The “Monthly Moz-Letter” almost got deleted today on my crusade to clean out my Gmail inbox. Glad I decided to open it – I almost missed this gold nugget from the Rand(om) Question section:

One last thing I’ll say about Panda in particular – you need to be willing to take dramatic action to respond. The sites I’ve seen recover are those who’ve done a complete redesign and a refresh of their content, making things so wonderfully amazing that they stand out as the best result for the query. Those who’ve made iterative attempts to reduce ads a little or throw some extra paragraphs on a page so as to hopefully get over the Panda algo generally haven’t.

Best of luck!
Rand

My take away? The huge light bulb moment SEO insight? If you want to rank first in Google in a post-Panda world, you’ve got to be a resource the best resource on the topic you’re targeting. Lead-aggregation sites (one of our biggest local rankings enemies in the moving industry) can’t just add tons of bogus content with a few keyword mentions, and increase their link buying budget and hope to outrank legit, helpful sites. But this also means that the websites of legit, authoritative businesses might not rank well if those biz owners don’t share their knowledge , and instead get caught up in the “Everyone needs to be on every social network to talk about themselves as much as possible” scamvice. Self promotion across social networks is not the same as being a helpful resource contributing to the betterment of your industry. I’m worried for the thousands of mom & pop businesses across the country that might miss that.

Mom & pop, if you’re reading this, here’s the best SEO advice I’ve got – be the best, most authoritative, most comprehensive, most helpful resource in the world on the topic you’re selling. Give all that helpful information away for free so that it spreads easily (Seth Godin shout-out). Then people will want to visit your site, want to find it in Google, Bing, Yahoo, Blekko, etc and, in turn, those search engines will want to deliver your site to the people using their search engines.

Not entirely, and not necessarily individually. But as a whole, if you combine all the suggestions & theories, they’re very one-size-fits all. I hear over and over again “social is important,” “You gotta build a Facebook community of thousands of followers around your brand,” “keywords in the URL are on the out,” “get your url tweeted & re-tweeted.”

From what I’ve seen in the moving industry, these are not true for everyone. Domain matched URLs are still gold for spammy moving lead-generators.

And for a product you use once every few years, brand recognition and community involvement are next to impossible to create without being annoying to your customers. I’m not saying it’s impossible – I consider it one of my most exciting challenges to create an active/interested Facebook community (we’re not there yet, but it’s a goal – moving can be a pretty boring social subject).

All I’m saying is, if Google’s goal is to write an algorithm that accurately picks and chooses which sites to rank vs. others, I think we have to consider that part of the math might be to include a “relative” factor.

The bridge is small and unimportant relative to the photographer, providing him no support or use. Credit michaelnpatterson

If you’re not standing on the bridge above, it’s relatively unimportant to you. Google treats ranking factors the same way – if a group or industry of sites is far from using social in their niche, then Google counts social a relatively unimportant factor to that niche. For example, if 9 out of 10 moving company websites have no Facebook page, 32 Twitter followers, and an all but abandoned blog, the Google algo wouldn’t weigh social factors as heavily in ranking those moving company sites as it does in, say, the tech industry. In other words, if 90% of the industry doesn’t have any data for “algorithm factor #174″, let’s say tweeted links, then it’d be a low “relative” factor. Which would fly in the face of what every SEO authority out there is saying about the importance of tweeted links. Sounds crazy, but Google has to have a way to compare related sites to each other using fair metrics relative to that industry or web category. A one-size-fits-all approach wouldn’t work across the web, and isn’t very Google-like. Their solutions are often exceedingly more complex.

So at the end of the day, go ahead and get your site tweeted about and build a Facebook community. But check your competition, watch your industry. Are you competing in an industry where your competition doesn’t even know what a +1 button is? Are you the only one struggling to produce an interesting blog about carrot peelers? The algo for your niche might not care if you slow your posting from two lame forced posts a day to 1 helpful, entertaining carrot peeling post every couple weeks. Go get some links, tweak and perfect your site’s internal linking. Think through how Google is measuring your competition and which factors are showing up across every competitor site. Dominate those ranking factors, and you’ll have the competitive edge. Then you can go tweet yourself.

But there is a small handful of people not freaking out… (inspiring video after the break).

These are the people that have been focused on delivering quality pieces of writing to their audience since the beginning. These are the people that have put together their own research, their own stories, and their own analysis since day 1, knowing readers are attracted to helpful, interesting information – and are often willing to dig through the engines’ ineffective rankings to find gold.

SEO’s have been chanting the Matt Cutts mantra “Content is King” without understanding a key assumed ingredient – great content. You must be the King of your content in order for your content to be King. It has to be excellent. And the continued tweaks to the Google ranking math are only promoting that fact further. If you think SEO is about links, social media and PageRank, you’re putting the cart before the horse.

Great writing, great design, a great story compels people to talk about it, to link to it, to +1 it, to “like” it – because, it turns out, they really do like it. You might be missing out on links, traffic, & rankings – not because you don’t have a story, but maybe because you haven’t told it the right way yet… (aaaaaaaand cue video)

(In response to the email above)
Dear SEO Email Spammers,

Please stop emailing me your promises for “increased of the best SEO servicing.” Your grammar is atrocious – which, to start, would guarantee I wouldn’t hire you or even respond to your email regardless of the service you were offering. 

The fact is, the engines take into account horrendously poor grammar. You’re revealing up front that you’d be a terrible candidate for the service you are spamvertising. Plus, 5 minutes after I deleted your first unsolicited email, another copy of the exact same email came through.

The first email was a bummer because it revealed a poor marketing plan. The second email was just annoying and disrespectful. I want to know if your mass email campaigns actually convert. Do people really email you back, offering you their credit card info, believing you are a legitimate SEO expert ready to provide excellent service? I can’t imagine anyone would – but I guess if it didn’t work, there wouldn’t be so many of these spamvertisements coming to me every week.

Peace, Love, and Unicorn Flavored Rainbow Grumdrops,

The Eclectic SEO

Google +1 sounds like a sure-fire way to promote a whole new type of spamming. It’s so hard to crowdsource something when crowdsourcing is so easily spammed, bought, or sold.

But maybe part of their analysis of the importance of each +1 click will depend on your Google account – how much you use it, which of their products you use (Gmail, Calendar, Docs, etc.) If Google has figured out a way to rate a Google Account as trustworthy or not, this could actually be a helpful product in getting some of the junk results out of Google search.

The upside is, Google +1 is different than the Facebook like button in that there is also a “dis-like” version available. See below:

I’ve had the “Block” option in my search results for a little while now and haven’t used it more than maybe once yet. Have you found use for it? What websites have you blocked? Will you actually use the Google +1 button?

I know, I know. My stomach turned a bit too when I got emails asking if I’d heard about the most recent Google drama – the same stomach twinge I get when I drive by a cop, even when I’m not speeding. But the same reality is true – there’s no need to panic if you’re not breaking Google’s “laws”. I’m not a content spammer or farmer or scraper. I write my own posts on this blog. If I ever invite a guest to write, it will be something original. I write original content for all my clients. And I try to make sure it’s content worth reading – informative and helpful, or in the very least comical.

I loved the statement made in a recent article that said something like, “Google is turning the web into a jungle” in reference to the thousands of pages of junk that spammers are churning out trying to rank something in the great search engine. I wouldn’t say it’s Google’s fault, but the web is definitely starting to feel very crowded by thousands of useless sites.

SEO’s reading this – those of us not speeding, or at least not much more then 5 or 10 mph over the limit, keep up your good work. Produce excellent content and maintain safe and legitimate linking campaigns. Google is getting better at weeding out the junk, which means black hat techniques will not always reign against white hat.

The solution: we found some advice online that recommended we remove the battery completely and then re-attach it. After doing that, and plugging the charger back in, the white indicator light showed up immediately. We booted up her notebook and the Chrome OS started up right away showing a full charge in the notification bar on the top right.

That’s how the beginning of this post was supposed to go, when I started working on it 6 weeks ago and never finished. The funny thing is, I put off writing the post long enough to get my own Google Chrome OS Notebook! That’s right, I’m not kidding.  We are now a 2 Google Notebook family. I’m not sure what went wrong in the science behind Google’s distribution algorithm but that means 2 were shipped to the same address. And that means I’m a lucky buzzard. So I figured I better get on it with the whole “sharing this info with the world” thing. And by world, I mean the 3 readers that accidentally end up on my blog (hi guys!) Watch for future posts on usability, bugs, etc.

This post is the un-boxing of the Google Chrome Notebook CR-48.

Let’s start with the packaging:
The box it comes in is a plain brown cardboard box with a UPS label on it. The return address lists some discreet unheard of company in KY. When you cut the plain box open you find this (above) inside. Another box inside has a funny little blueprint-style cartoon image of a hamster-powered contraption (hamster included according to the picture). Almost like something you’d see on some Urban Outfitters packaging. The first time we got to this level of excavation we were perplexed at what may lay inside. My wife has an affinity for UO and so we started to think someone had ordered her a nice surprise and had it shipped directly.

The screams and shouts of disbelief that came out of the two of us when we opened the interior box seem a little silly looking back on them now, but never in a million years did we believe that either of us would actually get the Chrome OS Notebook we both applied for. We’re not the types who win contests, free trials, etc regularly. So try to imagine our disbelief when, about a week ago, there was an identical package sitting on our doorstep, this time addressed to me. (Thanks Google)

Digging into the contents of my wife’s second box we found an un-marked netbook sized notebook*, an AC wall power charger, 2 small instruction pamphlets (see one below) and a battery. When we opened the more recently arrived box, the only new thing added was a sheet of stickers to be used to customize your Chrome Notebook.

Notice the Caps Lock key has been replaced with a Search key. Pressing this key opens a new tab with the curser in the address bar, ready for your search terms. If this drives you too crazy (like it does me) you can switch the option in settings to make the button operate as Caps Lock again. (Although I’ve taken this as a challenge to improve my typing ability by learning to adequately use the shift key as it was intended.)

Both Chrome Notebooks arrived with zero juice in the batteries. The instruction sheet said that an orange light will glow when charging is needed and will turn white once the computer has finished charging, which might take a few hours if the battery is completely drained. After leaving my wife’s notebook (above) plugged in for nearly 6 hours with no white light, I checked online (on our old Toshiba) and found that the best recommendation was to take the battery out, wait a few seconds, then replace the battery. We did, and upon plugging the power cable back in, immediately got the long awaited white light.

My Google notebook charged in 2-3 hours without any  battery finagling .

Launching the Google Chrome OS. After a full charge, my wife opened her notebook and it booted up without pressing any buttons. I appreciate that – a computer that knows that if you’re opening it’s screen, you’re probably going to want the computer on.

The operating system takes about 3 seconds to pull up a Select Network screen. We have WiFi at home, so she selected the network and hit continue. After accepting the agreement (and reading through every word, of course…) we hit next and the notebook took about 5 minutes to find, download, and install the latest version of Chrome OS.

After the install she was asked to sign into her Google account and snap a profile picture. Later, from the login screen I was able to add my own login, complete with profile picture (the above screenshot is from my Chrome notebook – the wife has yet to add her user account). If you’ve got a friend who’s only using your Chrome notebook once, I’d recommend having them use the guest account to avoid cluttering up the login screen with a ton of other users.

Finally, the welcome screen. A Google Chrome web browser fills the screen and a note pops up (see close-up below) highlighting the quick sleep and startup speed and connection options (Verizon 3g or WiFi). After closing the note you’re guided through an optional tour of how to use the Google Chrome Notebook. Most of the instructions relate to using a Chrome web browser. A few highlight the notebook’s hardware abilities: 2 finger clicking = right click, 2 finger dragging = scrolling, the track pad is tap to click or click to click across the whole pad (much like a Macbook). The instructions also point out that if you’d like to use a mouse instead of the trackpad, just plug it in via the USB port and it’ll work. “You don’t need to download or install anything.”

The intro walk-through also claims that you can close the computer to let the system sleep, go have a cup of coffee, come back, open the lid and be back to work in 1.12 seconds. I decided to test that right now, while writing this post. I just got up, went and reheated my Pizza Hut deep dish pizza left over from last night. I just sat back down, opened my notebook and before I finished lifting the screen a notification popped up about gmail, I switched tabs quickly and a looping animation on a different tab was already moving again. Wow. Maybe less than 1.12 seconds.

Pressing ctrl+alt+? displays special keyboard shortcuts. Once the image is up you can see which shortcuts are tied to each of 3 keys by holding them individually – alt, ctrl, and shift. The screenshot above is taken while holding ctrl.

Printing from the Google Chrome Notebook is available via Google Cloud Print. There are 2 ways to print – one involves networking a printer already connected to a Windows computer to be available via the Cloud, after some installation and settings are set-up. The other option is to print to special printers alluded to as Google Cloud Ready Printers, “optimized for your Google account.” They say to visit the Google Cloud Print page for a list of printers Cloud Ready but I couldn’t find such a list. Maybe’s it’s forthcoming?

That’s what I’ve got so far. I’ll be using my Google Chrome OS Notebook extensively over the coming days and will post updates about my opinions of the experience.

*note: Google calls this computer their Chrome Notebook, even though it’s the size (12 3/4 inch screen) and functionality of a netbook and even though most writers have been calling it the Google Chrome OS Netbook or Google Netbook for short.