Cameron Olthuis

I’m sure you’re all familiar with del.icio.us. By now you either use it religiously or you’ve just heard me mention the name and you’re curious what it’s all about. Delcious is a social bookmarking web application, or in their own words… “del.icio.us is a collection of favorites – yours and everyone else’s.” If you don’t use delicious yet this tutorial is for you, if you do use it then it’s very basic and you’ll find it boring, it’s just a getting started tutorial.

The reason I love delicious so much is because it allows me to easily bookmark any site I ever come across. I bookmark tutorials, motivational articles, and web sites that give design inspiration. It helps me remember these things and revisit them in the future when I otherwise may have forgotten. It’s easy to use and my bookmarks are always just a click away…

First of all go to del.icio.us. Where it says “Sign Up Now” go ahead and enter your email address, they don’t spam you I promise. Next you’ll see a page that asks you to enter a security code, they do this to make sure you’re a human and not a robot. Next you’ll see a page that tells you your account is setup and gives you directions on adding their buttons to your browser, this makes it easy to bookmark items you like. After you complete all this you’ll want to verify your email address and login to your account.

That’s it your done. You are now free to bookmark the world wide web. That was pretty easy wasn’t it?

There’s one more step. Delicious actually has an official Firefox Extension. Click install now and install it. Then you can tag right from the Firefox toolbar by clicking “tag this”. You can also visit your delicous homepage anytime by clicking where it says “delicious”.

By the way, if you like any of my blog entries you can bookmark them anytime you want.

It’s really hard to predict the future of the web, with some many cool new technologies it’s anyones guess which one’s going to be the next big thing. Why does it have to be just one? If it makes your internet experience more enjoyable and efficent you’re all for it right?

One of the technologies I’ve really been getting into lately is RSS. RSS (aka XML), allows you to easily create one or more of our own personal web pages, you decide what information is displayed there by subscribing to RSS feeds. You can use it to get the latest news, weather, sports, blog entries, events, and pretty much anything you can imagine, all on your own personal web page. I use my Yahoo! , it ties right in with my email account so it’s convenient. If you don’t already use RSS I suggest you start, it’s a very effecient way to get all the lastest information you’re looking for in one page.

Lately all sorts of web companies have been offering RSS feeds for all sorts of different things. I just learned that New York Times Job Market (source: Micro Persuasion) offers an RSS feed, if you’re looking for a job you can now track openings as they’re listed on New York Times. No longer do you have to check the New York Times everyday to see if there’s new job listings, the RSS feed will tell you.

RSS really is going to play a big role in the future of the web. It’s definitely one of the next big things to watch that’s taking over the web. Thanks to RSS you’ll soon be able to incorporate most everything you do online into one experience. By allowing you to get all the information you want in one place, it increases effeciency and saves time. Best of all it’s a very easy to use, even for the average person that isn’t computer savvy.

So what does this mean to marketers? I think it means there’s a big need to figure out what products are marketable using RSS. I ‘ve already started working on some for different clients. I believe these will offer a valuable service to our users, and will be things they’ll actually want to use. RSS feeds can really set your company apart, at the same time providing a very valuable service. Don’t go overboard with it though, not everything needs RSS.

I’m certainly looking forward to more companies offering RSS. For example, won’t it be cool when we’re shopping for a certain product on eBay and we can see all the listings as they come in, without having to actually visit eBay. It can get pretty annoying spending the time looking for new listings only to find there aren’t any. What about keeping track of items we’re already bidding on? Now I’m sure someone already offers a eBay software that does this but I’d really like to see these things coming from the actual companies.

I predict RSS will be one of the big things next year, if not THE big thing.

In a recent entry, 5 Things That Won’t Help With SEO, I talked about the dangers of link exchange programs and why you should avoid reciprocal linking with sites that don’t offer value to your users. Now there’s word straight from the horses mouth.

Barry Schwartz from Search Engine Roundtable has been providing complete session reviews from the Search Engine Strategies Conference in Chicago. His latest review, Search Engine Q&A On Links, is from a session where representatives from the 4 major search engines (Ask Jeeves, Google, Yahoo, and MSN) discuss proper linking strategies and also conduct a Q&A. This is one session I wish I really could’ve attended, it clears up a lot of questions about link strategies.

Here’s some quotes that I found interesting from Barry’s review:

Kaushal Kurapati, Senior Product Manager of Search, Ask Jeeves

– Be Cautious of reciprocal links and buying links
- Avoid link farms, cloaked pages, hidden links and links by images.
- Focus on your business and content, the rest will follow

Charles Martin from Google

- Be the user when building links
- use unique relevant content to attract links
- Avoid; recip links, poor quality link exchanges, fishy looking sites, who you link to can affect your reputation.
- He specifically says “You can be held accountable for linking to people”
- Do not obsesses with back links
- Design site with user in mind

Tim Mayer, Director of Product Management, Yahoo!

- There is this intense focus on link building, Tim says. There is very little focus on building quality content. If you build good content, people will link to it.
- Links should be related and designed to help the user
- Add unique and useful content that invites others to link to your site
- Don’t use link exchanges or buy links

I noticed they also mention that you shouldn’t buy links. I would agree that you shouldn’t buy links for the purpose of increasing your search engine rankings. I do however think it’s ok to purchase links as a form of advertising if you think it will drive targeted traffic to your site. It won’t boost your rankings but if it will increase your sales then why not.

Another thing I found very interesting is that all of them talk about focusing on your users first, a point I try to get across every chance I get. I briefly mentioned this in the 10 Rules For Web Startups entry but I’ve also been writing an in-depth article on focusing on your users first. I was hoping to have it done by now, hopefully the amount of time it’s taking indicates the quality of the article.

Yet another reason why Friendster blows.

The one-time hot spot dug deep into its network to pull out the e-mail addresses of people who didn’t initially respond to friends’ invites to join the online social network a year or more ago. The e-mails implied they were coming from a friend when, in fact, they were being sent by the company.

One guy is saying that Friendster even sent him an invite from a friend that committed suicide last year. Seems like they made more enemies than friends.

Now you know why Friendster who pretty much started social networking has fallen by the wayside to the others.

People don’t like spam, never have and never will.

I came across this article tonight that’s plugging a new one way backlinking service from Content Relay.

Thus, the company (ContentRelay.com) has launched a new website which enables webmasters to generate one-way links to their website by providing other webmasters with content to publish on their website.

At fist glance this seems like a great idea, but here’s the problem. Just like every other backlinking method this is going to get abused by the spammers. Once they (the spammers) realize all their other linking techniques no longer work they’ll turn to this and begin abusing it, until the point where Google and others start penalizing for it. Once that happens the links we’ve all been working so hard to earn will start to be de-valued. In addition the web will start being filled with crappy content that serves as nothing more than a shameless plug for PPC (Pills, Porn, Casinos).

The other problem I can see happening is content theft. What’s going to stop others from stealing content and trying to pass it off as their own just to get another link?

Let’s just stick to earning inbound links the hard but ethical way, writing & creating powerful content that benefits others and gives them reason to share with the world without getting anything in return.

Here’s my list of the top 5 things that won’t help with your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts, lots of them happen to be very popular techniques. Some are simply a waste of time, others are a waste of money, and some will just flat out get banned if you abuse them.

Please remember this is just one guy’s (me) opinion. Just about everything with SEO is a guess, sometimes an educated one. If you question any of this I suggest you do some research and form your opinion from there. Enjoy.

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Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks shares the stories he’s written about success & motivation. These stories are very inspiring.

I almost thought he was telling my life story at first. It seems we’ve had a lot of very similar experiences right up till somewhere in part #3 where my journey currently rests.

Hope you enjoy as much as I did.