Case in point. I’m driving into work a couple of weeks ago along the northern shore of Lake Ontario, and voila. I see a phenomenon I’ve never seen before, and have only heard about once.

Ok I think, wheres my camera? Oh good, its here. And I snap a few shots.

Here’s the result; Snow Donuts … A Natural Weather Phenomenon

Credit: Joakim_kna

Fear of The Dark

Are you afraid to implement the SEO techniques you’ve spent hours learning because you fear you may lose your existing rankings? God forbid your SERPs get knocked to the next page, but you can prevent such an event by taking some simple SEO leaps of faith
Low Risk, Low Return

This adage holds particularly true for any financial investment, and your investment of time and money in SEO should be no different. Playing safe will only work for so long, and inevitably you’ll find the need to innovate on your SEO game plan. I’m not suggesting a major overhaul or drastic change that confuses those smarty spiders from Google, but rather a phased approach of changes that will lead to better results in the long term.

Copyright: Walt Disney Company

Check out those Google numbers today. A fall from grace impacted by their missing the Street estimates. Talk about loosing your street credibility.

Two things stood out for me…”Most shocking is the steep decline in paid clicks, one of the best metrics to measure Google’s underlying advertiser strength. ” From 22% growth last year to only 9% this year. Suggesting, some say, that Google may not be as well insulated from a recession as expected.

Maybe. Maybe not. Advertising tends to be the first line item reduced on the budget in lean times. Will it bode the same for PPC advertising?

When I was a kid, I was trained to do category type searches by the Dewey Decimal library system. Later, as I got older, the Yellow Pages reinforced this category type search.

When I needed my Hair Cut I let my fingers do the walking and I looked up Beauty Salons. If I needed to drop a few pounds I looked up weight loss.

And I’m not the only one.

These category searches are so programmed into how we look for information, that they’ve become some of the most competitive keywords on the net: “travel”, “weight loss”, and of course, “sex”.

"The most important word in the vocabulary of SEO is TEST."

"Never stop testing, and your SEO will never stop improving."

"SEO people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals."

David Ogilvy  on Paid Reviews

"There is no need for advertisements to look like advertisements. If you make them look like editorial pages, you will attract about 50 per cent more readers."

What do you think about a site marking those links nofollow?

Let The SEO Drooling Begin…

I am a real sucker for SEO tools that make my work as efficient as possible, and I am literally ecstatic about coming across this little gem of a Firefox extension. The Link Diagnosis Firefox extension plugs directly into the Yahoo Site Explorer API that we all know and love, and then manipulates backlink data into a highly versatile and useable format.

Reporting That Your Boss will Be Proud Of

The Link Diagnosis extension transforms regular Yahoo Site Explorer results that look like this

Along the lines of Jeff Foxworthy’s humour, lets start off the week with a fun post …

You may be a search spammer if …

1) you know what a Markov Chain is

2) you use an image editor to write your emails

3) using the same free counter service for all the sites in your network brings down the free counter service

Courtesy: Weblogcartoons.com

4) content is what you are, not what you publish

5) you think of him as “Matt Cutts Me Out”

6) you think of subtitles as alt keyword stuffing

source: www.blaugh.com

Credit: Bocavelhma

Yahoo! Because We’ve Got You Too

Yahoo answers is a great resource for Q&A when you just can’t seem to find the information you’re looking for. Aside from authority sites such as Wikipedia or dedicated niche forums, where else can you find out how to make falafel the egyptian way? Obscure perhaps, but potent? Surely! When used appropriately Yahoo Answers can be the hub of piggybacking long tail searches to your own niche site.

The Requirements

1. Thy site must have quality content and reasonably attractive/usable design

Oh oh. Changes are afoot when it comes to Google Local Listings, and while I haven’t had an opportunity to employ and thus take advantage of relative keywords, I’m wondering if anyone else has and if they’ve noticed any changes in conversion?

To wit: Google has recently and sporadically introduced clumps of ten (10) local listing results complete with business name, address, URL and phone number, no less. (See and click below.)