Cameron Olthuis

The game is still the same. It’s still about good search engine placement. It’s just the way you win the game that’s changing.

I came across a great quote today from Stuntdubl…

We are not optimizing *for* search engines. We are optimizing for PEOPLE to find us THROUGH search engines!

This is pretty much exactly when I meant when I said 2006 is The Year of the User.

The SEO game is getting tougher every year. Now it means optimizing for both the users and search engines. Building the best user experience for any given niche is what’s going to accomplish this. The best user experiences will be because of the best content, which inturn will provide the best link love. Capitalizing on the aforementioned is key. Over optimizing for the search engines isn’t.

I guess you could say that user experience alone isn’t enough, you have to make the search engines realize it too.

Agree? Disagree?

SEO, Search Engine Optimization, User Experience

It’s been a hell of a week, like a roller coaster ride. I’ve had a couple of the best days in awhile followed up by some of the worst.

The bad news first. Have you ever had your computer crash without having a recent backup? I did the other night and it wasnt pretty. Of course it had to happen at the worst time possible, in the middle of a big project. Needless to say I pretty much lost everything and I’m starting over. It’s also pretty hard going 50 days without a check. I guess I’m learning this whole work for myself thing is hard.

Now, this isn’t my personal computer that crashed, it’s a computer that one of my clients bought for me to use while at their office. They’ve been very nice in giving me personal space away from this house if I want it. The computer has ran perfect for 9 months. Do you think it’s coincidence that it breaks down within 3 weeks of someone else using it that’s notorious for messing up computers? I guess I can’t complain if it’s not mine.

Can you believe I’ve had my eMachines for almost 4 years, the cheapest one at the time when I bought it. Seriously, my personal computer is pretty bad, if you knew the specs you’d laugh. I got it when we were first married and we didn’t have much money at the time, and we haven’t had much since. But it’s probably been one of my best computers ever. To go through the abuse that it’s been through and still be running is a miracle by itself. It’s never crashed, been reformatted, or anything. It may be slow as hell sometimes but it’s reliable. eMachines obviously makes a great product, regardless of what the price says. Who would of thought, an eMachines.

Adalyn had her 3rd birthday earlier this week and it was a blast. We don’t really have many friends with kids her age down here in San Diego so we just partied together as the family. Her cousin from Canada is coming down this week, I think they’re planning something for the birthday then. Sea World and Disney Land.

I closed a pretty big deal this week, which is always very cool. It’s just hard getting used to this contract work, going weeks without a paycheck is hard. Clients never pay on time and it’s hard getting used to. But this deal that worked out is big. I’ve partnered with a web development firm to provide search marketing services for their clients. They seem to have a pretty impressive client list so I’m excited about this.

I also got a call from a recruiter this week. I don’t really want another job but the money offered is tempting. We’ll see what happens.

It’s been a very busy week. I’ve been digging out from taking the day off for Adalyn’s b-day and the HD crash. I’m getting back on track and everything is cool.

We’re finally moving out next week, which is going to be great. The place we’re in now is just to small for our growing family.

Well that’s been my week. I’m planning on taking it slow for the weekend, it’s been awhile since I’ve taken one off so I’m just going to relax. Maybe do a little light posting, all personal stuff as I don’t feel like working right now.

Hope yours was better than mine!!

There’s a video on Google video right where John Battelle’s giving a seminar at Google New York. It’s not very often when you come across things this good for free. If you’re interested at all in the future of search this is a must watch!

Video: John Battelle at Google NY.

search, seo, google, battelle

Here’s a bunch of my favorite web design resources that I use everyday. The following resources have been a huge help to me and I highly recommend them. Whether you’re already a professional web developer or you’re just getting your feet wet there’s plenty of information that can help you.

What resources have you found helpful? I’m always looking to add to my resources so please share your favorites in the comments below. Read the rest of this entry »

Newsvine launched it’s private beta today and I have 20 invitations to give out. If you’d like one send me an email.

If you’d like to learn more about Newsvine you can read about it from the CEO’s blog. Notably here and here.

There’s a thread over on High Rankings Forum titled Keyword and Domain Name. One of the members is asking if using a keyword rich domain name will get ranked purely on the domain name.

Based purely on the domain name, will screendoor.nz get ranked in the MSN and Google the same as a screendoor.com?

Would screen-door.nz be a better then screendoor.nz if the keyword screen door is used 1000 times per day and the keyword screendoor is only used 150 times per day?

What’s funny about this thread is the person asking the question gets an answer quite a few times, from some of the brightest minds in the industry mind you. However, he continues to argue that using a keyword rich domain name will help him regardless of what others tell him. He uses the following example…

I have read what you told me to read but..

when I put up www.skincare-city.com, it immediately went to the first page (approx the second listing) in MSN under skincare-city.

Of course he ranked well for the phrase “skincare-city”, but only because that’s a keyphrase no one has ever bothered to optimize for, let alone even use on their site because no one would ever search for that phrase. It even turns out that he even has a few incoming links using that exact keyphrase, maybe that helped.

Regardless, there’s no point in ranking for a keyword that will never be searched for.

So back to the question at hand. Based purely on the domain name will you get ranked any better for those keywords?

No!

Keywords in your domain name isn’t what gets you to the top.

A couple years ago using keywords in your domain name did help with your rankings, but that’s no longer true. You can probably thank the spammers for this once they started using keyword-keyword-keyword-keyword.com for domain names. And this is probably the one time I actually do thank the spammers, because having a domain name with keywords in it shouldn’t affect your rankings. Just because you own screendoors.com doesn’t mean you have the most relevant site for screen doors.

Now just to make myself clear so there’s no confusion I said that having keywords in your domain name helped in the past, not that it necessarily meant automatic top rankings.

There’s more to top rankings than just a domain name.

There’s also a lot of other factors you should be thinking about when registering a domain name. SEO should be the furthest thing from your mind at this point. After all SEO is just a small piece of the online marketing pie anyways.

Think about your business. Think about your branding. Think about your marketing plan. Think about your customers. Whatever you do don’t think about SEO, there’s plenty of time for that later.

What do you think? I am right or wrong?

SEO, Branding, Domain Names

Tonight, Aaron Wall has started answering email questions on his blog about SEO related issues. Basically his readers ask him questions via email and he answers them publicly so we can all learn from it.

Aaron’s one of the top SEO’s in the industry so if you’d like to learn more about online marketing I’d recommend you pay attention to what he says.

This looks to be a great series, one that I hope Aaron continues to do.

SEO, Online Marketing