Two of our favorite “deep thinking” members spent time with the forums this week and it was like old times. Ammon Johns and Bill Slawski are well known for their insight and ability to explain complicated topics so that people like me can understand them.

Cre8asite Forums Threads

Here are some of our favorite threads of this week.

  • Duplicated Content Is A Myth! Bill Slawski writes:

    The issue is much more complicated than is set forth in the article that you link to. Is there a “duplicate content penalty” is a different question than “will sites get filtered out of search results because of duplicate content?”

  • SEO is Dying? Some comments include:

    I am close to 60 years old and if I am lucky I will still have a site that gets traffic when I retire. If I was young I would not count on a career in search - because (and this is yet a third idea) something new will replace the internet as we know it.

    The Viet Cong were so effective during the Vietnam war, despite less of everything, because they used their small size to their advantage, and Guerilla warfare is now standard military practice for small armies fighting larger ones. Online, the same is true for smaller companies, who can react faster, better and with more purpose, due to far less bureaucracy.

    The SEO of 1998, and the SEO of 2003 are different than the SEO of today, though unfortunately, there are many, even amongst those who practice SEO as a trade, who hold on tightly to yesterday’s SEO. SEO isn’t dying, but rather is evolving.

  • The Unhelpful Description, (and other stories of indexing woes) This is a meaty thread.

    Most people will see their traffic die out. However, a few excellent sites will grow because they have excellent practice. I think that this description tag is one of many points of practice that will help make a great site survive. This is, of course, of lesser importance than good content.

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- Cre8 members’ activities and writings elsewhere.

  • Tags Attract Eyes by Barry Welford, Moderator

    If the simple logic of the tag does not convince you, then further proof is in this week’s news item that the tag is getting a powerful friend. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Internet, is receiving a $350,000 grant from the James S and James L. Knight Foundation to help refine news searches by employing more sophisticated tagging, way upstream. He and Martin Moore are working with Reuters and the BBC to figure out how to incorporate “source tagging” into routine journalistic workflow.

  • Tag Clouds To Guide You Barry continues to explore tag clouds.

    Not everyone was so enamored by tag clouds. Jeffrey Zeldman expressed the view that Tag clouds are the new mullets. He suggested that every one was leaping onto the bandwagon of this fascinating new technology.

    Before we go further it is very important to make a clear distinction between tag clouds, which provide hyperlinks to individual posts or articles, and what might better be called Word Clouds.

  • How to be V.A.S.T. on StumbleUpon Elizabeth Able guest wrote for SEO Scoop.

    Building a Social Media profile can be a lot like working a room at a face-to-face networking opportunity. You have to show up, be seen, and be up for a little interaction: the eye contact, the firm handshake, a little humor, low on marketing-speak but high on availability, wearing your identity up front and personal where people can see.

Thanks to Our Friends

We appreciate the Cre8tive Community for their continued support and involvement.

  • Bear My Bones Barely

    Okay, that’s done, I’m all signed up and rearing to party at Cre8asite in the forum column “Free Beer While It Lasts”, which is about title tags and description writing for the optimization of websites, as well as a bit just on writing titles themselves, and where forum member AbleReach comments thusly:”Beer. German. Dark. Yum. With a slab of good cheese and a big chunk of that sour whole wheat bread with the great crust.” It’s all so much fun that I feel all funny all over just thinking about it.

  • Search Engine Crawlers and Dynamic Web Pages - by: Jerry Yu

    2. Keep the parameters short: this means the number of characters in each individual parameter should be short. There is no quantitative measurement given by Google but we can check some web forums to see examples. My Search engine friendly article (http://www.webactionguide/action-guide/build-site/se-friendly.php) referenced black hat seo discussion thread on Cre8ASiteForums. Its URL is “http://www.cre8asiteforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=8386″

    This page was crawled by Google. The length of its query parameter is 4 characters. There are many other examples on the internet that have more characters and were crawled successfully. The maximum number of characters that can be accepted by Google is unknown.

Caught Our Attention

  • Brunch: Family Time - “Each weekend a new “Brunch” post will feature thoughts about balancing family and self care with working in an always-on Internet environment. This “Brunch” post is by Donna D. Fontenot.”

    I learned years ago (through threat of great bodily and emotional harm) that I needed to set aside “family time”, and that I needed to adhere to that commitment religiously.

Coming Soon

Kim Krause Berg, Cre8asiteforums Founder, turns 50 years old. To get on her good side, we advise you to keep telling her she doesn’t look older than 30. Look for a party next week at the forums!

Happy Memorial Day in the USA. Cre8asiteforums wishes there were world peace everywhere.