If you are new to SEO, then while you may be a bit behind, you’re not alone.  According to Wikipedia, SEO or Search Engine Optimization is “the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site.”  For the most part, SEO originated when website owners realized that if they put a big glob of text at the bottom of their websites with all sorts of keywords. the search engines like Google, Yahoo and so on would think that the site was relevent to said keywords.

This trick lasted for a while, until the search engines began to penalize the text glob practice, and became more sophisticated.  They started to look more at tags, page titles, and other things to provide more relevant results to their users.  Then, it was game on.  Now, you had to be an expert in SEO in order to properly trick the search engines into putting your site on the front page.  People started to get paid for this stuff.  Message board spamming, hyper blogging, redirecting and all sorts of other techniques were developed, and for a while, those worked too.

The key word in that last paragraph is “trick.”  One used to be able to trick the search engines, but now, that’s game over.  These days, website SEO mostly consists of making sure that a site is properly formatted so that the search engines can easily find their way around when they get there.  Tricks only work for a very short period of time before the search engines catch on, and penalties ensue.  In other words, you’re wasting your time and money with tricks.

Think about it for a second…  Search engines have a customer base, and they are the people out there performing searches.  When someone performs a search on say Google, they expect to get relevant results, not spam.  Google and the others know this of course, and if the customers are not finding what they need, they won’t come back.  You can bet that they are working harder at providing relevant results to their customers by closing the trick loopholes than you are working on tricking them.

How To Delete A Facebook App

So now what?  Well, the not so obvious answer is to stop trying to trick the search engines and actually work harder to provide relevent content.  What a concept!  Give the people what they want!  You see, eventually, people will find the experts they seek, and if you are one of those experts, you’re in a pretty good spot to tell them more about what you offer as a product or service, that is, as long as you make it relatively easy for them to find you.

No, SEO is not dead.  You still have to structure your website so that there is a big fat welcome mat out front for the search engines to find their way around your site.  However, to entice them to visit your home in the first place, you need to have quality content scattered everywhere for your potential customers to pick up on.  You need Content Optimization (CO).

It’s easier than you think.

Try things like creating blog posts with actual, useful information on WordPress, TypePad or Blogger.  Join discussions  and groups on LinkedIn or Facebook.  Create multimedia content with easy to use sites like IgniteCAST.com and broadcast your valuable information.  Go ahead, give Twitter a try.  These sites are all combed over pretty much every second of every day by the search engines looking for quality content to show in search results.

Once you have become respected in online communities, you have earned the right to talk about your products and services.  You can even link to your site right in the content you create, and people will begin to think of you as a problem solver, not an internet marketing trickster.  They may even start to post links to your content (and therefore to your site) for you.  That’s a referral folks, and it doesn’t get any better than that.

Content Optimization will always work!  No tricks here, just honest to goodness honesty and quality. 

Eventually in life, most of us learn that honesty is the best policy.  And for those of you that have not learned that yet, trust me, over the long haul, it’s a lot easier, and much less expensive than the alternative.

Congrats on your decision – igniteCAST.

How to remove or delete a Facebook application or app – igniteCAST.

Go here to see Ignite 4 Quick Tips.  They are updated at least once a week, and you can automatically receive them by subscribing to the Podcast.

igniteCAST – Ignite 4 Quick Tips.

Easily one of the most common questions we receive is with regards to how to control slide timing.  In this tip, we’ll discuss the automatic timing features in Ignite and how you can use them to your advantage.

How Ignite 4 slide timing works. – igniteCAST.

SCATE Technologies, Inc. Chosen From Over 1200 Nominees

(Orion, MI – October 19, 2009) After a rigorous selection process involving a combination of public opinion polls and an experienced panel of industry judges, SCATE Technologies, Inc. (SCATE) proudly announced today that it has been chosen to receive a “TiE Midwest 20″ award for excellence in the Software category. SCATE will receive the award at a dinner ceremony to be held Friday, October 23 at the Ritz Carlton in Dearborn, Michigan in conjunction with the TiECON 2009 Midwest conference.

Since 2001, SCATE Technologies, Inc. has built many industry leading applications in the fields of web 2.0, desktop, social networking, engineering, eLearning and others. Additionally, SCATE develops world class custom programs, applications and search engine-optimized (SEO) websites for its global customer base. SCATE has also created a portfolio of its own products and web services including Scate Ignite 4, IgniteCAST.com, ScreenTweet.com, ScoutTweet.com, ScateMVV.com, ScateLearning.com and MySplake.com which are in use in over 100 countries and by some of the largest companies in the world.

The TiE Midwest 20 award acknowledges excellence among 20 startups within five industry tracks including Software, Wireless, Cleantech, Media and Life Sciences. TiECon 2009 Midwest is Michigan’s largest entrepreneurial conference, attracting hundreds of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and other professionals. This year TiECon 2009 Midwest is being held on Oct 23-24, 2009 at The Ritz- Carlton, Dearborn with well known keynote speakers.

“We are very proud of the work we have done for our customers, and we will graciously accept this award on their behalf” said SCATE President and CEO Steve Sadler. “TiECON 2009 Midwest is destined to be a great event this year and we look forward to meeting with our peers and other industry experts at the conference” he added.

For more information on Scate Technologies, Inc., visit http://www.scate.com. For more information on the TiECON 2009 Midwest conference, visit http://www.tieconmidwest.org.

ScreenTweet, ScoutTweet, mySplake, Multi-Vector Vision, Scate and IgniteCAST are registered service marks of Scate® Technologies, Inc. Ignite is a registered trademark of Scate® Technologies, Inc. The Ignite Flame logo, “Ignitables”, “Capture, Enhance, Publish, Share” and “You Know – You Show” are trademarks of Scate® Technologies, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Scate® Technologies, Inc. – 40 Engelwood Dr. – Suite B – Orion, MI 48359 USA- 248.371.0315 www.scate.com

If you are reading this, then you probably already know the story of Dave Carroll, a Canadian singer / songwriter that went from being a noted musician, to an overnight sensation earlier this week.  Mr. Carroll got his guitar broken it would seem by United Airlines, and upon trying to get them to pay for it, embarked on a customer service nightmare trip that many of us are all too familiar with.

You can see the video (over 2 million hits on YouTube in only 5 days) he made after finally getting fed up with the whole thing by clicking here.  You can also read his account of exactly what happened on his blog.

I’ve personally watched the video a bunch of times, and not only do I empathize with his plight, I like the song too!  Everything about it screams honesty, talent, fun and of course, a little revenge sprinkled in.  I like it because it reminds me of something I might do if I had his talent.  In fact, I did do something like it on a smaller scale.

He has been on every radio program, TV network, even on CNN hailed as the man that stood up for all of us when it comes to how those damn baggage handlers abuse our luggage.  That combined with the coverage on Twitter, FaceBook and other social media sites has brought United Airlines to issue an apology, to start throwing money at the problem and basically begging for all this to stop.  Unfortunately for United, Mr. Carroll has promised that there are still two more songs coming about the incident.

But this is where I begin to become concerned.  If you read his blog post where he documents what happened, there is a glaring problem.  There is no way to prove that United really did break his guitar.  In fact, there was nearly an entire day between when Mr. Carroll saw his guitar being thrown around by the baggage handlers on the tarmac, and when he finally opened the case to find it broken.  You can read this at his blog where he himself spells it out.

“When I got to Omaha it was around 12:30 am. The plane was late arriving and there were no employees visible. Although I was told later that it wouldn’t have mattered, I should have taken my hard case out of the padded protective exterior case to examine the guitar at the airport but I didn’t. The guitar case looked ok and we were tired, went to the hotel and then to sleep for our early morning pick-up by the tour managers the next day. When they picked us up in the early morning we would not be back in Omaha for seven days. It was later that day at sound check that I discovered that the base of my Taylor had been smashed.”

Does United Really Break Guitars?

Is there a pimply-faced hotel kid laughing his butt off right now because HE is actually the one that broke it?  Did one of his band mates accidently drop it on the way to get a cab?  Did a cabbie drop it?  Did it get caught in an elevator?  What about the stage crew at the event the following day, did they drop his guitar and were too scared to admit it?  I could go on and on with the possibilities, and maybe there is more to the story that could refute those possibilities, but so far, I’ve not heard anything that would.

So social media got a big fat juicy steak on Monday.  So big, meaty and delicious that social media is still winding down the feeding frenzy almost a week later, and social media has been told that soon, there will be another banquet served up by Mr. Carroll in the form of not one, but two more songs.  And so far, there is NO PROOF that the company that is now paying dearly with its reputation actually committed the crime.

Yeah, I know, they saw the handlers throwing the guitars.  I know it seems open and shut, and I’d probably think the same thing Mr. Carroll did.  I’m also pretty sure that Mr. Carroll did not imagine just how much attention his video would get.  Finally, I have no reason to doubt his honesty.

However, there was simply too much time between the baggage throwing event, and discovery of the damage to say for sure that United did the dirty deed.  In the mean time, social media has landed squarely in Mr. Carroll’s court, and looks like it plans to stay there, and United Airlines is embroiled in PR whirlwind it cannot possibly control.  I’ve even seen comments on YouTube about Mr. Carroll’s video where people are stating that they are cancelling their tickets on United over this.

I’ll tell you what, if you owned the company that was the target of a PR disaster like the one that United is currently experiencing, you’d feel differently about it.  You’d probably offer to pay for the guitar repair now, donate the $ to charity, anything to get it to just stop, all the while biting your tongue to avoid saying out loud, “How do we KNOW for SURE that it’s really our fault anyway?”

Is this really a victory for social media like so many are claiming it is, or is it an example of how colossally social media can FAIL?

This is crazy.  Just when I finally got going with blogging, it has become passé.  Now, if you really want to know what’s going on at Scate Technologies, you’ve got to read our Twitter feeds and watch our FaceBook and LinkedIn groups.

Blogging just seems to take so much time now, by comparison anyway, and I have to form longer trains of thought to do it.  With the others of course, I’m gone in 60 seconds.

So, do you read this blog?  Do you find anything interesting here, or would you rather we just ditch this place in favor of the “other” options?

Share Photos on Twitter

This Ignitable describes how to share pictures, images and screenshots on Twitter using a new service called ScreenTweet.com. You can upload images from your computer, take screenshots of your PC, Mac or Linux machine, and even send pictures from your mobile cell phone!

Cute, fast and free!

We discussed developing a new web app the other day, we all thought about it over the weekend.  On Monday AM, we agreed to do it, and we figured we could get it done in a couple of weeks.  As usual, we plan to change the world with it, and maybe we’re right.  Either way, we gonna do it, and it will be cute, done quickly, social and free.

The cute part is in the name and the look.  The name is partially derived from another cute name for a web app, and therefore, it had cute genes already in it.  As far as quick, we’ll be re-purposing existing code by simply only using about 10% of the real power that the code has built in to it.  As it turns out, people don’t want a lot of power anymore in their web apps.  They want to simply walk up to the machine, hit two or three buttons, and be done with it for now.  Either that, or hit the same two or three buttons a few dozen times in a row, and then go back to watching American Idol.  Any more than that, and they become experts, and start to get paid to hit the buttons.

If you look carefully at our Twitter feeds, you could figure out what we’re up to.  I’m not gonna make it easy by putting a link here… yet, but you won’t have to wait long anyway.  To be fair, we nailed down the domain name last December because it occurred to us how cool it would be to build an app. around it.  Yes, we started with cool, and now the thing is so cute, you just want to cuddle up to it and spend time with it every day.  That’s the whole idea, of course.