Jan 29, 2010

iPad Technical Specifications



Size and weight*
  • Height: 9.56 inches (242.8 mm)
  • Width: 7.47 inches (189.7 mm)
  • Depth: 0.5 inch (13.4 mm)
  • Weight: 1.5 pounds (.68 kg) Wi-Fi model; 1.6 pounds (.73 kg) Wi-Fi + 3G model

Display
  • 9.7-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen Multi-Touch display with IPS technology
  • 1024-by-768-pixel resolution at 132 pixels per inch (ppi)
  • Fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating
  • Support for display of multiple languages and characters simultaneously

Jan 28, 2010

iPad

Here it is folks, the Apple iPad. The screen is gorgeous, tilting is responsive, and the thing is super thin. Still, if you've used the iPhone before -- and you can see the two devices side-by-side here -- there's not a lot of surprises here so far. Here are some initial thoughts on the iPad:

Jan 27, 2010

Overview: Blackberry Stratus (9100)

BlackBerry_Pearl_9100_front
Source: salomondrin
It’s finally here! I had a chance to play with my new Blackberry Stratus (9100) AKA Striker AKA Pearl 2 and I have to tell you that is fantastic. It might be a little too tiny, but the phone is very (and when I say very I really mean it) pretty, slick, sexy, and it says “Business” all over it.

Jan 25, 2010

Oyama Dolphin PRO-L900 Review

Vehicle Parameter description:

Product Type:
Dolphin PRO-M500
Size:
16 inch
Material Construction:
Aluminum
Main Specifications:
16-inch ultra-light aluminum alloy 6000 Streamline shape folding frame / 6000 Series Aluminum Fork / aluminum drivers to / aluminum folding riser / aluminum chuck-type seat bar / high braking performance aluminum V-brake System / SHIMANO within the three-speed transmission system
Meet the criteria:
In line with national standard GB / meet CEN European industry standard
TRANSMISSION:
SHIMANO within the three-speed transmission system
Tooth plate:
48-tooth single plate of steel teeth

Crank:

Lightweight aluminum alloy crank
Foot:
Bilateral gray plastic folding pedal
Flywheel:
Within the three-speed freewheel 16T
Chain:
KMC Chain
Chain cover:
Anti-Pinch dirty double-sided tooth plate chain cover trousers
Brake:
High braking performance aluminum V-brake system
Tires:
16 "* 1.2" black child white edges, building ultra-large high-pressure tire / valve nozzle type-A / V
Wheels:

Oxidation surface treatment of aluminum alloy rim

Joint:
Oyama effort streamline deviation styling aluminum folding device patent
Bowl Group:
Waterproof rotating bowl Fork Group
Hand:
Ergonomic design comfort grip
Cushion:
Ergonomic high-elastic flow line saddle
Appearance treatment:
Four-layer liquid coating / three-dimensional luminous crystal S / Seamless Labeling
Suitable for height:
150 ~ 175 cm
Vehicle weight:
10.5 kilograms
Folding Size:
73 * 36 * 58 cm
Available colors:
1. Charming bluestone 2. Tender and beautiful red 3. Lake Blue
Ratio:
The maximum rate of transmission than three times the largest single-lap distance 3.83 meters to go
Note:
Configuration subject to change without notice, all in order to prevail in kind

Upgraded Dolphin PRO series uses lightweight aluminum folding bicycle design, weighs only 10.5 kilograms, but in the configuration with respect there is much more variable
Delivery: Quick-release type aluminum hubs, SHIMANO within a three-speed transmission systems, ultra-light 16 * 1.2 tire, with a faster cycling speed.

Jan 23, 2010

Nexus One Review

The Nexus One. In the modern climate of hyped (and over-hyped) smartphone launches, Google's official entry into the phone-sales game has excelled in a department where many find difficulty: generating legitimate excitement. Of course, long before the name Nexus One or the recent bounty of pictures and details existed, the very concept of a "Google Phone" had been ingrained in the public conscience, predating even the Open Handset Alliance and Android itself; the company dabbled in the concept of direct sales through its offering of the Android Dev Phones 1 and 2 (alias Ion), but this time, it's a public retail ordeal, not a couple of one-off developer specials. The genuine-article Google Phone is finally here -- for better or worse.

The device, a Snapdragon-powered, HTC-built phone looks -- on paper, at least -- like the ultimate Android handset, combining a newly tweaked and tightened user interface with killer industrial design. A sleek, streamlined phone that can easily go toe-to-toe with the iPhone 3GSs, Pres, and Droids of the world, powered by the latest version of Android (2.1 "Flan," if you're counting), and hand-retooled by Google. But is it all it's cracked up to be? Can the Nexus One possibly live up to the hype ascribed to it? And more importantly, is the appearance of the phone the death knell for the OHA and a sign of the coming Android autocracy? In our exclusive review of the Nexus One, we'll answer all those pressing questions and more... so read on for the full scoop!

Note: The unit we have in hand is -- by all appearances -- a production model, save for the QR code imprint on the back, which is likely an employee-only Easter egg. However, Google is making its official announcement tomorrow, and there could always be differences. If anything changes with the device, or there are revelations about the marketing or sale of the phone, we'll be sure to update the review with new info.

Hardware


As we said in the intro -- and our
previous hands-on write up -- the Nexus One is nothing if not handsome. From its ultra-thin body to sleek, curved edges, the phone is absolutely lustworthy. While it's unmistakably HTC, there are plenty of design cues that feel authentically Google as well -- and it's that balance which makes the phone such an intriguing piece of hardware.

Industrial design


When you first lay eyes on the Nexus One, you can almost hear someone at Google say something like, "Make us something as sexy as the iPhone, but let's not forget what got us here" -- "what got us here" being the G1, which Google worked tightly with HTC to create. Whether you love or hate the iPhone, it's hard to deny its obvious physical attractiveness, and it's clear that Google and HTC made strides to bring an Android handset into the same realm of base desirability that Apple's halo device occupies. For the most part, they've succeeded. The phone shape finds itself somewhere between the iPhone and Palm Pre -- taking the Pre's curved, stone-like shape and stretching it into something resembling a more standard touchscreen device (a la the
Hero or Instinct). The body of the handset is comprised of what appears to the eye as two interlocking pieces, a main, dark gray housing (coated in a soft-touch treatment) which is intersected and wrapped by a lighter gray, smooth, almost metallic band. The overall effect is fluid, though we're not crazy about the choice of coloring -- we would have liked to see something a little more consistent as opposed to the two-tone, particularly when the choice of hues is this drab and familiar. Still, the shape and size of the phone is absolutely fantastic; even though the surface of the device houses a 3.7-inch display, the handset generally feels trimmer and more svelte than an iPhone, Hero, and certainly the Droid.

HTC has managed to get the thickness of the phone down to just 11.5mm, and it measures just 59.8mm and 119mm across and up and down -- kind of a feat when you consider the guts of this thing. In the hand it's a bit lighter than you expect -- though it's not straight-up light -- and the curved edges and slightly tapered top and bottom make for a truly comfortable phone to hold. On the glass-covered front of the device there are four "hardware" buttons (just touch-sensitive spots on the display) laid out exactly as the Droid's four hard keys: back, menu, home, and search. Clearly this is going to be something of a trend with Google-approved devices.


Unlike the Droid, the Nexus One has a trackball just below those buttons that should feel very familiar to Hero users -- the placement feels a bit awkward here, and there's literally nothing in the OS that requires it. Along the left side you've got a volume rocker, up top there's a sleep / wake / power button on one end, and a 3.5mm headphone jack on the other, and along the bottom there's a micro-USB port, a mic hole, and three gold dots that look destined for some kind of dock (which would jibe with what we've
seen and heard). Around back you'll find the strangely pronounced 5 megapixel camera and accompanying LED flash, along with Google's Android mascot holding up a QR code -- a decidedly geeky Google touch that we expect won't make it to the final retail version. The layout of the phone is solid, though we would have liked a physical camera key (no biggie), and we actually had some real trouble with those four dedicated buttons. Hopefully it was just our review unit, but the target areas seemed to be too high on the row, and we found ourselves consistently accidentally tapping them while composing an email or text message, or missing them when we tapped a little too low. It wasn't a deal breaker, but it was definitely maddening -- especially considering that we don't have similar issues on the Droid.

Despite the minor niggles, HTC and Google have put together pretty damn good looking and feeling phone; it's not without faults, but they're pretty few and far between.

Internals


As you've heard, the Nexus One runs atop the much-hyped, rarely seen 1GHz
Snapdragon CPU from Qualcomm (the same processor powering the HD2) -- really the highlight of this show. The phone also has 512MB of both RAM and ROM, but those hoping for new application storage options will find themselves out of luck yet again -- you're still limited to that small partition for app use. The display is an AMOLED, 480 x 800 capacitive touchscreen, and the handset also contains a light sensor, proximity sensor, and accelerometer, along with an HSPA-capable GSM radio (AWS and euro 2100MHz bands only for 3G -- sorry AT&T users), WiFi, the prerequisite AGPS chip, and a microSD slot (which comes loaded with a 4GB card, but is expandable to 32GB). By late-2009 / early-2010 standards, there's really nothing notable about the guts of this phone beyond the presence of a Snapdragon processor, and even that left something to be desired. The phone is fast, assuredly, but not so much of a leap up from the Droid that we felt it kept pace with the boost we were expecting. Scrolling lists and opening apps seemed speedy, but put simply, it's not a whole new Android experience (we'll talk more about this in the software section).

Display


The 3.7-inch display should be stunning -- and is for the most part -- but we did have some issues with it (at least on the unit we have). In terms of touch sensitivity, the display is as good or better than any Android phone we've used. While the resolution is high (480 x 800), it's missing 54 pixels that we expected given the size of the Droid's screen. It didn't bother us that much, but it's noticeable in certain apps -- Gmail for instance, where you have to scroll further in some menus than you do on the Droid. The big issue with the screen, though, is actually the color balance. We found colors on the Nexus One, particularly in the reds and oranges, to be severely blown-out and oversaturated -- a common effect with AMOLED displays like the Nexus One's. At first we thought Google had tweaked some of the Market settings because the highlight orange was so bright, but comparing images on the web across different displays, the Nexus One consistently looked brighter then it should have. Oh, and using this thing in daylight? Forget about it. Like most screens of this type, the Nexus One is a nightmare to see with any kind of bright light around, and snapping photos with it on a sunny day was like taking shots with your eyes closed.

Camera


One place where the Nexus One seems to be improving things is in the camera department. Not only has Google bumped up the speed of the camera app (which we're still not that stoked about in general), but the 5 megapixel lens and flash took sharp, detailed images with none of the HTC-related issues we've seen on other models. The focus of the lens was super speedy, and images came out looking more or less as we'd hoped. The flash felt a bit stark at times, but given its size, we didn't lose too much sleep over it. One place where Google has really made some smart decisions is within the Gallery application. Instead of the drab, flat iterations of Android past, the new version is extremely attractive and user friendly, giving you far more options than before (like a nice pan and scan slideshow) and making browsing photos a much more enjoyable experience.


Telephony / data / earpiece and speaker


As a phone, the Nexus One isn't dramatically different than most GSM devices you've probably used. In terms of earpiece quality and volume, it's certainly on par with its contemporaries, providing a loud, reasonably clean talking experience, though it doesn't touch the Droid in terms of call clarity and evenness. The loudspeaker, on the other hand, seemed extremely tinny to our ears, making for a pretty unpleasant companion for conference calls, with the midrange cutting through in a way that could be painful at times. We'd be inclined to blame that issue on the extremely thin housing here, but it's hard to say what the real culprit is. As far as connections and 3G pickup, the Nexus fared as well as our iPhone did when traveling, but -- surprise, surprise -- neither of these could touch Verizon. For instance, at JFK airport, we had no trouble placing calls on the Droid, but both the Nexus One and iPhone were completely incommunicado. When we hit the ground in Las Vegas however (you know, for a little event called CES 2010), 3G seemed to function as we might have hoped. In a few cases, T-Mobile did seem to be hanging onto a signal a bit better than AT&T was, and in a browser test between the two, even though the iPhone ended up with a slightly faster load time, the Nexus One pulled down initial content considerably quicker. In all, we averaged download speeds of around 559Kbps on the phone -- about where we expected things to be.

Software



Now, the big story with the Nexus One (besides how it's being sold -- we'll get to that in a minute) has been the rumored alterations or updates Google has made with Android 2.1. There's been talk that this is somehow the "real Android," a suggestion that other, earlier versions weren't true to Google's mold. There's been talk that the Nexus One is worth the hype, and will blow people away when they see what this version of Android can do. Mostly, there's been a lot of talk. So, what's really the story here?

Well the real story is that Android 2.1 is in no way dramatically different than the iteration of the OS which is currently running on the Motorola Droid (2.0.1). In fact, there is so little that's different in the software here, we were actually surprised. Of the notable changes, many are cosmetic -- if there are major underlying differences between this OS and the one on the Droid, we can't see what they are. Still, there ARE changes, so here's a peek at just what Google has cooked up for the new phone.

Firstly, the place where Google really seems to have put a lot of its energies has been in the look and feel of homescreen navigation. Obviously the feedback the company has gotten is shaping the next steps on Android's path, and as anyone who has used Android will tell you, the homescreen situation
was kind of a mess. In 2.1, Google has jettisoned key chunks of the established Android paradigm for how to get around its device. Most noticeably, the company has killed the sliding drawer which used to house all of your application icons -- the tab is replaced with a handy "home" icon which zooms in your icons over top of whatever homescreen you're on. You can scroll up and down through those icons, which is now accompanied by a cute 3D animation where the items slide over the top and bottom edge, like wrapping a piece of paper around the side of a table. It's nice, but not necessarily functional in any way. Google has also added a little bounce to the menu, in keeping with its contemporaries' love of physics.


Additionally Google has expanded the number of homescreens accessible from three to five (following a precedent set by skins like Sense and BLUR), adding a combo of webOS and iPhone style dots to help you keep track of where you're situated. If you long press on those dots, you get a kind of "card" view of all your homescreens which you can use for quick jumps. All of the homescreen improvements are just that -- improvements -- and it's nice to see Google thinking about a user's first impression of this device. Not only do these additions bolster the look and feel of the UI, but they're actually sensible and helpful solutions to problems which Google had heretofore approached in an obtuse way.

Elsewhere, there are nips and tucks that are welcome, such as the improved Gallery application we mentioned previously, which seems to be one of the few areas actually tapping into the Snapdragon's horsepower. But Google stumbles as well; the dated and always-underwhelming music player has undergone almost zero change, and the soft keyboard -- while better than previous models -- can still be inaccurate. Of course, Google wants to provide another option for text input that we haven't seen before the Nexus One. Now included when the keyboard pops up is an option to use the company's speech-to-text engine, which will (attempt) to translate your words into onscreen text. Our experiments with the technology were marginally successful, but we don't see this being a big part of our communications game until the audio recognition gets a little more robust. It might work for an occasional SMS where use of the Queen's English isn't a priority.


One other thing. As we mentioned in our impressions post, there's no multitouch on the Nexus One. Now, we can live with a browser or Google Maps with no pinch-to-zoom, but not having a hardware keyboard hamstrings this device in other ways. For instance, gaming on the phone is pretty much abysmal save for a few accelerometer-based titles. And some of our favorite software, such as Nesoid (an NES emulator) is a total dead. For a phone which uses touch input as its main vehicle for navigation, relegating that experience to a single digit is really kind of bogus. There were plenty of times when using the Nexus One (and this does happen with other Android devices as well, but it's pronounced here) where we felt not just bummed that you could only use one point of contact, but actually a little angry. Why won't Google open this up? Why have they kept what has become a normal and quite useful manner of interaction away from their devices? Only Eric Schmidt knows for sure. What it made us realize, however, is that an Android phone is really better off with a keyboard, and we were longing to get back to the Droid a number of times while using this device.

Battery life

We haven't had a lot of time to spend with the phone just yet (you may have heard, it's been a bit hard to get ahold of), but from what we've seen, the battery performs admirably. Thus far we haven't had any major shockers when it came to power drain, and that AMOLED screen seems to go easy on things even when cranked up to a pretty stark setting. That said, we did see a dip when taking long calls, which indicates that this might not be a charge-free device day to day if you've got some serious gossip to dish. We're going to be running some more tests this week to see how the phone performs over a lengthier stretch of time, and we'll let you guys know how it fares.

Pricing and availability


As of this writing, all we have on the Nexus One in terms of pricing and sales plans comes to us in the form of
leaked documents and tipster screenshots. That said, if everything falls into line the way we think it should, the sale of the phone won't be the kind of barnstorming industry shakeup that many predicted -- rather, it's business as usual, with one small difference. While the phone is manufactured by HTC and destined for use on T-Mobile's network, Google will be the one doing the selling of the device. By all appearances, the company will have a new phone portal where buyers can pick between an unsubsidized, unlocked Nexus One for $529.99, or sign up for a two-year agreement with T-Mobile and purchase the phone for $179.99. This shouldn't seem strange or exciting to anyone who's recently bought a smartphone -- it's pretty much the lay of the land right now. Previous to the documents we'd seen, the hope was that Google had found some ingenious ad-supported way to get this phone into consumer's hands for a low, seemingly subsidized price but without the shackles of a contract or specific carrier -- but those plans seem have been either invented, or somehow dashed.

Wrap-up


Never mind the Nexus One itself for a moment -- there's a bigger picture here, and it might spell a fundamental change for the direction of Android as a platform. Whereas Google had originally positioned itself as a sort of patron saint for Android -- sending it off into the cold world to be nourished and advanced in a totally transparent way by the widely-supported Open Handset Alliance -- it has instead taken a deeply active role and has elected to maintain some semblance of secrecy as it moves from pastry-themed version to version. In general, that approach isn't necessarily a bad thing for device variety, functionality, and availability, but the way Android's evolution in particular has gone down certainly seems like a bait-and-switch from an outsider's view. Take Motorola and Verizon, for example: what had seemed like a deep, tight partnership literally just weeks ago with the announcement of Eclair and the selection of the Droid / Milestone as 2.0's launch platform has taken a distant back seat just as quickly as it rose to the top. In a word, Google is plunging head-first into the dangerous game Microsoft has adamantly sought to avoid all these years on WinMo: competing head-to-head with its valued (well, supposedly valued) partners. Whether Android risks losing support over manufacturers and carriers being treated like pieces of meat remains to be seen, but realistically, Motorola (which has very publicly gone all-in with Mountain View over the past year) and others are likely to grin and bear it as long as the platform pays the bills -- no matter how awkward competing with the company that writes your kernel and huge swaths of your shell might be.

Industry politics aside, though, the Nexus One is at its core just another Android smartphone. It's a particularly good one, don't get us wrong -- certainly up there with the best of its breed -- but it's not in any way the Earth-shattering, paradigm-skewing device the media and community cheerleaders have built it up to be. It's a good Android phone, but not the last word -- in fact, if we had to choose between this phone or the Droid right now, we would lean towards the latter. Of course, if Google's goal is to spread Android more wide than deep, maybe this is precisely the right phone at the right time: class-leading processor, vibrant display, sexy shell, and just a sprinkling of geekiness that only Google could pull off this effortlessly.

Then again, we suspect Motorola, Samsung, Verizon, and countless other partners might disagree.


Additional reporting by Chris Ziegler
Source: Engadget

Jan 22, 2010

SEO 101 Common Mistakes

For all the “SEO isn’t rocket science” crap you get from certain quarters it’s funny to see that companies from huge concerns down to one-man bands continue to commit the same errors they were making 10 years ago. If you’re an SEO, you could easily add to this list yourself (and I’ll have to thank the whole team for chipping in a good few ideas to bring this list to a nice round number!) If you’re a web designer who thinks that “good CSS = SEO”, a writer who thinks that “good content = SEO” or a developer who just thinks “SEO = bullshit” then here are a few pitfalls to bear in mind if you’re considering using SEO as a way to bring your products to market.

GENERAL STRATEGY

SEO isn’t just a discipline that exists outside the goals of your business. It should complement and be informed by wider business smarts.

  1. Treating onsite SEO as a ‘one-off’ project without a plan to regularly review the site – especially if your site has a high product or content rollover, or has big seasonal changes to push new messages and offers
  2. Changing horses mid-stream – revisiting keyword lists month by month in response to internal politics
  3. Not consulting existing Analytics data to identify best performing keywords
  4. Targeting all markets simultaneously
  5. Forgetting about Bing and Yahoo, where rankings and traffic can be easier to find in the short term
  6. Failing to understand (or convey to a client) that an SEO campaign is a long term strategy and results will not necessarily be evident in the first weeks or even months in competitive markets
  7. Failing to utilize universal search options for increased SERPS visibility eg images, news, blog search, product feeds etc
  8. Failing to work out initially if you can get a ROI from a sector you are targeting (profit margins, keyword volume etc)
  9. Putting SEO in a silo outside core business objectives
  10. Failing to include SEO input during the building of an online business plan and creating a site development spec.

MARKET RESEARCH

  1. Concentrating on trying to concentrate on acquiring the ’same’ links as your competition
  2. Looking solely at offline competitors
  3. Not tracking industry news and events for new, fresh content ideas
  4. Identifying ‘competitors’ purely based on results for broad, vanity keywords
  5. Not using tools like Google Insight or paying for data from the likes Hitwise to identify seasonal trends
  6. Not using the valuable data available from a concurrent PPC campaign to monitor converting keywords
  7. Being unprepared to deal with social media
  8. Failing to deal with negative feedback and reviews online
  9. Failure to do your own market research through reviewing interaction with your site through Analytics, click tracking, customer surveys etc
  10. Failing to have any form of conversion tracking software on the site to see what keywords are the ones that you have to go after

KEYWORDS

  1. Focussing on a small number of high volume ‘vanity’ terms rather than a deeper and better-converting long tail
  2. Allowing keyword choices on the basis of “the MD checks this every day”
  3. Chasing unrealistic keywords for your budget
  4. Choosing keywords from internal industry-speak rather than consumer-led terms with actual traffic
  5. Deploying brand / company name as part of a tedious “Company.co.uk – About” page title formula
  6. Setting too many keywords to dilute linkbuilding and content efforts
  7. Believing the numbers for likely traffic
  8. Using the “other users found this page by..” method of including misspellings and synonyms
  9. Forgetting that 25% of all searches have never been seen before and that search queries are typically much longer than single words
  10. Not reviewing keyword choices to understand where your site is failing to convert visitors and why

CONTENT

  1. Copying content from other sites – potentially tripping penalties
  2. Stuffing content with unnatural frequencies of keywords
  3. Keyword “wishlists” in page titles (“UK SEO – SEO in the UK – UK SEO Agency from a UK SEO” etc)
  4. Duplicated meta descriptions, which encourage Google to create their own snippets which can be nonsensical and harm clickthrough rates
  5. Deploying content in images and Flash files
  6. Creating content that has no value to human readers and fails to back up your market messages
  7. Syndicating content to higher authority sites which are likely to be indexed before your own site and thus become canonical
  8. Placing a large block of keyword-stuffed “seo content” a mouse scroll below the footer on the home page
  9. Outsourcing content writing to the cheapest provider that you can find… you get what you pay for
  10. Putting text within images rather than using background images under HTML text content

LINKS

  1. Building links from a narrow range of IP addresses
  2. Demanding link volume rather than looking at quality
  3. Using more than one company to build links without co-ordination between their goals
  4. Buying blogroll links from sites with dozens of unrelated, anchor text links to companies in completely different markets
  5. Using toolbar PageRank to determine the value of a link in isolation, without considering the content of the page, quality of the domain etc
  6. Not re-checking link equity from established links to make sure good links haven’t gone bad
  7. Relying on a small number of sources for links that could be nofollowed/deleted/removed by policy at any time
  8. Over building links on a small set of anchor text
  9. Not creating links to sites and pages that already link to you naturally
  10. Believing that linking to the search engines or an SEO company will deliver you any benefit

WATCH YOUR URLS

  1. Not redirecting URLs to a canonical domain – leading to huge duplicate content issues
  2. Leaving the non-www version and the www live simultaneously
  3. Not sending correct 404 HTTP responses for broken pages
  4. Using long strings of variables in URLs rather than short, static URLs with a proper file extension
  5. Not using the correct 301 response for old content that has moved to a new URL
  6. Using links for territories and currencies that create duplicates of your content in all but minor ways
  7. Using ‘unfriendly’ characters in URLs, such as underscores instead of hypens
  8. Allowing the indexing of URLS with session id variables
  9. Not using keywords within URL structures over numbers and internal shorthand
  10. Having a directory structure that includes terms like ’seo’

CHANNELLING YOUR EQUITY

  1. Deploying sitewide links to low-value pages such as “categories” with 1 product in them
  2. Linking every page to every other through an over-prescriptive menu and diluting equity spread to non-critical content
  3. Leaking equity to external sites by not deploying the rel=nofollow attribute
  4. Using ‘click here’ and ‘read more’ as default choices for internal links, rather than more descriptive phrases containing keywords where appropriate
  5. Not using the homepage to channel power to the most important market sectors you’re targeting
  6. Not using other properties you own (parent company websites, partners etc) to direct keyword equity to your target site
  7. Using internal nofollows to try to sculpt PageRank
  8. Failing to protect your site from exploits – everything from basic keyword spam in blog comments to sophisticated hacks
  9. Using XML sitemaps to mask poor internal link structure
  10. Not understanding the importance of ‘first link first’

CODE

  1. Deploying lots of inline Javascript and CSS and increasing the site’s download time
  2. Keeping CSS and Javascript files on the same domain, reducing threading and increasing load times
  3. Leaving dozens or hundreds of ‘keywords’ in the meta keyword
  4. Having page titles that deploy “keyword wish lists”
  5. Using navigation that can only be accessed through Javascript
  6. Not considering the use of AJAX to bring in content and links to keep load times low and control equity spread without compromising user experience
  7. Serving unoptimised images with large file sizes
  8. Failing to label images with relevant alt attributes containing keywords as appropriate
  9. Serving different pages to spiders and human visitors through cloaking without an obviously justifiable reason such as personalisation
  10. Denying access to spiders through Robots.txt

RELATIONSHIPS

  1. Not keeping the SEO company in the loop with changes to the company’s wider strategy
  2. Allowing web developers to build/change things on the site willy-nilly without informing and consulting with SEO
  3. Changing contact points frequently so that messages and learning get lost
  4. Not introducing SEO agencies to other parties like offline marketing companies, PR agencies etc. This misses massive opportunities for content synergy and pooling of ideas.
  5. Not responding to requests for information and content
  6. Not ensuring that SEO recommendations are implemented as fully as possible
  7. Blaming SEO partners for falling traffic without first seeing if there are wider market reasons such as seasonality that could be playing a part
  8. Enacting SEO recommendations from other third parties without consulting with an existing SEO partner
  9. Being unwilling to gain a small understanding of HTML / CSS
  10. Not paying your SEO company!

THE FIRST RULE OF SEO CLUB IS…. “DON’T TALK ABOUT SEO CLUB”

  1. Leaving “clues” in source code like
  2. Using obvious file names and document structure. http://www.yoursite.com/styles/seo.css is going to attraction attention and all that “text-indent:-100em” stuff is going to highlight your hidden content pretty much off the bat.
  3. Having dozens of obvious keyword landing pages linked from sitewides
  4. Advertising the fact that you belong to a link exchange program by carrying banners that promote such schemes
  5. Asking for advice about SEO issues on public forums without consulting your SEO company first
  6. Leaving link requests in blog comments
  7. Creating easily identifiable networks with common IP addresses, templates and outlink profiles that have an obvious relationship with your target site
  8. Making sloppy link requests to bloggers who are likely to out you (hint: read their back catalogue!)
  9. Using automated tools to check rankings on too big a scale
  10. Using the same link sources for different target sites again and again

AND FINALLY….

  1. Don’t believe everything you read on SEO blogs ;)

    paul carpenter