Remember a more genteel time on the web, when you searched with Webcrawler & Altavista, and Netscape was the browser of choice for those who wanted a free alternative to IE (or you paid for Opera)?  Alas, those balmy "summer" days of the Internet are well past.  This is definitely the "winter" of Google.

I found some disturbing stats on search engine share.  The figures are compiled, and update twice a month, by Compete, Nielsen-Net, Alexa, seoMoz, StatsCounter - GlobalStats, and Karma Snack's Snackfolio traffic analytics.  We all knew Google was taking over, but did you realize by how much?  Click the image to see and, in that famous line from "The Fly", be afraid, be very afraid....

Anti-competitive Google?

Is Google being anti-competitive?  Who cares if they are?  YOU SHOULD!  For the same reason so many people complain about Microsoft, the same charge should be levelled at Google.  Their constant expansion is great for THEIR business, but what about yours?

Being #1 on Google isn't where Internet marketing stops!

With such a massive market share, it's a simple job for Google to do whatever they like.  Just try to get sense from Adwords - they don't care about losing a

There's no such thing as a free lunch - someone always pays, ya know?  I've seen this ad on TV a few times and, finally, I got intrigued enough to look (as I figure many people have).  And it's true!  They give you a free website design and hosting and some SEO, though it's unclear how much they do in your first month.   Oh yeah, did you pick up on "the first month"?

Free website...not so free...

Yes, it's true that they do build and upload your new or redesigned website for free.  Then, after "your first month" if you don't like it or them, you can "cancel and pay $0".  Wow!!!  Soooooo, what if I don't cancel, what happens?  The ad goes on, "You just pay one low monthly fee..blah, blah, blah". 

Deceptive advertising

Well, it's no surprise that they want to get paid sometime - after all, we're all in business to earn a living, right?  What I really object to is the deceptive way they promote themselves.  The website ISN'T free for starters.  Yes they build it and host it for a month (well, I'm guessing a lot less than that), but a month won't tell you

I get asked a lot about domain names and their importance in SEO. So, to answer this I say, "Yes, it's nice to get your keyword or phrase in your domain name, but not critical." Let's face it, most keyword domain names are long gone - even the .biz, .info, and .net versions. You could do one with a hyphen in it, for example, www.cheap-pet-food.com, but that can be confusing for surfers to remember. However, you could grab that and point it to your main site to, hopefully, capture some results from it.

New v old domain names

There is definitely some advantages about buying an old domain name as opposed to a brand new one; but also some drawbacks.  The big advantage of an older domain name is that the search engines have, historically, weighted them because of their age and so you get a boost.  Google has hinted, starting from last year, that they may be reducing the weight they place on domain name keywords, which does, honestly, make sense.  With all the "good" ones gone, it's kind of sad for new companies who can't take advantage of this.

However, there are some pitfalls to buying old domain

If two more-or-less equally skilled people start an Internet business, why does one flop miserably, yet the other become a roaring success? Is it a secret weapon - a magic bullet - that others are yet to discover? It sometimes seems like that, but you'd be wrong.

Here are 5 characteristics which anyone can use to help improve their online (or offline for that matter) promotion. You'll find these traits in most all successful on line marketers. They are:

Organized

They have a plan!  Sounds like a no-brainer, but so many businesses approach the task of promotion haphazardly, with no clear idea of where they are going. You must get down ON PAPER (well, OK on you computer at least) a checklist of tasks and activities for each day of the week. Then, in the words of Nike, "Just do it!"

It should be a simple system that you work on every day, as it will keep you on track; and away from distractions. As Harvey Mackay said, " If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail." However, if you fail to use that plan, you're also planning to fail.

Consistent

Read and research, research and read. Learn from

Did I give away my feelings? My wife's always says I wear my heart on my sleeve! :-) Yeah, well IE is dead... yet... but I'm looking forward to the day when surfers wake up to the fact that they very likely aren't seeing the site that the web designer intended they see. Remember seeing this ridiculous image plastered around the web? It's sad to realize that some designers went out of their way to coddle Microsoft and it's disastrous set of web standards. Becuase of IE we have tags like <strong> whereas everyone else was using <b> to get text into bold. Why? Probably because they (Microsoft) could, they didn't care, and a huge number of end users didn't know. But, for the design world, it just created unnecessary work.

So, seeing as I've upgraded to Windows 7, and it doesn't run IE 6, 7, or 8, I was faced with running a virtual machine on my existing computer, or buying an old junker that had XP (probably MS's best OS yet) running on it. I opted for the latter. All this to make sure that the sites I'm designing for my clients run properly on a dwindling browser

Panda, Venice, Caffeine and Vince - what do they all have in common? Answer - Google. They're all Google algorithms from 2009 to the present.So, who really cares?

What's in a name?

Nothing really, as Shakespeare penned, in Romeo and Juliet, "What's in a name? that which we call a rose, By any other name would smell as sweet;" It's not the name that has the impact, it's the code behind it. Earlier this year, some of the Google updates caused terrible ranking damage for some sites. Personally, we've seen rankings decrease on some sites and increase on others. And yet we do the same sorts of SEO on each site we manage. And we're not the only ones confused. Going onto big SEO discussion sites, such as http://www.seomoz.org/, you'll find forums full of confused SEO practicioners asking what on earth they should do.

SEO is a long term investment

We see SEO a little like making an investment. You don't put money into an investment and then take it out the following week if there's a drop in return, do you? Investments are, generally, a long term thing - most short term investments are at least 6 months.

I had the misfortune of having Windows grind to a complete halt on me this week necessitating a total reinstall. To lighten the mood, read this amusing piece - thanks to annoyances.org. Now back to the gloomy stuff. After spending hours trying to fix it by applying numerous "fixes" off the net, I gave up and resigned myself to the reinstall which ended up taking a day to complete. Happily, I had the disks to reinstall, and backups of my important data. Oh, but, of course, backups aren't needed right?

REASON 1 - Computers are reliable now.

Yeah right! The fact that computers run at all, given the permutations of hardware sometimes astounds me. And while they are more reliable than before, they certainly aren't infallible - especially netbooks and laptops which suffer from "heat exhaustion"! Then throw in a whole bunch of software and there's a good recipe for an impending breakdown.

REASON 2 - I don't have anything important.

Really? What about your email, photos, and letters you've written? Could you really afford to lose them? What about free software you've downloaded (because you wouldn't be piratig would you??!!)? Remember where you got it; can you find it

In the days where you'd pick up a phone book to find a business, almost no websites accepted credit cards, in fact, many businesses didn't at their bricks and mortar site. But that's all changed now, with more and more purchases, even of major items, being conducted online. And the only easy way to accomplish those transactions online is with a credit or debit card.

Not just the "big boys"

"I'm just a little guy..."; "I'm a roofing contractor; it doesn't work for me." Wrong and wrong! The internet has levelled the playing field when it comes to size. No longer do you need to be huge to be successful online. And the good news is that anyone can benefit from accepting online payments. The catch phrase is..

Make it easy to pay!

The more ways your customers have to pay, the more likely they will!

1. If people want to pay with a debit or credit card, and you don't offer it, they'll likely go elsewhere.
2. Research has shown that commercial sites can triple their sales just by adding credit card payments.
3. Credit cards attract impulse purchases. It's easier to spend on a card without feeling the guilt factor, and

I spent the last weekend visitng old friends (well, some of them aren't that old!) and family before flying back to the States on Wednesday. It got me to thinking about how important the past really is. I know as kids we all hated visiting the old, crusty relatives, but the past has a great deal to teach us - if we are prepared to bother to learn from it.

It's said that the definition of insanity is repeating the same action, but expecting a different outcome. Even if it's not true for every situation, it very much holds true for website design and, especially, SEO. Unfortunately, with SEO, the goalposts keep moving which doesn't help either. That's why ongoing SEO work is so important. Yes, we must look back (at past results or failures) to be able to plan ongoing strategies, but the SEO "designer" also needs to remain acutely aware of the latest changes and how they will impact current, and future, SEO work.

SEO upholds the old definition of insanity well. It is a constant process of test and measure, test and measure. I, and many others, have said it before... SEO is NEVER on one

Well, it's late on a Thursday night - a little bit late on this entry, but I figure I have a semi-decent excuse... I had a wonderful day seeing my youngest daughter getting married here in Auckland, New Zealand. Despite some threatening weather on Friday, and a less-than-encouraging forecast, the weather behaved well and about 1 minutes drizzle was all the inclemency we got.

Whilst the ceremony went off without a hitch and everyone had a great time, building a good marriage is a lot like doing a good job on SEO. You don't say, "I do!" and then do nothing more. Both partners need to work weekly or daily at building love and care into their relationship. Do nothing for a year and, oh boy!, things just don't run well! Yet so many website owners believe SEO is a one time fix - and that's like leaving a marriage at "I do!"

Ifyou haven't added new content in the last 6 months, or been practicing quality SEO on a monthly basis, then you're leaving your website's "marriage" in dangerous territory.