Cameron Olthuis

‘Suck’ is a probably a little harsh. Most home pages don’t accomplish their purpose, and yes, some do ’suck’!

I was reading Seth Godin’s Blog today and came across his entry No good home pages?. While I’m sure Seth was just trying to make a point he says “there are no good home pages except for Google.” Then again who knows, maybe Seth really does think that. He has a point though, most home pages are no good. They’re overwhelming and confusing. Hell, I’ve come across web sites, and spent 10 minutes on the home page alone and still couldn’t tell you what they do. Maybe I’m just not as smart as I think.

If I come to your website and don’t know what you’re about within 30 seconds I’ll go somewhere else, and 30 seconds is being generous. The first thing a home page should tell me is; who you are, what your site does, and how I use it. It’s amazing, even some of the biggest brands miss the point. To me it’s just common sense. Do those involved in creating the User Interface just automatically asume everyone knows what they do? Do they even have a clue what they’re doing?

To me a good home page is simple. It’s easy to use and tells me exactly what it does before it tells me anything else. It’s pleasing to the eye and the navigation makes sense. Remember that if you want my business!

Xooglers – Blog about the early days of Google from former director of consumer marketing and brand management, Doug Edwards. Pretty interesting if you’re into that kind of stuff. [Source: Search Engine Watch]

WebGuerrilla – aka Greg Boser writes about Viagra and Handjobs:

Throughout the years, all search engines have taken turns denying that there is ever any hand manipulation involved when it comes to their stellar search results. At the same time, those of us who have been in the business awhile have all managed to witness what we feel are clear cut cases of hand manipulation.

In my mind, the most obvious example involved the infamous little blue pill. Viagra first hit the market in ’98. By the end of that year, dozens of pharmaceutical affiliate programs were launched, and the pill spamming industry was born.

I know I’ve witnessed what I feel are clear cases of manipulation through the years, and I don’t have a problem with it. I actually think it’s in the searchers (and search engines) best interest for some results to be manually edited for optimal results and I wish they’d do it more often. I do however, have a problem with the search engines telling us otherwise, but I’ll save that rant for another day.

I think we’d all agree that it’s pretty damn annoying when you can’t find what you’re searching for because the first five pages of SERPs are filled with nothing but SEO spam (again, another rant for another day). The algorithms are getting better and better at dealing with spam, but it’s still not enough, we need better results and we need them now. If better results means more hand manipluation that’s fine, I don’t really care how they serve ‘em up so long as they are the most relevant to what I’m looking for.

Save all the pill spamming pharmacy results for the paid listings.

that was some good grubb. I’ll go out on a limb here and say that my Thanksgiving dinner was better than yours, your neighbors, and your cousins… All put together. You see I’m fortunate in that my brother in law is an executive chef, and my sister is an executive pastry chef, between the two of ‘em they’ve worked at some of the best restaurants in the country. Not only was the turkey scrumptous but the dessert that followed shorthly after was “to die for.”

Jodi & Wade, thanks again for the unbelievable meal.

Happy Thanksgiving! Hope you all enjoy stuffing your soon to be fat faces with turkey & potatoes.

Gooble Gooble!

I’ve been seeing it more and more lately, creating a blog soley to increase the search engine rankings for a website. This is a great example of blogging for the wrong reasons.

In this post on the High Rankings Forum someone stated the following…

..the reason for me to have a blog on is to improve my rankings (on the bottom line) i dont think it has to do anything with what my site is about (correct me if im wrong)

a few posts later the same individual replied…

and i heard that blogs and rss are the hot stuff regarding seo.

I think most people fail to realize that you shouldn’t be adding to your website just for seo purposes. This goes for anything, not just blogs. If it isn’t in the best interest of your site visitors then forget about it!

So what are the right reasons?

I can think of a lot of great reasons why someone (or a company) should have a blog, but the most important is for the purpose of providing well written, unique content that can’t be found anywhere else. Do you have a valuable opinion on one or many subjects? Do you want to keep in touch with friends and family? Are you an authoritive individual in a certain industry? These are just a few of many great reasons to start a blog. Personally I’ve recently started my own blog to keep family and friends updated on my family and also because I have a strong opinion in my area of expertise (Internet Marketing) that I’d like to share.

If you want to start a blog make sure it’s for the right reasons. If you put your visitors first the search engines (and traffic) will follow. Blogging and RSS are not the hot things in seo; lots of well written, unique, and powerful content is. Remember, if it doesn’t add value to your visitors then don’t do it.

The Office, starring Steve Carell, has got to be the funniest show on TV! I do have a complaint though, it’s only a half hour long. I could easily laugh at this show for an hour every week.

If you’ve never seen The Office before you’re missing out. If you have seen it then you know what I’m talking about.

I can only image how fun that would be to actually work in a office like that, I would have such a blast working with Dwight. Can you imagine that?

If you haven’t seen The Office make sure you check it out every Tuesday night on NBC. You won’t be dissapointed.