Think Basis It's Good For Business

Hi, and welcome to my first blog post here on ThinkBasis. I’d like to say a few words about the most recent wave of panic that’s been sweeping the world of SEO and has everyone talking on the Wild Wild Web. Yes, I’m talking about the cartoonishly named update called Penguin from Google.

A few good hours spent reading white, gray, black and rainbow colored SEO forums has left me feeling like I’m currently in a post-apocalyptical part of the web, where spammers are given more power instead of being put in their place, businesses are given the green light to bomb and blast each and every one of their competitors, and Google idly sits on the sidelines, either enjoying the mess they created or scratching their heads going “Hey, that’s not what was supposed to happen!”.

Do no evil, right Google?

At first glance, Penguin looks like the single most well-thought and sensible update from Google in their constant war against spam. Matt Cutts even dipped the whole thing in honey with examples of spam-filled blogs and websites that were supposed to be wiped out by this update.

And then, out of nowhere, NegativeSEO!  Some guy over at http://trafficplanet.com started a brilliant thread and tested what we all speculated: Can you de-index your competitors with exactly the same kind of link-building tactics that everyone used just a month ago to rank with? Apparently, yes you can!

It was all downhill from there. From gigs on Fiverr offering to bomb your competitors with thousands of links, to more devious plans of making a website look bad in Google’s ever-so-watchful eyes, like duplicating blog content and re-publishing it on various websites, before the original can be crawled and indexed by Google itself. Google hates duplicates, and in this scenario, your original blog content would be seen as duplicated by big G … and down go your rankings.

So what’s left now: Should we all point our SEO “guns” at each other and blast away, or just put our trust in humanity and hope that our competitors don’t overload us with spammy links?

Easy it is, to be swayed by “the dark side” but deeper analysis would show a post-war of SERP’s displaying nothing but irrelevant content, mainly because all competitors would be down in the gutter, making room for all the mediocre 2-5 page results to float to the top. I seriously doubt anyone wants that.

That’s not to say the results right now are down in the gutter already. The worst offenders would be exactly the websites that Cutts gave as examples of on his blog, which still rank on the first page, weeks after Penguin was rolled out. Nice one Google!

So instead of fighting spam, websites with 20,000 spammy backlinks are protected (theory: Google assumes they’re giant businesses because of a high number of links pointing to them) and small businesses are getting trashed and pushed down on heck knows what page, or even worse: penalized and de-indexed.

Google hereby deems your article unworthy!

Another issue Google’s been trying to solve with this update is overly spun articles. Here’s a hilarious example:

“When it obliviously comes to provisions I’m drawbridge sweet fussy. I don’t meat too precisely cooked or too rare, and scout about has to be very soon right. She did all the old fashioned way. ”

Kudos to them for trying to remove such garbage from the web, but when I later found out they seem to frown upon guest posts as well, I felt quite a bit drawbridge sweet fussy about it to say the least.

Since content is king and G usually loves fresh material, it’s anyone’s guess why they would downgrade this option of creating backlinks, especially when the blog owners themselves state on their blog that “guest posts are accepted”,  as well as the blogs themselves not being auto-accept link farms and they are moderated by a human with a following of readers interested in the topic of your guest post. Big G probably assumes they’re paid links, and smacks your rankings right down. Speaking of content…

Meet Joe…

An average Joe, wife and two kids, mortgage on the house, that kind of Joe. He has a huge passion for household electrical maintenance. This drives him to create his own local business, and eventually his own website that promotes his services. Joe hits the first wall when he finds the standard wordpress/blogspot themes are “spammy” by Google standards so he naturally goes looking for solutions on the web.

He finds that fresh weekly content would do wonders for ranking higher in SERPs so he starts a blog writing about cathodes, conductors, faulty wiring and changing lightbulbs, but honestly now, how many people would be interested in that sort of material? How many articles and permutations on the same subject can Joe come up with before giving up, only to keep up with Google’s freshness algo?

On top of that, our Joe is left with managing Twitter, Facebook and Google+ while battling competitors on GooglePlaces that gave him false negative reviews, instead of actually gathering clientele and offering them his services.

Nevertheless, Joe gets a second mortgage on the house and hires a white-hat SEO company that manages to rank him for his main keywords on the first page of Google. Creeping out of Google’s algo factory comes an abomination called Penguin, meant to “help” small businesses and eradicate spam. However, Joe’s rankings plummet and he has no idea why. Careful examination of his backlinks point to tens of thousands of links created over-night, links he did not create,  but for which he was seriously penalized.

Joe cries out for help and Google gladly and promptly respond with their favorite email these days:

“We’ve detected that some of your site’s pages may be using techniques that are outside Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank.”

Translation:

“Hello webmaster. It seems you have some not-so-cool links pointing to your website and we don’t like that. We know exactly which of your 50k+ links are the bad ones, but we want you to spend countless hours, manually going through each of them, finding the dodgy ones and then deciding for yourself if they’re the ones responsible for your rank drop or not.

In the meantime, would you be interested in running an AdWords campaign?”

And so, after spending months on creating rich content, a compelling website and social media following, our poor Joe is left searching through piles of links, some which he has no control over or no means of removing, in hopes of “maybe” getting back in Google’s good graces and having a chance at his website being reconsidered for indexation.

Where did those links come from? Was it a mistake on Google’s part with the new algo? Was it Bob, his main competitor, doing some shady business, dipping his toe in NSEO? Who knows!

I for one, anxiously am awaiting the Unicorn update. Rumour has it that it’s supposed to offer spam-free, relevant SERPs and constructive competition between rival companies that will result in creative websites with relevant and helpful articles that will promote friendly user-business interactions. Too bad the unicorn is just a myth…

Advanced Web Ranking is a unique and “must have” keyword research tool for everyone that is interested in getting their website ranked higher in the search engines.  Both novice and expert SEO’s can benefit from the powerful features the AWR tool utilizes. There is a 30 day free trial license. AWR is one of the more robust SEO/web ranking tools out there and if you manage/operate more than one website you will wonder how you ever did without it.

There are 4 versions of AWR:

- Standard

- Professional

- Enterprise

- Server

The standard and professional versions of this seo software are great for individuals/companies that own 1-5 websites and need to keep track of rankings.  At bare minimum, I would suggest the Professional edition based on the reporting functionality contained within.  You can create reports and they are a very useful tool in helping your clients understand the advances you are making for their websites.  The Enterprise and Server editions have more features and are generally geared towards large scale operations.

Setting up an AWR project is very easy and intuitive. It took me about 5 minutes from start to finish, without reading any of the documentation provided (because…like….who reads that crap anyways?).  The most time consuming part was listing the keywords that you want tracked. I chose the Enterprise free trial edition and the program automatically suggested keywords for me as I typed.  I already knew which keywords that I wanted to track yet I found a few more based on the suggestions of the tool.  I set up 3 different projects for 3 different websites.  Total set up time: 5 minutes.

Tracking keywords:

I only used the bare minimum of features found in the tool, because as stated above, I hate reading documentation.  I just needed something to track my keywords and prepare a report for our clients.  Every morning when I open my copy of AWR, I select the project and then click “Update”.  For the sites with keyword lists less than 10 keywords, it took on average 5 minutes to update with new rankings for the day.  This is due to a protection feature built into the tool that forces the updates to “sleep” in between queries.  This prevents Google from accidentally blacklisting your IP address due to flooding.  For websites that are tracking 20 or more keywords, it took on average 30 minutes to fully update the reports.  This time can be cut significantly down if you were to use a proxy, but I was using the normal IP address associated with my internet connection.

Reporting:

Reporting is as easy as clicking a button. You will have your choice of reporting formats and the results are displayed in a visually appealing spreadsheet.  You can then take the non-branded spreadsheet, apply your brand name and then pass it along to the client to show evidence of the increased rankings that you have gotten for their website.

Final thoughts:

AWR is a very powerful tool that every SEO should not be without. Even if you are tracking your personal websites, this tool can be very useful in tracking your progress in an easy to understand format.  Over time as your keyword reports build, the reporting time can grow exponentially. A great way to overcome this is to rent a box, remote in and run it as a virtual machine. Your site ranking will be greatly improved!

Recently, while taking important time out of my day to check up on Facebook, I have found some awkward recommendations appear on the right hand side of my news feed. As part of the Recommended Pages section, the Facebook team has devised an ingenious method of linking Pages that you have previously liked to other persons, places, or things they figure you may also like. Here’s an easy way to look at it: (more…)

(Please note that this position is no longer available)

We’ve recently opened up some internship opportunities for anyone interested in gaining work experience in graphic design.

If you have a kick ass portfolio (or just a really good one), have an eye for type and a clean aesthetic, we want to hear from you. Please send samples of your work to toronto@thinkbasis.com. Applicants will be judged on the basis of their portfolio. We don’t care about your school experience, work experience or hobbies so a resume is really not a requirement. Any work that you send through should have been done by you from creative to completion. Due to the volume of applicants we usually get only those that qualify will be contacted for an interview.

Some things that you might be asked to work on:

• iPhone/iPad user interface design, logos supporting creative
• Web design and UI design
• Print materials
• Advertisements

Most times you will work on-site at a client’s location. But if you’re interested in doing it from home, we’re open to telecommuting too.

The internships are unpaid but the right candidates may receive a small monthly stipends to help cover costs. There is also a possibility for a full time job in the future.
Interns will receive a letter of recommendation from the company and we’ll work to get you a recommendation from the clients as well.

A bit about us

Think Basis is an atypical marketing company. You’ll find that we’re easy going so self discipline is very important for anyone working with us. But easy going doesn’t mean that we don’t care. The quality of our work is of the utmost importance to us. We just believe that if you hire the right people, you don’t need to play office politics or micromanage. Our clients demand the best and we strive to deliver.

Beyond client work we also produce a number of internal projects so the work you’ll be doing can be very diverse. You’ll come out of this internship with a good portfolio and the pride in saying that you were in charge of the creative development.

Being a “web guy” means that hosting is kind of a huge part of what keeps everything going from day to day. In the past we kept and managed our own servers at The Planet. It was largely good, though not perfect. But, after 4 years of self management we decided to go less stressful and also get some “Digg proofing” from the Media Temple (gs) service. In theory the service sounds great and their site makes it sound like the next best things since Twitter. Unfortunately the reality is a bit different.

Here are some things that have really bugged me about (mt). I’m not saying this because I hate the company. In fact I like their philosophy but…

1. They say you can host 100 sites on the service but you can only really host 1 SSL site.

I wrote to them about this several months back and they still haven’t updated their site. They state that you can host up to 100 sites on the (gs) service. Sounds great right? Well not if you have to have more than 1 SSL site. So if you run 5 e-stores you’re SOL. I asked them to clarify that small point in their marketing copy and they never did. I find this borderline deceptive and at the very least absolutely useless to making a purchasing decision between their (gs) and (dv) offerings. Especially if you already go through the arduous task of moving to their service. (see point #3)

2. The (gs) service has constant downtime and they post photos of their office parties online.

As I write this we’re going on over 2 hours of downtime. Thanks for nothing (mt). This was happening at the exact same time a client was on the phone with me inquiring about our service. Looks really good for a web developer when he can’t even keep his own site up and can’t get through to tech support. In fact I think this may have cost me the sale for an e-commerce site development project today.

Finally I said enough is enough but step #3 will explain further.

Did I mention the office parties? I wouldn’t really care but promoting their extravagant parties through Twitter at the same time my site is down is kind of rubbing salt in the wound. (This actually happened.)

3. There is no way to migrate to, from or between their services. #lame

We ran Cpanel on our server for over 4 years. During that time we could migrate sites between our servers, to and from other services with the push of a button. When moving to Media Temple we had to manually port over 30 sites including files, databases and e-mail accounts. A stupendous pain in the ass. Now that we’re here I decided that the (gs) is (bs) and wanted to upgrade to a virtual dedicated server solution and take up managing our own server again. Hell, I could keep a server up with only 2 incidences of downtime in 4 years (5 minutes total). But wouldn’t you know it, Media Temple couldn’t be bothered to come up with a migration solution between their own services. This is really inconvenient and an extremely stupid business practice. Not only are they giving me a good reason to just move to a proper dedicated server again, but they lost my business today because I can’t easily move 30 sites that are on their own servers. This one really boggles my mind.

4. Their MySQL solution is always going down so you have to upgrade.

Unless you upgrade to a MySQL grid container don’t expect your site to stay online for any reasonable amount of time on the (bs), I mean (gs). If I had a dollar for every minute I spent dealing with issues before upgrading, I’d be a rich man. It’s much easier to just pay the extra $20/month and save yourself the headache.

5. Putting in a support ticket takes at least 8 hours (and sometimes 24 hours) to get a response, and the phone wait time today was 27 minutes.

‘Nuff said about that.

6. Useless SSH access to anyone but the main user.

If you’re on the (gs) and want to give SFTP access or SSH access to a developer you’re boned. I mean you can set up the user and give him access but he will only be able to access a subfolder within his own account. Unless of course he wants to use plain FTP. Does (mt) even care about security? My answer here is going to be “not so much.”

This is rudimentary stuff for any business. Do you want to give your web guy your master password? What if things go wrong? It just doesn’t seem very useful to me. I can’t even figure out why you’d want to give someone SSH access to a useless folder. “Hey super cool programmer. Here is command line access that you can use to do absolutely nothing of use within this one folder that only you have access to.”

I’m still keeping my fingers crossed that the company will improve things drastically because I like the idea of a clustered service. But Media Temple, next time you have a party, please make sure that my site is up before you post the pictures.

By now everyone in the search community is familiar with Google’s motto of doing no evil. But without getting into a huge debate about the merits of capitalism and the economy, I think it could be argued that their product search, as it stands, might be venturing into evil territory.

At the moment, the core focus for the search product is almost exclusively based on price. It’s basically a price comparison tool so people can get the cheapest product around: great for consumers, but perhaps not so useful for the economy and the world at large. Buying cheap may not be the best course of action when it comes to sustainability, the environment or local economies.

I know I know. Lots of criticism, not a whole lot of suggestions. So how would we improve Google Product Search this holiday season? Here are a few ideas:

1. Let the consumer decide what the overriding purchasing decision is instead of price.

Personally, I like a deal but price is rarely the deciding factor when I’m making a purchasing decision. I like to know about quality, ingredients or materials and where the product is coming from. It would be nice if I could have that info right in the search results.

2. Add additional product tags for “Green” credentials.

There is a lot of talk about global warming, sustainability and pollution in general. There are also a lot of regulatory bodies including the USDA that certify organic products. Unfortunately none of these show up in Google Product search. I’d love to see these added as tags so organic and earth friendly credentials are prominently displayed. I think this would be in line with Google’s own stance on the environment so I don’t know why it’s taking so long to have it implemented.

3. Show the country of origin and Fair Trade status.

With all the talk about economic recovery and impoverished nations, it’s really surprising to me that the country of origin is not displayed for any products. In this day and age, wouldn’t you pay a dollar or two more for something made in the USA? It’s a key selling feature in many paper catalogues so let’s give the consumer the right to know where their stuff is coming from. I think a little flag icon would do the trick nicely.

While we’re at it, how about fair trade? It’s nice to know my organic chocolate came from Peru or something but are the farmers and processors being fairly treated? Was my rug made by a 5 year old kid who was forced to work? Were my electronic products made in an energy efficient manner? There are numerous bodies and organizations dedicated to these issues. If these certifications were shown in the search results, customers could opt to vote with their dollars if they deem an issue sufficiently important. At the moment, they can only be self serving by choosing the cheapest option. We can’t improve the world if we can’t make an informed choice.

4. Indicate local products.

Sadly this feature is implemented to some extent but it only works for places to buy. It would be great to see things produced within your city or state. (Bacon from a local farm, honey from within your state rather than pasteurized and blended from Argentina.) What a wonderful way to support local economies by putting the product’s origin right in the main search results and letting the consumer vote.

5. Sort by the features above.

Currently you can sort by price. You can get the cheap product or the expensive product. I’d love to be able to search by local product, or by fair trade only, or by organic only. Give me some options Google. Come on, I know you have the technology. Lead the way.

I don’t like to call Google evil often because I like a lot of their products. But it seems like Product Search is lacking in innovation and like google.com is out of sync with google.org. The great news is that a lot of these features would be pretty easy to implement and retailers would jump right on them. So, if anyone at Google happens to read this, maybe we can get a few of these changes done in time for next Christmas. Please.