Welcome to the latest issue of the SEO Chat newsletter! If you get the Developer Shed newsletter too, you'll have seen my note about this being a good time to do a little spring cleaning on your web site. In all honesty, of course, you shouldn't limit that to spring. Do what you can to make sure all your links work, your content is up to date, etc., and you're doing both your visitors and the search engines a favor. Which means you're doing yourself a favor too, of course.

If you know a techie who can't resist boasting about his or her l337 haXor skillz, you might want to pass along the information we're highlighting this week from eWeek. We don't condone hacking, ever, but here's one situation where being up on your security holes and knowing how to exploit them could earn a sweet laptop.

Of course we have the usual selection of thought-provoking articles for you this week. On Wednesday we took a look at Delver, a search engine in private testing that thinks the most important item missing from search today is the social graph. They aim to track it better, so every user will get unique answers to their queries. Speaking of the social graph, on Tuesday we ran the first part of a three-part series on social media optimization, which we hope will help you make the best use of these ubiquitous communities. On Monday we covered Google Knol and the SEO implications of the program. If Google is right, we'll be getting a lot of quality information resources, but should YOU consider writing a knol?

We focus on the basic tips with the SEO-related tutorials we're highlighting for you this week from Tutorialized. Check out our list of the top 10 SEO tips, learn how to optimize images and title tags, and more. You'll want to check out our other tutorials on Tutorialized as well.

If you're not seeing any movement in your search engine ranking, is it Google tweaking its algorithm, the changes you made to your site, or something else altogether? That's the question our original poster for the Thread of the Week is facing. As usual, our forum members show that it's helpful to get another pair of eyes to look at the problem. Be sure to stop by and share your expertise.

Finally, our Spotlight, just for readers of our newsletter, discusses blogging and linking. If getting relevant links from blogs can help your standing in the SERPs, is it a good idea to create several standalone blogs and have them link back to your site? Scroll down to the Spotlight to find out.

Until next time,
SEO Chat Staff

Application development for the OLPC laptop
The XO laptop (of the One-Laptop-Per-Child initiative) is an inexpensive laptop project intended to help educate children around the world. The XO laptop includes many innovations, such as a novel, inexpensive, and durable hardware design and the use of GNU/Linux as the underlying operating system. The XO also includes an application environment written in Python with a human interface called Sugar, accessible to everyone (including kids). Explore the Sugar APIs and learn how to develop and debug a graphical activity in Sugar using Python.
Learn more.

Create dynamic Firefox user interfaces
When you create browser-based applications that display XML data feeds, you often need to code the data-retrieval mechanism and the user interface. Mozilla Firefox provides an infrastructure that frees you from these tasks, so you can concentrate on your application's functionality. Learn how to use Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (Ajax) to download XML data from a Web server, and discover how you can use Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) to transform it dynamically into Firefox user-interface elements expressed in XML User Interface Language (XUL). You can apply these techniques to any application that uses XML data sources.
Learn more.

Explore Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded
Ubuntu is a great server and desktop distribution for the GNU/Linux operating system, but did you know that it's also ideal for handheld and mobile embedded devices? Ubuntu's latest release, Gutsy Gibbon, now includes support for the embedded and mobile spaces with the Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded (UME) project. Get to know the UME project, and find out how to get started.
Learn more.

All White Papers.

SEO Index

Delving into a New Approach to Search

Social Media Optimization, Before You Kill Yourself

Google Knol: Implications for SEO

    SEO on Tutorialized

 SEO Thread of The Week

 SEO Chat News Spotlight

Introducing Tech News by Developer Shed. News you can't use.

It's edgy! It's irreverent! It's all about technology! It's news you can't use, and you won't want to miss it! View this week's edition to learn the answers to these burning questions:

Now that the trendy triangle-shaped pyramid car has been invented, what's next? Rhombus car unavailable for comment. Microsoft is working on a device that lets you record video when you get excited. Who does the Oscar go to? Hint: Hot Secretary, Twix, and Mountain Dew the Movie! What do self-healing rubber, a broken down Camaro, and a guy named Bubba have in common? Is this really the coolest device ever invented? Sliced bread up in arms, definitely a sore loser. Did you hear that sound? Better be careful, the pain train is coming! Watch the video!

Delving into a New Approach to Search
by Terri Wells -- 2008-02-27

Before the Internet and search engines, we used a number of different ways to find information. And we still do; who hasn’t asked their friends for advice about a trip or a purchase? Delver, a search engine start-up based in Israel, hopes to update that practice with a Web 2.0 twist.

The way Delver sees it, there are two basic problems with search the way it is today. The first problem is that you could be a dog or the President of the United States, and you’d still get the same results from a search engine if you both put in the same keyword. Or, to put it a different way, a sixty-five-year-old history professor searching for “Goth bands” probably won’t be looking for the same kinds of results as his fifteen-year-old granddaughter, but they’ll both get the same results anyway. Delver thinks this approach is a mistake.

The second problem is that, not only do most search engines not know who you are; they don’t know who your friends are either. Since they can’t see your “social graph,” as it’s coming to be called, they can’t tell whether your friends might know something that’s relevant to your search query. Delver thinks that, if you’re searching for “New York,” you might want to see blog posts and YouTube videos and such from friends that are about or mention New York.

Read Delving into a New Approach to Search

Social Media Optimization, Before You Kill Yourself
by Akinola Akintomide -- 2008-02-26

Social media optimization -- what a mouthful! Some have already started wondering whether social media optimization (SMO) will become a "separate" Internet marketing model, separate from paid search and from SEO, and they may very well be onto something.

First off, I do "Digg it" and I do "Slashdot it," I occasionally "Wiki," but Facebook and MySpace are not my favorite haunting grounds. However, "bidness is bidness" and I had little choice. I had to learn SMO and in this respect the website www(dot)searchengineland(dot)com was extremely helpful for learning how to build viral applications for community sites, or how to design them and have a programmer build them.

One thing I noticed way before I started reading the helpful columns in Search Engine Land (especially with Digg(dot)com and Wikipedia) was the contempt they had for deliberate attempts to gerrymander their site. Most of the time Digg buried any Digg they felt was being manipulated. Even the "Tails" that wag the Digg dog were not safe as they set up systems to ensure that Digging was as democratic as possible.

Read Social Media Optimization, Before You Kill Yourself

Google Knol: Implications for SEO
by Terri Wells -- 2008-02-25

When Google announced its Knol project in December, many analysts said that the search engine giant went one step too far by effectively entering the turf of content producers. What kind of effect will this super-secret project have on search engine optimization practices if and when Google opens the service to the public?

Before I can cover the possible SEO implications, I’ll need to explain what Google Knol is and why it may matter to SEOs. On December 13, 2007, Udi Manber, a Google VP of Engineering posted to the Google blog about “inviting a selected group of people to try a new, free tool that we are calling ‘knol,’ which stands for a unit of knowledge.” The idea behind Google Knol is to convince people who are authorities in their fields to write an article on the subject, thus increasing the actual knowledge available on the Internet.

The project is in private beta and invitation-only, so unfortunately I have no details as to the tools and interface that Google is providing to authors. In addition to offering free tools for writing and editing the knol, which is really nothing more than a web page, Google will host it for free. “Writers only need to write; we’ll do the rest,” Manber said.

Read Google Knol: Implications for SEO

Tutorialized has a dedicated SEO section for Search Optimization, Website Marketing, and many other SEO/SEM related tutorials.

IPB SEO
Three important, almost mandate tips on invisionfree power board search engine optimization.
Read the tutorial.

SEO Tips - Top Ten
A top ten of tips to keep your head above water in SEO.
Read the tutorial.

Get Traffic To Your Website In Few Days
The most powerful ways of getting traffic to your website.
Read the tutorial.

SEO 101 - Image Optimization
Getting started with image optimization.
Read the tutorial.

Title Tags For SEO
Title tags are important to SEO. Here are some easy steps to improve you title tags.
Read the tutorial.

Google envy?

I have just switched over to Joomla as per my web person's request and have implemented as many of the search friendly characteristics as I have read about into my my site. However, I am seeing no movement in my placement for Google, even after having added new keyword rich content.

I know that Google has changed it's algorithm, which may account for the sudden slippage in place. However, I would like to know if there is anything else of which I should be aware.

If anyone could take a look at the site and give me a few pointers, I would be very appreciative.

You have two backlinks.

That would be a good place to start.

If you have changed to Joomla then your website's URL names and structure have probably changed.

Google will now be seeing all your pages as "new" and they will be starting from scratch again, all the history and trust lost.

You need to place 301 redirects from the old URL structure to the new URL structure to get this history and trust passed onto your new pages.

Posts from this thread may have been abridged or removed. Forum members are responsible for the content of these posts.
Read the full thread.

How Not to Blog for Link Juice

Every so often in the forums we see someone take a valid tip and apply it in a way that wastes the effort - and could lead to their site being penalized, taken to an extreme. For example, everyone knows that one-way links from relevant sites can improve one's standing in the SERPs. So building blogs that feature content relevant to your main site and link back to it is a great way to boost your rankings, right?

Not exactly. For starters, let's look at the number of links. If you want to get lots of links this way, you'll need a lot of blogs posting relevant content on a regular basis and linking to your site. Do you really have the time to maintain all that? Even if you did have the time to maintain it, those blogs won't pass much "link love" on to your main site if they're not getting backlinks from other sites. So you're left with the same problem, for more websites.

Besides, this maneuver doesn't fool the search engines. EGOL, a well-respected member of the SEO Chat community, notes that "They have seen people for years toss up hundreds of websites with the hope of 'manufacturing links.'" And it simply doesn't work, because the search engines won't value those links from blogs very highly.

There is a better approach. Gazzahk, another SEO Chat member, recommends adding a single blog to your target site. Make sure that the content on that blog is of high quality and interesting to your target audience, so that readers will deem it worthy of linking to. Then try to get links to your blog. If you're doing your job right, it shouldn't be too difficult. "If you have writing skill and can generate interesting, relevant and decent articles," Gazzahk explains, "blogs and social bookmarking can be a very good way to create links." Good luck!

Read the thread for this article.

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