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SEO Book

How To Write GoodSeptember 1

Yes, deliberate mistake :)

It grates when people write poorly, huh. When writers write well, the words almost become invisible. The focus shifts away from technical details, and onto the message.

Is there an easy way to write better blog posts? E-mails? Web copy?
Let's take a look at three guidelines for web writing.

1. If You Can Say It, You Can Write It

The Dilbert Mission Statement Generator - sadly now offline - comes up with convoluted gems this:

"Our challenge is to assertively network economically sound methods of empowerment so that we may continually negotiate performance based infrastructures"

Satire, one would hope.

However, the US Air Force uses the following mission statement:

"The mission of the United States Air Force is to deliver sovereign options for the defense of the United States of America and its global interests - to fly and fight in Air, Space, and Cyberspace"

"Deliver sovereign options"?

Who talks like this? Well, apart from the US military.

Nobody.

Good web writing is the same as good spoken language. Use short sentences, short words, simple structures and a natural, predictable flow of ideas. Avoid waffle, hyperbole and words that hide meaning. Whenever you finish a piece of writing, read it aloud. Cut or rephrase phrases that sound clunky, becaus

Selling SEO Services: A Consultative ApproachAugust 26

Does the thought of selling fill you with dread?

If you see yourself as a technologist, or marketer, then selling may not come easy to you. But we all need to sell something, even if it is just our opinion! If you're a consultant of any description, it comes with the territory.

So it pays to know a few techniques. Luckily, sales isn't something you have to be born to do - it does not require supernatural charm, charisma, a hide as thick as an elephant, and a superhuman drive.

Selling can be like a doctors consultation.

A Visit To The Doctor

When you go to the doctor, do you expect the doctor to just guess what is wrong with you?

A doctors consultation involves the doctor asking you a series of questions. This questioning is to help determine what the problem is, and how it can best be solved. At the end of the process, the feeling is probably one of relief and assurance i.e. that the doctor has your best interests at heart, and will cure what ails you.

It's the same in business.

Any client you encounter has a problem. Like a specialist doctor, it is your job to ask a series of questions to help nail down the problem and find a solution. The very act of questioning - known as consultative selling - helps build trust and rapport with

How Many Companies Has Google Bought?August 25

One of the best ways to track Google's strategies is through visualizing & analyzing their acquisitions. Which is what the following image helps you do. Click on it for the full enlarged version :)

via Scores

Alexa Site Audit ReviewAugust 24

Alexa, a free and well-known website information tool, recently released a paid service.

For $199 per site Alexa will audit your site (up to 10,000 pages) and return a variety of different on-page reports relating to your SEO efforts.

It has a few off-page data points but it focuses mostly on your on-page optimization.

You can access Alexa's Site Audit Report here:

http://www.alexa.com/siteaudit

Report Sections

Alexa's Site Audit Report breaks the information down into 6 different sections (some which have additional sub-sections as well)

• Overview
• Crawl Coverage
• Reputation
• Page Optimization
• Keywords
• Stats

The sections break down as follows:

So we ran Seobook.com through the tool to test it out :)

Generally these reports take about a day or two, ours had some type of processing error so it took about a week.

Overview

The first section you'll see is the number of pages crawled, followed by

Your Favorite Eric Schmidt Quotes?August 22

Do you want Google to tell you what you should be doing? Mr. Schmidt thinks so:

"More and more searches are done on your behalf without you needing to type. I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions," he elaborates. "They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next. ... serendipity—can be calculated now. We can actually produce it electronically."

Of course the problem with algorithms is they rely on prior experience to guide you. The won't tell you to do something unique & original that can change the world, rather they will lead you down a well worn path.

What are some of the most bland and most well worn paths in the world? Established brands:

The internet is fast becoming a "cesspool" where false information thrives, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said yesterday. Speaking with an audience of magazine executives visiting the Google campus here as part of their annual industry conference, he said their brands were increasingly important signals that content can be trusted.

"Brands are the solution, not the problem," Mr. Schmidt said. "Brands are how you sort out the cesspool."

"Brand affinity is clearly hard wired," he said. "It is so fundamental to human existence that it's not going away. It must have a genetic component."

If Google is so smart then why the lazy reliance on brand? Why not show me something unique & original & world-changing?

Does brand affinity actually have a hard wired genetic component? Or is it that computers are stupid & brands have many obvious signals associated with them: one of which typically being a large ad budget. And why has Google's leading search engineer complained about the problem of "brand recognition" recently?

While Google is collecting your data and selling it off to marketers, they have also thought of other ways to monetize that data and deliver serendipity:

"One day we had a conversation where we figured we could just try and predict the stock market..." Eric Schmidt continues, "and then we decided it was illegal. So we stopped doing that."

Any guess how that product might have added value to the world? On down days (or days when you search for "debt help") would Google deliver more negatively biased ads & play off fears more, while on up days selling more euphoric ads? Might that serendipity put you on the wrong side of almost every trade you make? After all, that is how the big names in that space make money - telling you to take the losing side of a trade with bogus "research."

Eric Schmidt asks who you would rather give access to this data:

“All this information that you have about us: where does it go? Who has access to that?” (Google servers and Google employees, under careful rules, Schmidt said.) “Does that scare everyone in this room?” The questioner asked, to applause. “Would you prefer someone else?” Schmidt shot back – to laughter and even greater applause. “Is there a government that you would prefer to be in charge of this?”

That exchange helped John Gruber give Eric Schmidt the label Creep Executive Officer, while asking: "Maybe the question isn’t who should hold this information, but rather should anyone hold this information."

But Google has a moral conscience. They think quality score (AKA bid rigging) is illegal, except for when they are the ones doing it!

"I think judgement matters. If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place," - Eric Schmidt