Opinions – Salvatore Surra

Will HTML5 Help With SEO, Rankings, or Panda

Every few years the Internet goes through a major change in order to progress and evolve into new standards and tools to help site owners, users, and web professionals find, connect, and share content.

Initially, the web was pretty static, but over time more dynamic elements were introduced. Now we are the heels of another major transformation with the introduction of html5 and css3. Site owners, webmasters, and those that are concerned with website structure, SEO, and/or rankings will need to start looking at these elements as they will become standard soon and will most likely effect your rankings in the near future.

Let’s take a look at how things have evolved to get an idea of where they will go.

Does Google Search Have Acceptable Collateral Damage

The following graphic, designed by the guys at SEOBook.com and ByJess.net, is a good overview of how Google has evolved over the years and the various actions that they’ve taken to combat spam, make their search results better, and to help publishers get their content out.

Does Google search have acceptable collateral damage?

Looking at the graphic below, people can see just how unsure, untested, and unreliable Google has been since they were initially launched back in 1998.

No Farming At Google – Farmer Update Goes Live

Today maybe one of those days in Internet history that goes down as a significant change in how things are done. Every so often an update or change in the ranking algorithms are so major that it effects the way the Internet is used. Google’s official release today of the ‘Farmer Update‘ most likely will be a signal of what’s to come and will be a dramatic change in how sites are ranked. Just less than 12% of the search results will be effected making this one of the biggest changes they’ve done in their history. Most changes effect less than 10% and in many cases, like last month’s ‘Scrapper Update‘, only effected around 2% of the results. Many times, the changes are so slight that most people will not even notice a difference. The game has changed today.

Practical Social Marketing Management Tips

These days it’s almost impossible to turn on the TV or read news with out seeing something about social media, social marketing, or social networking. Sites like Facebook, which is now the most trafficked site in the US, along with Twitter, Digg, Linkedin, MySpace, Youtube, Ning, Mixx, and more are all trying to get more users to spend more time on their sites in hopes of gaining bigger position in the Internet to where they can monetize and make some money.

In fact, just last week Twitter announced it’s own monetizing strategy, which includes paid tweets from major companies. Facebook has been doing this for years already, and the same with MySpace, but it’s the first for Twitter and assuming it’s successful, more will follow.

Why Birthdays Are Great

Most people would say that birthdays are great, although some don’t appreciate them as much as others do I suppose. It’s not that I can’t see why some people don’t like birthdays, but most are reasons of vanity or insecurity and not really justified as all around belief.

I personally like birthdays for a lot of reasons, and not just because of the presents, even though those are nice to get as well. However, it’s nice to be acknowledged, and with the use of social sites today, there is a lot more of that. For example, sign into Facebook and I get dozens of birthday greetings from people that I had never gotten them from before. This is a nice way of connecting and feeling special. I used to be happy just getting call or two from a friend or family member, but not I can expect to get dozens of birthday wishes over a couple of days. Greetings come in from various sites where my birthday is posted for public view.

Pittsburgh Steelers Fight Song 2009

Here We Go Steelers – 2009 Pittsbugh Steelers Fight Song

Twas the Night Before the Super Bowl

I thought this was really good, and I’m getting really excited about the game on Sunday, so I had to make a post with my favorite Steelers hype.

‘Twas the Night Before the Super Bowl

‘Twas the night before the Super Bowl, when along the gulf shore,

Socializing with Relevance makes Social Sites Relevant

Socializing with relevance makes social sites relevant.

I’ve been using social sites for the past couple of years now, and find them very useful in my daily life. Yes, I’m one of those people that one would be called a twitter-holic, or Facebook fiend, but in truth I get more information and stay current with more things than I ever got from traditional media and networks. In the past, the I would use newspaper and television to get my current news, but today I can use my social networks to see what things are making news at that very moment and the ones that matter most to me. However, I find that many social sites don’t have the ability to weed out irrelevant content, but some have found ways to keep the most relevant content upfront.

social_sites In order to truly take advantage of these networks I think it’s a good idea to exchange one’s ideas freely across the networks at the same time. What this will do is make each site more relevant by making the content the driving force for one’s social persona. This means that because I’ve got all of my sites linked together I think twice before posting something that I don’t think is somewhat relevant or useful to the majority of people in my network, versus just socializing things because they are there. For example, I have a Digg, account, but I’ve got my Digg feed linked up to my Friendfeed, which posts to my Twitter, and then goes to my Facebook.