Don’t read my prevous posts

Don’t read my previous posts. There is no value which can be derived from them…

Google vs Viacom

I am with Google on this one. We are all as naked as babies in the cyberworld, we need rock solid privacy laws to protect the individual as much as possible.

Having said that, on a social scale, there is no privacy on the internet. You stepped on someone’s foot, he blogged about it and named you in his post, a part of your life would thus be made public. Its thus essential to at least know how to manage reputations online should the need arises.

Why a website for reputation management

Today, someone mentioned to me that in a certain industry (I won’t name which one due to privacy reasons), a website is not needed because their kind of reputation management is not done on the internet. It common knowledge among the industry etc.

I respectfully disagree with the person. If you are telling me about referrals and selling to a niche market, alright fine, you may have your point. However every company would need to have some kind of web presence in the form of a corporate homepage.

The 5 points of reputation management online with websites
1. Would you be more likely going to the library to research about a company’s reputation and news or would you just search it online?
2. Someone slams you online, the world and his cat knows about it. Where would you defend yourself? In the declining media called the newspaper? What is your company’ control over it’s online information? If you do not have a website to launch your damage limitation exercise, good luck!
3. Surely it is not that expensive to have some kind of a website. Would your company want be seen as a cheapskate or out of date?
4. What are your company’s achievements? Your potential customers want to know.
5. You can only write that much with in your Linkedin profile, and you won’t want to look unprofessional with a blogspot domain.

Takeaway of the Day

A website only have three seconds to capture a visitor from a search engine or another website. Make sure he sees the right things before he pushes the back arrow.

Did you say Guarenteed?

No one can guarantee anything on search engine. When a company or an individual offer you consulting for a few thousand dollars, turn him down. Its a rip off. If they say they will optimize 3 out of 20 keywords on any search engine, kick him out of the door. An SEO course for many hundreds of dollars? Bullshite, just give me a call and I can teach you everything you need to know about SEO in 1-2 hour over a good meal. You can even open your own SEO company after that but please do good, don’t overcharge others and learn another skill set in case Google changes the rules of search.

Anyone who wants to ‘optimize’ his website should just follow a few basic rules. Content, content and more content. Relevant content, Optimize your meta tags, have a good viral campaign, link from relevant sites, have compelling webpages, get involved in social media, read my blog and don’t harm any cute dogs.

Do it consistently and the chances of you be ranked in the top 5 are as good as or even better than any ‘SEO Expert’ doing keyword spamming, directory submission and other sneaky stuffs. Quick fix SEO techniques usually damages the credibility of your homepage. Traffic coming to your website will be at best be irrelevant. Top positions with a butt ugly webpage is a phyrric victory.

I believe, there will be a day when ‘SEO enhanced page’ will be knock off Google in favour of content and relevance in favour of length of stay and analytics results. What that day comes, the SEO industry will be a dying occupation. Its not in Google’s interest to let SEO experts run the world. Search Engines want good websites to be ranked top.

This is the reason, I cringe whenever someone described me as an “SEO expert” or I am forced to write those words on my resume or profile. I cannot guarentee top rankings, but I will do my best. What I gurantee are coherant online marketing strategies and outcomes. “SEO: (man, I hate that name ) is just part of the process.