Dustin Woodard's thoughts on search, social media, filmmaking and the web in general.
Never thought I’d see the day that Microsoft would make a bid for Yahoo. There’s so much overlap and the difficulties of becoming to big of a company just got bigger. I’m happy to see Google get stiffer competition, but I’m not sure how it will play out other than Microsoft immediately getting a larger share of search.
For the best coverage of the Microsoft bid for Yahoo, hop on over to Search Engine Land.
I’ll be speaking at SEMpdx on March 10th at the Portland Zoo. Still trying to figure out if it is really a ploy to lock me up with the animals. “Oh… look at the cute SEO flicking boogars at the crowd.”
You can catch me at the links session with another Seattlite, SEOMoz’s Rebecca Kelley. You can also take a look at my Searchfest mini-interview with Todd Mintz where I answer these questions:
Websites everywhere let their copyright footers go out of date, but you don’t expect it of the bigger, more sophisticated sites that could easily justify the 5 minutes it would take to create an automated solution. Especially search engines which crawl, index and rank billions upon billions of web pages with some of the most advanced technology in the world, built by some of the most sophisticated teams of researchers, PhDs, and programmers seen to man. So here it is, January 2nd, 2008 and all five of the top engines still think it is 2007:
Click on the search engine images to see if they’ve updated their site yet, then add a comment when they do so we can document which engines fix it first.
Look out super multi-taskers. As of January 1st, texting while driving is illegal – at least in my home state (Washington) and in Florida (read more here). According to the Washington State Department of Transportation, cell phone distractions are responsible for less than one percent of the collisions.
The good news: it’s only a secondary violation, meaning you have to get pulled over first.
The bad news: the greater than 99% causes of collisions are still out there.
The worst news: starting July 1st, talking on your cell phone at all while driving will be illegal unless you use a hands-free device. Hands-free device providers must be excited. Bluetooth even use “Seattle” as the code name for their next generation of hands-free devices. You can still text and drive and multitask if you have one of the self driving cars from Torc Robotics.
A lawyer from Chambers Legal in Perth warns that these new laws will become confusing when the lines between technology begin to blur. What happens when people can receive texts on built-in dashboard LCDs, using voice recognition software to send texts, or even right now when a person uses the speaker function on their cell phone instead of a hands-free device? Judges and officers will also have to define what exactly is texting. What about sending or taking pics with your cell phone, or checking your phone for the time or sending pre-drafted or templated messages that require just one or two clicks?
Personally, I think texting while driving is a bit dangerous, though a quick glance to read an incoming text in Seattle’s typical stop-and-go traffic is not a big deal (no worse then loading in a new cd, checking a map, a crying back-seat baby, or a talkative passenger).
I feel the hands-free law is probably over the line, to have a better understanding about the legal implications you might want to check with an expert like Bob Bratt. True, it is safer, but I believe the ability to drive while on the cell phone is up to the drivers ability then anything else. If we want to we want to create blanket laws for all drivers, they might as well outlaw drinking coffee, listening to the radio, talking to a passenger, doing make-up (actually, this one should be a law), picking noses, and reading billboards or bumper stickers while driving.
Online reputation management is increasingly important as more and more friends, family and employers search your name. Even if you are always on your best behavior online or you have a fairly unique name, as the population swells and more people become creators of content on the web, there’s a great chance that people will mistake others activity online as your own! And if you own a roofing company, there’s also other Ways to generate Roofing Leads.
Fusion Vegas explains that controlling or managing search rank for your own name is fairly easy for an SEO (search engine optimizer), but what can the average person do? Below I outline a number of free, quick, easy and effective ways to populate the first page of results for your name. I highly recommend people start creating content for their name now as it will be much more difficult after waiting for someone else with your name to muddy the search results to spur you to action. Are you thinking about hiring an SEO company? If so, then check out this SEO Agency Sydney.
1) Create a Blog
According to Andy Defrancesco even if you build just a one-page site using your name on a free blog network, you can quickly use your blog to create pages about yourself and link to other pages you are going to create on this list. Use your name in the blog name. If you want to boost the amount of leads generated by your website just visit www.yourveganmarketer.com for the best seo service.
Estimated time to complete: 10 minutes
Free Options:Blogger (blogspot) LiveJourna
2) Create a Wiki
Several wiki platforms have done a great job of creating publishing tools that are even easier to use than most blog technology. Though wikis are best suited for group collaboration, the will also work well helping you link to your blog and other pages. Use your name in the wiki name.
Estimated time to complete: 10 minutes
Free Options: <
3) Register your domain
If you are lucky enough to have [insertyourname].com (or .net, .org, .info) available, snatch them up. The $8 a year fee is well worth it even if you don’t actively build a site using it because, at the very least, you are preventing your competition (other people with your name, or people who don’t like you) from ranking high for your name. Even better, use your domain for the site or wiki you are going to create.
4) LinkedIn
Set up a LinkedIn profile and make it publicly available. Add background info like education, employment history, awards or certification (or anything else you are proud of). Add links to your other sites/pages.
5) Jobster
Some people are a little shocked when they find out their Jobster profile shows up in search. Not you, because you want it to! Create a jobster account, allow it to be publicly available, fill out a little employment info, answer a couple questions, but write it keeping in mind that your current employer could come across it.
6) Myspace
Myspace pages tend to show up in search as well. Though Myspace has probably ruined more people’s reputations than helped, you will create a clean Myspace page for your name and, if you feel the urge, put the racy stuff on a different profile.
Estimated time to complete: 5 minutes
7) Flickr
Flickr accounts and images have a great chance of showing up in the engines, especially for image searches. Creat an account, upload a few photos you like and label them with your name.
Estimated time to complete: 10 minutes
8) Comment on Popular Post
Sometimes I see a commenter’s name show up in search. Find a popular blogger site or newspaper site that allows comments, and find a post that you feel comfortable commenting on. Use your real name for the name field. Try this on a couple sites.
Estimated time to complete: 5 minutes
9) Employer Site
If your employer features profiles on their website, ask them to add one for you. If not, talk them into it or author a post on their blog (if they have one).
Estimated time to complete: 5-30 minutes, depending on your company
10) Join a Forum
Do a search for a forum that you might want to participate on. For example, if you are into guitar, you should search for “guitar forum.” If it looks like a place where it would be easy for you to make five or six posts, then sign up and use your name for your profile name. Make your five posts and fill out your profile page with information about you and use your name at least once in the profile description.
Estimated time to complete: 15 minutes
*Disclosure: I work for Wetpaint, but honestly believe their wiki solution is the best option
Everybody uses Facebook and it’s an amazing website to get customers. With adequate seo packages singapore you’ll be able to rank your website to the top and get popular. In the future, Facebook might also be an option. They recently allowed profiles set to public to be crawled, but they are showing logged-out status of your profile, which is basically your name and picture right now.
Keep in mind, Google usually only shows two results for any one site. That’s why I have you contributing on multiple sites. A couple more tips: