Saw UFO
SEO Weekend Update
Hello. Do you have coffee? I'll give you a cat for a cup of coffee. Coffee? No? Just some SEO news then? Fine.
What's Your Blog Comment Policy?
Scott Allen had a really good post with Thoughts on Blog Comments, Moderation, and the Conversation where he talks about the part comments play in the overall conversation on blogs. There's been some debate about blog comments lately, both internally and abroad, and what right the blog author has to moderate or even delete them.
Personally, I think it's completely the blog author's job to set the rules and make sure that everyone in the community sticks to them. Around here I've had to do quite a bit more moderating and editing than in the past. Some subjects have hit closer to home or excited a far more passionate response and sometimes people let they emotions get the better of them. When someone leaves a lengthy comment that is nothing more than a personal attack on someone else, it's not going to be posted. If it can be edited and salvaged, it will be. But if all you've contributed is a 1,000 word essay on why you don't like X and why X would be better off locked in a closet with no food or water, well, you're not giving me much to work with. Take a nap and then come back.
Blog comments should enhance the quality of the conversation. They should offer alternative points, present debate, enter in some humor, etc. They should keep the integrity of the blog intact. If not, then the owner of that blog has the responsibility to moderate it and help bring the conversation back on topic. Or at least those are the rules we play by. What about you? Do you publish everything t hat users submit? How fearful are you to edit the thoughts of others?
Yes, XML Sitemaps Are Important To SEO
Barry Schwartz asks if Google Sitemaps are important to search engine optimization. We also talked about the issue back in February in our SEO Newsletter article entitled Building an XML Sitemap.
Barry points us to the Google Groups thread where Googler JohnMu explains that it's generally worth the time to set up a complete XML Sitemap, listing the kinds of data that Google is most interested in.
Back in February, Bruce Clay Senior SEO Analyst Maryann Robbins discussed many of the same features and explained that building an XML Sitemap was absolutely essential for search engine optimization purposes. They not only give Google a complete list of the pages you want indexed, but they also give you the opportunity to provide supplemental information about those pages. They help with canonical issues, tell the search engines how often the page changes, when the page was last modified, how important the page is to your Web site, etc.
So if you're asking whether or not XML Sitemaps are important for search engine optimization, the answer is "absolutely" and "yes".
Microsoft's Plans For Search
Now that Yahoo is no longer an option, General Manager of Microsoft's Search Business Group Brad Goldberg sat down with Robert Scoble to talk about what they're looking to do next. Topics discussed in the interview include Microsoft's plans for mobile, how they plan to compete with Google, the quality of the Live engine, and whether a Mahalo-type strategy could help them gain market share.
If you have half an hour or so, it's worth a listen.
Fun Finds
The Times of London reports that the average teenager's iPod has 800 illegal music tracks. Hee, ouch. Those damn kids are nothing more than a horde of pirates!
Everyone's favorite job search engine Indeed.com has just launched job analytics for employers. Now if only we could get them to launch a coffee delivery program for employees.
Impact Your Industry Through Blogging
Jeremiah Owyang had a great post on Friday about the opportunities and challenges of corporate, team and personal blogs. A lot gets said about blogging. People talk about how it's a great way to add content to your Web site, to establish yourself as a leader, to join the conversation, to put out fires, etc. You've all heard the arguments for why blogging is a worthwhile branding strategy for your company. But I don't think any of those reasons represent the real power of blogging.
If you tuned into SEM Synergy last week, you may have heard Bruce, Virginia and Susan talking about corporate blogging (or not, there seemed to be some sound difficulties with the recording). During their chat, which I couldn't participate in because Susan had locked me in a closet, Bruce touched on a benefit of blogging t hat I don't think gets nearly enough attention - The ability to form your industry and help set its course.
Even if you're just now getting the hang of marketing your company on these Internetz, you probably haven't missed much. Whatever your industry, chances are it's only in the very early stages of being formed and cutting out its presence online. By joining the blogosphere and developing a strong industry voice, it gives you the ability to help shape it. What other medium affords you that?
We'll take Bruce Clay as an example. Coming back from SMX Advanced I took an unpopular stance and argued that SMX Advanced had perhaps veered off course. Part of me wishes I hadn't written that post because of all the personal attacks and infighting that occurred, but I know that in the end it was worth it. It started a conversation that needed to be had. What is advanced search engine optimization? Does black hat SEO fit into that? Where is our responsibility? Is it a matter of risk vs reward? I think it was an important conversation to have. It's one that will help shape the way advanced conferences are run in the future, and in turn, what direction our industry will take.
That's what blogging is about. And that's what I love most about it.
If you're not really invested in your industry and are just out to make a quick buck, then don't even worry about it. But if you got involved in whatever space you're in because you care, then blogging gives you an enormous platform to steer the conversation and the actions of your industry. Yes, doing this will undoubtedly help you establish yourself as an authority in your field, but even bigger than that is how it helps shape the industry itself. It ensures that the important issues are discussed and debated in the open. It encourages progress.
If there's a topic that's affecting your kind, blog about it. Get others to blog about it. Use your blog to push the conversation along. Don't repeat what everyone else is saying or join the bandwagon. Stick up and fight for the industry issues you believe in and the ones you don't think get enough attention. You may get a few rocks thrown your way, but at the end of the day, you're doing something that matters. Sure, you're building your brand and creating content for your Web site, but you're also laying the groundwork for the future of your industry.
The AP Hates The Blogosphere. We Hate Them Back
Over the past few weeks I've come to find that my patience for stupidity is at its lowest in the morning. Combined with the fact that it's Monday, the most sleepy and irritating day of the week, you can imagine my reaction when I opened up my feeds and heard that the AP was going to set guidelines for how bloggers can link to and reference their articles. Oh sweet Jesus. Are you kidding me?
I decided to write them a note:
Dear A.P., Get over yourself. Hugs and Kisses, The World (minus all the Belgians, of course.)
The A.P.'s display of moral superiority comes after they sent the Drudge Retort (a Drudge Report parody site) a letter demanding that they remove several posts that contained short quotes from various A.P. articles. According to the New York Times, each quote contained between 39-79 words. Not exactly gregarious and definitely falling within fair use. [Even setting aside the protected status of parody --Susan] The blogosphere did not react kindly. Michael Arrington and TechDirt have both decided to ban the A.P., or at least seek out alternative publications to link to when possible. Other grassroots anti-A.P. movements are also in the works.
The A.P. tried to clean up the mess it had created with a comment over at TechDirt that did nothing but offend even more and raise some eyebrows. The comment left by Jim Kennedy makes reference to the "licensing agreements" that many bloggers have with the AP to display their stories in full.
Is that what this is about? The A.P. wants bloggers to have to pay to include a snippet of their text? Good luck getting people to agree to that. The record companies can barely get people to pay for music. You want them to pay for a paragraph? Hee!
Blogger Jeff Jarvis called out the A.P. for leaching off original reporting and not crediting original sources. He was so insulted by the A.P.'s stance that he's launched the FU AP campaign asking bloggers to stop linking to the A.P. until they apologize to the Drudge Retort's founder Rogers Cadenhead.
As frustrating and time warping as this whole scenario is, it's actually kind of humorous for a few reasons.
First, when are people going to realize that bloggers send you traffic? The more often a blogger takes a small quote from your article and links over to you, the more people who are going to follow that link and discover your content. Instead of looking at TechMeme and bloggers as competitors, look to them as partners helping you to push your content. They're not going away. You may as well find a way to work with them.
Second, bloggers don't need your guidelines. We don't care how you want us to link to you or reference you or talk about you. We have our own guidelines. We're not going to acknowledge yours. Perhaps we would have helped if you were sm art enough to engage and ask for our input, but you didn't. You assumed you knew better. Now you fail.
When will mainstream media and large corporations realize that angering the blogosphere is not in their best interest? We may seem small and fragmented, but we're not. When you go after one of us, you suffer the wrath of the entire army.
This was a huge fail by the A.P. Forget just looking silly and like they've never heard of the Internet, the A.P. is doing a stellar job of coming off like a bully here, overstepping their bounds, rights and trying to get bloggers to adapt to a set of "rules" and "standards" that the A.P. has yet to create. Sorry, A.P., but we're not interested. We're so not interested that we'll not only boycott linking to you, we're working on removing all your precious TechMeme links.
Consider yourself unlinked from the blogosphere.
