Light SEO

Search Engine Optimization as an applied art

2009-07-28T11:08:00.002-04:00

Previously I considered SEO as a business.
I was wrong.

I am now disappointed by what other businesses thin about SEO.
It seems they just don't need it.

Another idea is to create real websites offering real services, move them onto the first pages of Google/Yahoo/Bing, and then sell customers to real offline services.

I see it the only way to apply SEO to real life.

No, I understand you can try to sell your service to someone else but that's the same rate race (more marketing job than SEO).
I'd prefer to concentrate on something but not doing everything at the same time.

So what I'm doing now:

1. Create a number websites advertising some services
2. Collect (in any way) the customers interested in those services
3. Find other businesses of this field and sell the customers to them

Will try.

Bingo!

2009-06-13T19:35:00.002-04:00

Microsoft started new search engine.

Do you remember how strong was MS even 10 years ago?
It was a monster in the IT world and it seemed nobody could come even close to them.

Kind of the same Google is now, right? :)

Honestly, I like Google but at the same time I like MS Bing has an API with no limits.
At least for now.

Long live Microsoft.

Hi there

2009-05-05T06:04:00.001-04:00

Google started to fight and filter websites which sell links.
The problem for google I think is that it's not easy to see a difference between paid and not-paid link.
Of course it's possible to check some signs related to some particular link-selling systems however I don't think google is going to fight with those. Obviously there should be some more clear ways to find such dependencies.

So that's nice to see google works on improving search results this way.
Does that mean the era of link-selling is either gone or close to?

Joomla 1.0.9 and Virtuemart 1.0.0 problems with MySQL 5

2008-12-31T02:01:00.003-05:00

One of my clients just complained his Joomla/Virtuemart website stopped to work.
Joomla was pretty old, version 1.0.9, the same ancient version was Virtuemart.

The description was more meaningful: it looks working but the list of products is empty.
Admin panel however shows a lot of products and everything looks ok from that side.

The client was completely disappointed because nothing has been changed on the site since month ago when everything worked just fine.

The only major update on our server for that month was MySQL database upgrade from version 4.xx to MySQL 5.

And that was the answer:
Virtuemart's SQL statements just crashed on the new database.
I'm totally disappointed with both Virtuemart and MySQL and how they work with each other. :)

Here is the solution.

1. Find administrator/components/com_virtuemart/html/shop_browse_queries.php file and backup it.

2. Find the following line in the file

#__{vm}_product, #__{vm}_category, #__{vm}_product_category_xref,#__{vm}_shopper_group

and replace it with this one:
(#__{vm}_product, #__{vm}_category, #__{vm}_product_category_xref,#__{vm}_shopper_group)

There are 4 replacements required for the file.

3. Enjoy! or let me know if you have any problem...

So as I understand MySQL brought more restrictions on version 5 so your website might experience some problems with such upgrade.

Another problem with Google products

2008-10-02T11:41:00.002-04:00

Found a problem with google products/services.

Google Chrome browser doesn't work well with Blogger service owned by Google now.
I already reported to Blogger support but no reply for the last two weeks, and the bug seems still here.

The problem is that I cannot upload a picture.
On a certain point Blogger complains about some strange error (some parameter missing) and refuses to go further.

So writing posts I do everything in Chrome,
then open Internet Explorer, login to Blogger.com, upload pictures, save the results, and then it works.

Other than that no problems with Chrome so far.
It works definitely much faster than other browsers.

The fall and crisis are here

2008-09-30T10:24:00.003-04:00

Even "Google almighty" going down these days.

So that may mean market expectations regarding marketing budgets are not so high.
And earn something on advertisement may become a bit harder.

Following this idea we can find that doing something for advertisement may be not so attractive as before.

So the result can be a new direction for online investment and online business.

Market is not going down.
Market is looking for other ways to go.

Ebay payment gateway doesn't work with Google Chrome

2008-09-11T03:55:00.002-04:00

Installed Google Chrome browser,
but couldn't use it on ebay.

Trying to pay there, ebay complains "Your Safari browser is bulls**t, please use another browser".

So nothing is perfect in this world I think...

Link exchange techniques

2008-07-04T16:01:00.002-04:00

Sometimes I receive email messages that look like spam however it's not a spam.

Those are link exchange offers.

Like "Hi, let's do links exchange. Please place this link to your website and send us the URL, and we'll place the link too. Bye."

You know it looks like scam for me.
Some strange guys ask or even push me doing something promising to do something as well.
I don't even know you, why you think I should trust you?

But... what message may work in this situation?

I think if I receive something like this I would pay more attention to that.
"Dear Alex! I am so happy to find your website and I like it so much! I even placed a link to your lightseo.com (you can find it here....) And your link to my homepage would be very appreciated! Thank you!"

Do you think it should work better?
I do.

How to find clients for SEO service

2008-05-28T15:51:00.004-04:00

Talking to business owners (or other decision makers) sometimes there are some difficulties explaining what is search engine optimization and what could be benefits for the client's business.

Usually a SEO specialist (or company) needs to explain what is that service, estimate how good that could be for the client, prepare some homework with statistics (at least some numbers) to confirm pros and cons of the promotion in search engines.

Mostly that happens because some persons are far away from internet, they are scared by dot com crash they heard about and don't trust these strange technologies anymore... you think I'm kidding and there are no such business owners anymore?? c'mon there are tons of them! :)

So instead of permanent proving of what I'm going to sell I started to think about an opposite approach to the problem.

And now I want to check another idea: doing business together with my clients instead of trying to improve their business explaining them benefits of internet popularity.

So...
I register a domain name, investigate some business area, find popular keywords, find major players on the market, perform the whole set of SEO actions and move my website to the first page of google.

My idea is to get a number of visitors and - more important! - number of contacts (phone calls, emails, or just web form submittings).
Even one contact a day.

After that I can come to a business owner, and tell him "Hey man, how are you today?"
Instead of selling him SEO, google promotion, search engines, visitor conversion and other buzzwords I can offer him this one contact a day.

They like what they understand.
One contact a day - it is clear.
A promise to improve his website's page rank is not.
And here is the difference.

You don't promise anything, you sell a lead who is interested in your client's product or service.

Benefits for me are that I can sell that for a higher price.
And I don't need to sell something that my client is not familiar with.
The cons are that I have to invest my own money first.
But I'm sure it makes sense.
At least - to try :)

So how to promote website in search engines?

2008-02-25T11:13:00.003-05:00

So when we see both black and white SEO methods the next question you might have would be "So how to make my website(s) visible in google, yahoo and other search engines?"

As you may know the best results can be achieved by using balanced methods.
Have you ever heard about balanced portfolio in investment?
The same idea: not concentrating on one method but using different ones in some proportions.

Instead of giving your website natural development we'll probably need to push it a little bit.
The art is in defining how little is this bit.

Later we'll define the main steps of promoting - a "light" promoting, a conservative promoting. Our targets order would be 1. Not banned by search engines, 2. TO be promoted.
Exactly in this order.
I don't like dangerous procedures.
Minimizing risk is the task number one.

Stay tuned.

How to ask Sergey Brin to promote your product/service

2008-01-30T10:32:00.000-05:00

It looks RIM shares have to move up.
Sergey Brin was advertising their Blackberry device :)

Welcome to the New Year

2008-01-30T10:30:00.000-05:00

I'm here and still alive.
Hope you had nice time since my last posting,
now we are reset.
And start a new page.

Happy New Year

2007-12-31T11:26:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year, boys and girls.
Let it be better than previous ones.
And it will be.
:)

Pros and Cons of Black and White SEO

2007-11-02T17:32:00.000-04:00

The problem with "White SEO" is that although it does work but usually it works very slow.
Not everyone is ready to wait a few years until his/her website becomes popular.
The results are usually required yesterday, not in three years.

Other than that, the white methods require permanet website update.
If you can organize a discussion board on your website that would be great.
If you post your industry news at least few times a week you are the man.
But sometimes you are too busy to take care of your website(s) so frequently.
Or, if you have a hundred websites, are you sure you want to spend all your time promoting all of them this way? Without a cashflow that can start in a year or two?

That's why the pure "white" methods are not necessary what everyone wants to use.

Opposite to that, "black" SEO methods are just dangerous.
Once banned, your website joins a bad company in eyes of search engines.
The possibility to enter "first-google-page-world" very fast by spamming guestbooks and discussion boards may look very attractive.
But those are not our ways.
Forget about it.
If you are interested in long term relationship you'll need "white" projects which are human-oriented websites, not google-oriented.

What is the solution?
I know something.
Stay tuned.
Information's coming.

How to start a business

2007-10-22T00:19:00.000-04:00

You may know the name of Guy Kawasaki.
This guy is a specialist in startups.
I even read his book Art of the Start (honestly, a bit disappointed).
His blog is one of those I would recommend to anyone, not depending if you are going to start a business, or not.

Take a look at this video.
Many interesting questions, and kind of ...mmmm... motivating... isn't it?

This area (how to start your own business and become a millionaire) is very interesting for me (I realize you're not surprised because it is probably interesting for anyone else).
So...

Interview with Google founders

2007-10-20T13:39:00.001-04:00

Found this interview recently.

Nice, but cannot say it's something overwhelming.
I realize Sergey and Larry are responsible for a strategy, so the questions like "How to be first in Google?" are not for them...
But anyway... :)

It looks Sergey is the leader of Google.

Also found a strange fact in the interview - as per Wall Street Journal 14% of electricity used in the U.S. are used by servers.
It sounds so unbelievable.
I cannot trust it.

What is White (or "White Hat") SEO

2007-10-11T16:40:00.000-04:00

Opposite to "black" methods of a website optimization there is another set of methods named (surprise! surprise!) White SEO (or White Hat SEO).

So what are differences and why they are opposite?
Their targets are absolutely the same - to make a website visible in search engines and move it to the first page of google, yahoo, msn/live, altavista by defined search requests.

But the approaches and methods are different.
"White" methods are absolutely natural.
It is not a secret Google likes popular sites made for humans, not for search engines.
And a measure of popularity could be a number of incoming links that other websites place on their pages. A link is considered as a "vote".
So "white methods" include creating a websites, placing popular materials, making them popular so other people would be happy to put links to our website on their ones.
It is easy!

And it is the way google recommends us to go.
I found my old sites suddenly have high PR (page rank) and appeared to be on the first pages by their particular requests absolutely with no any special steps done!
That's really amazing, and it is the ideal way that definitely works in an ideal world.

What is Black (or "Black Hat") SEO

2007-10-04T17:35:00.001-04:00

All search engine optimizators can be logically separated to a few groups.
One of them is "Black SEO".

This group usually contains the most technically advanced guys.
Twenty five years ago such people were the first who learned what is PC,
fifteen years ago they were hackers who knew how to use assembler and system interruptions,
five years ago they learned how to send out millions of messages of spam,
now they know how to push a website into search engines in a very short period of time.

Their results could look amazing,
but the problem is that google doesn't like their methods.

Your website can be on the top but in a week (or month, depending on how advanced are the promotion methods) it can be banned and you have a chance never see it in a SERP (search engine result page).

Why that usually happens?
Have you ever seen strange websites containing not readable text? Or just bunch of links to similar words? Or any other sites which are definitely created not for humans?

Here they are.
You can see doorways - specially created websites that are filled with keywords.
Just keywords, to make google like them.
And at the first look search engines really like them.
But at the second look they can be banned forever.

Such websites are promoted through spam.
Do you like spam, by the way?
Me too! thank you!
But now spam is not just a sending mass mail.
Modern spam technologies include spamming guest books, forums (discussion boards), all other places where some comments can be left.
And this comments come with backlinks to the spammers' promoted websites.
Google can see a bunch of links to some website and can guess this site should e very popular since so many other websites decided to place a link to them.

However later most of the links will be removed by other site owners and the "link wave" is over.
Google is smart enough too, and can analyze and predict this situation, and it always struggles with such approach.

Your website can be promoted by black methods too.
Avoid that.
It is not for a long time.
If your idea to stay online longer than a month, just avoid.
Before hiring a SEO company make sure you understand what methods will be used.

What is Search Engine Optimization

2007-09-27T15:12:00.000-04:00

I think you are right.
You know the answer.

However I would say it is a process of fighting with search engines like Google to push our web sites to the first pages of the victim.

Are the methods SE optimizers use illegal?
I don't think so.

If we'd live a perfect world the search engines would filter all "not-so-good" websites and all the artificial methods those websites are pushed into SERP. However since search engines themselves are not perfect they are still not able to do their job with 100% accuracy. So I would consider search engine optimization as a process that helps to improve search technologies and make the world a bit better.

It is always nice to think we do something useful for the world, isn't it?
:)

Hello, world

2007-09-18T11:02:00.000-04:00

Hi,
my name is Alex and it is my new blog.

The idea of the blog is to tell the story of my SEO life.

I am not a guru in search engine optimization.
But I would try to learn that.

Keep on smiling.
:)