PingPongPie

I believe in helping people, especially helping people help themselves. I think most people know the proverb: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

I found a website business that helps people in the poorest parts of the world with very small financial loans. It’s based upon group lending, whereby many people will make up a loan of a few hundred or few thousand dollars. The lending units, if you can call them that are $25 bits and you lend one to a team of people or a person. There is no financial reward, and your money is at risk it’s truly altruistic. However, the repayment rate is around 99% which is pretty amazing considering the people you’re lending money to don’t have credit scores.

The site is called Kiva and here is my personal page where you can see the money I’ve loaned all $50 of it as I’m such a magnanimous person. lol My page: my lending page

MeetDomainers is a premium conference aimed at top domain investors and top SEO experts from all over the world. Speaking at the conference will be some of the industries most revered and respected entrepreneurs. It’ll be a great opportunity to network and maybe do a big deal or two

These include:

Lesley Cowley, CEO, Nominet

Bryan Lip, Director, Partnerships, Expedia Affiliate Network

Robert Prime, Managing Director, Think Partners LTD

And of course myself.

The conference is on the 27th / 28th of August in Manchester. You can get more information here:

I think there are enough published posts about the last saga of how Google is penalising itself but I thought I’d wade in too, since my readership is about 6, it doesn’t really matter anyway.

To cut a long story short, Google caught itself cloaking and has removed some of its pages from the index as a “sign of good faith” to webmasters that it has consistency with its guidelines. However, I don’t believe that this was the correct method of corrective action from either a users or PR perspective. Here’s why:

1. Google users need help pages and by removing them from the index the the user experience declines for many regular users.

2. Removing it’s OWN pages from it’s OWN index is contrived and anyone with half a braincell can see this. I feel slightly insulted to be honest.

I think what would’ve been a better course of action would have been to issue an apology and to say that these things can happen and that they would be giving a little more consideration to websites before they penalise them.

Google now have a bit of a PR disaster on their hands and their trust with webmasters has yet again been slight eroded, especially since they found even more pages which were being cloaked and were violating the webmaster guidelines but are refusing to remove them from the index.

I don’t dislike Google for making a mistake, However, I dislike being patronised. Immensely.

Ferrari are such a whining bunch of people, it’s astonishing. The way they have gone on about being disadvantaged by the safety car this weekend is truly terrible. Hamilton made a marginal decision by overtaking the safety car and because it was MARGINAL they took a while to punish him and therefore the penalty was almost negated. Hamilton gambled and while he didn’t exactly win, he didn’t lose either. Mr. Alonso, next time, maybe you should take those marginal gambles as some of them will work for you too and some won’t but at least you won’t be a crying baby.

Even Montezemolo has eventually stepped in saying it’s destroying the credibility of the sport, when in actual fact all moaning is actually making Ferrari look like pathetic, unprofessional sore losers. I think there is only one loser this weekend and it’s Ferrari, not F1 or anyone else. Nobody likes a whinger.

SFTU Ferrari. I used to support you.

I frequently am plagued with low quality SEO enquiries by shall we say, people that lack common sense and maybe intelligence. Take this one from today: (Have transcribed telephone call)

Potential Non client: Hi, I’d like you to take my two property websites, optimise them and make them rank good and stuff.

Me: (alright know that this is a waste of time) Hi, err, ok, can I have the URL’s?

Potential Non client: What’s a URL?

Me: The website addresses…

Potential Non client: oh, it’s www.number78.co.uk & www.norwich-apartment.co.uk

Me: (looks) erm, they are the same site on two different addresses, you have a duplicate content problem.

Potential Non client: What’s duplicate content

Me: (sighs) When you have the same version of a website multiple times Google doesn’t like it, you either need to re-write one of your sites or put them together (couldn’t be arsed to explain what a 301 is at this stage)

Potential Non client: Hmmmm - Well, I’ve paid for two names, so that’s not really an option at this stage and I’ve paid my website boy to put it up twice at an additional costs. Also, I have no time to do any writing.

Me: Are you a businessman?

Potential Non client: What?

Me: Are you a businessman?

Potential Non client: I’d like to think so, why do you ask?

Me: Because you have the brain of a lizard.

Me: (Puts phone down).

And that’s how you take a client on. Not.

Joomla! Unnecessary awkward and complex CMS system that should be put to ground, I mean why oh why would you choose it as your platform from which to work? You’re making a rod for your own back, trust me. Takes hours to recode things which should take 30 seconds.

Brent Csutoras is a well known Social Media Marketer and sent me an email the other day saying he knew a couple of guys who offered a neat service. I asked Brent to send me more detail and this is the resulting email conversation, with a “reply all” function so everyone can see what’s being said.

From Brent:

Chris - Please meet David Snyder and Loren Baker. They offer the neat services as discussed. Please connect and talk with each other so you at least know what each other can provide if needed.

From Me:

Tell Loren Baker to suck my balls.

From Loren Baker:

I would suck them if you had any

From Me:

LMAO

==

That’s how we roll in Search Engine and Social Media Land

Do I really need to explain? Okay, I will anyway…

Google is an algorithm that is link based, maybe not so much in the future, but for now it still is. However, back in the day, you’d build some links and “hey presto”, you’d see some some changes in your website ranking. However, these days, we build some amazing links though the most creative viral marketing possible, the projects garner lots of links and then…We wait a loooooonnnnggg time to see the effects.

You can see why Google does it, well, they do it to maybe make people think that their monthly rental links don’t work, so there’s the logic, but come on, give it to us already. I’m not talking about paid links here, just regular editorial links, from authority sources. Where money can’t buy links. Please Mr.Google, please.

I subscribe to Wired magazine, I think it’s the most amazing piece of literature ever produced ever ever. That doesn’t say much for me and my depth of knowledge, but seriously, it is amazing and it’s a very “boyzy” magazine. It’s filled with science, gadgets, business, technology, entrepreneurship and basically everything else that I like. If you had access to see their demographic stats I’m sure they would look something along the lines of:

99% - Male
1% - Undisclosed

Reading my magazine this month, I came across the most misplaced advert ever, it was an advert for a subscription to…wait for it…Vogue. I mean seriously, how can you get a more misplaced advert than that? I only have one word for the media planner of www.magazineboutique.co.uk. Fail.

Magazine Boutique is a sort of supermarket / distributor for a bunch of magazines so you can subscribe to them in one place. Of course they also offer a subscription to Wired so there is some cross pollination going on, but I thought “these two plants ain’t going to breed”. I mean why didn’t they put in: House and Garden or GQ - Twice (Think I already saw a GQ advert in for this month but seeing a different advert for the same magazine would’ve been much better)

I’m really confused as to why they would’ve run an advert for Vogue in what is almost a 100% male magazine? Maybe they thought the male readership would’ve bought a subscription for their girlfriends or wives, but that wouldn’t have worked either as people that read Wired are so uber geeky that getting one is very unlikely, the only woman that we have a chance with resides in a 24″ computer monitor and I don’t think she really wants a subscription to Vogue.

Sorry to slam you Magazine Boutique but your media planner / buyer really sucks at planning / buying media, I’ve never seen a more misplaced advert in my life. At least it made me laugh, and I’m sure I’m not alone.

Fail

I’ve noticed that there are some cool SEO blog names out there, some of bloggers I know personally, others I don’t. However, as the space gets more and more competitive, people try to be a little different to stand out from the crowd.

Some of my favourites:

1. www.seorabbit.com - Claims to be an SEO Expert

2. www.seoidiot.co.uk - Claims to be an erm…SEO Idiot?

3. www.stuntdubl.com - Claims to be an SEO Stuntman

I mean what next? A Ping Pong Pie?