Search engine optimization

I found the SEO article by Google very helpful. I'm fairly versed in SEO, but the article had a few pointers that I found interesting.

First of all, I now realize why websites include the title of the article in the URL. On sites that I have worked for, a lot of times the posts were numbered (i.e. /23540). I know now that those articles are much less searchable. I'm also notorious for being in too big of a hurry to add any alt text to images. Not only is it good for web browsing, but it's better optimization for search.

I also found it interesting that you can use the "nofollow" meta-tag so that robots don't include certain items in your ranking calculation. That could be very useful if you have an odd post that isn't necessary relevant to your site.

The advice to blog about new features, etc. was good advice as well. And I am going to start doing that with the sites that I work on now.

For promotion, you are foolish to not use social networks. On Kikolani.com, a post gave some advice on what promotions can be run on Facebook and Twitter. The Twitter advice is clever. The post advises to promote something on your site with Twitter, but to add a hash tag that is popular at the time (i.e. #haiku or #oscars). That way it will show up in the trending topics and could get more exposure. It has become almost standard now to create a Facebook fan page for your business as well, so you can update all of your fans at once.

For social bookmarking sites, I think it's important to get a lot of links posted. Sites like Digg, Reddit and delicio.us are great springboards to getting content read. An article on ezinearticles.com offers 4 benefits to using these sites. Obviously the main goal is to gain exposure, but the most interesting points were that social bookmarking provides branding and gives quality backlinks. If you post a lot of links on the social bookmarking sites, then you demonstrate your expertise. Also, to match up with the search engine optimization, you get quality backlinks, which help improve your rating.

SEO is essential to increase exposure and traffic to your website. The tips given will be very beneficial as I continue to develop my website. The process will continue to evolve and it is wise to keep up with the changes.

CNN redesign is much cleaner

The new CNN design works a lot better for their goal of becoming more focused on their unique content, rather than the breaking news. Their use of images works much better than old site, that like the article said, was text driven. The Highlights section is much better than the highlights that we had to replicate for our assignment. I know when I browse the Internet, photos guide me a lot as well as the headlines, so this method of highlighting their content is effective.

I think their sections at the bottom are better organized than the old design as well. First of all, there are more links. CNN used to only have two links per section, but with its new division, they are able to put more content in the div boxes.

The only thing that I'm not crazy about is the navbar. I feel like it gets lost in the header. The header is bright red and the navbar is too similar. Over all, however, I really like the new design.

How can Google cut costs?

Google is not going anywhere.

The story in the New Yorker criticized Google for being a company that is not necessarily well-managed. And it said that Google's only revenue comes from their search engine. I don't see a problem with that. Obviously, management is important, but their revenue has nowhere to go but up.

The article also pointed out that Google will never make money with YouTube because of high storage cost. Well, part of that high cost is the energy bill. Here's what Google has to say about that: Google planning on moving some of its data centers to international waters?

The company wants to use the cold ocean water to cool its servers. It will be a high cost to build, but it is a green effort to save energy costs. I only see that helping.

I just can't fathom a mammoth company like Google going away. They will continue to innovate with ideas like Gmail — which only made e-mail better — and the Android phone, which is set to pass the iPhone as the second most popular phone on the market within a few years.

Get used to it. Google is here to stay.