Question from Steve: Information about the why's & how-to's of the BLOGosphere have made for a plethora of copy all over the SEO world, yet my constantly recurring question never seems to come up! And this first question always leads me to second one. (1) If your business is NOT in any way concerned with... let's call it "journalism" (it seems that the business of StepForth would have a sizable reliance on journalistic talent), how would a company go about deploying a blog initiative and still have time to sleep more than one or two nights a week? (...there's this business we gotta keep running!) And (2) if one were to hire one of many firms offering such a BLOG service, how would it come off as more than a thinly veiled SERP ranking initiative, when your business is not of the type where there is really any "news" to report -- AND further, where the BLOG service cannot possibly be expected to have the specific knowledge needed to write usefully pertinent journalistic copy?
Answers from Ross Dunn: 1) You are right Steve, I imagine there are some industries where having a blog would be rather useless but I haven't run into one yet. There are usually a few things to write about: tips on how to use your product, tips on how to get more out of your service, client testimonials, client case studies, industry news, new products or services being offered and why, new staff profiles, emerging opportunities in your industry, etc.
As to how to find the time to keep up a blog... it can be a struggle there is no doubt. Indeed I sometimes find our blog gets put on the back burner while we tackle extraordinary busy periods with new SEO jobs or competitor analysis contracts. The key is that whatever you write does not have to be epic in length - it just has to be interesting or provide some value to readers and build relevance to your site.
2) I would welcome feedback from anyone who has experience using an outside blogging firm. I have yet to hire a blog writer unfamiliar with my business - they have all been on staff writers with experience with SEO/SEM. Even my clients have been tempted to hire on and take a bit of the burden off but have not gone that route yet. That said, I have been keeping my ear to the ground for good writers and companies that could fit this niche. In on case I met some people who had teams of writers each with experience in different industries and that was how they answered my concerns about quality content. In their case the cost of hiring a writer included a small investment in the time it took for the writer to learn the basics of the industry so they could adequately write about it. Unfortunately I cannot vouch for the end quality of their writing because I have yet to go that route.
As for content such an offsite writer could provide... well there are some pieces of information that do not require intimate product/service knowledge. For example, the blog writer could keep the blog up to date with industry news, new products/services you are providing (by paraphrasing your site), they could even troll the forums related to your industry and create daily summaries of the discussions that take place. All of these elements can provide additional relevance to a website.
Question from JAG: If we have a website and the homepage lists a number cities in a dropdown list. Are google robots smart enough to navigate through the dropdown list and start indexing the individual cities?
Answer from Ross Dunn: What I would term a "standard" drop down menu system is not search engine friendly because it is chalk full of code that search engines ignore. In my opinion the best drop menus are DHTML or CSS because they have the ability to be search engine friendly while offering the space saving and aesthetic advantages of a drop menu.
Question from Mackenzie: Just recently I had a client ask about “Conversation Domination”. From what I have read, I’m skeptical as it seems like a scam. Because I look to Step Forth as SEO experts, I was wondering what your take is on this concept.
Answer from Ross Dunn: Hi Mackenzie, thank you for your kind words, I am happy to help. Conversation domination is a term I have only heard of a couple times before and from my research it appears that it is currently a term used for a set of social media marketing tactics designed by marketers Howie Swartz and Jack Humphreys. Now I don't know if they in fact originally coined this phrase... I may be giving too much credit since it seems a logical turn of phrase in the social marketing realm.
Your question prompted some curiousity on my part so I checked into this a little further into their program and from what I have seen so far their program teaches users various techniques for taking advantage of social marketing to boost search engine rankings. Unfortunately I do not know how ethical their practices are or if ethics are a even considered in their teachings. That said I only had limited time to review their info so I would not discount it - they could have a great program.
If your client is looking to delve into social media marketing there are other resources that will provide free advice while they decide what direction to take:
Andy Beal and his ongoing discussions on Social Media Marketing (SMM) are always intriguing and timely.
Jeff Quipp and his team at Search Engine People work hard to keep on the cutting edge of SMM so I recommend reading their blog.
Where's StepForth in this list? We are not quite ready to commercially offer social media marketing services and until we are I think the teams above are more qualified to be your teachers. Soon, however, our new social media marketing specialist will be writing for this blog and we will be launching services to bring social marketing in house and take advantage of that realm with the zeal and professionalism that StepForth is known for.
In the course of my day I come across a load of great articles or news posts that I often don't have time to read. Sometimes I even do read them but forget to share the wealth. In addition, my Twitter feed is chalk full of article suggestions and tips from great minds; unfortunately I don't do a good job of noting them yet. Here are a few links and tips I have come across today, I will try to do this more often:
Handling a Domain Name Dispute Without a Lawyer - when the big guys try to crush you with their legal teams because they don't like your domain... what do you do? WebmasterWorld users weigh in.
No Recession for Link Building - link building guru Eric Ward weighs in on the world of link building and how to adapt during any 2008 recession
Free Social Media Measurement Webinar this Thursday: Jeremiah Owyang has put together a webinar "on Social Media Measurement How to Listen Effectively and Engage in the Conversation this Thursday at 12:30 EST/9:30PST with Glenn Fannick, Product Development Manager at Dow Jones." This is likely to be a very interesting webinar which I highly recommend listening in on.
Hey Rand, Do You Mean Siloing?: Lisa Barone wrote this great article on the theme-based approach to designing and optimizing a website (what Bruce Clay calls "content siloing"). It isn't a new concept by any means but it is worth a read if you are unfamiliar with theme-based optimization.
On the always helpful advice of Michael Dorausch (a fellow Twitter user) I submitted my Twitter profile to the Twitter Pack Project. The Twitter Pack Project is a wiki where anyone can catalogue their Twitter address under a variety of categories:
So what is the point? To gain more followers and network more with people of like minds. It is a great idea and I am happy that I took the time to publish my Twitter profile (www.twitter.com/rossdunn).
If you have a profile be sure to post it on the Twitter Pack Project. If you don't have a Twitter account give Twitter a try, I have not regretted it one bit. In fact it has taken me by surprise just how good a networking tool it is and how interesting it is to follow people's everyday discoveries as they Twitter them.
As an accredited Yahoo Ambassador, I am accustomed to working with the Yahoo Search Marketing PPC system (YSM). Although YSM can be an effective means of paid advertising, its Panama system still has a ways to go and I want to share with you several of the challenges in setting up a geo-targeted campaign.
Opening an account with an address in the US or Canada, restricts you to advertising only in those markets. If you'd like to geo-target other areas of the globe, you have to use this site: Yahoo International Accounts
Once there, a separate account for each and every additional country you wish to advertise in will need to be created. That's an awful lot of work for someone wanting to geo-target globally. When calling YSM support to find out how to get around this, their answer was that it is impossible to integrate campaigns to be served globally. I found this to be odd, as I'd just completed a globally targeted campaign in Google Adwords for the same client.
Another hitch in geo-targeting in Panama is trying to include Canada as a target region. If you select Canada as the market to be served to, you will only get ad service if the ads are written in French. This is unusual, as roughly 23% of Canada's population is French; in order to get ad service to English speaking Canada, one needs to set up the account in the US and Canada market . Apparently, however, this odd set up can cause problems in US advertising as well, as evidenced in this RKG blog.
Given that targeting Canada allows for only ad service in French, it seems odd that Yahoo would use exactly the same map as the English service US and Canada market as there aren’t a great many French Canadians in the US. By comparison, upon checking Switzerland, which also has more than one official language, no similar restrictions seem to apply. The target area was even restricted to just Switzerland and not the bordering countries, many of which have the same languages.
Overall, Yahoo seems to be very inflexible as to where they will serve ads. It would be nice if they displayed this kind of information more prominently when setting up accounts with them. I imagine a lot of people have wasted a fair amount of time trying to work through this system. I've mentioned these issues when speaking to Yahoo support staff, suggesting that changes of this nature would make the system more useful for advertisers. Both Google AdWords and Microsoft Adcenter allow flexible geo-targeting options, with MSN going as far as to allow an assortment of criteria to be changed at the ad group level.
Yahoo has thanked me for my input, but I question whether they are really listening. Dating back more than a year, similar complaints litter the YSM Blog and to date no known attempts have been made to improve the system.
While Yahoo has a number of good aspects behind its Panama Platform there is still much room for improvement. Here is a summary of my recommendations to Yahoo:
A revamping of YSM's system should be devised for more user friendly and efficient account creation and management. Yahoo's current system has the effect of putting all the setup and management workload on the advertisers.
Country restrictions should be made clear to the advertiser at the account creation stage.
Any ad copy language restrictions in place for specific geographic areas should be clearly noted by Yahoo. In cases where ads are disallowed due to language, there should be an indication the ads will not be served. In the case we recently experienced, there were no editorial alerts or any other obvious indication the Canada – English campaign was not functioning.
Do you have any tips or suggestions for Yahoo? Email me and I will be thrilled to add it to 'the list' and send it to Yahoo Search Marketing staff.
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 12:08 PM
As a staple toy for just about every child, Lego has turned 50 today, and Google is celebrating with a Google Lego Logo.
On Jan 28, 1958 in CopenhagenDenmark, Godtfred Kirk Christiansen submitted a patent for his invention which would eventually be called the Toy of the Century. Since then, more than 400 million children and adults play with their Lego totaling an estimated 5 billion hours each year.
I for one grew up with a large bucket of Lego and still on occasion bring it out and play once in a while, hoping that my upcoming child will want to do the same – I’m sure he/she will.
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 3:00 PM
On Dec 26, 2007 Google shares closed at $710.84. Today one short month later, Jan 25, 2008, Google closed at $566.40. That is huge drop, more than 20% over a one month period, and I am sure some investors are feeling the pinch on this one. Back in November Google peaked at around $741 – I feel sorry for anyone who bought on that day.
I am no financial expert – in fact far from it, but I am pretty sure this is bad. That said, they will recover and break back into the $700+ range – right? I would be surprised if they didn’t, although I have been surprised before.
Expect QDOS (taken from 'kudos') to be on the lips of many over the next year. QDOS is a method to monitor and measure your own Internet popularity and, in the longer run, help you secure your online persona from identity theft.
Up until now there has been no way to measure digital presence, to see where you fit in to the online world. At Garlik, we've analysed the digital profiles of the nation and have made available a QDOS score for every UK adult . Your QDOS score is made up of 4 different components:
Popularity Who you know and the extent of your online network.
Impact How much people listen to what you say online.
Activity What you do online e.g. shop, chat, blog.
Individuality How easy you are to find online according to your name, your age etc
I expect QDOS will do very well, if not absurdly well in North America. As Al Pacino once said "vanity is my favorite sin". This is obvious in nearly every corner of social media networking... many people just want to look like they have more friends and show off their accomplishments so this new service just fits perfectly. Don't get me wrong, I am not judging, but I don't think there is anywhere more vain than North America which is why I have high expectations for this company. It also helps that one of their board members happens to be the inventor of the World Wide Web... Tim Berners-Lee.
Aside from the enjoyment of monitoring your online identity and watching it morph in real time QDOS offers a much needed element of security that will really appeal to Internet users the world over... protection from identity theft. QDOS is relatively new but I did find an interview with Tom Ilube, CEO of QDOS that explains how the company will help its clients protect their identity:
"In the digital world, there is information that other people, companies or even the Government makes available about each of us which we are often not aware of, including government database information such as UK births, deaths and marriages. In fact, you could say there is ‘background digital noise’ about all of us."
"The key to tackling data abuse is for consumers to make themselves ‘hard targets’ and the purpose of QDOS is to wake people up en masse to the fact that their identity is worth protecting. Once consumers start to recognise this fact in a major way, it will become harder for fraudsters to abuse their data."
So what will all of this cost to you? Claiming your name and manually monitoring your online identity will be free but QDOS will be providing a $6/month identity monitoring service. The service will provide a monthly "personal identity statement" that highlights any weaknesses in your online identity security. (source: Business Week)
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 2:16 PM
These days, as more and more companies come to the conclusion that their 1990's built websites with the animated gifs, static backgrounds, and auto-playing midi files have seen their prime, they begin to enter into a world of redesign. While creating these new websites with the sleeker look, and cleaner file structure is a smart move for the future, the risk and complications caused by changing URL’s and the impact this has on search engine rankings is very real.
This is where redirects come in. Using the correct redirect, in most cases a permanent 301, is key to helping maintain your existing rankings, whether your site is undergoing a complete face lift, or if you simply want to move a few pages around.
While Permanent 301 Redirects are the most common there are valid situations where either 301's or 302's may be the most appropriate. This article will discuss what these redirects do, common and less common uses, implementation, and how to check that you have set them up correctly
1.) What are these redirects, what do they do?
Permanent 301 To summarize in a few lines, permanent 301 redirects are just as they sound. They are permanent redirects from an old URL to a new one. These redirects tell the search engines that the old location is to be removed from their index and replaced with the new location. Using 301 redirects is the most search engine friendly way to redirect traffic and engines, and far out weighs that of various JavaScript and Meta refresh redirects.
Temporary 302 Temporary 302 redirects are also as they sound; temporary. Here you are telling the search engines to read and use the content on the new page, but to keep checking the original URL first as it will ultimately be reestablished.
2.) Common and Less Common Uses There are many special cases where you should stand back and consider which redirect to use. In nearly all situations a permanent 301 will be the answer, but sometimes a 302 just may fit the bill. Here are some examples of when to use each redirect.
A.) Permanent 301 Redirects As noted earlier, 301 redirects are by far the most common. When using them you are telling the search engines "do not come back to this location, the page has permanently moved."
All three search engines handle 301 redirects the same. If Site A is 301'd to Site B, then Site B will show up in the search results and Site A will ultimately be completely removed.
Page Deleted or Moved Probably the most common use is the moving or deletion of a single page. Let’s say that you are no longer selling a specific product and therefore have no need for its page. Using a 301 redirect to send the spiders to either the next closest product, or to a relevant product list would be of far more value then having your site return a 404 error and sending users to an error page.
The same goes with pages that are simply moved. While you are probably better off keeping the page where it is, there are many valid reasons why you may need it moved, and in this case a 301 redirect is essential to keep both the search engines, and your site users (who may have bookmarked this old page) happy.
New Top Level Domain If you are thinking about changing your main domain name, don’t do it. If you find that there is just no way around it, and that the change is essential, 301 redirects are your answer.
By using a 301 redirect to send traffic from your old site to your new site you can help ensure that ranking damage will be minimal. Without a 301 redirect your new site will be a completely from scratch endeavor with years of hard work down the drain and any historic profile that a search engine has created will not be carried over to the new site.
WWW vs Non-WWW This is now one of the most common uses of a 301 redirect when used in combination with Mod Rewrites. Essentially by using a permanent 301 redirect to send traffic destined to the non www version of your site (site.com) to the www version (www.site.com) you can focus the strength and prevent page rank split, giving your site's home page (and internal pages) a nice little boost.
Duplicate Pages More often than not you will find websites with valid multiple home page URL's all which serve up the same identical page. This is most common with two versions of the home page such as: www.site.com and www.site.com/index.html.
The first step is to update all your home page links to ensure that only non-index.html version is referenced. Should you happen to miss any home page links, and to direct these /index.html pages to the right place, adding the 301 redirect will ensure that you are not splitting the page value.
Old Domains If you find yourself with multiple websites and one or more of them are completely outdated, but still relevant and you have no chance of revitalizing it, you may want to consider using a 301 redirect to send traffic and engines to your current site.
By redirecting all internal pages of the old site to the most relevant internal pages of your new site, you will not only ensure that site visitors reach the proper updated content, but that any pre-existing rankings, link value, and other search engine goodness is transferred over to the new, active website.
Note: If you find yourself in the unusual situation of having dozens, or even hundreds of old websites, do not 301 all of them at the same time, you could likely be flagged as a spammer and endure penalties or a possible banning. If this is the case, just redirect a few of your sites that happen to have the most to offer in terms of rankings and traffic.
Rewriting confusing URL strings via Mod Rewrite Lets say that you have a site with long confusing URL strings for all internal pages. These days the major search engines do a much better job of indexing these obscure file locations, but it is still in your best interest to redirect them to a friendlier, cleaner URL. To do this you can use Mod Rewrites which utilize 301 redirects to turn this:
This URL is not only far more friendly to human visitors, it adds a higher level of relevance for the search engines and is easy to index.
(For the record, no, I do not own a white BMW 650, but who wouldn’t want one?)
B.) Temporary 302 Redirects The practical use of a 302 redirect is really quite limited. In most cases a 301 redirect is the correct choice; however, there are always exceptions. If you find yourself in the position where a 301 redirect just won't do, here are a few situations where the 302 may be a better choice.
Temporarily Moving a Page This is the main reason this 302 redirect exists, but you have to also ask yourself, have you ever temporarily moved a page? If the time comes where you need to relocate a page on a temporary basis, with the ultimate final destination of the page being at the original location, then you would want to use the 302 redirect.
Home Page Redirect Have you ever visited a websites home page only to find that you have been redirected to some obscure URL string like www.site.com/home/redir/pageinfo?id=23498874&g=34, but in actuality it is still their home page?
There are many cases where various dynamic sites or content management systems choose to rewrite the home page using some lengthy string of variables. The best fix for this is to use a mod-rewrite to change the messy URL into a simple www.site.com. Sometimes however, mod-rewrites may not work due to various server constraints, in which case, using a 302 redirect may be the answer.
By redirecting the home page of your site using a 302 redirect to this longer, more obscure URL, you essentially are telling the engines to continue using the shorter, original URL, but index and rank based on the content of the longer version.
In doing so you will not only clean up the display URL in any search engine rankings, but you will also help retain value from any links pointing into your home page from outside sources, ultimately helping to improve your overall search engine rankings.
Special Promotions Let’s say you have decided to create a special promotion for a product page on your site. You have toyed with the idea of changing the original product page but have decided against it, and instead created a new promotional page.
While the promotional page is live, use a 302 redirect to temporarily send traffic intended for the product, over to the promotional page, you can then easily remove the 302 redirect once the promotion is over and the original page will come back into play.
302 Hijack Important Note:We do NOT recommend attempting this, although if you do, you are likely to only harm yourself as this black-hat trick no longer works.
Not too long ago the spammers did what they are good at and found a way to abuse the system, in this case, the 302 redirect.
It was possible to use these 302 redirects to hijack rankings and traffic from another unsuspecting site. How did they do it?
Hackers used the 302 redirects to send the search engines from their domain (Site A) to a page on the target domain, (Site B). Google would see this and the rankings for Site B would be ultimately transferred over to the redirecting page on Site A.
Spiders were essentially cloaked to see the 302 redirect to the page on Site B, while human visitors, arriving from the newly hijacked rankings, would either see the original page, or be directed to another page residing on Site A.
Because of this vulnerability any 302's that direct to a different top level domain are now treated as 301 redirects by the search engines. By treating these as 301 redirects it eliminates the usefulness of this technique and solves the hijacking problem – sorry spammers.
Special Circumstances There are always exceptions to every rule and situations which result in the need for a creative solution. In the past we have had a client who found themselves in one of these situations.
When undergoing a huge redesign, a client of ours was forced to have part of their site hosted on one server, and part on another. The part of the site to be moved also had to be placed at the sub domain www1. This presented the potential problem of a huge ranking loss in the search engines which just was not acceptable.
The answer was using 302 redirects on all pages which were moved over to the www1 location. Because the sub domain is still a part of the original top level domain, this solution did not risk any possible penalties from the search engines (in regards to the 302 hijack issue), and also did not cause any problems with the effects of the alternative; a 301 redirect. In the end not only were rankings not compromised, the result of the new website actually caused an overall improvement in listings and site traffic.
This was a circumstance with a number of complicated technical issues I won't go into, but the end result was success, with much thanks to a few 302 redirects.
4.) How to Check: Not sure if you have implemented your redirects correctly? There is a fast and easy check you can do to find out.
Let’s say you are redirecting page A to page B. The obvious way to check is to try loading page A and see what comes up in your browser, but, if you have set up the wrong redirect, to the naked eye it may appear that all is correct.
To ensure that the correct status code is being utilized, use a "header checker" tool, enter the URL for the page to be redirected, and see what comes up. Finding a tool to do this is as simple as searching in Google, but to make things even easier see our HTTP Header Checker tool at StepForth.
5.) 301 / 302 Redirect Warning Be sure to avoid redirecting large numbers of pages all to one location. This practice is commonly used by spammers and could wind up getting your site into some hot water with Google.
Spammers have been known to create thousands of pages. By generating 1or 2 links to each of these pages, and ensuring that they are spidered and indexed in Google they can then harness the power of redirects to boost site rankings. By taking thousands of pages and redirecting them all to one main page, you would essentially increase the value of the target page and transfer much of the link popularity and boost search engine rankings.
Google is onto this. If you try this, you will likely end up banned, or at least penalized. That said, there may be legitimate reasons why you would drive multiple pages via 301s to another page on your site. If this is the case, be careful so you do not wind up being flagged as spam.
6.) Summary If your site is in need of a redirect, be sure to use the appropriate one for your situation. Correct use of these redirects can be your best friend when it comes to retaining search engine rankings, and your worst enemy if used incorrectly. There are many situations which may not be covered in this article, but hopefully you now have the information to make an informed decision on which of these two redirects is right for you.
I am pleased to say, although I am a little late finding out, that my article "How Glossaries and FAQs Can Improve Search Engine Rankings" was nominated for a SEMMY (Search EMMY). I wish I had known sooner so that I could have spread the news earlier but just the same I feel honored; it is nice when work gets a little link love and additional attention.
By the way, Matt McGee deserves a big thanks. Creating the SEMMY's is a brilliant way to acknowledge all of the writers out there that work hard to produce quality content. Thank you for your hard work and vision.
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 3:59 PM
Today something exciting happened to me. Google replied to an email I sent them. Not only did they reply, but the response I got was exactly what I was looking for - you see, they read my question, and actually answered it!
This is a first for me, as the first response I always get is some auto-generated form response that doesn’t come close to addressing the original question. After several days of email tag, the question is eventually answered.
The problem with this response I got was that it isn’t really the answer I was hoping for.
We all know that Google does not allow the same keyword to be live in more than one AdGroup or Campaign. This is common sense because if they did, you could essentially have multiple ads appearing at the same time under the same search.
But what happens if you throw in the wrench of having each of these unique campaigns target different geographic areas? In my mind this should work - unsure I thought I would check with Google before putting in the time to set everything up.
My Question:
"I may be setting up a new account in the coming weeks that will target 12 different geographic locations.
Essentially I will be creating 12 campaigns, one for each specific geographic location. The Ads will all be similar, with the main differences being the geographic location mentioned in the ad. Each of the 12 campaigns and their corresponding AdGroups will target the same Keyword set.
Will this work?"
Their Answer:
"...As you are aware if you have the same keywords across multiple campaigns, in this case twelve, only one ad (the better performing one) from the twelve campaigns will show. Hence, setting twelve campaigns each with a unique geographical location and having the same keywords will not be feasible..."
In short, it won’t work. Perhaps this little adjustment to the AdWords system would make perfect sense, and may even happen some day - but I'm not holding my breath. I will happily give credit where credit is due - Thank you Genevieve for actually reading my question and answering it without simply pulling a response from your database.
Back in December I attended the PubCon conference in Las Vegas and I was fortunate enough to meet my friend and Internet celebrity Ralph Wilson for an interview. Ralph has me regularly contributing tutorials and articles to the SEO section of his popular Web Marketing Today website and decided to interview me for a feature video on the website. The competitor analysis interview turned out pretty well I think - thank you Ralph!
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 10:45 AM
Have you ever come across a blog, forum, or other interactive site where you only wanted to post a single comment and then move on, only to be forced into registering and providing all your info, and finally saying, forget it?
Yahoo would like to put an end to this through the use of OpenID according to a TimesOnline report Thursday. OpenID is a system that allows internet users the ability to use a single login across multiple websites.
OpenID has been around for a while now and currently has more than 130 million subscribers, but to date, none of the biggest web properties have embraced its services.
"Raj Mata, director of memberships at Yahoo!, said: "This is another step forward for the open web. It is a hassle for users to have to log in to different sites. Often you have to register an account with a site - which you won't remember - just to post a comment. We think this reduces the barrier to entry."
While I for one can see the massive benefits of a single log in system giving access to all your favorite sites, I can also see the potential security nightmare. It doesn't take a programmer or security expert to know that a system like this is probably not without its holes, especially if used on a wide scale.
"The whole thing is fantastically dangerous until you can introduce cryptographic methods which ensure that the whole procedure is not phishable," Ben Laurie, an independent security expert, said.
While Yahoo noted that all relevant security issues have been addressed with the latest version of the OpenID protocol, time will tell if the initiative will be a success.
Blink
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Google
Simpy
Spurl
Y! MyWeb
If you have a profile be sure to post it on the Twitter Pack Project. If you don't have a Twitter account give Twitter a try, I have not regretted it one bit. In fact it has taken me by surprise just how good a networking tool it is and how interesting it is to follow people's everyday discoveries as they Twitter them.
These days, as more and more companies come to the conclusion that their 1990's built websites with the animated gifs, static backgrounds, and auto-playing midi files have seen their prime, they begin to enter into a world of redesign. While creating these new websites with the sleeker look, and cleaner file structure is a smart move for the future, the risk and complications caused by changing URL’s and the impact this has on search engine rankings is very real.
