If you play the SEO game you should not wine about losing the ball (or the whole game) every now and then. The Search Quality team is doing a fine job in the Netherlands right now by giving +30 penalties and blocking old school directory like linkfarm pages like www.goedbegin.com and www.startnu.nl.

Rule number 1.

If you game the system, really; Don’t wine! Get up, LEARN and try again.

Rule number 2.

If you game the system, game it good. Go Full Monty or don’t do anything at all.

Rule number 3.

If you game the system, do it on disposable domains. Don’t take risks on your brand-name.

I’m really getting sick reading the Google Help Groups with all people who believe Google stole their traffic. Especially if you’re not ranking for Jiba in top 5 anymore. Do you really think your website with some ratings should rank top 5 for brand-names? Of course it was comfortable like a warm bath getting all that Adsense money, but is it really that good of user experience? Get a hold of yourself, improve your website, add value and don’t be stupid. If you can’t live up to that, you should not play the game at all.

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Well? On my macbook (yeay!) I did a fresh install of Firefox and it never was this fast and stable. Which firefox extensions are still necessary for SEO? I already have: Firebug, SearchStatus, SEO Link analysis and the web-developer toolbar.

I know there are lots of good extensions out there, but which one is really a killer one that every SEO needs?

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While searching for lego stuff for my son I started out with a query about [lego]. Either this is a canonical issue, or good online reputation management. I do not doubt about the greatness of Lego but is this really what you think is useful for your users? Maybe it’s a better idea to use all these subdomains as sitelinks and provide some choices for your customers, so that they really are able to compare and buy some Lego.

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What’s on my mind now? Well Tuesday I went with five colleague’s to the Affiliate day, which was organized by Paul Schoenmakers (Shoemaker, coincidence?). The keynote that day was done by Kris Jones, from pepperjam network, an affiliate network started only because he was tired by the networks that didn’t listen to the super affiliates. Now here lies the resemblance between Paul and Chris, they both strive for the same goal: More transparency by the affiliate networks.

Kris did a great keynote about all the opportunities laying ahead for us. His message for every attendee was clear: The future for affiliate marketing is great and the time to react is now! One of the speakers got ill and Eduard (Dutch blog, working for outrider) replaced his spot with a nice introduction about search engine marketing. Well done Eduard!

After that there was a great lunch for all 600 people and room for networking, which we did a lot. A lot of familiar people and a very nice ambiance. The Fabrique is really a cool place for conferences, being an authentic old factory.

Joost did his thing in the last session. His presentation (in Dutch) woke up the affiliate world in the Netherlands a bit. Talking about affiliate management, transparency and opening up and especial cooperating wasn’t what they were used too. Great stuff and really impressive.

Time for beer, uh networking and dinner. Kris went home already, because Robyn was feeling kind a tired by the whole Amsterdam Experience and we talked a lot with our friend from M4N and Afili.net, a couple of customers and people just wanting to know a bit more about SEO. Drank a couple of beers with some guys from GroupM/Outrider and just having a good time.

After that, I’ve got my hands on a good bottle of Champaign (thank Zylom girls!)which Joost and I drank in the car on the way to Kris and Robyn to have a small after drink/dinner in Amsterdam. The car was driven by our Managing Director for Germany, Evert who brought us home a bit closer to home as well! Thank you Evert

Overall a great day, a great event and props to Paul and his team of setting up such a great experience and step forward in affiliate marketing!

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We all know Goatse (I actually have t-shirt about that, call me a nerd) and today sugarrea (twitter) pointed the people on twitter to this site. It’s not filthy like goatse is, but it sure is funny as hell. Check it out: http://thingsididlastnight.com/ This definitely deserves a link from me. Great link bait, too bad of the anchor text.

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Google just did it again. They managed to bring out an innovative shortcut to prevent a threat. This time the threat of social search, at least they try a bit.  Let’s start this post of with a quote: The greatest trick the devil pulled was convincing people he never existed… (feel free to comment the movie).

Vertical Search
The first time Google created a smart shortcut, was by working on Universal Search. This was a good way of coping with the first threat of vertical search. By providing the best mixed search results on the normal result page they kept people on their platform instead of seeking other platforms. Think of all travel comparison engines, the local stuff.  By implementing it on the usual SERP’s they aren’t losing that much traffic because people stay happy.

Social Search
For quite some time a lot of people have been talking about ’social search’. This should be the next search style, think of it like search 3.0 where your close group of friends are your best providers for information. Think of a comparison and recommendation engines with only people you know and trust.

Now Google pulled another great trick. They launched a kind of widget. This widget could have the power of MyBlogLog, Facebook, Myspace and every recommendation/comparison engine combined. Great thinking Google!

Now what’s going on? Google Friend Connect let’s people connect on their websites with a widget. Now with this widget you could give reviews about that page, send it to other, related, pages, actually all the cool stuff you could need building a social search platform. This way users don’t need to go to the other platform but can directly ask their friends for help. This way Google gets the world information, uses your friends to get the most trustful recommendation, because, who would lie to his friends?

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After reading the post from Shoemoney about SEO not having a future I’ve started to think. First off, I think he’s right. SEO is a Goldrush the last couple of years. A lot of ’snake oil salesmen’ (by Jason Calacanis) are making a quick buck with some meta keywords and title stuff. Others have great linkfarms and dozen’s of syndicated RSS feeds, which gives them and their clients a bit of linklove. I think that these SEO’s will go out of business as the game get’s harder and harder. No big bucks to be made anymore. No easy money.

The people who are game in the industry right now, will stay on top. They always found good ways to get good, converting traffic and they will be able to do this in the future as well. After that I got another small epiphany.

All those people who are stepping in this big link bait trap that Jeremy pull off. Those are reactionary people. And probably do reactionary SEO as well. The whole problem is that by doing reactionary stuff you are never going to be on top of your game. Google isn’t reactionary, Apple isn’t. Microsoft is, look at where they are, not being able to buy Yahoo.

Apple is doing visionary stuff. Steve Jobs said it right: If you design for what people want, the product will be old by the time you’re able to sell it, and will not have everything people asked for. You can see very well how that’s been working for Apple. They dictate the market and even the whole industry, with the iPod and the iPhone. Google had a visionary look at the whole way web pages should be indexed, sorted out and displayed. This was a big guess, but it turned out pretty ok. Especially with their idea’s about how to monetize it.

The same goes for SEO’s. The good SEO’s are on top of their game. They are visionary. They actually have an idea about where the market is going to and they have an strong opinion how it should be done. By having a visionary look at things you’ll always be able to bypass the stuff that is going on and take shortcuts into news area’s. Reactionaries will always be second best.

Now ask yourself, and be fair, are you a reactionary SEO or are you a visionary SEO?

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Welcome Folks, *insert big hollow echo sound in here*

Since I could keep blogging in Dutch, I thought that I’d try blogging in English. Especially since I meet a lot of people who never heard of me, my thoughts, my stupid ideas and the stuff I try in another language then Dutch.

The blog is of course still work in progress, but you’ve got to start somewhere and following the GTD stuff, this one shouldn’t be in my ‘Someday, Maybe’ archive any longer.

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