Farooque

According to the Keirsey Temperament Sorter — which is based on Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) but inspired by the ancient Greeks — people default to four primary temperaments:

• The Spontaneous: (Artisan: Sensing-Perceiving) – often competes and is primarily motivated by the thrill of the winning experience, the adrenaline rush.
• The Competitive: (Rationalist: Intuitive-Thinking) – often competes and is primarily motivated by big-picture status, the trophy on the shelf.
• The Humanistic: (Idealist: Intuitive-Feeling) – often competes and is primarily motivated by the success of the team, one for all.
• The Methodical: (Guardian: Sensing-Judging) – often competes and is primarily motivated by the satisfaction of a job well done, winning is it’s own reward.

The top 5 reasons they don’t work

Your Nephew Jimmy…
Leaving your company website development in the hands of a relative or student to save a few hundred dollars is a strategy that usually backfires.

Amateur productions…
You wouldn’t show a client a homemade business card printed on flimsy paper? Why would you stake your company’s reputation on an amateur production and inadaquate website marketing, development, and promotion system?

Unclear objectives…
A website is just a tool to accomplish a set of objectives. Unless you thoroughly understand those objectives, how could you develop the right tools for the job, such as search engine optimization or pay-per-click advertising?

You’ve grown apart…
Businesses are constantly evolving, however most websites never change. Over time these sites not only look dated, but also no longer properly represent the business.

No one knows you exist…
Having the “Cadillac” of websites is worthless unless your target market can find you, which is why we offer exceptional search engine optimization and website promotion tools.

The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints; we spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy it less.

We have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time; we have more degrees, but less sense; more knowledge, but less judgment; more experts, but more problems; more medicine, but less willingness.

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We’ve learned how to make a living, but not a life; we’ve added years to life, not life to years.

We’ve been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor. We’ve conquered outer space, but not inner space; We’ve cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul; We’ve split the atom, but not our prejudice; We have higher incomes, but lower morals; We’ve become long on quantity, but short on quality. These are the times of tall men, and short character; steep profits, and shallow relationships.

These are the times of world peace, but domestic warfare; more leisure, but less fun; more kinds of food, but less nutrition. These are days of two incomes, but more divorce; of fancier houses, but broken homes.

It is a time when there is much in the show window and nothing in the stockroom; a time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to make a difference, or to just hit delete…

~ Farooque

There’s probably a lot of better more cool names I could label myself - but I will forever consider “being an SEO” an honor, despite the beating it often takes from those that sully it’s good name. Below are the principles and qualities I would consider for qualification as a “good SEO”. I’m sure there are plenty that I missed - and hopefully there will be some debate of what can be added or removed, but these are the areas I personally feel are unique to “being an SEO” - and common traits and ideals that I see in those that I would consider top SEO’s. Why do you need a flashy title if you can sum up what you do in a three letter acroynym?

1. SEO is a marketing school of thought…not a process. There are plenty of people that understand the process, and don’t “get” SEO.

2. It’s much easier to plan a website than to retrofit it. Understanding fundamentals makes it much more valuable when you hire a consultant or agency.

3. Search increasingly impacts every form of media. Every media distribution point is doing their best to incorporate search to personalize the conversation rather than just screaming at random people.

4. It’s all about the links Building link equity is the new brand branding. It’s really all about the conversion - but you gotta love links (and openly admit to it).

5. Any marketing decision impacts search engine rankings - and vice versa TV, radio, print and other ads can all be used for attracting links. Want to use all flash as the homepage? Pick a different school of thought.

6. Creating a “purple” idea is much easier than begging for links There is always an extraordinary, remarkable new angle to any industry. SEO is about understanding the indirect correlation of things to execute on great ideas that no one else has envisioned by having a unique perspective on marketing.

7. Social media can be optimized Optimization does not mean manipulation. Optimization is examining the rules of the game and using them to your advantage. Social media increases both exposure - as well as the level of public scrutiny. People appreciate when bias is disclosed, and conversation is HUMAN.

8. Top rankings won’t fix a shitty product.

9. Blackhat is lying to clients, customers, partners, or vendors. Whitehat is proactively discussing risk tolerance, process, expectations, and contribution to a community instead of just bilking people into teaching you to think.

10. It’s all about the results Great results can be rankings, sales, or the spread of ideas. There are many great business leaders that don’t realize they are SEO’s. It is more than a process - it is understanding the process and stacking the deck in your favor within the confines of the game - which ultimately changes the game.

SEO consultants prefer to redirect domain.com to www.domain.com for SEO purposes. The thought is that some incoming links point to their non-www domain and some point to the www domain. So if the domains are consolidated, incoming links are as well. SEO consultants who use this redirect usually see instances of search engine rankings with and without the www in their listings and want to consolidate their efforts.

Add the following four lines to your .htaccess file, replacing ‘domain.com’ with your site’s domain:

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^domain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

These are what I believe to be the top 10 most important things that you need, in order to get your website found in the search engines.

Below are the top ten results (5.0 would have been a perfect score for being most important).

Title Tag - 4.57
Anchor Text of Links - 4.46
Keyword Use in Document Text - 4.38
Accessibility of Document - 4.31
Links to Document from Site-Internal Pages - 4.15
Primary Subject Matter of Site - 4.00
External Links to Linking Pages - 3.92
Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community - 3.77
Global Link Popularity of Site - 3.69
Keyword Spamming - 3.69
What do you think? Comments on these?