SEO Consultant in San Diego

Good morning fellow survivors!

As I was checking my Gmail this morning I noticed a clever little Gmail Ad that almost got me to click on it. Not because of the product offered, or because I was interested to see what was in the other site. I almost clicked on it because there are some elements that triggered some of my robotic behaviors in my computer. Here’s the ad:

Can you tell what triggered my robotic behavior? Hahahaah, no no no, it wasn’t the text saying “Someone has a crush on you..”. It was the “(1) New Message” text. You see, those ads aren’t new, and I would never automatically click on something like that elsewhere on the web. The thing is I’m in my own trusted Gmail Inbox, and I see a perfect little link saying “(1) New Message”, I automatically put my mouse cursor on top of it. I had to pause, read the rest and think for .5 seconds in order not to click.

The concept of advertisers capitalising on people’s robotic behaviors isn’t anything new, it just feels weird when you realize they almost had you. Now think of this, for everytime you realize that they just had you, there have been at least 10 or more times that they got you and you still don’t know about it.

Watch this cool short video about something similar to what I’m talking about. It’s called “Subliminal Marketing”, scary and interesting stuff…

I’m sure it has happened before but I have never witnessed it, Amazon.com is down boys and girls! See the screenshot below:

Ok.. Now let’s wait to see what happened

—- EDIT at 1:06pm PST —-

According to a Reuters article, Amazon was hit by technical failure!

Over a month ago a friend sent me an email asking if his Link strategy was up to par with Google’s policies. He wanted to make sure that his site wouldn’t end up being penalized by Google.

It’s also important to determine if all the work you’re doing will actually bring you the “Link Power” you’re seeking. I often encounter business owners who still spend a lot of money and energy into builing link exchanges with other sites, and in the opinion of this humble SEO Consultant that’s the biggest waste of time! To have a relevant link exchange is one thing, but to blindly create reciprocal links from buried pages on a site about tires going back and forth to a site about candles won’t help. That’s just a ficticious example by the way.

Anyway, back to my buddy’s question… He asked if it would be ok to own 4 different websites, all using different hosting servers, then create links from three of them going to the main one. The thinking behind the different server is so they can have different IP addresses. The purpose behind that is so that it looks natural, not like you’re manipulating Google, even though that’s exactly what you’re doing.

That’s smart thinking and all, but there’s something else we need to consider, the Registrar information. If you’re buying all domain names as the same entity, then you end up having the same registrar information under your WHOIS record. Can Google look into that? You would be surprised with what they have access to! In February of 2005 Google became a registrar. What does it mean to become a registrar?

Registrars are resellers, any entity can become one and sell domains. There are different tiers of registrars. You could be a “middle man”, between the source and the client. You could even be the “middle man” between the original middle man and the client and so on. It only costs a few thousand dollars to sign up to different tiers, and for Google that’s small insignificant ash tray change. Do you think they acquired that so they could let you buy domain names from them? ——- No.

Disclosure: now we enter the area of speculation and SEO Survivor’s opinions

Google made this move so they could have greater access to domain information. That doesn’t mean that now Google has information to all domain names purchased. They would only have the information to the domain names registered under them, but now they have the edge they needed to get into the registrar databases. They may not get into the black and white information, but as registrars, they get benefits such as being able to carry out high volume of automated queries and many others. I won’t get too techincal here since there’s more information about Google as a registrar if you want.

If Google can reset the Search Engine Authority from domain names that expire, you can be sure that they can find that your domain names are owned by the same entity even if they are hosted in different servers. This remains to be tested though, so if you are currently doing this, let me know how it’s going. It could work out for a while, just keep in mind that it is a huge pain in the ass to get out of Google’s supplemental index, and that’s where you go when you do something naughty in Google’s eyes.

The best way to build links is to be active in the Social Media community, share and help others out. To have original and useful content on your site, to have an SEO friendly and user friendly site navigation. To personally contact other site owners that have relevant content to yours and offer to write something for them to post on their site and link to you, as well as other practices along those lines. Organic strategies may not produce results as fast as robotic strategies, but be sure that they are well worth the time and effort, and provide super valuable links to you. Also don’t be affraid to link to other relevant sites since you have to give if you want to receive. And remember, don’t panic if it’s organic.

I hope this helps out a bit! Stay tuned for more and don’t be affraid to comment people! Peace out…

Buenas tardes everyone,

It’s another perfect day in this perfect world we live in, and what better than some good updates from the Search Engine Marketing world to make everything fit right in? I can’t think of anything better… Below is a short list of some articles that captured my attention this week, nothing from the main news stream that you already heard about from reading major news sources. This is the good stuff you don’t find out from such sources, these are things that come from “a friend of a friend”. Today I am your friend’s friend, and here are the news I bring to you:

1. imnotadoctor exposed Big Local today. As he was doing the geek’s version of the daily muscle flexing in front of the mirror, which is googling keywords your site ranks well for, he found some major spamming going on. Not only that, but they have a fishy 302 redirect in place taking visitors from the target url (www.clovers.com) to their main site (www.BigLocal.com). You should read up on that story on Search Engine Land.
2. A Twitter Search engine is out. I found http://summize.com/ this week, but I’m not sure how new it is. Pretty interesting tool, and simple concept. It basically searches through people’s tweats and serves results. Here is the search result’s page for tweats related to the seosurvivor.
3. Google’s Porn problem seems to be far from over. In the last month there have been at least two instances where Google was spotted displaying explicit porno pictures in the universal search results box. When searching for “knuckles” and “Hot Celebrities” on regular search, with the “adult filter” on, you’d get a big old explicit image right there on the top of the results. Not cool Google, not cool at all. Granted, it’s freaking hard to keep those spamming porn sites out of the way.



4. Linda Phan, from eVisibility, wrote an awesome post about helping searchers find their way with local business ads. Amongst other things, Linda talks about how advertisers don’t get charged for people clicking to expand the plusbox, clicking on the actual map, or clicking to get directions to the business location, which is nice for all adwords users out there. A good read if your business is local and you use PPC.
5. The SEM industry still rocks! Danny DeMichele wrote a post on his blog talking about some recent studies showing that the Internet Marketing Industry is far from declining, it’s actually gaining more momentum! That’s a good thing to know for all those of us who are immersed in it 24/7.

I’m stirring the brain juice and crafting some fun posts for next week. Have a great weekend and pick up your trash

It came to my mind that I may have gone a bit overboard with the multitude of social media profiles I have created. I’m writing this post to make it easier for you to add me to your network on any of the mentioned social media sites we may have in common. Plus, next time someone asks me for my profile URL to a certain site, I’ll just send them this post instead of looking up the URL

Contrary to popular belief, I do have a life outside work and the internet. Because of that, a lot of my profiles are just sitting there. I may use them sparingly, and I may not use some of them at all, but they are there should I choose to become more involved. I’m very much active within some, and you’ll find me constantly updating content and participating. Either way, hit me up so we can network, share interesting stuff and contribute to a more relevant, semantic web.

StumbleUpon: http://seosurvivor.stumbleupon.com/

Sphinn: http://sphinn.com/user/view/profile/seosurvivor

Mixx: http://www.mixx.com/users/seosurvivor

digg: http://digg.com/users/seosurvivor

del.icio.us: http://del.icio.us/seosurvivor

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mrricardofigueiredo

Flickr: http://flickr.com/photos/seosurvivor

Twitter: http://twitter.com/seosurvivor

Friendfeed: http://friendfeed.com/seosurvivor

Propeller: http://www.propeller.com/member/seosurvivor/

Google Blog (Shared Articles): seosurvivor shared items

Bumpzee: http://www.bumpzee.com/users/view/seosurvivor

MyBlogLog: seosurvivor mybloglog profile

Mahalo: http://mahalo.com/member/Seosurvivor

Sproose: http://sproose.com/user/seosurvivor

Technorati: SEO Survivor Blog page

Yelp: http://seosurvivor.yelp.com/

Digital Point: seosurvivor profile (must be logged in)

Search Engine Watch: seosurvivor profile (must be logged in)

cre8asite: seosurvivor Cre8asite profile

LifeHacker: http://lifehacker.com/commenter/seosurvivor/

Search Engine Roundtable Forum: seosurvivor profile (must be logged in)

High Rankings Forum: seosurvivor profile (must be logged in)

WebmasterWorld: seosurvivor profile (must be logged in)

reddit: seosurvivor - for some reason the direct link to my profile isn’t working, so good luck finding me there!

… there are probably a few more, but that’s all that comes to mind now. I’ll update this list if I remember other places where I can be found.

Peace and Happiness!

Although there are many IM clients out there, this one has caught my attention. Digsby is rich in awesome useful features, compatibility and a user interface that is fun to play with.

Their Public Beta Launch was today, and we’re all trying it out here in the office. Take a look at their features page and you’ll see why I’m excited about this program.

Due to its young age, they still have to deal with several bugs that may come up from time to time, although they seem to be doing a great job at keeping the software clean. They have released 15 new iterations encompassing 35 major changes, 53 improvements, and 109 bug fixes.

If you have several different things to look over during a day’s work, and you’re a social media junkie like I am, be sure to download a copy and experience what the little green digsby dude can do for you. Cheers!

We have been watching the Google / DoubleClick acquisition process, and it has come to an end. I’m personally surprised at how fast this deal came together, though the talk has been around for a while.

What does this mean?

Read Google’s Announcement about the purchase to get your questions and doubts answered, or at least somewhat humored.

Meanwhile we wait to see DART tags implemented into the Google Content Network, among other new features that will certainly pop up in the near future.

I feel for any layoff victims, since there may be some DoubleClick layoff soon. Google will probably opt to reduce DoubleClick’s headcount to match its current business structure. The word on the street is that this is supposed to be done by sometime in April.

As mentioned on my last entry, I wrote a post for the eVisibility Insider about the use of nofollow tags. That post has received awesome feedback, and I’m very happy to see that the SEO community embraced it the way they did.

We even made it to the homepage of Sphinn, check out the screenshot:

For a lot of the big players out there, that’s nothing to be bragging about. But being fairly new in the SEO industry, and holding a full time job that keeps me busy, I certainly see this as an accomplishment.

Thank you ImNotADoctor (I have links to this guy on my sidebar, so make sure you check his site out), for getting the word out and submitting that post!

SEO Roundtable’s Tamar also mentioned our post and that definitely put a smile in my face. My buddies who went to the SMX West last week were telling me that she’s great in person, and I’m grateful to receive good feedback from her

Have a great day everyone, and thank you for your support and readership!

As promised last Friday, I wrote a blog post on understanding what the “No Follow” tag can do for you.

The post was just published this morning and it has already received quite a bit of positive feedback from the Sphinn community.

If you have a website, need to explain “nofollow” tags to clients and don’t know how, or are interested in understanding more about how nofollow tags work, you must check this out at the eVisibility Insider.

Have a great week, and look forward to another post later this week.

Another week has gone by and I haven’t posted anything in my blog. I have had plenty of great ideas throughout the week, but having time to post them is a total different matter.

As an SEO/SEM Project Manager for a positively busy Internet Marketing Agency, I don’t have much time during the work day to develop personal projects. Then, at the end of the day, when I get home the last thing I want to do is work. My attention turns to some type of entertainment and relaxation. Although I do love this business, at a personal level, I also love other things… And believe it or not, I try to move my body every now and then

With all of this blah blah blah said, let’s talk about something interesting…. How about the last SMX West? Three of my boys just came back, and they had a blast!! SEO by Mike, OrganicSEOConsultant and ImNotADoctor. That’s right, I didn’t go and I AM going to talk about it!

By the way, look how awesome the shirts we made and passed around the conference are:

FRONT

BACK

I scored some schwag thanks to my peeps thinking of me while there, and my boy Fumi took care of the photoshoot with his blackberry. The photo below is showing off my new schwag as I’m writing this blog post! Right now you’re thinking “How awesome is that?”.

One good thing that we realized by having them go to SMX is that we definitely are on the cutting edge of the SEO industry. Almost nothing was news for our guys, and I’m not trying to be cocky at all by saying this, but the main thing for them was networking, which must have been awesome! Maybe I’ll go to the SES next, we’ll see.

We have posted some great stuff about the SMX on the eVisibility Insider blog, so if you’re interested in checking out our notes, you should definitely do so.

Besides that, I have a pretty cool blog post for next week that’s in the works, along with an overview on what “nofollow” tags can do for your site, which will be posted in the eVisibility Insider sometime next week.

Peace out my friends, have a wonderful weekend and I’m looking forward to sharing more with you next week.