The Art Of SEO - The Science Of PPC

You can use the Google Cache of a page to figure out if Google is handling your parameters, tag pages, etc., without creating problems.  Click on the "Cached Snapshot" in the Google toolbar from URL and see if the path displayed in the cache matches the original URL.  If it does not match, the cache is displaying the canonical URL and you know that Google has figured out your duplicate content and has mapped the pages together.  This technique is particularly useful for any site that uses tracking parameters, controls display through or has canonical concerns.

I discovered this trick while investigating Semtech.com the other day, a semiconductor company that makes ICs for circuit protection and ESD protection .  Semtech has complex needs because engineers want to locate products with specific parameters. Semtech solves this requirement with a very powerful CMS, but one with some SEO concerns.

The user navigation portion of the site has a hierarchical navigation system that put products in categories with subcategories while the parametric search calls products part number in the /products/ root directory.  External links point to both versions, depending on the path the user took to find it.  This canonicalization issue has largely been address by blocking the parametric search path via robots.txt, but the products continue to exist with two different URLs: the canonically deterministic URL and in the /products/ directory.  For example, one of their power management product has a canonical URL of http://www.semtech.com/products/power_management/switching_regulators/sc2440/ but also exists at http://www.semtech.com/products/sc2440/.

If you look at the Cache for the non-canonical URL , http://www.semtech.com/products/sc2440/, you can see that Google shows the canonical URL in the Cache.

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If you are looking for family fun in Las Vegas , you should definitely visit Cirque du Soleil’s KÀ. KÀ is easily the most accessibly, husband and kids friendly of the Cirque shows, with an exciting mix of pirates, sailors, flying machines and, of course, incredible acrobatic performances. The most fantastic part of KA, Cirque du Soleil’s spectacular show atthe MGM Grand, is the stage itself. Amazing human feats of acrobatics, trapeze arts, dancers, martial artists, and tumblers aside, the gravity defying stage itself is the main attraction in this stunning theatrical experience. Built by a mining equipment company, the stage alternately twists and turns, stands on its side, spikes emerging and disappearing as the performers climb, chase, and fall in a surreal, dreamscape — Spellbound meets Mad Max at Thunderdome.

The plot itself is right out of Gilbert and Sullivan or Twelfth Night : Twin Sister and Twin Brother of royal descent separated at a beach head after a pirate attack aboard the sailing vessel which quickly becomes the stage; their loyal nursemaid and court jester, guardians throughout their perilous and phantasmagoric journey. While the Brother is learning the art of shadow puppets, hanging out in caves, and running from the creepy Archers, the Sister is climbing a mountain (the aforementioned amazing stage tilted to a 90 degree angle) scrambling and swinging up the spiked wall pursued by the vicious Archers.

Perhaps the most exciting moment in a 90 minute gripping-the-edge-of-your-seat extravaganza is the burlap tent which is magically transformed into a human flying machine powered by the forest people and the Firefly Boy. I am not one easily given to hyperbole but honestly there are not enough superlatives to describe the experience: amazing, spectacular, stunning, and very cool. Go see it when you are in Vegas. Though she has not seen the other shows in town yet, my wife is making me take her back to see KA again when we go back in the summer. KA-Boom!

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Jonah Stein joined Local SEO Expert Andrew Shotland and  Steve Espinosa at the Kelsey Group’s ILM 2008 ‘Local SEO Guide’ Ultimate Search Workshop for a 2 and 1/2 hour local search session and live site review.  The ROIGuy focused his presentation on Beyond SEO, Website Optimization & Conversion.

The presentation featured 30 slides in 30 minutes and is available to download.

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I am happy to announce Reddit Founder Steve Huffman and Google’s Matt Cutts are joining my Web 2.0 Summit Session , Defend Web 2.0 From Virtual Blight.  They will be joined by Jonathan Hochman , who will discuss strategies Wikipedia uses to address blight and Guru Rajan, who will present a case study about HumanPresent, a new technology from Pramana which offers a less obtrusive (and currently more effective) alternative  to Captcha.

Both Steve and Matt spend most of their day in a cat and mouse game against Spammers and others who seek to game their system for personal gain.  Wikipedia has hundreds of thousands of contributors with a wide variety of agendas.  To keep pace, Wikipedia uses a variety of bots and human editorial strategies. These panelist have a tremendous amount of experiences and will share some powerful strategies to help address blight.  I have been talking about Virtual Blight as a construct for understanding and addressing many of the issues facing site operators for over a year now and it is really great to jet a chance to broaden the audience.  My pitch for the session is below.

The success stories of Web 2.0 are the so called “Social Web”, sites built on crowd sourcing; user participation, user generated content  and user voting/rating systems. Sites such as Youtube, Digg, Yelp and Facebook provide mashups of content sources along with a platform for interaction and participation.   Inherent in this model is the assumption that each “user” is an individual who is participating in a community.  The reality is that many “users” are avatars, bots and sock puppet created to spread Spam, disinformation, attack individuals, organizations and companies or manipulate rating systems to promote a private agenda that is not in keeping with the spirit and intent of the community.

The success of Web 2.0 has made it a prime target for spammers, vandals and hackers who want to exploit the trust implicit in this ecosystem. The May, 2008 headlines about Craiglsist’s ongoing battle with spammers highlights the problem. Web 2.0 companies need to recognize this type of manipulation as a fatal cancer and develop strategies to aggressively defend themselves against the ravages of blight that can devastate their communities.

We are all too familiar with community blight in the physical world: The downward spiral afflicting many of our urban and suburban neighborhoods. Blight is marked by abandoned and foreclosed building, liquor stores and payday lenders on alternating corners, trash strewn lots and front yards, graffiti-covered buildings, broken sidewalks, broken glass and billboards everywhere you look. Prostitutes, drug dealers and scam artist haunt the shadows.

Domains and web properties afflicted with Virtual Blight are like neighborhoods suffering from urban blight. Billboards advertise payday loans, pornography and offshore pharmaceuticals, street corner hustlers offer knock off watches, get rich quick schemes, pirated movies and software along with other products  that are suspect and often illegal.  Kids aren’t safe to roam around and people move out.   Online neighborhoods begin as attractive destinations, but often they turn into vacant, desolate ruins. Hotmail and Geocities are two prime examples of Web neighborhoods that have been impacted by virtual blight, destroying billions of dollars worth of brand equity in the process.

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