By now everyone with electricity has seen images and video of the devestation that befell New Orleans and the surrounding areas yesterday. 80% of the city has been destroyed. Over 100 people have been killed, tens of thousands injured and hundreds of thousands left homeless. The magnitude of the disaster is impossible to express in simple words. When words fail, all we have are deeds. Now is the time to help in any way we can. Read more…

One week left. That’s it. One week from the time this piece is being written the school doors open and the dog-days come to a close. Summer is over in seven days for tens of millions of students across North America . Going back to school is both exciting and anti-climactic, at least if I remember correctly. It has been quite a few years since I sat on the students’ side of the lecture podium. Today, my only experience with schooling is as an infrequent guest lecturer at the University of Victoria or at one of the local technical colleges. My career as a student ended long before the advent of the commercial Internet. Read more…

Two weeks ago, I used this space to write about the importance of usability in website design. The article was supposed to act as a lead-in to a short series of articles on the basics of search engine optimization and as a gentle suggestion for webmasters concerned with converting visitors into buyers. As it turned out, the article was long on style but short on substance, a fact that was quickly pointed out by Kim Krause Berg in a blog entry entitled, ” Don’t Tell Me I Need Usability Without Explaining How “. Kim Krause Berg, for those unfamiliar with her, is one of the leading usability experts in the United States . Read more…

It is hard to believe the all too short northern summer is almost over. In less than two weeks, kids will be going back to school and commercial webmasters will be gearing up for the autumn and winter sales seasons. This is as good a time as any, perhaps better than most, to cover SEO 101, the basic techniques that form the foundation to an advanced SEO or SEM campaign. Read more…

To phrase it in as juvenile a way as I possibly can, I think search engine spam sucks. I think the use of, and subsequent macho bragging about, spammy SEO techniques is detrimental to the SEO/SEM industry as a whole. I have a number of reasons for staking this position, none of which I intend to outline below. I have an even greater concern surrounding spam, search engines, and the nature of the SEO/SEM sector I wish to write about today. Read more…

I am taking a two-week vacation starting next Friday. That is a good thing too because the past four days have almost turned me off this amazing industry. A break from the silliness of the search engines and the pettiness of practitioner politics will do me a world of good. I’m also sure that the absense of my frantic presence for few weeks will provide a much needed break for the rest of the StepForth crew as well. Read more…

Last week saw the resumption of the search engine size wars in which one major search engine claims to be larger than its rivals, prompting those rivals to rapidly upsize themselves. Yahoo fired the first round at Google, claiming to have over 20billion objects accessible in their database. Google, which can only claim about 13billion objects fired back with questions about measurements, basically stating Yahoo was mistaken or misleading in its claims. Read more…

This was a truly interesting week. On top of the Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose, the past five days provided search marketers a front-row view of international economic development, the growth of a media empire, the internal disruptive influence of corporate culture shifts, and a colligate game of “mine is bigger than yours.” While a happy family obligation kept me away from San Jose, the week had several profoundly powerful sleeper stories that show how serious, ironic and silly the world of search is. Read more…

Known as the web’s Usability Czar, Jakob Nielsen is one of the Internet’s most respected consultants, authors and commentators. Dr. Nielsen’s fame stems from his uncanny ability to note basic things most observers miss or gloss over. Although many of his observations on website usability amount to basic common sense, his message is often ignored by small to medium sized business websites and by newer webmasters and search engine marketers. Read more…

Three bad headlines sitting on the fence,
One fell over and made them look dense,
Another fell over and they started to spin,
and that’s where the power of media comes in.

It must have been a Monday. Read more…