So Google Chrome is finally out, and I got to tell you, it is one heck of a browser, if you are into simplicity and the looks. Google Chrome has got to be the most attractive Web Browser there is out there. So it is safe to say that Google has followed Apple’s ways of providing us the ultimate eye-candy.

So what’s to like about Google Chrome? First of all, I like the fact that everytime you open the browser, it shows you your favorite sites in no nonsense way. Every time you open a new tab, you’ll see a visual sampling of your most visited sites, most used search engines, and recently bookmarked pages and tabs, which I think is very handy, at least if you are a heavy delicious user.

Google Chrome is married with Google gadgets, so you can create shortcuts to your favorite web applications without having to access the web, which again is a big plus. One thing that I find very interesting about Chrome is the ability to drag out tabs. I can’t do that with Flock so maybe Flock 4.0 will come with that feature.

Google has paid extra attention to browsing securely as you can browse privately (in stealth mode) or in lockdown mode (where you are protected against phishing sites). The downloads are less intrusive too, which is again a big plus.

I like the lightweight Chrome browser. It seems to be very well designed and intuitive. It took me about 5 minutes to pick up most of the features and fall in love with it. The only downside to it is that it does not have the social features of flock but it never claims to be aiming for that market anyway. Very impressed with Chrome so far.

P.S. Download Chrome here. And don’t forget to share your thoughts on it!

Google Chrome is finally upon us (released today). Google has finally joined Mozilla and other Open source browsers in the browser wars. We also know that IE 8 will be out soon, so Microsoft and Google will be at it again. So why is Chrome significant. For one Google gets to attract more eyeballs to its web services. If you think about it, Google has been methodically working towards its plan to dominate the WWW, and Google Chrome is another piece of the puzzle. Also, IE 8 is going to threaten Google’s ability to watch our every activity, so Google is going to muddy the waters by introducing its own browser (god know how much information Google has gathered from its poor users with or without them knowing).

I am interested to see if Chrome will give us SEO built-in options such as Google SEO ranking toolbar and other features beyond what is offered with plugins for Firefox. I personally don’t mind sharing my information with Google (unless I want to keep them a secret which then I will use another service). For me personally, it will take a lot to switch everything from Flock to Chrome. It should not only be SEO friendly but also SMO friendly, and I just can’t see that happeneing when the program is still in early beta.

If you own a blog, you are probably familiar with the concept of pinging. In essence, when you publish a piece of content, you want to let syndication services such as Technorati to come and pick up on your new content. This is all fine and dandy if you do it moderately (don’t do it 5 times a day and when you have no new content as you will get banned). Pinging allows you to get extra links and traffic from around the net and who hates that, right?

It all looks harmless really. You publish content, you let others know about it, and you get traffic and links that can help you climb up the rankings. If you are just pinging sites such as Technorati, then you should be fine. But be aware of pinging tools that are out there. You have probably seen tools such as Pingoat. The problem with these tools is that some of the directories that are posted on them are unreliable. So you need to be extra careful which ones you Ping. I have personally had my site penalized for pinging the wrong service (a Japanese service). The truth of the matter is that there are many who don’t want to work hard to create content for themselves, so instead they steal your content (through web scraping). Sometimes, Google does penalize your site for that. You don’t get dropped by the engine, but you lose significant ranking. So you want to make sure you know the service you are pinging.

Uncertainty is the nature of search engine optimization. Google provides us all with a guideline on how to keep our pages optimized for its bots, but it doesn’t tell us which factor is more important, or what truly determines the ranking for a site (for a specific term). So, it’s only natural for SEOs to make up stories to make more money. One of these unfounded claims is the fact that you can hurt your rankings by putting Google Adsense on your blog or website right away. Now that can’t be further from the truth. I have done numerous experiences with Adsense, and I can tell you that Google would not discourage its Adsense users from putting ad units on their sites. Having said that, Google does care about the quality of content that you put on your site. Google has been specific in the past about the fact that it hates “thin affiliates.” It’s easy to use software packages such as HyperVRE to create Adsense pages on the fly, but you need to make sure you add quality content to avoid ranking penalties. But if you are not just slapping useless content on your pages, then Adsense will not hurt your rankings. Anybody who’s telling you otherwise is either misled or trying to make some cash.

You may have heard stories about how Digg can help you move up the search engine rankings and double or triple your SEO conversions. But is that really true? The simple answer is yes and no. Digg, Wikipedia, and all other Web 2.0 social networks have pretty much implemented the no-follow tag on their links. So you get a link but it is pretty much ignored by search engines. Does that mean that you should not go after these links? That’s not true at all. Unlike some SEOs claim, no-follow links are actually very valuable, if they are obtained from the right sources. For instance, Digg links don’t help your rankings directly, but if your story shows up on the front page of Digg, you can get a thousand or sometimes more backlinks from various sources. Not every story shows up on Digg’s home page, so you can’t expect to get those results. Nevertheless, adding Digg and other social media sites to your SEO campaign can help out a lot in the long run. But whatever you do, you want things to happen natually. Anythin that looks unnatural is bad for you and your business (Whether its adding 1000 links in a minute or digging 20 of your own stories on Digg).

Any organization that you go to, you’ll find about 99% of its employees don’t know anything about SEO. I have talked to marketing managers, directors, and senior vice presidents who have no clue about how search engine optimization is done. But the funny thing that I have notices is that after 10 minutes of discussion about on-page SEO tactics that they could use to improve their sites, I almost always get this brilliant feedback.

“I have a great idea! Why don’t we just change the color of the text that you are suggesting to white. That way we don’t hurt the customer experience and make search engines happy.” So why is hidden text such a popular idea among marketers:

• Low Risk: hiding the text looks low risk to most people. Your copy doesn’t have to be perfect if you hide it. Besides, you can probably put things in there that you normally wouldn’t (if the text was visible).
• Damage Control: you don’t know what adding a paragraph of text would do to your customers. They may leave and don’t come back (it depends on the content you put on your site). So why not mitigate the potential damage by not showing them anything at all?
• Greed: everybody gets greedy sometime. You want to have everything and pay nothing. We all want to have our cool flash sites and put pretty images on our pages and avoid anything that search engine might like.
• Ego: everybody wants to be a genius. We all have egos and if we find some solution that no one has tried before, it will make us feel good. But here is the thing. There got to be a reason why people don’t use these so obvious tactics, right? Not everyone’s stupid!

Some of these obvious mistakes are just due to lack of proper knowledge. I really don’t blame people who suggest these ideas, but sometimes the top guys go ahead with these ideas without talking to a professional SEO. Now that’s when you can get into trouble.

Who are the real heroes in our hyper competitive industry? Are they those who you see at Search Engine Strategies giving lectures about the latest development in our industry? There are a lot of these people who I have the most respect for. Most of these lecturers have paid their dues and have been good at one time. But today, most of these guys barely do any SEO work. Their focus is more on “big picture” ideas. The dirty work is done by SEO professionals who have been in the industry for 2-5 years.

I don’t have any problem with people getting paid or promoting themselves in these events. What I do have a problem is when these people ask $400-$1000 an hour and deliver the same work that a SEO professional with 2 - 5 years experience can deliver. Sometimes their work is even worse than that. I have personally read a few proposals for the companies that I have worked for from some of these so called “big guys.” To share a story here, one day the SVP of the company that I used to work for asked me to review a proposal from one of the top guys in the industry. The proposal was probably the worst I had seen at the time. But the guy was asking for $500 an hour to do consulting (not doing any work). That’s not what being a SEO professional is all about. Being a SEO professional is all about providing value to clients/customers. So my hates off to the true heroes of our industry.

I am sure you have already heard of the idea of searching socially. In essence, companies such as Scour allow you to search for what you are looking for, but on the SERPs you get a chance to vote for the results. It’s a very good idea on the surface. In essence, by being part of the community and voting on the provided results, you can help others find what they are looking for faster. But here are the major issues that I see with the current platform:

• Gaming Web 2.0 service is a serious business: Believe it or not people make a living out of gaming Web 2.0 services such as Digg. So it would not be a surprise to me if they did the same to these so called “social” search engines. Sites such as Digg change their algorithms everyday to fight spammers, but there are just too many people trying to spam others.
• Social concept has flaws: Not everyone thinks alike when searching for even the most specific terms. Let’s say I am searching for Chase Credit Cards. I could be thinking about finding a selection of chase credit cards to apply for or trying to find out the latest news about chase products. So a site that has received 30 thumbs up for that keyword could be extremely useful to one person and somewhat useless to another.
• N dimension-based systems work better than N-1 dimension based systems: The system that takes into account only two factors for ranking search results pages is inferior to a system that takes in account 4 factors. Now you may say that voting could add a whole other dimension to search, and make it more effective. While true, the current systems are not perfect, and a binary vote for a results page cannot truly indicate the usefulness of a listing. So in essence, you add more unpredictability to your search pages by taking into account people’s vote.

The social search is exciting and everybody wants to jump on the social bandwagon these days. But in the end, social search can not stand on its own, which leads us to a hybrid social semantic search engine. But we are supposed to get there evenutally…

That’s the million dollar question. What happens if you Digg your own article? According to Digg, you are free to submit your own articles. But in general, it’s a good idea to your readers submit your articles to Digg. Now I did submit my article to Digg a couple of months ago and in 3 days my site was completely dropped from Google. I am by no means suggesting that had anything to do with my ranking drop, but it’s interesting that it has happened to a bunch of other people as well. What’s your experience with Digg? Have you experienced such an issue?

If you have worked in the SEO industry for even just a little bit, you know the reputation that search engine optimization professional have in other industries. Many think of SEO professionals as gamers: a group of folks who spend days and nights figuring out shortcuts to the top of the SERPs. In fact, many SEOs consider themselves to be gamers. But is it really true? Are we all just a bunch of folks who have nothing better to do than figure out what tricks Google in putting us at the top?

For some people the answer is yes. The Blackhats are certainly gamers, and there is no question about that. I don’t care if you are putting hidden text on your pages or you are using color schemes to trick engines, you are gaming the system.

But BlackHat SEOs are not the only ones who are giving us a bad name. Some white hats, especially those who love to buy links and use reciprocal linking aggressively are to blame here as well. I have been in the same room with SEOs who claim that they like to live on “the edge.” These are the people who give us honest whitehats a bad name. When I do SEO for people, I always think about the ways to improve their content and improve ranking positions by implementing the best practices. Not everyone is familiar with the importance of title tags. Not everyone knows who exactly the search engines work. Showing people how to target the right keyword is different than changing your whole content around a couple of keywords and repeating it a million times throughout your content.

So no. SEO is not gaming search engines. It’s about learning the rules and maximizing value to your readers. Nothing more or less.