I recently relaunched a website from a single static page to a full-blown site with around 20 pages. The site structure fits within the guidelines (of course) and I did some link-building to get some general link-juice and to get the site to rank for the business name.

With Google and Yahoo! results were as expected. Within a few days the site was ranking for the fairly unique business name.

Microsoft’s Live search engine on the other hand was lagging. In fact, the cache date hasn’t updated in months.

I got a recommendation to try adding an XML sitemap and ping it through the Live Search Webmaster Tools. Which I did and we’ll see if that helps but judging by Microsoft’s support forum, I see little help coming…

One poster claims the new Webmaster Tools themselves are the problem though a representative from Microsoft denied it. The poster says once he deleted the identification code Webmaster Central requires to verify site ownership, his indexing went from nothing to a few hundred pages per day. That’s quite a jump. And it could be coincidence.

It seems the slowdown in crawl rates started in October so my suggestion is if you were using the Webmaster Tools before November, try deleting the identifying XML file. If you weren’t, try what I’m doing and sign up to see if that gives MS a kick in the pants.

Either way, if you are experiencing crawl delays, drop by the official MS Webmaster Forums and drop a complaint. Squeaky wheels get greased.

One man… you go high enough you always come to one man… who? - Mel Gibson as Porter in Payback

I know it’s really hard for some people to grasp that Google is an evil, lying, manipulative company (with fantastic PR). So I drew a picture.

How many times have you heard Google representatives say that Search and Adwords are kept separate? This just can’t be because these people run the whole thing. From Search to Maps to Blogger to Adsense and so much more. At some point, all these “divisions” become one company with a single leader pointing the way.

For those of you unfamiliar with leadership principles, the way a chain of command works is communication runs up and commands go down. The employees don’t see the grand design or understand it. They just do their jobs by following orders and reporting progress.

But someone at Google knows both sides of the company very well and pulls the strings to make them do what he wants. Would Google put an evil mastermind in it’s top management team? Continue Google is evil. Here’s the picture. »

Yesterday, Microsoft announced corrections to their new cloaking-detector bot that was causing havoc with web stats and ad earnings.

While many blogs are covering this announcement - hit tip to Donna for breaking the story - most are viewing this announcement as a positive step… or at least being diplomatic about accusing Microsoft of any wrongdoing.

Screw that.

Microsoft knew what their program was doing and was, at best, slow to respond. This “better to ask forgiveness” philosophy is what led Microsoft’s browser and operating system departments into anti-trust lawsuits. And now it seems the culture of those departments has spilled over to search. Continue Microsoft: Better to ask forgiveness than permission philosophy makes its way to Live »

… but this one is not meant to educate the masses.

Of course, the search engine officials are telling us SEOs to keep things clean and to follow the rules. And really, we want to follow the rules and keep our little white hat unstained. Honest guv’, we do. At least we want everyone else to follow those rules and be good. However, we are living in the fast lane and we can’t be arsed to write 150 pages of greatness, and then wait for people and search engines to pick up on those in an all-natural way. Nah, we really need a good dollop of grey on our hats to get ahead. And I don’t mean pigeon poo.

First grown-up step on the SEO ladder is often to visit forums and read, or even sign up. That’s great. SEO forums come in all shapes and sizes and shades of hat, ranging from angelic white like Doug’s forum to infra-black like Earl’s. Then again: you’re not that extreme. You just want your pages to rank decently. The following list will take 10 of the most common whitehat SEO myths and will add to those a grain of salt (or more) in order to turn them into real-life SEO tips.

1. Content is king.
Hahahaha. Move on to the next one please. Ok, for the record: nowadays you cannot rank any page without links. However, you can rank any page with targetted links. Just add your favourite keyword on the page once to dodge the google bombing filter eh.

2. Pagerank is dead.
It is not. On Google, you need pagerank to get anywhere. The other search engines use similar algorithms. Common denominator is links. Nice, proper <A HREF=”…”> links. Doesn’t matter what the anchor text is (at this point), just get the backlink. However, don’t believe all you see on the Google toolbar. The pagerank indicator does not necessarily correspond with the actual and correct pagerank of the page you’re viewing. In fact I have uninstalled the toolbar a long time ago, effectively freeing up space that belonged to the webpages I was viewing in the first place. Liberating, I tell you.

3. Rewrite your pages to have .html extensions.
In the days of yore, some search engine bots would ease off crawling dynamic pages like .php and .asp. If only to prevent server overloads crashing the site in question. These days, it doesn’t really matter anymore. Furthermore, what’s the use of getting your pages crawled every day when in fact they haven’t changed for months? Just leave the .php extensions on, and even the query strings if you feel like it. Spend your time more wisely.

4. Don’t link out to a “bad neighbourhood”.
Oh please. As long as you’re not linking back and forth within the very worst of link spamming networks, then the odd dodgy link won’t hurt your webpage or website one bit. (Sorry, no real-life example here.)

5. Avoid shared servers and go for dedicated IPs.
Again, unless you host your entire blackhat crosslinking network on there, a shared server is not going to do you any harm. Keep in mind that the majority of websites are on shared servers. The search engines have grown accustomed to them. Better yet: why not browse your server’s IP for domains and pick a couple of nice and clean websites made by others and link to them?

6. Don’t buy links. And if you sell links, use rel=”nofollow”.
This rule needs to be adjusted. Ok, bought links are frowned upon, officially. However, if enough care is taken to avoid leaving the usual “footprint” of bought links, then buy away if you have the money to spare.

7. Keep your “keyword density” around 5%.
Duh. Even Randfish knows this is not true. Some landing pages for flash sites have a keyword density of 50 - 100% and still rank tops. There is no such thing as a fixed, ideal keyword density.

8. DMOZ is dead.
Ok it may not be as powerful as it used to be, but if you have 15 minutes to spare, come up with a nice title and description and submit your website. Who knows eh? Don’t go overboard though: most dmoz editors have day jobs and some take months to update their categories. Don’t bug them. Umm ok bug them a little but not too often.

9. Don’t use CSS like “visibility:hidden” or “display:none”.
True, spammy hidden text is icky. What’s more, it isn’t even that effective. But don’t believe the myth that just using css like that will get your pages penalised. There are many legitimate uses for hidden content on web pages, dynamic menus being one of them. Just make sure it will never come to a “manual review”.

10. Use valid code.
Nice to aim for. Not necessary for good rankings. Keep in mind that half of mankind has an IQ of less than 100 and is truly puzzled by all but the simplest html code. People just do their best at writing html, but can’t be expected to be perfect. Search engine spiders have adapted to that, and they are very lenient. If your pages are already indexed and ranking nicely, validating your code won’t improve things. On a side note: if you are using <TABLE>s and are happy with how your pages look and behave, then don’t be tempted to rewrite them to clean css. Really, the bots can’t be arsed about tables or css.

Ok that’s enough for now, let’s stop before this turns into a multipage rant. Top 10s read better than top 30s anyway. Just stay tuned for more

It’s Google’s right to rank websites how they see fit. When Google was “doing no evil” and only “organizing the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” I was a big fan. One of their biggest, most vocal supporters. I sent them a great deal of business and helped build their reputation.

Google has become morally bankrupt. Or at least, fallen victim to it’s own ego.

Google has taken to stripping even more sites of their PR scores? Why? Nobody knows though there is a lot of speculation these sites are involved with “pay per post”.

Pay per post comes from sites like reviewme.com where people looking for publicity are lined up with bloggers in their industry. The blogger writes a post giving their impressions of the product or service. Obviously a link to the reviewed product happens in the post.

According to Google engineer Matt Cutts this is not ok:

- Yet another “pay-for-blogging” (PFB) business launched, this time by Text Link Brokers. It should be clear from Google’s stance on paid text links, but if you are blogging and being paid by services like Pay Per Post, ReviewMe, or SponsoredReviews, links in those paid-for posts should be made in a way that doesn’t affect search engines. The rel=”nofollow” attribute is one way, but there are numerous other ways to do paid links that won’t affect search engines, e.g. doing an internal redirect through a url that is forbidden from crawling by robots.txt.

Google has crossed the line from organizing information to telling us how to present it.

According to Google, the only ad platform that is “not evil” is this one… and maybe this one. Though I can’t imagine why.

It is ok to have information on your website. It is not ok to make money from that information unless you run it through Google first (and they get their cut).

I can’t believe more people aren’t upset about this! Who do you want to control information? Who do you want to decide how the internet should work? Who do you want to decide how you may or may not earn an income? Do you want to be an indentured servant of Google?

Chances are you already are and just don’t know it yet.

Starting today Google is banned from 14th Colony.

Who knows, maybe I’ll calm down in a day or two and decide I’ve been hasty. Or maybe I’ll decide I should have done this a long time ago.

Right now, I just hope just 3 other people think real hard about this and make a similar move. I know my small protest won’t effect change. But if a few people join me, maybe a few people will join them too.

Will you be one of the 3?