Google Wave

Final steps for Google Wave

More than a year ago we announced that Google Wave would no longer be developed as a separate product. At the time we committed to maintaining the site at least through the end of 2010. Today we’re sharing the specific dates for ending this maintenance period and shutting down Wave. As of January 31, 2012, all waves will be read-only, and the Wave service will be turned off on April 30, 2012. You will be able to continue exporting individual waves using the existing PDF export feature until the Google Wave service is turned off. So we'd encourage you to export any important data before April 30, 2012.

If you would like to continue using Wave, there are a number of open source projects, including Apache Wave. There is also an open source project called Walkaround that includes an experimental feature to import all your Waves from Google. This feature will work until the Wave service is turned off on April 30, 2012.

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Benefits of Blog

Build Community: Business blogs provide your small business with a chance to share your expertise and knowledge with a larger audience. An opportunity to connect with a wider audience and build a community is a strong benefit for consultants and knowledge workers.

Easy Web Publishing Solution: Blog software is easy to use. Simply write your thoughts, link to resources, and publish to your blog, all at the push of a few buttons. Blog software companies such as TypePad or Blogger.com offer easy blogging tools to get started. Updating the weblog is a faster process than contacting a web designer with changes or doing the coding and uploading yourself.

Higher Search Engine Rankings: Search engine marketing is hot. The search market has become the Holy Grail of Internet advertising and continues to grow faster than our expectations. We believe search is actually gaining some market share from other types of online marketing.

Lower Costs: Blogging is a low-cost alternative to having a web presence. For small business owners without the time to learn web html or the money to hire a designer/developer, blogging offers an inexpensive method to get your company's name out on the Internet.

Better Communications: Blogging provides several communication benefits. As indicated by Business Weeks’ Olga Kharif in Blogging for Business Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban sees blogging as a time saver instead of providing many interviews blogging gets his message out to many people at once.

Internal links – Blogs that post product or service related information can deep link anchor text to product information or purchase pages deep within the web site. This is very beneficial for ranking on long tail phrases.

Inbound link magnet – One of the biggest benefits, blogs link freely to each other – much more than web sites do. Blogs are also a significant source of many posts to social news and social media web sites. Text, audio and video are all easily supported for syndication by blogs. The more media available, the more likely it will attract incoming links. Additionally, there are many widgets and plugins that make it easy to share blog content, thus encouraging links and traffic.

RSS – Links to RSS feed urls that use the blog domain name will assist in building link popularity and when RSS content is syndicated or cited by other blogs, any embedded links will also assist in sending traffic.

Non-Search traffic – I think the greatest benefit of having an active blog has little to do with improving your search engine rankings though. The best thing about blogs is that they allow you to generate substantial amounts of traffic via RSS and links that have NOTHING to do with search engines. My recommendation to marketers in 2007 is to pursue traffic alternatives to search engines as aggresively as their budgets and marketing programs will allow. The result will be incremental increases in site traffic with search engine referred traffic an added bonus, if not correspondingly enhanced.

Brand Promotion – By hosting your own blog, it will be easier to develop and promote your own brand. Even if you are not selling something, hosting your own blog will provide greater individuality than what shared hosting can offer.

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Bullet Train in India

The Minister of Railways, Government of India, Shri Dinesh Trivedi along with Indian Railway Board Members, held discussions with a visiting Japanese delegation led by Mr. Takeshi Maeda, Minister for Land Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT), Government of Japan on bilateral issues in the field of rail transportation and various aspects of high speed train corridors (popularly called bullet trains).

The members of the Japanese delegation included Mr. Ryuhei Maeda, DG for International Affairs, MLIT, Mr. Akhihiko Tamura, Sr. Dy. DG, Railway Bureau, MLIT, Mr. Akitaka Saiki, Ambassador of Japan, Mr. Satoshi Seino, President, East Japan Railway Company, Mr. Tadaharu Ohashi, Chairman, Kawasaki Heavy Industry and Mr. Makoto Washizu, President, Japan International Transport Institute. Indian Railways delegation consisted of Shri Vinay Mittal, Chairman, Railway Board, Ms. Vijaya Kanth, Financial Commissioner, Shri K. K. Srivastava, Member Traffic, Shri A. K. Vohra, Member Staff, Shri Kul Bhushan, Member Electrical, Shri A. P. Mishra, Member Engineering and Shri Sanjiv Handa, Member Mechanical.

There had been efforts from both sides last year in the direction of High Speed Train System. A delegation led by Mr. Ryuhei Maeda, DG for International Affairs had visited New Delhi in October 2011 and held fruitful interaction with Shri Trivedi and Railway Board officers. This was followed by a visit of Indian Railway officers to Japan to have first hand understanding of Shikansen system. Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), Japan Railway Technical Service (JARTS) and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) are also working in this direction.

It may be worthwhile to mention that Indian Ministry of Railways has selected six corridors for conducting pre-feasibility studies. These are; 1) Delhi-Chandigarh-Amritsar, 2) Pune-Mumbai-Ahmedabad, 3) Hyderabad-Dornakal-Vijaywada-Chennai, 4) Chennai-Banalore-Coimbatore-Ernakulam-Trivandrum, 5) Howrah-Haldia and 6) Delhi-Agra-Lucknow-Varanasi.

The consultants for pre-feasibility study for four corridors have already been appointed namely M/s Systra, M/s Italffer and M/s RITES Limited for Pune – Mumbai – Ahmedabad; M/s Mott MacDonald for Delhi-Agra-Lucknow-Varanasi-Patna; M/s INECO, M/s PROINTEC, M/s Ayesa for Howrah-Haldia; and M/s. Japan External Trade Organisation (JETRO) and Oriental Consultancy along with Parsons Brinkhoff India for Hyderabad-Dornakal-Vijaywada-Chennai. However, the process of appointing consultants for the corridors Delhi-Chandigarh-Amritsar and Chennai-Bangalore-Coimbatore-Ernakulam-Trivandrum is still going on. Final report for pre-feasibility study for Pune-Mumbai-Hyderabad high speed rail corridor has already been submitted by the consultant.

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Google Panda Rolling update

In July we asked if the Google Panda update was a rolling update? Meaning, did the algorithm update dynamically by itself without having Google hit a button to push out an update. The answer was no - at least back then. But it is expected that the Panda algorithm would one day be part of Google's rolling and continuously updating algorithm - working in almost real time, when possible. At this point in time, I do not think Panda is a rolling update. But some are thinking it is. A WebmasterWorld thread has some asking if it started to be a rolling update yet. Tedster said partially:

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Google Panda Update

A while back, I wrote about how to get the best high volume links. Fast forward eight months and Google has made two major changes to its algorithm -- first to target spammy/scraper sites, followed by the larger Panda update that targeted "low quality" sites. Plus, Google penalized JCPenney, Forbes, and Overstock.com for "shady" linking practices.

What's it all mean for link builders? Well, it's time we say goodbye to low quality link building altogether.

'But The Competitors Are Doing It' Isn't an Excuse

This may be tough for some link builders to digest, especially if you're coming from a research standpoint and you see that competitors for a particular keyword are dominating because of their thousands upon thousands of pure spam links.

But here are two things you must consider about finding low quality, high volume links in your analysis:

1. Maybe it isn't the links that got the competitor where they are today. Maybe they are a big enough brand with a good enough reputation to be where they are for that particular keyword.
2. If the above doesn't apply, then maybe it's just a matter of time before Google cracks down even further, giving no weight to those spammy backlinks.

Because, let's face it. You don't want to be the SEO company behind the next Overstock or JCPenney link building gone wrong story!

How to Determine a Valuable Backlink Opportunity

How can you determine whether a site you're trying to gain a link from is valuable? Here are some "warning" signs as to what Google may have or eventually deem as a low-quality site.

• Lots of ads. If the site is covered with five blocks of AdSense, Kontera text links, or other advertising chunks, you might want to steer away from them.
• Lack of quality content. If you can get your article approved immediately, chances are this isn't the right article network for your needs. If the article network is approving spun or poorly written content, it will be hard for the algorithm to see your "diamond in the rough." Of course, when a site like Suite101.com, which has one hell of an editorial process, gets dinged, then extreme moderation may not necessarily be a sign of a safe site either (in their case, ads were the more likely issue).
• Lots of content, low traffic. A blog with a Google PageRank of 6 probably looks like a great place to spam a comment. But if that blog doesn't have good authority in terms of traffic and social sharing, then it may be put on the list of sites to be de-valued in the future. PageRank didn't save some of the sites in the Panda update, considering there are several sites with PageRank 7 and above (including a PR 9).
• Lack of moderation. Kind of goes with the above, except in this case I mean blog comments and directories. If you see a ton of spammy links on a page, you don't want yours to go next to it. Unless you consider it a spammy link, and then more power to you to join the rest of them.

What Should You Be Doing

Where should you focus your energy? Content, of course!

Nine in 10 organizations use blogs, whitepapers, webinars, infographics, and other high quality content to leverage for link building and to attract natural, organic links. Not only can use your content to build links, but you can use it to build leads as well by proving the business knows their stuff when it comes to their industry.

Have You Changed Your Link Building Strategy?

With the recent news, penalties, and algorithm changes, have you begun to change your link building strategies? Please share your thoughts in the comments!

Editor's note: This column originally was published on March 8, 2011, and comes in at No. 2 on our countdown of the 10 most popular Search Engine Watch columns of 2011. Over the final two weeks of 2011, we're celebrating the Best of 2011 by revisiting our most popular columns, as determined by our readers. Enjoy and keep checking back!

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