SEO by Chris Estes

After an unexpected break from blogging I am back from a few months of silence.

Over the past few months I have been honing my development skills in addition to getting back in to politics.  As I have indicated before… Once upon a time I worked in Politics.  I have been both a volunteer, activist, and professional in politics for the last 8 years.  Due to unforeseen circumstances related to the current state of the economy I decided it best to pursue using my degree and experience to join on the bandwagon.

I have taken a job on the ground in Oakland County, Michigan on the outskirts of Detroit working for a non-profit organization that shares similar values to me and most importantly the same goal.  After the election is over, November 4th, I will be back in the market pursuing a job as a regular person.  Aren’t we all just regular?  No, or at least a few months ago I didn’t think so.  I had convinced myself somehow that I was special.  In that  last few years I have worked hard and some how imagined myself  to be someone I am not.  In reality my illusion was allowing me to get away from what matters most.  Happiness. After years of working for even higher profile figures than me gave me hopes and dreams to be them.  After spending a summer with my parents taught me that it was all an illusion.  After spending months drifting about my parents house I came to the realization,  “I am regular!“  In fact I want to be regular.

As I came out of my daze I blew a couple interviews, unintentionally just did bad, and realized I love SEO and the challenge to the constantly changing SEO Universe.  But my place in the SEO community is low on to totum poll.  Sure I could rise to the top of the SEO community but that would bring very little to me.  So after this election is complete I will be back in SEO only part-time.  I am going to follow my instinct and go for a regular job with stability and most importantly with benefits.  I will continue to blog for personal fun and work with clients on a part-time basis.  Focusing on smaller numbers of clients will give me the ability to help create the perfect plan all the while not neglecting what is important to me.  I have two personal choices ahead of me.  1.  Return home and hope to get a good paying rewarding job (thinking something in construction or mill work). 2. Move back to DC and work my way up in government or the non-profit world.

The full-time life in SEO consulting is a bit to much stress in combination of high profile jobs is what drove me into the fog and ultimate burn out.  I want a full time job that at the end of the day or week I can look at and be proud of.  Weather that justification comes from hard work on an issue of championing a piece of legislation or helping family farmers navigate the rigors of Washington.  Being able to take a pile of dirt and create something like build a new Eco friendly power plant or make steel pipe that is helping end the dependency on foreign oil.  I want to be able to fulfill a quote may dad says very frequently “When they put me down in the ground. People will say there goes somebody that made a difference”.

How will SEO and your SEO business going to fit into that?  The same way I originally intended for it to be. I am going to put it back in the hobby category and part-time employment.  I am not ending SEO I am just not going to do as much as I was.

In my break I did lots of work on the growing area of Content Management systems and new technology using Adobe Flex.  Those article are sure to come at some point.  So stay tuned for updates.  I am adding an e-mail subscription via feedburner so that it can be delivered to your e-mail.  I have been writing on my personal blog lately about politics and other things.  Just so much going on in the world that needs my attention!

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In Michigan I am working with the Humane Society Legislative Fund.  I am heading up their “boots on ground” campaign.

Humane Society Legislative Fund is a social welfare organization incorporated under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code. HSLF works to pass animal protection laws at the state and federal level, to educate the public about animal protection issues, and to support humane candidates for office.

In this case I am heading up their team in Michigan’s Congressional District 9.  One of the most highly contested and closest races in the country.  To be asked to spear head this operation is very much a privilege and an honor.

As you know from previous posts I am a big supporter of non-profits and charities.  So instead of sharing a link for charity how about dropping them a donation.  It helps secure more than just your pets and wildlife it protects human rights also.  They are just as concerned with our well being as any other organization.  They are currently in the fight for changing the current state of affairs.  No other politically affiliated organization needs your help more.  Please donate $10 or more.  If you can’t give money try giving them a link and a spot in one of your post.

Today “Google’s Spam Cop” Matt Cutts admitted that search engine optimization isn’t spam. Matt Had this to say:

I’ve always meant to do a post to say that search engine optimization (SEO) is not spam and that Google doesn’t hate SEO, but I never seem to get around to it. This presentation gave me a chance to slip those facts into the minds of several thousand tech-savvy folks.

This is first omission or at least direct omission I can remember from a Google Employee of the nature. Matt said this in a keynote presentation.

You can read Matt’s complete story on his blog along with seeing the video here.

SEO by Chris only practices White Hat SEO practices within the realm of standard Webmaster Guidelines.

I am coming to you live from a hotel somewhere in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania. This will be a quick blog as I have to get to sleep.

This might be a day or so late but it appears Google has done a Toolbar Page Rank Update. This is great to hear as this blog moved up from a page rank 1 to 2. I am sure in the next couple of days there will be more Google Smack Down talk and chatter about Nofollow. Stay tuned for more updates on Page Rank updates as it is always a fun time!

I did notice this one post from our friend Kimberly over at yicrosoftdirectorygirl.com. Congratulations!

This SEO test will be a part of a series I want to write about on the effects of the sitemap protocol and if it is really working. Hopefully by the end we will all better understand sitemaps and core principals about XML sitemaps. Stay tuned for more articles on the different sitemap related posts and the tools used.

The experiments

I am going to run an experiment testing sitemap.xml and hanging pages. This will not be a flawless test but it will help me prove my assumptions.

I have been telling clients that if you add a url to an XML sitemap that it will be discovered. Why do I say this? Often times due to different varying factors search engines have a hard time finding pages inside of dynamic content pages. This test is not going to be about accessibility or how content is delivered. The SEO Experiement is only about sitemap files.

The test is going to be limited to hard coding the url into an xml sitemap and see if it can be found. My assumption will not be a solution to linking or standard url structure.

We already know that Google, Yahoo, and MSN will index urls similar to http://www.domain.com/?=123. We also know that pages with session id’s are usually not indexed because of the session variables. What I am trying to prove is that a url listed in an XML sitemap will be found by Google, Yahoo, and MSN without back links and only submitted through the different search engine webmaster tools .

How I am going to do this test is by creating a unique page that is not linked by any other pages and add it to its very own xml sitemap to be discovered. Once I created the pages I will add the sitemap to the webmaster tools section of each search engine. I am going to create another page and add it to a urllist.txt (an old protocol used by Yahoo. In the xml Sitemap I am going to put in 1 page only that is free floating and see how long it takes to get indexed by each search engine. In the urllist.txt file I am going to add another page and see if it is indexed.

Assumptions/problems/and forecast – Hypothesis

The file will be picked up in Yahoo and cached much fast than Google with xml sitemap file. The urllist.txt file will probably not be found on MSN which will be one problem. The other problem with MSN is they don’t yet have a way to add multiple sitemap files through their portal, even though they read robots.txt. The files from the urllist.txt will be picked up first by Yahoo and Google will follow.

Scope

2 html pages

1 sitemap.xml page

1 urllist.txt page

Result

To be continued

Because I don’t want to spoil the experiment I won’t give the specifics locations of the files or exactly how I am going to do it. The experiment could take 1 day or 2 weeks. For now we will see. Stay tuned for the results and summary. More experiments are coming.

Have you ever met somebody with the same name as you?  Have you at least cyber-stalked them?  I have. In fact I have been working to push them from the top rankings for my name.  On an SEO note all I may have been doing is legitimizing their prescience.   My name pressence isn’t the point of this post.  One of the fascinating things for me living in New York is having the New York Times at my door every morning before I go to work.

Today I opened the paper to find an interesting article about "googling" your name and making contacts with people with your same name.  This is snapshot of the article.  To read the whole article: Names That Match Forge a Bond on the Internet.

April 10, 2008 – NY Times

Names That Match Forge a Bond on the Internet

By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM

From time to time Sam Blackman, a pediatric oncologist in Philadelphia, checks up on people other than patients. Namely, other Sam Blackmans.

No stethoscope is needed to take the pulse of his namesakes, though — just a Google search. And while he has never met the men he refers to as Sam 2.0 and Sam 3.0, when one of those other Sam Blackmans posted a photograph of his wife on the Internet, Dr. Blackman, 39, couldn’t help but feel a twinge of pleasure.

“I’m like ‘Oh! Sam Blackman got married,’ ” he said. “I felt like I should send a card or check his registry on Amazon.”

Now that the telephone book has been all but replaced by the minutiae-rich Web, searching out, even stalking, the people who share one’s name has become a common pastime. Bloggers muse about their multiple digital selves, known as Google twins or Googlegängers (a term that was the American Dialect Society’s “most creative” word last year).

In “Finding Angela Shelton,” a book published this month, a writer named Angela Shelton describes her meetings with 40 other Angela Sheltons. Keri Smith, an illustrator, has posted drawings of six of her Googlegängers on her blog. There are name-tally Web sites like SameNameAsMe, and Facebook coalitions including nearly 200 people named Ritz (their insignia is a cracker box logo) and a group aiming to break a world record by gathering together more than 1,224 Mohammed Hassans.

But while many people are familiar with Googlegängers, a fundamental question has gone unanswered: Why do so many feel a connection — be it kinship or competition — with utter strangers just because they share a name?

Read more…

I have never met someone with my same name.  I think it would be interestingly creepy.  What if they were better than you?  What if they were worse?  What if they were a criminal?  These are all good questions.  For now I belive I am content just "cyber-stalking" their name.