Google's Search Engine Optimization: Is the SEO game rigged?

Although I'm a freelance website designer,  I don't want to use this post to talk about the inner workings of what it takes to make a website successful. I don’t want to turn this post into another Internet marketing blog. Ironically most of Google's income is from telling others how to make money on the Internet. It’s a game, and regardless of what Google thinks of my website, I want to add real value to my readers.

It seems these days I spend more time optimizing a website than designing the website itself. I follow all the tips, tricks, and rules to get Google to recognize my painstaking efforts and sometimes that's still not enough. I feel I sometimes have to "dumb down" my content in order to get Google to recognize it. Is this the way it's supposed to be? Is this really progress?

In researching what makes up a search engine, I found that the problem with Google search is that it's mostly computer algorithm driven. They believe their search engine results should be primarily driven by an automated system. Google’s bots scan your content to determine relevancy, and how your content should be weighted against other websites. It’s a very complex process that I won’t go into detail here.

Unfortunately with most computer scientists, most feel a computer algorithm can replace the human element. When in fact a human should always be in the loop in some fashion.

Their income is from ad banners, not organic search results (Organic search results describe a search that returns results by indexing pages based on content and keyword relevancy. This is in contrast to listings ranked based on who paid the most money to appear at the top). Not that I can blame them for this, but once you realize organic search seems to be mostly an annoyance to them, it makes perfect sense. In reality they don’t care they just knocked your site out of search results from a decent ranking previously.

I played by what I thought were their rules, and still got punished for some unknown reason. Google decides with their automated algorithms that someone now has spammy non unique content. I have no problem playing by Google’s rules, but I don’t have the slightest clue what that is. If Google made the rules clear, perhaps black hat SEO will decease in the process. What is Black Hat SEO you ask?

Black Hat search engine optimization is customarily defined as techniques that are used to get higher search rankings in an unethical manner. These black hat SEO techniques usually include one or more of the following characteristics:

• breaks search engine rules and regulations
• creates a poor user experience directly because of the black hat SEO techniques utilized on the Web site
• unethically presents content in a different visual or non-visual way to search engine spiders and search engine users.

A lot of what is known as black hat SEO actually used to be legit, but some folks went a bit overboard and now these techniques are frowned upon by the general SEO community at large. These black hat SEO practices will actually provide short-term gains in terms of rankings, but if you are discovered utilizing these spammy techniques on your Web site, you run the risk of being penalized by search engines. Black hat SEO basically is a short-sighted solution to a long-term problem, which is creating a Web site that provides both a great user experience and all that goes with that.

I do plan on to keep updating my websites, fighting the good fight against Google’s stupidity, and relying less on Google for visitors. For any online business it makes sense to do this because at anytime you could be deemed a spammer in the eyes of Google. Your business can literally end overnight. I’ve unfortunately seen too many online business rely on search engine traffic, only to get completely wiped out from an update.

How to create RSS feeds by email for WordPress.org/Blogger

Not all visitors to your website or blog will be familiar with RSS feeds or how they work, while some other visitors just don’t want to mess with using a feed reader. I've discovered how to use an email subscription, which is another great service to offer to your visitors. It's convenient, and to your visitors, it's like getting a newletter in their email inbox. Very cool.

First you’ll need an email subscription service that’ll send out the emails for you.
The service I currently use Feedburner through my Google account, or you can just log on to www.feedburner.com
First, set up a Feedburner feed if you don’t have one already. Then follow these steps:

1. Go to Feedburner.com and login
2. Click  "My Feeds" in the upper-left-hand corner
3. Select your feed from the list
4. Click the “Publicize” tab
5. Click “Email Subscriptions” on the left
6. Make sure “Feedburner” is selected, and click “Activate”
7. Copy the HTML code in the box
8. Login to your WordPress blog’s administration area
9. Go to the “Appearance” section (a.k.a. “Design,” “Presentation,” or “Themes” in versions prior to 2.7)
10. If you’re using Widgets in your sidebar, click the “Widgets” sub-tab. Add a “Text” widget to the sidebar you want, and paste the HTML code in the configuration section. Save your changes, and that’s it!
11. For Blogger, go to your website's dashboard, and click the "design" tab.
12. Click on the "gadgets" tab.
13. On the available list of gadgets, click on "feed by email"  
14. Copy/Paste the URL of the feed in the configuration box and click "save"  

Yahoo Small Business finally upgrades to MYSQL5

Well, they finally did it. I think Yahoo had too many CEOs last year and they couldn't decide what direction to take the company, but whatever the reason was, they finally got around to upgrading their database technology after many years. This change mostly effects users who have WordPress websites and/or blogs because WordPress has new requirements for their new version 3.2. This means you need to have PHP5 and MYSQL5 in order to run WordPress. Any versions lower than that will no longer be supported. Congratulations, Yahoo. You joined the world again.

Web Design Trends

Web design trends come and go. It’s difficult to predict the future of web design, but still there are some changes that are worth talking about. The first trend that I have noticed is the priority of a website’s functionality over its graphics. Beautiful design seems to be insufficient. I think of the connection between design and virtual reality of the website. I try to enchant my visitors by using harmonious color schemes and intuitive designs together with easily accessible information available to both desktop/laptop browsers, as well as smart phone and tablet browsers.

Say Good-bye to Flash

It has recently been said that “the Flash Player was not going to achieve the same ubiquity on mobile as it has on the desktop.” He also added that (and mainly points out), since HTML5 is widely accepted across all platforms, and the fact being that Apple’s iOS is not going to allow Flash in the browser, it is very much understood and observed that the tool will never achieve the same universality on mobile as how it achieved on the desktop.

It’s a known fact that HTML5 is universally accepted and supported by most mobile browsers, and having a strong base with strong support on smartphones and tablets, this enlightened Adobe that Flash would never be able to compete with the latest standards of HTML. This is one of the main reasons why Adobe decided to kill Flash, and as Mike stated – Adobe is now more focused toward HTML5.

HTML5 vs. Flash

Even though I loved all the contributions that Steve Jobs made to the world, I still think that he should have offered Flash on the IPad. I did get to explore HTML5 a little bit recently and I do like it as far as its ease of use. However, the problem remains that it only runs on the lastest browsers, and unless your users are very tech savvy and upgrade their browsers, they’re not going to be able to appreciate it. Internet Explorer version 9 will run it, along with the latest versions of Firefox and Safari. Firefox will only accept .ogg files as opposed to .mp3 files and so on.

Here’s the thing: unless all browsers will come to realize we need technology that’s backward compatable along with browsers meeting the same standards, it will take a while for HTML5 to completely catch on. I do see the advantages it has over Flash, but it will still take time for the rest of the world to catch up.

Dynamic Web Design

Dynamic web design is an excellent way for users to update their own information. More and more people want the capablility to be able to update their own data without having to depend on a webmaster to do it for them.

The whole entire website does not have to be dynamic. There can be a mixture of static and dynamic web pages within the same website. The deciding factor is how often the data must change, or whether the client would like to control his/her information.

Content Management Systems such as Joomla, Drupal, and WordPress give the same capabilities to the user. You download the free software, but you are responsible for the configuration. This may be the answer for you if you have a large website to set up that you want to control yourself. However, the user must be somewhat saavy in the use of open source software. Some people are not that technically oriented or patient enough to have to surf through forum after forum to get a simple question answered, or to have to put on a new release or apply a patch. Some people find that extremely complicated and time consuming, and I must say, I don’t blame them one bit. It’s not for everyone.

Many web hosts support PHP if you can write your own scripts, but you should make sure before setting up an account with them first, and also what kind of technical support they may offer. I often use HostGator for most of my web hosting needs. In the website I designed that is pictured above, I used PHP and MySql to create powerful queries, database updates, and it has proven to be the center of database design.