The initial phase of usability enhancements focused on behind-the-scenes technology and laid the groundwork for future growth.

“In February, we kicked off our improvement plan by implementing new systems that allow dynamic content serving, significantly increased the site speed and provided the room we needed to grow and continue improving,” said Mark Achler, CEO of Spine-health.

As part of the new software roll-out, the entire library of more than 2,000 physician written and peer-reviewed articles, plus the blogs and contributions of 10,000+ active users were ported into a completely new content management system.

“This second phase is exciting because it’s a truly visible sign of the progress we’ve been making. We’re very excited to continue expanding and enhancing our content and functionality to better serve our members and visitors,” Achler added.

Spine-health serves nearly 1,000,000 unique visitors per month, and features in-depth content, written by physicians and peer-reviewed, on pain topics specifically related to spine and back conditions. Spine-health is considered an authority on topics like back pain, chronic pain, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, lumbar and cervical spinal stenosis and co-morbidities of those conditions such as depression, stress and sleep problems.

Spine-health can be found online at http://www.spine-health.com/

Post from: Cshel Chicago SEO, Web Development

Spine-health launches new design, usability enhancements

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So why would you want to start a social network?
In addition to adding coolness and generating additional traffic for your site. Branded social networks help build your brand by creating a community for your users and fans. The users connect with other like-minded people and while bonding with each other… they emotionally bond with the brand… that turns users into fans and fans into brand evangelists.

Let’s not forget that a social network also creates additional ranking opportunities for your site. More content, more potential spots to occupy on the SERPs.

So why is Lovd so special?
Lovd is a) really cool looking and fully featured right out of the box, b) FREE, c) open source, and d) supposedly very easy to install and run — if you’re familiar with Ruby On Rails. I say supposedly only because I am absolutely NOT familiar with RoR, and will have to defer to Steve’s expert opinion on that topic.

If you’re interested in adding a unique facet to your site, and you (or a geek you love) are familiar with Ruby on Rails, go check out Lovd — check the system requirements, demo, features, etc — then download it and give it a spin. It’s open source and you can’t beat the price :)

Post from: Cshel Chicago SEO, Web Development

SEO 101: Starting Your Own Social Network

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There’s apparently some big financial scandal going on in Paris. According to a story that appeared today on FT.com, the police searched a broker’s desk, confiscated his computer and detained him… because he’s listed as a friend of a co-worker (Jérôme Kerviel, CFA — guy at the center of the scandal) on Facebook.

Seriously.

Mr Zabraniecki is understood to work as a cash equities broker at SG Securities, part of the corporate investment division, executing trades for the equities derivatives desk, where Jérôme Kerviel, the man at the centre of the scandal, worked.

Police also searched Mr Zabraniecki’s desk and confiscated his computer and some documents.

Mr Zabraniecki was among Mr Kerviel’s friends listed on Facebook, the social network website. He is 29 years old and joined SocGen in March 2002, according to social network websites.

Note to self: Be a little more picky about which friend requests I accept from now on.

Since when is it relevant to report when people are friends on Facebook? I suppose it is relevant when it’s really the only incriminating thing the police could use as an excuse to go searching your place of business and arresting you… which begs the question… since when does being friends on Facebook equal guilt by association?

I mean, if I’m friended by someone who gets popped in California for carrying a personal consumption quantity of weed in his car, does our Facebook association then give the police probable cause to come to Illinois and search my car and home?

Just crazy. Glad I don’t live in France.

Post from: Cshel Chicago SEO, Web Development

Friends on Facebook equals guilt by association?

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The Sitch…

Light voluntarily joined a forum and, by doing so, agreed to the Terms of Service of that site. Then he voluntarily wrote a post and put it up on the forum. Now for some reason, that post is causing him some level of grief (for reasons he refused to share), and he wants the post removed from the forum. He contacted the forum owner and requested to have the post deleted and the forum owner declined. Light then drafted his own Cease and Desist letter and emailed it to the forum owner. The forum owner then banned him. So now, Light is planning to sue the forum owner for copyright infringement.

The Analysis…

There is no copyright infringement here. Read the Terms of Service or Terms of Use on most forums or services where users contribute content and you’ll see that the forum owners tend to like to have the right to re-use, edit, re-purpose, etc. things that gets posted to their site. “But I have automatic copyright protection!” Yes, but only until you agree to give up some of your rights by clicking on the “I have read and agree to the terms….” button. This is why it’s important to READ things before agreeing to them or signing anything.

Example Terms Of Service from a Forum

From WebProWorld’s Legal Notice…
User Submissions Not Privileged
Any material, information or other communication you transmit or post to this website (“Submissions”) will be considered non-confidential and non proprietary. iEntry shall have no obligations with respect to your Submissions. iEntry and its designees will be free to copy, disclose, distribute, incorporate and otherwise use your Submissions and all data, images, sounds, text and other things embodied therein for any and all commercial or non-commercial purposes. You are prohibited from posting or transmitting to or from this website any unlawful, threatening, libelous, defamatory, obscene, pornographic or other material that would violate any applicable law.

I suspect the homemade Cease & Desist Demand didn’t win Light any points with the forum owner either. In general, you don’t email C&D letters. Additionally, (unless you are a lawyer or you’re using a professionally written boilerplate) you don’t write your own C&D letters. A poorly written C&D may as well be scrawled in cheap wax crayon on the back of a sheet torn from a spiral notebook and signed, “Rabid, Litigation-Happy Nut Who Is Too Cheap To Pay An Attorney”.

Remember, C&Ds generally don’t have any teeth anyway. Unless they look and feel like they came from a large, serious company with the means and desire to actually follow through with threats of legal action, Cease & Desist letters aren’t worth the paper upon which they are written. If they’re sent solely electronically they are worth even less.

Finally, Light’s situation should serve as a reminder to everyone to not post things online that they might regret later. On the Internets, things have a way of not ever going away.

Post from: Cshel Chicago SEO, Web Development

You should actually read the Terms Of Service Agreement

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Choosing a domain name for your business (key points)

1. Keyword domains are always a safe bet, but they can be a tad on the bland side. Is it better to go for a cool brand or a dull keyword laden domain? My vote is for the cool brand… people love their brands. People do not *love* keywords. Not to mention, brandable names tend to be more readily available on the open market than awesome keyword domains.
2. (Easy to Say + Easy to Spell) or (Clever + Easy to Say) = Easy to Remember
3. Hyphens are okay, and in some cases good, but remember to think about the big picture. If your primary domain has a hyphen in it, make sure you also snag the non-hyphenated version and 301 it to your hyphenated domain. This way you don’t end up with gross sounding radio spots, i.e. “Visit Bob’s-Tech-Hut.com. That’s Bobs Hyphen Tech Hypen Hut Dot Com!”
4. Make sure you’re not stepping on someone else’s trademark before you sink your entire life’s savings into a project. You don’t want to have to change domain names after you’ve already printed your literature and spent money on producing your ads, etc. We’re not saying it can’t be done; we’re just saying it’s incurring an avoidable expense and causes avoidable pain and anguish.
5. Domain Tools has a nice domain suggestion tool. Be prepared to jump on a domain once you find one you like… it might not be there when you come back the next day.

Getting the Domain You Want (key points)

1. Use a reputable domain registrar, and register as many years in advance as you can comfortably afford.
2. Check the backorder services to see if the domain you might want is going to expire soon. Backorders are generally free unless they successfully “catch” a domain for you when it drops.
3. Check after market sites for registered, but for sale domain names… search for “domains for sale” and you’ll come up with dozens of sites offering after market domain sales.
4. If you need to buy a domain from a broker, have a price in mind ahead of time and be prepared to walk away from the domain if the price isn’t right, or be prepared to write a really big check.
5. Consider having a third party contact the domain registrant to negotiate a sale, or at least contact them via a throw-away email address. Sometimes sellers up the sale price if they think you’ve got deep pockets, or if they figure out what your business name is and know how desperately bad you want the domain.

Keeping Your Domain (key points)

1. Make sure the contact information you have in the domain registration file is accurate and current.
2. Make sure your registration is paid up.
3. Throw some backorders on your own domains just in case… especially if you know you’re prone to bouts of forgetfulness.

Post from: Cshel Chicago SEO, Web Development

SEO 101: Domains – Picking them, getting them, keeping them

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Ever lose your cell phone? Are you familiar with the pit of black, festering panic that settles into your stomach when you realize you don’t have it and the odds you’ll find it again are slim to none? Imagine that feeling multiplied by a million — because that’s how losing your laptop feels.

Think about it — your laptop has your life on it. Work files, email, bookmarks, project notes, projects that are still in development and not ready or suitable for other people’s eyes, and then let’s not forget all of your software and music.

Ponder for a moment all the seriously BAD things that will happen if you lose your laptop.

1. Lots of spending will be in your immediate future. Spending money to replace the physical hardware, spending money to replace the lost software and music, and spending lots and lots and lots of time rebuilding everything. Let’s face it, back-ups of the entire harddrive are fantastic, but how many people actually do that?
2. Sensitive or important work files will be lost. You know that presentation you were working on for your boss’s Monday morning executive committee meeting where he has to justify your department’s budget for the year? You know… the budget from which your salary is paid? Yeah. That one. *poof*
3. You’ve just handed the keys to your company’s kingdom to the guy who stole your laptop. It’s such a pain in the butt to have to remember all those silly VPN passwords, so you’ve just set your browser to “remember” all of those passwords (and associated bookmarks) for you. How handy. Oh, same goes for your office email, too. Let’s just hope the guy who stole your laptop is just nosy, and not like, a wannabe h@x0r or something. You certainly wouldn’t want any of that ill gotten company data to show up on the Internet for just anyone to google up and use toward illicit or immoral ends.
4. Your online reputation will be ruined and you might end up broke or in jail. Again, because you’re lazy — and don’t deny it — you’ve got all your passwords saved so whoever gets your laptop can now BE YOU… on Facebook, on MySpace, in email to your CEO, at your bank, in email to the President…You get the picture.
5. All ur imz are belong to us. You know how much you instant message your friends. Imagine some bored kid gets his hot little hands on your laptop and decides that the transcripts of your boss-trashing-bff-backstabbing-and-significant-other-cybersexing IMing sessions are *such* a fascinating read, he’s going to post them so his friends can share the mirth — oh and then someone diggs it. Shortly thereafter random people on the bus are looking at you like they know you and then gleefully yelling out the pet name you gave your girlfriend’s hoohah.

So now that you’re a nice, tightly wound ball of anxiety, what precisely can you do to protect yourself from catastrophe in the event you do lose your laptop? (Well, aside from the obvious which is chaining it to your wrist and not so much as going to the can without it?)

1. Quit being lazy and REMEMBER your passwords instead of letting the browser “manage” them.
2. Disable IM logging. (Most people forget to take care of that when they install their chat client — well, people who aren’t serial adulterers anyway, but I digress.)
3. Back EVERYTHING up.
4. Consider making an image of your harddrive for a quick restore.
5. Install Laptop Locate.

Items one and two are fairly common sense; item five, however, is fairly new.

Tometa Software’s LaptopLocate is a laptop tracking software utility that will monitor a computer’s IP address to allow server administrators and general users to locate their computer. Each time a computer that has LaptopLocate.net is turned on, the IP address of the computer is transmitted to a pre-determined location via email and logged for reference. This information is also transmitted to LaptopLocate.net’s servers and logged in the event your computer is ever stolen.

LaptopLocate.net is helpful in finding where computers, especially mobile computers, are currently located. If the computer is stolen, Tometa Software coordinates with law enforcement agencies to help track down a registered user’s computer before valuable equipment and data is compromised. The software runs in the background on the computer, so unless the thief knows to look for it, it is invisible. If the thief does know to look for it, the software can be password protected so that it cannot be disabled.

Tometa’s Laptop Locate software sells for $19.95, which considering all you stand to lose, is a “can’t afford not to” kind of expense.

Attention Bloggers: If you’d like to receive a free copy of Tometa Laptop Locate for review, contact David Brown at dbrown@tometasoftware.com. There are 50 copies of the software available for review purposes, but once those 50 are gone, you’ll just have to buy a copy if you want to try it out.

Post from: Cshel Chicago SEO, Web Development

Top 5 Ways Your Life Will End If You Lose Your Laptop

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Mainly, what we’re hoping to get from the survey is data on the general experience level of the listening audience, what types of topics most interest the listeners, what guests the listeners would like to hear on the show and the average age of the listening audience.

Things that aren’t included in the survey, but that I’m dying to know are:

• Are you currently, or are you trying to get into SEO consulting for clients?
• Are you an in-house SEO? If so, for what size business? What industry/sector?
• Are you listening because you’re seo-ing your own small business website?
• Are your sites targeting a national audience? (International, regional, local, etc?)
• Feel like sharing your marketing budget with us? If not, should we just operate under the assumption that the budget is somewhere bewteen zero and shoestring?

Feel free to reply to these questions via comments. I’d love to hear more about what specifically the listeners are hoping to get from the show.

Post from: Cshel Chicago SEO, Web Development

SEO 101 Needs Your Feedback

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It is a pretty site… too bad it’s all Flash.

I’m not even entirely sure what to say here. I mean, can you honestly say your business provides search engine optimization services when you sell websites that are built entirely in Flash and, literally, the ONLY two links on the WHOLE site that a spider can see go to YOUR site… not a site that has anything to do with the client?

It is a pretty site… too bad it’s all Flash, but it’s nice to look at none-the-less. Check out the site in Lynx though. There’s hardly anything there at all.

Check out the site in Lynx. There's hardly anything there at all.

Holy Mackerel! is a seafood restaurant… you wouldn’t know that from the Lynx screenshot though. Seafood is in the domain, so I guess that’s helpful; however, it might be more helpful to have the title tag say something like “Holy Mackerel! Seafood – Lombard, IL” or maybe even add in “Restaurant” after Seafood. Just “Holy Mackerel!” isn’t descriptive enough. The page is pretty crystal clear about the location, which is good, but you still don’t really know this is a seafood place if you can’t see the Flash.

Now look at the source…
Even operating under the assumption that the client is completely IN LOVE with the Flash site… which they’re entitled to be, it’s a very slick site… one would still think that a company who SEOs the crap out of the links to THEMSELVES might take some time to consider the needs of the client when putting the design together.

Things that make you go hmmmmm.

A few things that struck me as odd…
(A) One might think that the name of the hotel in which the restaurant is located might be a good opportunity for a link to — oh I don’t know — the hotel. Maybe that’s more of a “good neighbor” type of link. I know I’d find it useful *shrug*, but I guess we can let this one slide…

(B) Actually having some anchor text where the mailto: link is might make the link functional.

(C) It’s easier to rank for terms like “restaurant” when you spell “restaurant” correctly (and maybe have it on the page more than once).

(D) Clearly someone there knows something about SEO. Pity they didn’t use their mad skillz to SEO the client’s website.

So why am I picking on this site?
For one thing, this supports my previous post about double checking the work that your vendors do to make sure you’re not getting screwed. I realize there’s more to SEO than just on-page stuff, but it’s not THAT hard to make some minor changes to this page so that it looks like someone at least tried. Further, it wouldn’t have annoyed me so much if the links to the developer weren’t *SO* SEOd. So it’s not like they don’t know how, you know?

The other thing that bugged me is that I have a general dislike for using your client’s website to promote yourself. Just a personal thing. I know as a client, if I’m paying the vendor good coin for the work, I don’t want to have to give them free advertising, too. Maybe if they cut me a break on the cost we can discuss it, but for the most part, I want the site to be about my business, not theirs.

Post from: Cshel Chicago SEO, Web Development

Holy Mackerel! You call that SEO?

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Here’s what happened. I vaguely recalled the name of the place being “Anthony Vince” something or other. So verily, I go to Google and search for “Anthony Vince Salon” and here’s what comes up…

Well. Okay. The name is right… but from the description it looks like it’s a multimedia development company that needs to go back to fifth grade and learn to spell “professional”… I have a sneaking suspicion I know what happened here, so I clicked on through to check out the site.

Oh look! It is indeed a salon/spa and not, in fact, a multimedia development company who can’t spell professional right. Next, just for giggles, I took a peek at their source code.

Aside from the glaring issue with the meta description being a self-serving plug for the illiterate multimedia developers — oh and the keywords too — there were the usual problems with making the site look pretty but completely ignoring/not caring about how the bots see the code. No H1 tags, no H-anything tags, no emphasis, no nothing. Yes, CSS is way kewl; however, the ability to convey emphasis and importance directly within the HTML is available for a reason. Digging further into the site, every page has the exact same title/description/keywords, a lot of the good content is flash so it’s useless anyway, and to top it off, the site hasn’t been updated in like 4 years.

So why pick on the poor saps?
I felt like this is a perfect example of why it’s important to know enough about what you’re doing in terms of your online marketing to be able to double check your developer’s work. No one expects you to know your business AND be a world class web developer. If your primary job function is NOT search engine marketing, no one expects you to be the world’s foremost authority on that either. That is still no excuse for not bothering to learn enough about what you’re paying people to do to know if they’re half-assing the project or just plain incompetent.

And the moral of the story is…
How do you *know* your consultants know what they’re doing? Ask the other people they’ve done projects for? Okay… sure… but ask them WHAT? How do you know which questions to ask if you don’t know what it is you want or need? If you do have a defined goal, but you really have zero idea how to reach said goal, what will you do then? Just let other people fret about the technical, voodoo magic details. Mmmmm… no. Bad idea.

Seriously… if you’re going to spend a ton of money on, let’s say, an engagement ring, you’re going to spend a few weeks learning about how to tell a bad diamond from a good diamond, a cheap setting from a high quality setting, etc. A cubic zirconium LOOKS pretty, but you’re spending money on a diamond and you want to know you’re not getting ripped off. Apply the same logic to your web projects.

Learn enough to know that you’re getting quality work out of your vendors and consultants.

Post from: Cshel Chicago SEO, Web Development

Double Check Your Web Developer’s/SEO’s Work

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Beginning SEO Podcast SMX Wrap-Up — Download the MP3

Brent Csutoras, Lisa Barone, Carolyn Shelby at MSN Party at SMX Advanced 2007

In the interest of keeping the topic focused on issues relevant to beginners, we discuss the tone and subject matter of SMX Advanced, and at what point in your learning curve you should consider attending. If you’re not to the point where you think you could hang with the big dogs of search, we also recommend some alternative conferences where you can catch more basic sessions and get up to speed.

For other stuff on SMX Advanced 2007, see:

• Long Overdue SMX Wrap-Up – moi
• Live Blogged Sessions from SMX Advanced – Search Engine Roundtable
• You’re all bright people… go do a search :P

[Photo: Brent Csutoras, Weird Asia News; Lisa "The Lisa" Barone, Bruce Clay; Carolyn "cshel" Shelby; Hanging out at the MSN sponsored SMX party on Sunday night]

Post from: Cshel Chicago SEO, Web Development

SMX Wrap-Up on Beginning SEO Podcast

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