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Excerpt: So everyone knows — and a few people have asked, I am well.  I have been sick, and I will be doing a post detailing, among other things, my unpleasant experience with medicine.  Thankfully, a few thousand dollars later (not covered by standard health care), I am 95% back to normal.And no, it wasn't the doctor from House that fixed me.  Rather, it was some really smart Hungarian guy with a funny accent.  Go figure. The book is on schedule for April 17.  Some people inquired about that as well.I will be blogging again soon.  For now, I'm on a…

Chapter 1 tells you what the book is about, some of the foundations, and how its focus is very different than other SEO books.  Come and get it.  Tell me what you think in the comments.

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Excerpt: A few weeks ago (before I got sick), Wikipedia announced that they are "nofollowing" all links contained by articles — effectively telling search engines the links are untrusted and should not be factored as heavily into a ranking algorithm.I think this is patently ridiculous!If wikipedia tells the world its links are not trustworthy of a vote, what does it say about the reliability of their content as a whole?Isn't the point of collaborative editing that, by and large, the product of such an aggregation of edits — some good, some bad, will collectively achieve something high in quality?Rand Fishkin asserts…

I am not feeling well lately, but have not abandoned this blog.  The book is on schedule, and I am OK overall (nothing life-threatening), but I posting may be a bit slower over the next few weeks because of general malaise.

No worries, though.  The book is on schedule, and I'm OK.  Guest posts are welcome.  Contact me if interested.

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Excerpt: Guest post by Joost de Valk. Every now and then when you search, whether it be Google, MSN, or Yahoo — RSS feeds show up in the SERPs. For instance, if you search for the popular blog boing boing on Google, the third result is the FeedBurner feed of that particular blog. This, of course, is a "bug." Most of us don't want feeds listed in the SERPs. It does however, make you think: Feeds are bound to rank for some terms unless they are excluded somehow. I won’t go in to why search engines seems to…

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Excerpt: Are you a blogger?  If you'd like, send me an email with your snail-mail address and the blog you administrate, and I may be able to get you a free preproduction copy of the upcoming book.  Please do not provide PO Boxes, as the publisher will not send mail to them.  I'd love a review on your blog when you receive it and have a chance to peruse it — but that is voluntary, of course. Also, if you're one of the people who provided input in the writing process, I would like to thank you for your time.  You…

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Excerpt: I've been feverishly working to meet deadlines on the seo book and dealing with a sickness — so I've been quiet.  But I haven't been sleeping.  The book is now 100% done and edited.So here's the introduction from Chapter 3, "Provocative SE-Friendly URLs."  Leave a comment and let me know what you think.  Or just buy it :) “Click me!” If the ideal URL could speak, its speech would resemble the communication of an experienced salesman. It would grab your attention with relevant keywords and a call to action, and it would persuasively argue that you should choose it instead of…

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Excerpt: Your computer sucks.  The Core Duo is dead — now you need a Core 2 Duo!  Well, at least nobody is selling them.  And if the web page was located at /Core-Duo.html, one can 301 redirect /Core-Duo.html to /Core-2-Duo.html.  This channels the legacy equity to related updated content.  This practice is superior to returning a URL not found (404) error, both because it transfers equity contained by that URL instead of dispensing with it, as well as refers any old links to relevant updated content.It is clear to me that an old page that is semantically related to a new…