http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=724c7ca07ff32ee1&hl=en

This is really a follow-on from my last post – Carlos and I are asking the same questions, and I believe with the same intention.

Here is an excert, but you should really read the whole thread to see how it progresses. I copy some part of it – without intention of deceiving the search engines

Carlos124

Level 1
1/17/10

I appreciate the further response Autocrat but this can get downright confusing.

You say…

“At theend of the day – you are loking for legitimate (or to legitimise) methods of generating backlinks so that you can improve your sites performance in the SERPs.”

Absolutely correct.

“As with various forms of SEO/SEM, that is likely to result in “Active Manipulation” – which is against the WebMaster Guidelines.”

I would not say that this is likely to result, rather that it does result in Active Manipulation for the purpose of improving one’s ranking in the SERP’s.

So if Active Manipulation is not allowed by Google’s Webmaster Guidelines…guidelines which by incorporation into another Google service I agreed to, I am bound to abide by the how do you define Active Manipulation?

Is ANY so-called Active Manipulation of search engine ranking “evil”?  Or a violation of Google TOS or guidelines?  I don’t rightly know of ANY single web master anywhere that is in their right mind who does not actively attempt to manipulate their ranking to make it better.  That is why I am asking you define what you mean by Active Manipulation because I cannot believe that you are in one fell swoop saying that any webmaster who tries to manipulate their ranking is “wrong” for doing so just because Google does not like it.

Maybe your definition of Active Manipulation and mine are different.  Don’t know.

I am not asking so as to try and justify what I would like to do.  I am asking so as to be clear on what I can and cannot do so that I can either put Google anything behind me and forget any attempts to be a webmaster AND placate Google at the same time or continue to try and succeed by focusing on improving my ranking in Google with a clean conscience respecting their TOS.

It amazes me how Google can possibly expect anyone to not try and Actively Manipulate or influence their ranking.  It’s like saying that in the real world I cannot actively manipulate or influence the public through advertising to know about and otherwise use my real world services.

Do  you see a difference between “evil” active manipulation and active influence?

I am of a mind to just forget Google and focus on internet marketing attempts that do not tie me down to a TOS which is as you say general in nature in most cases and still too nebulous when it comes to specifics of what I can and cannot do to provide me with any reasonable degree of clarity.

I will do what I must do to effectively compete in the SERP’s or I will forget Google and do things outside the scope of it’s TOS.  The thing I will not do is keep trying to do what must be done in this day and age to compete while at the same time putting myself in the straight jacket of a TOS which is lacking in clear specifics (if I cannot at least arrive at a reasonable understanding of what I can and cannot do under it).

I just want clarity one way or another.  That is all I want.  Is that too much to ask?

Is it okay for me to use ezine?
To develop backlinks through articles for my site pages and to look to such backlinks to improve my site ranking?

All considerations aside as to whether that works or not I believe based on the discussion here that such is perfectly acceptable by ANY Google TOS or guidelines.

Is it acceptable for a web site owner who owns several domains to point to anyone of them from any other of his domains?

I think again the answer to that is yes with a qualification that it not be excessive.  And here is where we get into the nebulous BS that Google seems to be so good at these days.

It’s completely up to Google to determine what excessive is.  I am okay with that.  I could care less about the risks involved.  Life is full or risks.  So what!  I know without a shadow of a doubt in my mind at how badly Google is able to detect many interlinking attempts with respect to figuring out why site A links to site B.  Google’s algorithm is NOT all knowing.  It never has been nor will it ever be.

Never mind that some large sites, who apparently have Google’s blessing, interlink to each other in quantity of linking that I will never in my entire life even come close to approaching.  But if Google says that my having 2 or 24 web sites all linking to one other site is too much…well…nothing I can do to say otherwise is there?  Excessive is whatever Google says it is.

Like I said I am okay with that.  But if that is the case, and I believe it is, where does that leave someone like me who wants to operate with a clean conscience about abiding by Google’s TOS?  It leaves me not knowing if I am doing something I should be doing or not with respect to excessive interlinking.

I am not talking about interlinking between junk sites Autocrat.  Not at all.  Whatever you or others here may think about spam and junk that is not something to even be considered in this coversation for I am not talking about interlinking between junk pages.  I am talking about useful, valuable content on different sites and using those sites to improve the overall ranking of other relevant and useful sites through judicious linking.

In the case of our discussion here I am even more specifically talking about hosting my articles independent from article directories so that I can gain the benefit of more flexibility with how I write my articles and otherwise put more emphasis on making them better quality since they will be hosted on my site as opposed to continuing to give ezine the benefit of my free labor with little in return.

Is it wrong for me to host my article independently on my own site and use said article to gain backlinks for myself just as I presently do through ezine?

If that is “wrong” why is it “wrong”?  Just because it exposes the failure of Google’s algorithm to adequately distinguish good content from poor content based on the quality of the content alone and not based on a link algorithm that has proven to be less than robust against spam?

If that is not “wrong” then I take it that it’s okay for me to link between my sites to improve their ranking link juice.

Again we get back to the nebulous excessive bit.

I mean Google cannot have it both ways saying out of one side of it’s mouth that it’s okay for me to write articles for self promotion and post them to article directories like ezine and then that it’s not okay for me to do the same thing out of my own domain to another domain.  These are both means for me to influence my own site rankings that are equally as much under my control respecting the type of backlink and the anchor text I use.  Either they are both “wrong” or neither are.  Which is it?

If ANY self promotion and backlinking for purposes of increasing web site ranking is “wrong” then ezine article type posting is dead “wrong” which brings us right back to the original question I posed when I started this thread.  Which in turns leaves me right where I started…confused.

Carlos

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Carlos124 Level 1 1/18/10

One other thing I would like to add to this discussion that just now came to my mind.  I want to add this not to stir up further discussion, though I am certainly open to hearing anything else anyone might have to say, but rather to make this discussion a bit more complete since I will be pointing to it as an example of the problems with Google’s TOS in the future and the problems that someone trying to abide by TOS rules may encounter.

It has been said in this thread that certain things are technically against Google’s rules but that Google looks the other way unless violations get excessive.  And it has also become evident that this excessiveness is completely arbitrary with respect to when a practice is deemed to be excessive.  For some sites it will be excessive to interlink between 3 or 4 sites.  For others, the really big sites with lots of satellite sites, it will probably not be considered excessive if they lots and lots of interlinked web sites.

The problem for me or anyone trying to abide by TOS rules is this.

Are we supposed to put upon ourselves a more stringent requirement of abiding by Google rules than Google itself enforces?  If Google choses to look the other way are we, who desire to abide by TOS rules, to disadvantage ourselves by living by the letter of the Google rules?

Our competitors will know no such disadvantage.  They will walk in technical violations of Google TOS rules that Google choses to ignore.

That’s unfair.

Google should not expect anyone to abide by it’s rules to a higher degree than it itself is willing to enforce.  And no one, who wants to abide by Google rules, should feel bound morally, legally, or otherwise to not engage in technical violations that Google itself does not enforce.

The other day I went on a public bus.  The bus line has a rule.  No eating or drinking on the bus.  Yet they do not enforce said rule.  I even asked the bus driver if I could have a banana despite the rule and he said that it was okay for me to have my banana.

Was I supposed to not eat my banana just because the rule was the rule?  If it was not enforced by the bus company through it’s authorized representative?  That would put me in the position of being the rule maker to enforce upon myself a rule that it is not my place to make or interpret.

Rather is it not the better part of wisdom and common sense for me to just…well…eat my banana and not worry about it?

Same with this Google rule business that they apparently do not enforce.  I want to do the right thing by Google yet the letter of it’s rules make it near impossible for me to compete with other webmasters who do things that Google overlooks and does not enforce.  Am I supposed to not eat my search engine banana because the rule maker, Google, allows other webmasters to eat their bananas while looking the other way at the technical violations of it’s own rules?

That’s ludicrous.

Google can enforce whatever rules it wants to make at will.  They can clarify their rules and make them explicit but they don’t.  I am not an engineer but I could tonight give Google engineers insights on how to kick out all kinds of thin almost worthless sites from it’s index.  But will Google do that?  No they won’t.  The Google index is filled with sites that are in technical violation.  I see them almost every day.  Especially thin, junky Adsense sites.  They are all over in the niches that I and other internet marketers are targeting.  Scraped sites.  Copyright violations left and right.

I could give Google engineers a search query that would pull up thousands of such sites.  Looking them up based on the same cheap About Me page that is used by thousands.  But would Google kick them out of it’s index?  I doubt it.  They know full well how to do what I am proposing but they don’t.  They chose to look the other way.  I am not sure why.

I think webmasters such as myself should be free to be in technical violation of whatever rules Google itself does not enforce.  That’s only fair and that is the only way that honest and conscientious webmasters can compete.  It levels the playing field between those who don’t give a darn about Google rules, or any rules other than making money for themselves, and those who care to do the right thing.

Of course the best thing of all would be if Google got serious about enforcing the rules across the board.  Equally.  But they don’t do that.

Just my added thoughts to add to this discussion and round it out.

Carlos

I have been thinking about this topic on and off for a while.  Is manipulating Google search results ethical?

Here is what I am thinking about”

• Do the Google Terms of Service apply to me?
• What is Ethical SEO? What makes something ethical?
• What exactly do the terms of service say regarding SEO?
• Is self-backlinking unnatural?
• Is self-backlinking immoral? Is it illegal? Is it against Google TOS?
• Does Google have a right to govern the Internet? Does it have a right to dictate how a website owner behaves?
• Is Google’s position practical? Does practicality affect what is right?

There are a lot of questions, and I will have to think a bit to make this a coherent post. I will start off with the easy questions and easy points. This is an exploratory process.

Do the Google Terms of Service apply to me?

What I mean by this is whether the TOS apply to me as a webmaster? As a site owner, do I need to follow the Google TOS and Webmaster Guidelines?

As a site owner, I may or may not have submitted my site to Google for inclusion in the index. Does it constitute use of the Service? I don’t know the answer to this.

I do know that “5.2 You agree to use the Services only for purposes that are permitted by (a) the Terms and (b) any applicable law, regulation or generally accepted practices or guidelines in the relevant jurisdictions…”

But I still don’t see that having a site listed in Google’s index is actually considered using the service. I did read through the terms of service. Google is offering an information directory service. They collect publicly available information, rank and classify it, and display it.

Does anything in Google Terms of Service talk about SEO (or manipulating search engine results)?

There is a line – “5.4 You agree that you will not engage in any activity that interferes with or disrupts the Services” which someone could construe to say that SEO is interfering with the Services.

Do the Google Webmaster Guidelines apply to me?

I don’t know. Google can say that by agreeing to be listed, you are agreeing the follow the guidelines (no paid links, no link schemes, etc.. as listed in the guidelines).A webmaster may say that it is Google’s choice to list or delist my site (and their responsibility to reward sites following the guidelines.)

So – what are the guidelines? Are the guidelines an explanation of Google’s strategy for how they intend to rank pages, or rather an edict from Google to webmasters who wish to be part of the index? What I mean is that Google can do a few things. They can say that “you may build your site how you wish, but this is our recommendation. It is up to you, but we attempt to reward sites following our guidelines (and punish sites for not following the guidelines).” Or Google can say that “You must follow the guidelines. Violation of the guidelines is a legal and moral issue. Yes, we will attempt to punish you in the rankings for not following the guidelines, but you also are cheating us, and committing an illegal and unethical act.”

Just to make it clear, I am trying to approach this from the moral viewpoint, not how effective an SEO tactic is.

On these first two points, Google cannot impose an agreement. Someone cannot say, “I have included you in my directory (or my club, or my political party) and you must follow the code of ethics or guidelines governing it.”

Google has an agreement if the webmaster has agreed. For example, Adsense Terms of Service says, “You shall not, and shall not authorize or encourage any third party to: (i) directly or indirectly generate queries, Referral Events, or impressions of or clicks on any Ad, Link, Search Result, or Referral Button  (including without limitation by clicking on “play” for any video Ad) through any automated, deceptive, fraudulent or other invalid means, including but not limited to through repeated manual clicks, the use of robots or other automated query tools and/or computer generated search requests, and/or the unauthorized use of other search engine optimization services and/or software;”

furthermore “(viii) act in any way that violates any Program Policies posted on the Google Web Site, as may be revised from time to time, or any other agreement between You and Google (including without limitation the Google AdWords program terms);”

Without being a lawyer, I believe this means that when you use Adsense, you agree to all Google terms. But what about Webmaster Guidelines, is it a dictate from Google, or a suggestion? Why does Google use the word illicit here? “Even if you choose not to implement any of these suggestions, we strongly encourage you to pay very close attention to the “Quality Guidelines,” which outline some of the illicit practices that may lead to a site being removed entirely from the Google index or otherwise penalized.”

SEO practices as ethical. as an The terms “illegal seo” in phrase match has 13K results. “ethical seo” has around 64K.

To summarize where our thoughts have been going:

• It is not clear to me that having a website listed in Google constitutes agreement of TOS
• Nothing clearly in the TOS talks about SEO
• It is not clear to me whether Webmaster Guidelines are suggestions, or rules.

Now up to this point, I have been dealing with the issue of the ethics of SEO from a legal point of view. Ethics itself is a complex definition, so here is what I mean when I say, “Is something ethical?”

• Does it abide by law?
• Does it abide by common moral principles?

I know this definition is a bit unsatisfactory, and laws may not accurately define ethics (ie a law may be morally wrong). For some, ethics are not defined by actions, but intentions.

But going back…in the first part, I am trying to see whether Google TOS or Webmaster guidelines say anything about SEO, and whether we are obliged to follow them.

Let’s talk about SEO in absence of Google guidance. For example, let’s say Google gave no guidance. Google was silent, or said, “have at it, link spam, forum spam, black hat, whatever…in the end, our algorithms will win.” Of course, we are not at the end, and for now these tactics win.

Let’s go to an example by Matt Cutts and the search term “radiosurgery” (opens in new window). Matt writes, “I hope you’ll agree that you wouldn’t want a serious medical search for brain tumor treatments to be affected by inaccurate or uninformed posts.”

Yes, I agree.

What are the perfect search results for such a term? I don’t know. Is it Google’s responsibility to return perfect results? Let’s say that no-one meant harm and optimized for this term, but an inaccurate link got through into Page 1…I guess it is Google’s fault? I don’t want to be mean. May God protect us from all sicknesses.

What about a relatively less serious term? Acne…or back pain? Is it morally wrong to optimize for such a term?

What about insurance quotes? I don’t think anyone would say it is morally wrong to optimize for such a term. It’s business, after all Even if the site is just an affiliate site that directs your insurance request to other companies?

Mode of optimization? Are certain SEO practices ethical, and others not?

I believe the answer from Google is yes. Google has a nice PDF on SEO, and also has this link regarding SEO firms.

Google’s intention is to create a high quality directory of information, and relevance is a measure of quality. Google wants its index to be relevant. That means satisfied users. It is in Google’s interest to promote SEO practices which allow its algorithms to effectively evaluate relevance.

Google has also said that using duplicate content to manipulate the SERPS is bad, using link schemes is bad, and paid links must be no-follow.

But what about users? There are three parties involved…

Party 1 – Google

Party 2 – The site from which you are obtaining a link

Party 3 – The end user.

Where do comment linking, profile linking, forum linking, article syndication, RSS submission, directory submission, tweeting, etc… fall? What about article spinning? (By the way, Jon Leger has a very good article on the ethics of article spinning and another on the ethics of backlinking). Is the golden standard simply quality, or adding value? If I add value to the web, is it OK? How much value? Does syndicating my article add value? What about converting the article to PDF? or to a video and also getting an MP3 out of it?

What about autoblogging? Is that evil, or just using syndicated content? Mind you, I am not talking about using articles without permission or copyright, I am talking about following EzineArticles publishing guidelines. Did I add value?

Some of this falls into user intention now. Value is subjective. What if I intended to add value, but I didn’t. Am I evil? What is my moral responsibility to keep the Google index high quality?

Here’s what I have learned:

• Google’s index is private property. They can include or exclude me. For any reason or no reason at all. I don’t think that Google’s service is a public utility (like water or electricity)
• If I use their services, like Adsense, I need to abide by their rules (and it would be good if I abide by their “guidelines”) Does it mean that if I use them as a search engine, I need to abide by their webmaster guidelines? Not sure, but I don’t think so.
• Google does benefit from people following the guidelines. It makes it easier for them to rank the web. Would it be beyond Google to raise false ethical issues so that people follow SEO practices in Google’s best interest?

I am going to conclude the post, though my thought process has not reached a conclusion. It certainly seems that the easy approach to this is to treat Google not as a public information service, but as an advertising medium. Yes, Google has built its value by relevance. Google gains nothing by unnatural SEO efforts – they are detrimental to Google’s ranking. However, a webmaster would seem foolish not to put his best foot forward to Google. On their end, Google will need to investigate better methods of ranking that are less prone to manipulation. User behavior, or human reviews…

Thanks for reading.

beta testers, please enter your email address so I can communicate efficiently with you all.

I appreciate your help!

Numerous SEO experts have discussed Google’s emphasis on brands in search engine results. For example, see Aaron Wall’s posts regarding the subject.

See the video below for some background:

So I see there are two changes here, one is a difference in search results where brands have some sort of influence. This is the Vince change. The second is a small little bar in Google search results which lists brands on some consumer queries. Check out the picture below:

So if you are interested in SEO, some questions come to mind…

1. What constitutes a brand in Google’s eyes? (from the video)
2. What effect does a brand have on a particular queries search results? (if the keyword has a brand name vs. if the keyword does not have a brand name, but is “associated” with the brand.
3. How did those 5 manufacturers get into the top. Where is Trendnet for example? They also make routers. I do think Google has accurately listed the top brands. Interesting they chose to list Cisco rather than Linksys (Cisco makes the Linksys brand)
4. Can we leverage the brand effect?

Some more questions may come up as I right this.

Matt Cutts answers the first question in the video at some level, ie it is not about brands per say, but about returning relevant search results based on the type of query that the user is asking. Google is all about returning what the user wants – or to think about it another way, your perfect search result should appear #1, and you should be able to press “I’m Feeling Lucky” with confidence. Here’s a new motto for google – “It’s not Lucky, its Google”. Anyways, I digress (plus google would not make adsense revenue with too many lucky queries)

So brands are a way to get trust and authority in the search results. Trust and authority are part of the Google mantra, so I will move on.

Aaron Wall covers this too (yes, another outbound link). Anyways, search results have changed, and as you can expect, there is some emphasis on brands.

Question 3 and 4 were really what got me thinking about this. So let’s throw out some ideas, unfiltered for consideration. What makes Google think something is a brand (ie trusted and authoritative, and listed under the brand listing)

• length of domain registration (a classic)
• anchor text being used in links
• anchor text matching the domain name – exactly
• .org, .net. .com all pointing to the same website
• buying adwords for the anchor text
• related listings in google shopping with the word

Feel free to comment on more ideas – and lets go through this list.

Length of domain registration, as covered in this post, is debated. My personal feeling is that it matters, but by a small amount. If Google was ranking on a 100 point scale based on their 200+ factors, maybe this one is worth 1/2 a point. It’s not going to kill you, nor will it be the silver bullet. Remember, this is just a guess. When I have a doubt on what a search engine would do, I just ask myself, “Based on what I know about the web, would I use this as a ranking factor if I was in Google’s shoes?” Google obviously would test this and make sure it does not adversely affect results for common queries, and so on. So I think it is a small factor.

Anchor text distribution is likely skewed in brands where the brand appears in the anchor text with or without modifiers. For example, the brand BMW would have various links to its domains like “BMW 5 series”, “BMW 745i”, “BMW”, “black BMW” and probably some analysis is done on the commonality of anchor text and substrings of the anchor text. I think it is very similar for personal names. When you link to a person’s website, you use “Fulan Khan”, “Fulan writes”, “Fulan Khan wrote about” as anchor text.

Brands probably have a large number of anchor text with the exact match to the domain name. I think this is the most interesting one, and the background why there is a common recommendation to get an exact keyword to domain name. ie If you want to capture the keyword for dog training, you want the domain “dogtraining.com.” I think the recommendation exists because of the brand emphasis, ie that the brand emphasis has made Google give more importance to exact keyword to domain matches, and also anchor text to domain matches.

As for .org, .net, and .com, not every brand or company can claim ownership of all TLDs, so I don’t know if this matters. Maybe it is slightly positive, or has no factor. The few brands I tried could not fit this critera of owning multiple TLD.

Using Adwords to bid on a brand (or as a signal for brand or trust) is something that was brought up by Shark SEO. (Actually he has a great post and my article is quite similar to his) – it makes sense to me, though I don’t know if Google does this.

As for the last bullet point, related products using similar keyword modifiers, yes, I do think this is something Google uses to figure out brand names. The reason I said related products is there are common modifiers which are not brands – for example, “silver”, or “large”, etc… Google needs to eliminate those modifiers from the list of brands.

Now finally, Google is probably using a list of words, and Google does human reviewers. Not everything can be efficiently determined algorithmically.

So that’s the end – what did we learn? Google has some emphasis on brands, because of their desire for accurate search results. Brands are a signal for Google regarding trust. There are probably some algorithmic and human factors involved in determining a brand. By thinking about the algorithmic factors, we can possibly gain an edge.

Thanks for reading.

A harmonious life is one of balance.You do not want to overeat, or undereat. You want to eat in balance with your bodily needs.

You do not want to overreact, or underreact, you want to react appropriately. This is balance.

People, though, may be in an imbalanced state.

In order to correct the balance, you may need to apply imbalanced pressure. For example, if you get angry very easily, the appropriate treatment for you would be to practice consistently the opposite (hardly ever getting angry) – that way you will move towards the center.

Consider a see-saw. If it is imbalanced, equal pressure on both sides will not balance it. You temporarily need to apply more pressure on one side, until the state of balance is restored.

Source: Imam al-Ghazali Rahmatullah Alaih

Nirmalya Kumar’s article “Kill a Brand, Keep a Customer” provides a welcome strategy for companies that are in need for some in house brand cleansing. In days where companies saturate many markets with their products with many of them competing for shelf space as well as market share, we have reached a point where too many choices are available not only for the consumer but also for the company. The surprising aspect is that many of these brands are not profitable in any sense, so it would be best for these companies to heed to Kumar’s advice and proceed with brand deletion. By engaging in a brand rationalization program, companies will find themselves with more profits, more time to dedicate to brands that are integral to company success, and more resources (such as human capital) to allocate towards the remaining brands.

Brand rationalization is a not a lengthy process, but it can become bogged down by numerous complaints and arguments simply because of the extensive impact it will have within an organization. Initially, the CEO of the company must gather all the brand executives/managers and perform a brand audit of all the brands offered by the organization. The audit includes a number of facets such as the amount of profit a brand garners, the number of competitors the brand has in that category (including within the company), and the brand’s position in that category (luxury, basic, value). After an in-depth analysis (with managers of all levels the company) that includes the tedious task of allocating costs, the executives are often shocked as to why the company has so many brands that are “cash users” as opposed to “cash generators.”

This leads into the pruning process, or a trimming of the company’s offerings. There are two methods to go about this process:

1. The Portfolio Approach: The logistics behind this process involve formulating a list of criteria that will hold as guidelines as to whether a brand will continue to endure or whether it will receive the ax. Guidelines to retain may be that the brand must be a top three (most popular) brand within a market, or it will be removed. Many firms adjust the selection criteria based on their position within the global marketplace and further within categories. As a result, only brands that meet the parameters set by the company continue to exist while the others are put up for deletion.
2. The Segment Approach-As opposed to the portfolio approach which looks at the company as a whole, the segment approach breaks down the products into the different types of customer segments they cater towards. Divisions disregard brand position (such as price offered, features) and hone in on the consumers and their perception of the brand.

Usually a company engages in a bit of portfolio pruning (which tends to remove a lot of brands) and then some segmenting pruning (which has a tendency to eliminate fringe brands) to arrive at their final brand mix. There are a number of pitfalls that a company can come across, most dealing with disgruntled managers and workers who will undoubtedly be afraid that the removal of a brand from the company will result in a loss of their job. However, in order to be a more profitable and efficient organization these tough cuts must continue to ensure top performance from the remaining brands.

After a company has concluded which brands to eliminate, they must decide the manner in which to go about this elimination. Kumar states four methods in his delineation on the topic:

1. Merge-Usually this is the most popular method and it involves amalgamating the  resources of the deleted brand with the brand leader within the company. Merging includes a blending of product features. The merging process can be a long drawn out process(of three plus years duration) or a relatively quick one if the market is not wide reaching.
2. Selling brands-If a brand is not in harmony with company goals and it has the ability to be sold for a healthy amount, many companies will sell the brand to other organizations.
3. Milking Brands-For traditional or sentimental brands, companies cease all marketing promotions for that brand and limit the areas in which the brand is sold. Eventually the brand is distributed in a very narrow scope until it’s following is virtually nil. Then the brand is eliminated.
4. Elimination-Most brands can be eliminated with little or no backlash. This is done through a strategy of offering coupons/discounts/sales for the brand which the company is keeping which removes attention from the eliminated brand.

Thinking.

I don’t know where to begin on this one. What is the value of good thinking?

You hear some common phrases, “Why didn’t I think of that?”, “Work Smarter, not Harder.”

Can people even think better? Can we really think different (ie Apple)?

John Maxwell writes in “Thinking for a Change” about 11 skills in thinking. This isn’t gloss. The problem in thinking is that people gloss over things. Here is the list:

• Big Picture Thinking
• Focused Thinking
• Creative Thinking
• Realistic Thinking
• Strategic Thinking
• Possibility Thinking
• Reflective Thinking
• Popular Thinking
• Shared Thinking
• Unselfish Thinking
• Bottom-Line Thinking

We know that big picture thinking means – look at the picture, but we want to know – how to do it? John’s advice summed up is: Expand your world and learn from it, and be comfortable with the ambiguous. Expanding your world means to do things that you normally would not do, meeting new people, etc…

One cannot be too ambiguous in all aspects – that is where focused thinking can come in. Focused thinking is about spending time and energy on a problem. Not everything will come easy. People may think of an issue for 10 seconds maximum before making a decision. Spend more time than you think is necessary. You may have to repeat a scenario in your mind over again (maybe to the annoyance of your colleagues.)

John’s book is a good one.

When I need to think of something, I find it is helpful to ask myself some questions to get my thoughts flowing.

1.) What are you trying to do?

2.) Why are you trying to do it?

3.) What if it does not happen?

4.) What are the constraints? Are they real? Why are they real?

5.) What are you afraid of? Is there any underlying true reason for this issue?

I may also try to imagine (visualize) the set of steps in minute detail – this will also bring out considerations. For a simple example, let’s say I am thinking about whether I have forgot anything before going on a trip. Imagine: I get in the car and pull out my keys. I drive to the airport. I park and go to the counter, get out my passport and credit card (do I have my passport, do I have the credit card?). I need to go in the security line. Take off my shoes, put my stuff in the machine (did I remove the liquid from my handbag, did I bring my laptop). Now I go to the gate and wait. (did I bring a book to read while waiting, did I bring a snack?), etc….

My quick advice, to myself and readers is:

• ask yourself a defined list of questions when thinking of a problem. Think of questions and talk to yourself.
• visualize the scenario
• take more time to think than you need. Don’t give up thinking at your first or second inclination. The idea will come.

Let’s talk about organizational maturity in software as an example to nail down this point.

When an organization is young, the emphasis in software is about feature development. Source control management and QA may be an afterthought. After this phase comes SCM systems, and an emphasis on QA. The next thought is about QA automation. After this, improved bug tracking and analytics, and analyzing the defects to find problem areas. Then creating standard code checkin procedures, or quality practices. In other words, as the organization develops, 5 to 10 years in, software maturity develops.

Each business matures. How can the business mature? Through natural growth, but also through an outside infusion of talent. If top marketing execs at P&G joined a young marketing firm, the young firm’s marketing maturity would develop faster.Certain marketing best practices will spread throughout the organization faster than they would have, had the young firm not brought in outside leadership.

For an individual maturity, it is about mentorship. Finding a teacher or guide in an endeavor is the way to make sure that you remain on track in business development. Without a guide or feedback, you may be heading the wrong direction. Honestly listening with your mind and heart open is the key to receiving advice. Close your mind to arguments and listen.

I think at this point, it is fair to say that Google aims to improve a user’s web experience – in other words, when a user uses Google to browse the web, and Google links to sites, Google wants those sites to be high quality. Informative, transparent, adding value to the web, and also easy to use. Now this is my interpretation of Google’s actions, not some official Google statement.

In any case, one can argue that site speed is part of a quality web experience. Matt Cutts mentions now, that site speed will be used as a factor in Google rankings.

So now that its done, you obviously want to consider it. In any case, you wanted to consider site speed before this SEO change as well; painfully slow pages won’t get you more sales and people are going to click away.

How can you find out how slow your pages are? Two tools use for Firefox are the Page Speed from Google, and YSlow from Yahoo. If you are a technician, you can use these to find out which page of your site is slow.

I’ve used YSlow, but after a few minutes, you may realize that unless you are developing your site management system or coded the site yourself, this isn’t something that you will want to mess with.

A lot of IMers use wordpress, and we’re fortunate to have such an active community providing top plugins and functionality. Page speed optimizations are no exception. Tutorial9 has compiled a superb list of caching plugins for wordpress – these caching plugins will help you improve your wordpress blog speed. The recommendation from the article is the W3 Total Cache plugin – take that one for a test drive if your Wordpress site is slow.

Another quick tip – if you are going to have hundreds or thousands of wordpress posts or categories, the best permalink structure may be something like:

/%post_id%/%postname%/

as you set the SEO benefits of the keywords in the URL, and you get a unique ID that will improve post lookup. You can see: http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks#Structure_Tags for details. Another site benefit is that if you want your site to be syndicated by Google News, they would also require a unique ID in the URL.

In Time Management GTD Part 1, we talked about David Allen’s premise – you need a clear mind, and you need to maintain a system of next actions.

Now there’s a concept of open loops. Open loops, in your mind, are loose ends. These are internal commitments, i.e., you need to take out the garbage. You need to build backlinks for a site. You need to complete your taxes, etc… Open loops are also used in copy writing. For example, “I’ll tell you about that killer technique in a few minutes, but first let me show you my revenue in the past month” is a common technique in sales videos. The viewer/listener’s mind is now waiting for that revelation, and the person keeps watching the video. A commitment has been made, and the mind needs to get that commitment resolved.

When you have responsibilities, your mind (generally) wants you to meet those committments. In the middle of driving, you will remember that you need to get milk, or whatever else you need to do. It is like your mind has a repeatable reminder; did you turn off the stove, did you send the check, etc…

Do you feel tension in your mind when this occurs?

Time management, based on my study, relies on the behavior of the mind. Consider what you’ve done when you feel this tension. You take a deep breath, consider all priorities, and maybe write them down. You feel better after that – things are not not jumbled in your mind. You can get down to the business of getting things done.

What kind of things are on your mind?
- Things you know that need to be done, but you don’t know their intended outcome. They are unclear.
- If you don’t know how to complete something, it will be on your mind.
- Something you think you will forget or not complete in time will be on your mind and cause you tension.

The GTD system aims to address these and create a system where:
- things will be off your mind in a place you trust you will review
- the system requires that you clarify the next action for any item
- the system has reminders in place that you will review regularly.

The system then, it is simply about managing actions. What to do, and when to do it. We’ll talk about implementation in the next post.