SEO Expert, Evangelist and SEO Consulting Services - Tony Adam

I keep hearing lately about what the “secret ingredient” or “secret sauce” is of SEO. It has kind of bothered me because for about 2 years now i’ve been in the industry and never heard of such terms coined. Having attended PubCon in 2004 and attending this year I am kind of excited to see the new things on the agenda. But, I’m still puzzled where all these ideas of “secrets” came up. I’ve carried a couple companies to the top of search rankings and never really knew anything of secret sauce, but mostly, consistent structure and relevance. Is this the “ohh so secret sauce” that people keeping talking about or is there something I should know about?! Let’s get some good back and forth going for anyone interested in the topics?

Recently I took a test spin of Windows Vista Beta 2 on my desktop to see how it would stand up to the test.  Unfortunately, it was completely buggy and had major issues.  Although, we do know that this is no where near shipping, but, will it ever live up to its potential?  I have some belief that they are making some major efforts towards really locking it down and cleaning up buggy code.  But, will this suffice?  With all the push back already, is a Beta 3 release before the actual Release Candidate actually enough to release a strong and secure OS.  We keep hearing about the persuit for quality as of late.  Personally, I’m interested in seeing the end result in 2007, to see if the expectations will truely measure up.

So what is the deal with the current state of the web? I keep reading articles about how things are looking like they did during the ‘99 “Dot Bomb.” Are we heading towards a massive burst in the bubble that is building up or will it continue to grow strong this time? There are many factors that come into play that I believe is causing all of this speculation about the web industry.

First, social networking and user-generated content sites (e.g. Myspace, FaceBook, YouTube, etc.) are getting evaluated in the billions when they have no succesful revenue generating models. Even a site like YouTube is being evaluated above $1 billion when it brings in absolutely no-money and is a consistent loss.

Second, salaries going up, companies spending boat loads, and the industry is boming like it was back in ‘99.

Third, advertising money is going up and the industry is screaming along with a massive amount of growth.

So, what does all of this evaluate too. In my eyes a lot of people are saying the Web 2.0 and Advertising 2.0 industries are both going to see another huge “bubble burst” like we did back in ‘99. But, truthfully, I highly doubt that we will see a huge shift like this for sometime, if ever at all. People have learned from mistakes and the cases are not the same. The industry still has much more growth within it, especially with the new broadband and digital mediums being provided. There might be a slow down pattern, but I can bet you that there will be no “Dot Bomb 2.0″ anytime soon.

A term that I just saw in my recent readings for OMMA magazine, really got me thinking. “Advertising 2.0″….hmmph, interesting. With all the current talk about Web 2.0 on the internet, I am shocked that advertisers haven’t tried to dub this feature theirs. It’s such a catchy term that goes directly hand-in-hand with the current Web 2.0 state.

So, I am officially starting my advertising 2.0 campaign. With the digital age that we are living in, advertising and marketing has taken such a huge step and leap forward with Search/Internet/Online Advertising & Marketing. To all my fellow Internet Marketers, advertisers and innovators, join me in starting the Advertising 2.0 craze!!

(Poor attempt at starting something cool?!…I think not!!)

I just need to go on a quick tangent regarding the friendster patent that has been released recently. I wanted to take a step back and look at it from Friendsters point of view, but i really couldn’t see anything positive. The truth is, friendster is doing just what i was hoping it would not, trying to steal away funds and hurt the current and future social networking prospects. This last second dive is just that, a dive, like a cheap boxer taking a dive just to make some cash, Friendster is doing just that.

The other thing that upsets me is the fact that they are tagging themselves as an originator in social networking. The truth is there were sticky features in most other major sites like PlanetAll and Webmaster World that were doing these types of things, like building communities, since the mid 90’s.

I just wanted to come out and say this was an EXTREMELY cheap effort by Friendster who is trying to effectively use the courts to make its final heave for cash in their failing business model. Shame on friendster for not trying to do something new, specialized and exciting and blatently saying other companies are stealing their ideas.