07.14.05
Posted in Uncategorized at 3:50 pm by altersage
Why do some people have the need to deceive others?
This was a question posted in an article I read today. Given that the SEM industry is competitive, I personally still do not see the point of tricking your clients into buying into your services.
I like to believe that I am quite ethical in my dealings with others – both personally and professionally.
In the past I have been put in the position where I took on overload SEO clients from another company. Unfortunately they performed black-hat techniques and I had the choice to either continue in their practice or correct it. I chose to salvage the websites from their black-hat techniques. The thing is that these techniques deliver very good results in a relatively short period, but only sustain the results for 6 months to a year in some instances and that is if you’re lucky enough not to have your website blacklisted from the search engines.
When I removed all the black-hat SEO from the websites and optimized the sites “properlyâ€, obviously I had loads of explaining to do as to why the sites suddenly dropped from Top 10 positions to Top 50 and beyond. I also had to explain why it was going to take a little longer to see them climb the ranks back to the Top 10 positions without telling the clients that their previous company used frowned upon techniques. I guess it’s needless to say that I did lose a few clients at the time, they simply did not care about the technique – they just wanted their results back.
I just feel that whichever way you optimize, whether it is white- or black-hat, at least inform your clients of your intentions. This way they are aware of the consequences.
But back on topic, the article above covered the SEO-client perspective: Do you weed out the dodgies, or take them on to rescue the bottom line? I will leave you to think about that one…
Gadgets: Isn’t this a beauty?!! I would love one, but since I have not even had the time to properly install my Morrowind game – where am I going to find the time to play Playstation?
On a personal note:
It’s my second last day in the office! And the work load (last minutes, handovers and how to’s) I need to finish is quite demanding. Tomorrow, my last day, will pretty much pass quite quickly as the official send off lunch from the company is usually 1.5 hours and we close shop early for drinks, snacks and socialising. So I really hope that I get to everything in time!
Joey and I are in much need of a nice quiet getaway. The getaway that I was organising for us yesterday is unfortunately fully booked for the weekend I had in mind. I am truly disappointed!!
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07.13.05
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:23 pm by altersage
Been a pretty uneventful day for me today. Been catching up on blog posts, completing handover documents (as this is my last week with present company), and generally checking out some weekend getaways.
The reality of my last days in office has finally settled in and I am beginning to feel the jitters that accompany ones life starting at a new company and having high expectations placed on ones shoulders.
So, I am afraid that I don’t have much industry news today…as I am generally trying to tie up all loose ends this side…
We finally watched War of the Worlds last night – riveting action filled movie that keeps you on the edge of your seat. Now I can let the scary movies lie low for a bit to give my adrenalin chance to refuel 
Not that WOW was scary…just intense, but that could’ve been accredited to all the sugar we had, lol.
What is briefly on the cards in the SEM world today:
Most of the talk on today’s forums were about ClickFraud, the worlds ugliest dog, general banter about the up and coming San Jose SES conference, and how the Internet Achive is being sued for its core business model.
On a lighter note and for some reason the song “if you’re a geek and you know it clap your hands..” is playing in my head right now….lol.
DeveloperShed’s weekly newsletter promoted this tip /device for people that often “get burned†whilst the ‘boss’ takes a stroll-by the desk:
Stealth Switch bills itself as a “Desktop Cloaking Device.” It’s a foot pedal that makes windows completely invisible on your screen. It can be set to hide the current window, hide all open windows, or hide all except certain windows. One click sets everything back the way it was…and since it sits under your desk, nobody will notice.
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07.12.05
Posted in Uncategorized at 4:20 pm by altersage
An article by Mike Grehan today covered a question that I often get asked by clients and colleagues. “What is PageRank and how do you improve it?†My answer is quite “stock-standard†now: “PageRank is not really that important, of course it forms part of the algorithm to some extent, but not as much as what was once thought….†And then I proceed to give the explanation of how PageRank is measured, which is too long to post here
One of my friends tried to con me into thinking that he was able to read all my MSN chat logs today…luckily I knew better, as 1. I encrypt all my data and 2. I don’t save any of the chats…and besides, he does not have remote access to my machine
Instant Messaging used to have vast security risks, but two years of development and additional security measures has made a somewhat more secure reality possible. But the reality is that companies do have access to read staff IM logs and of course emails as a matter of fact, well that is no different than your friends sitting on your machine and going through your mails or “un-encrypted†chat logs But IM has evolved into so much more than that.
IM has become an integral part of the online business world. You can connect with friends yes, but more importantly business contacts and clients – instantly.
Chats are in real-time, almost in-person, and written – more effective than telephonic conversations especially if your client base is international – you might not understand one another due to heavy accents or whatever. Best of all, IM is free. I found a great article that covers how IM could be used as a more effecitive CRM tool.
Wow, what an excellent business model – and it works. John Buckman already successful with Lyris, an email list management program, created an online music label for unsigned artists that would otherwise not have the opportunity to be heard because of the genres that they fall into. He invested $1 mil into this venture as little as a year ago, and will already have made it back this year. The artists themselves are not bad at all. I gave a few of the artists and tracks a listen. Yes! You can actually download complete MP3 albums, well actually listen streaming audio, and if you want to buy it, buy it from as little as $5…With great descriptions like: “organic didgeridoo meets electronic voodoo†who would not want to listen, lol.
No unfortunately I will not be receiving commissions for my efforts here Do yourself a favour and go check it out, and perhaps you’ll find a really cool album as well.
Google is testing big-time. Yesterday I posted about the PPC advert display, and it seems that for a while they have been testing image results in the SERP as well. See highrankings forum discussion. I see yesterday on the Search Engine Watch forum that Google were also seen to be testing result displays by providing “more resultsâ€. On the screen cap taken by one of the members you can see that it’s listing a couple of additional results from the first site.
Googleguy confirmed that Google were indeed testing some new UI.
Speaking of Google, if you have not yet installed your Google toolbar for Firefox – do so now! It is so nifty having the “real thing†instead of the extension that “mostly†worked from the mozilla add-ons site.
Doesn’t spam just tick you off? Can you believe this! I am sure that at one point or another all of us have received a junk mail from some arb person claiming that he / she is from some arb bank in the middle of nowhere and that you must claim a relatively large amount of money from them by doing one thing or another. Right?
Well, for a while those ones did cease to reach my inbox. But today when logging into one of my forums, I noticed that I had a new PM (personal message) waiting for me in by forum inbox. I go look. And yes, it’s none other than one of those same SPAM bank emails. Who would have thought that they would think of that?!! This means that some poor bloke had to sign-up to the forum and then sent this little message off one by one to forum members – yes others had complained about the same thing!
Do you own your website design? I saw this happen first hand at a company that I worked for a while ago. The travel industry is very competitive and sure it is to be expected that competitors will copy the “leader†of the time. We created a site in-house of course, but one competitor at the time copied our site design, colours and even content!! The only thing that was different was the reference to the site name! Lucky for us at the time, we managed to dissuade the copycat from his ways.
There are some other companies out there that might not be as lucky, or may even not have a clue that this could be happening to them. Here is a great article on how you can copyright your website design.
Hoorah!! MSNbot has been really busy spidering my blog! And finally Yahoo’s slurp has come along as well, now I must just wait for Googlebot to find AlterSage and I will officially be lodged in the land of cyberspace. 
Almost forgot. Here is a heads up: There is a new search engine in development in South Africa, called Jonga. It will most likely take on the latest one we have here called Funnel. Take a sneak peak, but don’t tell a soul
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