mail emails and any other account which uses cookies for the yahoo.com domain.
Simply visiting the malign URLs on yahoo.com can be enough for a victim to fall prey to the attacker, letting him steal the necessary session cookies to gain access to the victim’s email — the victim does not even have to type in their username and password for the attacker to do this. Both attacks send the victim to a blank webpage, leaving them unlikely to realize that their own account has just been compromised.
The Netcraft Toolbar protects users against both of these attacks, warning that the malformed Yahoo URLs contain cross-site scripting elements, and that the URLs have been classified as known phishing sites.
Netcraft has informed Yahoo of the latest attack, although at the time of writing, the HotJobs vulnerability and the attacker’s cookie harvesting script are both still present.
Ongoing Phishing Attack Exposes Yahoo Accounts – Netcraft
Governor Palin’s E-Mail Hack
See Added Notes Below:
There were two things that shocked me about Sarah Palin’s email account being hacked, the first was the obvious, that someone would do something so bold and absolutely crazy, ha. The other thing that really shocked me was that the Governor of a state would actually have a Yahoo email account, ha. This was the biggest shocker for me!
It is my understanding that this is was her personal account and not her official business or government email account.
I was showing to a friend yesterday how easy it is to locate these “brute force” password cracking applications on questionable websites and how easy they were to use to get into applications like email, etc.
Here’s an article that I found on Wired.com regarding the attack and some notes about the guy who hacked in:
A person claiming to be the hacker who obtained access to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s private Yahoo e-mail on Tuesday has posted a supposed first-person account of the hack, revealing the relatively simple steps he says he took to crack the private e-mail of the Republican vice-presidential candidate.
The story was briefly posted Wednesday to the 4chan forum where the hack first surfaced. Bloggers have connected the handle of the poster, “Rubico,” to an e-mail address, and tentatively identified the owner as a college student.
As detailed in the postings, the Palin hack didn’t require any real skill. Instead, the hacker simply reset Palin’s password using her birthdate, ZIP code and information about where she met her spouse — the security question on her Yahoo account, which was answered (Wasilla High) by a simple Google search.
The simplicity of the attack, of course, makes it no less illegal.
Source: Palin E-Mail Hacker Says It Was Easy | Threat Level from Wired.com
Source: Memo to US Secret Service from The Register
Added Notes: From The Register…
Updated Memo to law enforcement investigators tracking down who broke into Sarah Palin’s Yahoo email account: Gabriel Ramuglia might be a good place to start.
The 25-year-old webmaster and entrepreneur is the operator of Ctunnel.com, the browsing proxy service used by the group that hacked into the vice presidential candidate’s personal email account and exposed its contents to the world. While he has yet to examine his logs, he says there’s a good chance they will lead to those responsible, thanks to some carelessness on their part.
“Usually, this sort of thing would be hard to track down because it’s Yahoo email, and a lot of people use my service for that,” he told El Reg in a phone interview. “Since they were dumb enough to post a full screenshot that showed most of the [Ctunnel.com] URL, I should be able to find that in my log.”
Ramuglia got into the proxy business a few years ago, after schools began blocking access to an online game site he used to co-own. Pretty soon, people began using the proxy service to access YouTube, Gmail, MySpace, and dozens of other sites that are routinely blocked by IT departments.
To prevent abuse of the service – such as the occasional bomb threat or other illegal act that’s been known to happen – Ramuglia logs each user’s IP address, along with the time and web destination. That often isn’t enough to track down people who access extremely popular websites. But in this case, the perpetrators included a whole string of random-looking characters when posting screenshots of Palin’s hacked account. That will probably be enough for him to pinpoint the proverbial needle in the haystack.
The information at the moment is on a server at a Chicago colocation site owned by FDC Servers. Logs are automatically flushed after seven days, so the clock is ticking for law enforcement, who presumably are under intense pressure to protect the privacy of a candidate for the White House. Of course, there’s always the possibility that Ctunnel.com was only one of multiple anonymization services the email hackers used to cover their tracks, but there’s only one way to find out.
Ramuglia said if he is contacted by law enforcement officials he will probably give them the information they seek. At time of writing, he’s received no inquiries from any law enforcement agencies, he said.
The breach of Palin’s account “is pretty clearly against my terms of service,” he said. “As exciting as it is to be in the news, this is not the type of activity I can encourage by any means.”
Update
Within hours of this story posting, Ramuglia received a phone call from an FBI special agent from the Anchorage, Alaska, field office.
“He just wanted to make sure I wasn’t losing the logs,” Ramuglia said, referring to the special agent. The two are scheduled to speak again soon to coordinate the turning over the logged information.
What’s more, Wired.com has a story here detailing a now-removed post to the 4chan website in which a person claiming to the hacker who accessed Palin’s email “used only a single proxy service to hide his IP address.” Oops. ®
AOL to Yahoo? Microsoft?
In a move that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Time Warner is poised to sell off AOL in separate pieces and will reportedly separate its advertising and content platforms with its dial-up business to get the most out of the poor sucker that acquires it.
According to those close to the move, Time Warner believes AOL may be more valuable to them once it’s separated and it believes that it can make about $10 billion off the sale of its parts. But as most analysts correctly point out, that’s probably not going to happen.
“The Yahoo discussions have valued AOL at around $10 billion, excluding the dial-up business,” The Wall Street Journal is reporting. “In contrast, Time Warner’s current stock price — around $14 — suggests a value of no more than $3 billion to $4 billion for the ad-sales and content businesses, some analysts say.”
Wishful thinking or an attempt to capitalize on the Yahoo malaise? Most reports suggest both Microsoft and Yahoo are looking to acquire AOL, but Microsoft, obviously in no danger of worrying about money anytime soon, knows that AOL isn’t worth the $10 billion valuation Time Warner is trying to place on it.
But for Yahoo, a company that has been rocked by more controversy than any other tech company in the past year, an AOL acquisition may be just the right move to allay some shareholder fears and keep Carl Icahn off Jerry Yang’s back. And perhaps that’s what Time Warner is banking on.
AOL may look like an attractive target for some companies that are trying to expand their presence online, but what does Yahoo have to gain through an acquisition of Time Warner’s stepchild? It’ll acquire a company that’s having serious trouble on the Weblogs, Inc. front and is desperately trying to find its way as a dial-up company in a broadband world. And although it is profitable, it has been held back by declining growth and revenue over the past few years and its prospects for growth are all but lost.
This is nothing more than another desperate plea by two companies with two totally different strategies. Time Warner is desperate to do away with AOL and finally put that problem behind it and Yahoo is desperate to acquire AOL to make its shareholders believe its management knows what it’s doing. And if that happens, only one company will lose: Yahoo.
If any company acquires AOL, it’ll be Yahoo. And not because Yahoo has grand plans for the future of this dilapidated firm, but because of its desperation to satisfy shareholders. I think Microsoft is too smart for this acquisition; at that price, AOL simply isn’t worth it. But Yahoo doesn’t have the luxury to simply walk away that easily. And in no time whatsoever, the company will be paying too much for too little.
Time Warner Sets the AOL Hook, Yahoo Bites
My Personal SEO Research Findings…
One of the most frequent conversations I have with my clients is about their Search Engine Rankings. I have been pleased to see the amount of interest they are taking in their websites organic ranking. By organic, I am referring to “natural” search results as opposed to paid rankings or pay per click / adword campaigns. I have been experimenting with some new techniques and strategies the past few months and I am going to summarize my findings here for those of you that might be interested, I also welcome your findings here as well. Also, I want to make mention that my company Pleth Networks, LLC offers SEO as well as SEP services to our clients on a paid basis, this is freebie info I am just throwing out there.
Beware of Anyone w/ All of the Answers!
One of the first things I want to cover here, (and it’s really a biggie in my opinion), is the vast assortment of so-called search engine experts that are out there. There are so many varying opinions out there today as to what works and what doesn’t work, etc. I was attending a conference last year in Chicago and sat in on two sessions discussing SEO, both were being conducted by folks I believe that are very credible folks in the industry. I couldn’t help but notice that not only did they contrast on a few things but they also disagreed strongly on a few big things. I can’t remember now w/out looking at my notes what exactly these issues were but they weren’t small things. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that there is so much information on the web regarding Search Engine Optimization, it gives us a wealth of things to try out, sometimes at our own expense though.
What about Keywords & Meta-tags?
Back in the day, keywords & meta-tags were all of the rage, they still are with a lot of people today, but my personal testing has shown me something slightly different. Keywords aren’t near as important as they might have once been, in fact I am of the belief right now that if you spend over an hour on your keywords while developing your website you have spent plenty of time on them. I know a developer right now that has completely abandoned keywords altogether. I haven’t gotten to that point quite yet, while they may not matter as much on Google, Yahoo, etc., there may still be some search engines out there that still look at keywords strongly, and who knows, one of those search engines may be the hottest thing a year from now. I don’t see where having keywords could hurt anything so I advise my clients to go ahead and put them in, can’t hurt anything…
I have also been asked by clients how many keywords they need to have on their site. I really don’t know the answer to this, I have seen clients send me huge word docs w/ keywords galore and I have seen clients send over a list with only 5 or 6 keywords on it and they do extremely well. I would recommend using about 10 or so keywords that are strong with what you want to come up under in the engines and just leave it at that. I wouldn’t worry too much about adding keywords down the road as your business grows, and I will explain my foundation for this later on when I discuss the importance of the <title> and <h1> tags below…
What about Page Description in the Meta Information?
This is becoming a popular debate today and I can see both sides of the argument. My partner Greg stumbled upon this one when we recreated our Pleth site and brought it to my attention so I have to credit him w/ this find.
I have found that it’s good to have a different page description in your meta’s for each page in your website. Since a lot of sites today are complicated dynamic content management type applications this can sometimes be difficult to accomplish. Fortunately I have found that Google will look for your meta-description on your website and if it doesn’t find one, it will immediately dive deeper into your page and excerpt your page for a description. Here’s a prime example of our findings to support this.. (Source: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=GFRC%2CGFRC%3A2007-05%2CGFRC%3Aen&q=+site%3Awww.pleth.com) These are actual listings in Google for Pleth’s Corporate Website with the description tag removed. Notice the varying descriptions under the title.
Pleth | Web Site Design, Managed Hosting, Email Hosting, Email Service
Pleth, LLC is an Arkansas based Web Site Design Company, Web Hosting, Email Hosting, & Email Services provider.
www.pleth.com/ – 32k – Cached – Similar pages – Note thisPleth | Client Portfolio
Spotlight Sites:. Atlanta Kids Directory is a full-color monthly resource guide that is distributed within the Atlanta, Georgia area. …
www.pleth.com/client_portfolio/ – 90k – Cached – Similar pages – Note thisPleth | Contact Information
One of the biggest advantages to doing business with a firm like Pleth Networks is that our team is always accessible for your managed web hosting needs. …
www.pleth.com/contact.htm – 26k – Cached – Similar pages – Note this
With this being the case it makes me wonder if we are not better off nowadays to leave off the descriptions altogether? This is something that I think has more or less evolved as of late, it may have always been a trick that others knew but I was brought up under the school of thought that when putting together a site you always needed to have a keyword heavy description list that coincided with your keyword tags, not anymore. This is probably one of the biggest finds for me that I am seeing work. Our traffic to our Corporate website has dramatically improved and I plan on deleting my keywords from this blog in the very near future to see what happens.
One other thing that I want to make mention of about this before I move on is that by trying this I don’t see it as a risky thing to do because as I make mention later in this entry, there is so much emphasis in page titles nowadays. (keep reading)
Alt-tags on Images
This was a tactic that we used quite a bit back in the day that showed a little benefit but I have found that it’s not relevant enough today to really worry about anymore. The one thing that I can see it’s good for might be to help your images come up higher in Google’s Image Search or something like that but honestly, who really uses image search to look for Real Estate or NASCAR t-shirts? My advice, don’t spend the time tagging your images, if you have the time, go for it, I haven’t seen in any cases where it hurt anything.
Black Hat Tricks / Hidden Text, etc.
Another technique that used to be used quite a bit back in the day was the practice of hiding small same colored text in the top or bottom of a page, it was for the most part just a repetition of the same keywords to provide a higher ranking. For as long as I can remember this was considered black hat and there was always the threat that the search engines would punish you for doing this by dropping your rankings, I have heard stories of this but haven’t ever actually seen it happen before, in fact I have a client that I have managed his site for a number of years now and he has had hidden text on his site for as long as I can remember and to the best of my knowledge has always outranked his competitors. I am certainly not saying that the hidden text is helping him because there are other factors as to why his site ranks high but I am simply pointing out that he hasn’t ever been penalized for this.
Age of Domain
One thing that I have found to be valid is that a site’s age has a little bit to do with how well it pulls up in Google. Now, with that being said, I will also say that it’s not always the rule. Let’s say you take a website and put it up on a domain that was purchased this week and then you take that same website and put it up on another domain that is 5 years old, I have found that the older domain does better. (don’t do this though, see duplicate content below) Now, if you own an older domain but are using a newer domain, don’t worry, simply have us do a 301 redirect in Apache to your newer domain and all of the “advantage” from the older domain is then transferred to your newer domain. This is a practice that other SE firms are doing as has proven to do the trick.
If you are starting from scratch don’t get discouraged by the age of domain thing because there are a lot of ways you can still rise above your competitors that have been online for a long time, keep reading…
Duplicate Content.
In talking with other SE folks I have learned that duplicate or identical content can get disregarded by Google if it’s completely word for word identical. I have also found that this isn’t always the rule and sometimes a little bit of variation in the content is ok. This isn’t a big factor for me because most of our clients operate from one domain and just have 401 redirects to the primary domain from any other domains that they might own.
Long Keyword Heavy Content
Again, back in the day, more was better it seemed. I would encourage my clients to send me long wordy pages that were packed with keywords. While I haven’t seen where this has hurt anything for any of my clients I have found that it’s not completely neccessary. If you write good content with decent keyword density throughout you should do just fine. After all, in the grand scheme of things you are writing the long pages to get a higher engine ranking to bring folks to your site and then if they get there and find a long-winded in-coherent rambling they are going to get turned off anyway. My advice is to just write good content that includes your keywords, remember if you do the trick I mentioned above and drop the description from your meta-tags the search engines are going to see your content anyway….
Flash / Shockwave Animation
Flash has been around a while now, and while I will be the first one to tell you that it’s pretty to look at, I have to recommend limiting it’s use. I will occasionally use Flash Animation on a clients website to create an effect, but I use it only in places that are of little value, examples would be a flash montage in the center of the home page with photos tweening in and out or maybe in the banner of the page. In the past we utilized a few flash navigations but today we abstain from doing this at all, even in the rare cases where we used the flash navigations we would use text links in the footer of each page to link all of the pages together. The big problem with flash is that after all of this time it’s still not legible by the search engines, I know that there are those out there that will disagree with this who are extremely pro-flash but I invite them to show me an instance where a shockwave object got crawled by googlebot or another search engine, I have never seen this happen. Again, I want to reiterate that it’s not a crime to use Flash on your website, and I certainly think that it’s got it’s place on the web but I would advise you not to use it for critical components of your site like the navigation.
Site Navigation
Having good site navigation is important, I think that most “experts” can all agree on this. When your website is crawled by the search engines for inclusion the way that they crawl your site is by following the links on your site. Let’s say you have a page on your site that isn’t linked to from other pages of your site the odds of getting it indexed are unlikely unless you have an automated sitemapping application or something like that running. I always try to use text links or css menus these days when creating a client’s website. Sure, they aren’t as much fun as a flash or javascript button that lights up when you mouse over it but at the end of the day the text links simply outperform. As an aside from this, there are a lot of options when building navigation these days with CSS, or cascading style sheets.
XML Sitemaps
I would venture to say that having an xml sitemap for your website is critical these days. Google, Yahoo, and even MSN (found out about this one yesterday) all have webmaster tools that allow us to list links to xml sitemaps for websites that we manage. These sitemaps simply list all of the pages that are included in your website so that the search engines can index the entire website. I have seen the benefit when it comes to xml sitemaps. If you want an example of what a sitemap looks like, here’s a link to mine: http://www.cottonrohrscheib.com/blog/sitemap.xml
While researching MSN last night for a client I discovered that somewhere along the way they had added a webmaster tools section as well for recording sitemaps, for a while this was non-existent and I am glad to see them trying to keep up with the pack but let’s face it MSN isn’t anywhere in the league with Google, or even Yahoo for that matter. Keep in mind this is my opinion and I know that there are diehard MSN users out there but they are a minority these days. Google is by far the king in my opinion.
It’s never been hard to figure out how to submit your site to Google or Yahoo but with MSN it has been a task to say the least, here are a few links that I discovered last night that are relatively new I would think. I am assuming they were added once MSN implemented their Live Search.
Submit your Site to MSN (Live Search) – http://beta.search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx?FORM=WSUT
Record your XML sitemap to MSN (Live Search) – http://login.live.com/login.srf?wa=wsignin1.0&rpsnv=10&ct=1203104699&rver=4.5.2125.0&wp=MBI&wreply=http:%2F%2Fwebmaster.live.com%2FPassport.aspx%3Frequrl%3Dhttp%253a%252f%252fwebmaster.live.com%253a80%252fWebmasterAddSitesPage.aspx&lc=1033&id=252562 (you will also need to have a passport or live login to get into this one, but it’s worth it if you manage a website)
Incoming Links & Reciprocal Links
This is also a topic that has sparked debate. In the past there was the school of thought that the more incoming links you had to your website the better off you were, today part of that is still true, the more incoming links does help but the incoming links that matter the most are the ones that come from websites that have a similar focus. Here’s an example of this…
Let’s say that I have a friend who owns a restaurant and he puts a link to my website (a web design business) and at the same time a web-hosting business puts a link to my business on their website, the link from the hosting business is going to give my site a bigger boost because it is closely related to my business. Not that the link from the restaurant is going to hurt anything, some would argue but I haven’t seen anything to prove it in my research, in fact as a test I put a link to my web development blog on a tourism website that I manage for a client and low and behold my Google PR (pagerank) actually improved… Go figure. My advice is, if someone is willing to link to your website never discourage them from doing so, I would advise you though to pursue websites that are closely aligned with your business when looking for reciprocal links.
Reciprocal links used to be a big thing, it was always recommended that if someone links to you that you provide a link back to them but I haven’t found that to be as relevant today as it once was. In the past I would never think of having my corporate website not linked to all of the associations I belong to in the footer but in our last release of our Pleth Corporate website we left this off of the footer and have actually seen a lot of success with it not there. I guess you don’t really know unless you try these things, that’s part of the reason I am publishing this entry because I have actually tested these things and am only reporting what I know from my tests.
Banner Ads on High Traffic Websites
I have a lot of clients who see purchasing banner ads on high traffic websites as a way to increase their search engine rankings but for the most part the goal in doing this is to attract more traffic to your website. A small text link will do just as much good as a huge gawky banner if you are just out to get a higher ranking in the search engines. If you are looking for more traffic to your website, then the banner might be the best approach.
Tips for Text Links
This is a little complicated to explain and it has taken me a little while to analyze this and get my mind around it but here’s something that I have found that might be relevant. I am going to use Pleth as an example because this is where I am basing a lot of my information.
If a website is going to link to the pleth website, I would prefer them to link the words “web development” or “web hosting” as opposed to just linking the word “pleth” or spelling out our web address. I can’t explain this exactly but I think that there might be something to this. If you go to Google and type in Managed Web Hosting, we show up on page three! That might not sound like much to some of you but keep in mind that the keywords “managed web hosting” is a highly sought out search term and there are literally hundreds of thousands of websites out there that offer managed hosting, if you don’t believe me take a look at the amount of pad advertisements in Google’s sponsored links, here’s the link: http://www.google.com/search?q=managed+web+hosting&hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENUS242&start=20&sa=N
We have been able to achieve this high ranking by using a combination of techniques but I would have to say that our linking the words “managed hosting” in the footer credits of some of our clients websites is partly responsible for our success for this keyword. I have watched this happen right before my eyes.
The <title> and <h1> Tags
Okay, I have saved the best for last. In my opinion the best thing you can do to improve your websites rankings is to have your title and h1 or header tag the same. It is also a good idea to have your keywords or buzzwords used in your title tags. Here are some examples where this has made a dramatic difference for one of my Real Estate Clients, here’s a listing of terms he’s doing well with since we dramatically updated his website (www.greersferryrealestatecenter.com)…
Greers Ferry Lodging Providers (#1 in Google) ???? http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GFRC,GFRC:2007-05,GFRC:en&q=Greers+Ferry+Lodging+Providers
Greers Ferry Mortgage Companies (#1 in Google) ??? http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GFRC,GFRC:2007-05,GFRC:en&q=Greers+Ferry+Mortgage+Companies
Greers Ferry Lake Investment Property (#2 in Google) – http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=GFRC%2CGFRC%3A2007-05%2CGFRC%3Aen&q=Greers+Ferry+Lake+Investment+property
Lakefront Lots in Greers Ferry (#6 in Google) – http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENUS242&q=Lakefront+Lots+in+Greers+Ferry
Launching Ramp on Greers Ferry Lake – (#2 in Google, #4 in Yahoo) – http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GFRC,GFRC:2007-05,GFRC:en&q=Near+Launching+Ramp+on+Greers+Ferry+Lake
Nice Home Near Greers Ferry Lake (#1 in Google) – http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GFRC,GFRC:2007-05,GFRC:en&q=Nice+home+near+Greers+Ferry+Lake
Some of these terms are a little broad but I just wanted to show how having an assortment of page titles can open you up to a lot of success in Google for specific keyword searches. In this case, if someone is looking for lodging providers in Greers Ferry his site will pull up higher than the actual lodging providers, the same goes for a closely related industry like Mortgage Companies which is a nationally sought after keyword, he’s number 1 there also.
Now I want to take a look at how well his unique page titles are doing in Google. For the sake of this test I am going to pick a few unique page titles from his site and see how well they rank:
Lake View of Middle Fork (#1 in Google) – http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GFRC,GFRC:2007-05,GFRC:en&q=Lake+View+of+Middle+Fork
40 Acres Near Greers Ferry Lake (#3 in Google) – http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GFRC,GFRC:2007-05,GFRC:en&q=40+acres+near+Greers+Ferry+Lake
Business located in Greers Ferry (#2 in Google) – http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GFRC,GFRC:2007-05,GFRC:en&q=Business+located+in+Greers+Ferry
Nice Home Near Greers Ferry Lake (#1 in Google) – http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GFRC,GFRC:2007-05,GFRC:en&q=Nice+home+near+Greers+Ferry+Lake
Business building in the heart of Greers Ferry (#1 in Google) – http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GFRC,GFRC:2007-05,GFRC:en&q=Business+building+in+the+heart+of+Greers+Ferry
As you can see, the varying page titles in use on his website has dramatically helped his search engine results. This is all kind of new territory that developers are encountering today when developing dynamic content management solutions that were at one time non search friendly. In all of the applications I develop for Clients I do my best to ensure that whatever content they are going to generate that it’s going to give them a unique page title. From there my work as a consultant / developer is done, they simply have to come up with unique page titles that will help them positioned in the places they want to be positioned.
Again, I can’t stress enough how important page titles and identical header tags are, I think that this is probably one thing that a lot of website owners today have overlooked. I also know that in some cases this is not an attainable goal due to technology or software restrictions but whenever possible I strongly advise this technique above and beyond all others.
As I mentioned at the top of this entry, there are tons of sites out there offering advice on search engine optimization, and while I am not discounting any of those sites, I have learned in my 10 years or so of doing this for a living is that the only way you are going to find out for sure if a tactic or technique is going to work for sure is to try it out for yourself at your own risk.
