I just thought it was kind of funny that someone reserved the .org domain for the exact keyword phrase I was looking for, down to the very year of 2011. It will be interesting to see how well the exact match domain SEO tactic works next year at this time. Have a great Memorial Day!

Have you ever found yourself reading an article and realized that a word or two just seemed insanely out of place? And that if another more obvious word were substituted, the sentence would make perfect sense? Why didn’t the author use the correct wording? You may have been the victim of an article spin fail:

a SEO tactic whereby numerous unique versions of an original article are automatically generated by searching and replacing keywords and phrases, but that does not make sense to the human eye.

If you’re like me, you probably don’t read as much as you’d like. Call me prejudiced, but when I read, I like to read works that are written by humans. I won’t call out the source, but I stumbled the above phrase while strolling through a neighbor’s content farm. Do you think the above was written by a human? Someone or something totally missed the point.

Notice the first sentence in the bullet point. Note the capitalization. How should the sentence have read?

1. CharlieSheen.com is Down

Celebrity status aside, one of the most important aspects of a winning website starts with, well, being able to view it. CharlieSheen.com displays the  default ”404 page not found” page in any browser that requests the page. 404 is the http status code that occurs when a website is aka losing, aka not winning. 100% down time means no train wreck to watch. Listen and hear it crying out for web hosting.

2. Charlie Sheen doesn’t own CharlieSheen.com

According to the current whois record, a Hot Rods company in Canada owns Charlie Sheen’s namesake .com. March 19, 1997 was a good day for the owner of CharlieSheen.com, but not for Sheen. Charlie starred in no less than five films that year. There probably wasn’t a lot of time for dealing with Network Solutions, the one and only domain registrar at the time. Now, even CharlieSheen.info is taken. But, why hasn’t Sheen bought CharlieSheen.com instead of spending on some of the other things we hear about? CharlieSheen.com could be a winning domain if only it were in Sheen’s hands.

3. Not Indexed by Google

How much free organic search traffic do you think Google would send Charlie Sheen’s site if it had even one page indexed? How many natural backlinks would Sheen’s domain receive? How many of the 368,000 Googlers in the image below who typed “Charlie Sheen” into the search field would click through to the exact match .com domain? Getting indexed would be a quick and easy win for this celebrity, no doubt.

4. No Content

Perhaps worse than a content farm and certainly more tragic is the conspicuous absence of web content on CharlieSheen.com. Whatever your opinion about Charlie Sheen, everyone agrees that he is a human viral content generating machine. Imagine the content that could fill the pages of a CharlieSheen.com curated by the Sheen.

5. Not Monetized

The Google AdWords Keyword Tool suggests some words and their corresponding exact match traffic that CharlieSheen.com could potentially receive. How many of those 368,000 Googlers who typed “Charlie Sheen” into the search field would click through to the exact match .com domain? Would fans buy Charlie Sheen T-Shirts and DVDs? Would the consume Charlie Sheen news from the horses mouth?

And what about monetizing traffic from social media? A celebrity with 3 million Twitter followers and over half a million Facebook likes should be able to seriously bring it.

Let it be known that I am not a fan of Charlie Sheen’s domain strategy. But, does he really need CharlieSheen.com? There may come a point where celebrity brands can transcend the need for exact match domains that trolls like us to fawn over.

Hey SEO’s, what’s wrong with this Google AdSense advertisement? Don’t you love the way that two businesses have to co-exist on the same Google AdSense ad? One way to avoid SEO malpractice is to restrain yourself from the practice of guaranteed SEO:

No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.

Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a “special relationship” with Google, or advertise a “priority submit” to Google.

Perhaps the above quote from the Google Search Engine Optimization Guidelines should read No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google except a Google advertiser.

I’m heading out to buy my copy of Call of Duty Black Ops and have a few thoughts before go. Multiplayer online games have been part of my life since the mid-1990′s. It was lonely in those days, firing up the old 28k modem and a bit of hope to connect with friends. I remember wanting to play certain games like flight sims and there just not being enough opponents around. The graphics were quite bad so I had to use the imagination to sufficiently suspend reality. Yes, I remember literally stalking the truck that delivered some of the 3DFX Voodoo 2 graphics cards to my neighborhood. If you were a gamer, you were a geek in those days.

I find myself going out to make a purchase of around $60 for a game I have not tried the beta for and which I feel confident I don’t need to try. I know for certain that Call of Duty: Black Ops will be fun not just because the last title proved loads of fun, Modern Warfare 2, but because of the unprecedented consumer demand. For this game to fail, it would be like a dud Spielberg film or a bitter Starbucks latte. Activision could charge $120 per copy and double their revenue, if they wanted.

Another thing. I will probably finish the single player version of the game in days and move on to the longer lasting, competitive arena of multiplayer, which I’ll play for at least a year. I’ll get my money’s worth and it might even keep my out of trouble in the real world. Today the online aspect of games has become the dominant mode over single player because gaming is now solidly social.

This stuff is seriously main stream now. It’s funny. Everytime I wear the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 T-shirt my wife gave me for Christmas last year, people everywhere start coming up to me with that glimmer in their eye saying

Great game, man.

To which I agree and then inevitably the question of what platform do you play on comes up, to which I reply “PC” and they usually reply Playstation or Xbox. But, that brings me to another point. It doesn’t matter what platform you play on anymore. It’s the same game. You know the guy has experienced the thrill of killstreaks and the undying agony of stolen care packages. It’s a high five, bonding type moment.

It’s no longer lonely being an online gamer. It’s no longer slow. No longer pixelated. And just as I’m writing this, I look at Kobe Bryant in the Activision Call of Duty: Black Ops commercial and realize that it’s no longer considered geeky to spend many hours in front of a screen without eating or sleeping. The future of online gaming looks even better than it did before.

Call of Duty: Black Ops TV Commercial “There’s a Soldier in All of Us”

Did you notice the ads during this political season? The ad pictured above depicting Democrat incumbant senator Barbara Boxer bull running in Spain is sponsored by her Republican opponent Carly Fiorina. If you hold your mouse over the subtle “i” you will see that the ad is also sponsored by Google. I like the ad, but I have never seen Google show any hint of wanting to hide the “Ads by Google” message that prevents the blurring of website content with advertising. Perhaps Google doesn’t mind a little confusion within political ads that range from tame (like this one), to offensive, (more common). After all, these ads don’t involve ecommerce, just the future of the country.

So this is how web designers get all those of links. This might work for most folks, but not me. Recently I asked for an estimate from several web design firms for a new project. One of the web design firms replied with a rather lengthy questionairre for to fill out and return. When I saw number 5, I stopped cold, yelled loudly, then closed the questionairre. One thing I am not going to do is pay a web designer 20% of the project price to keep his link off of my site.

1. Digg 4 is Faster

   Not just because it is built on the same database modelling as Facebook, Twitter and Reddit, but because Digg 4 is all about speed and efficiency. The cleverly engineered minimalist user interface, keep-it-simple-stupid functionality, and stripped down features mean faster load times and less drag on server resources. Who needs burdensome social media gimmicks anyway?

2. No more “Digg Effect”

   Does your website get traffic from Digg, so much that it crashes your server? The “Digg effect” became a badge of honor to some bloggers, but most did not cherish picking up the pieces after making the Digg front page. It turns out that the Digg 4 effect is not the same as the Digg effect. With Digg 4′s new traffic mitigating architecture, you don’t have to worry about large numbers of Digg visitors rushing to your site. This means you can cut your site operating budget. Purchase cheap web hosting and still sleep well at night. You don’t need VPS hosting, a dedicated server or trendy cloud hosting. You can even remove those cache plugins from your WordPress installation.

3. More Friends

   No more policing your submissions to see if your digg friends are really your friends. It doesn’t matter. Everyone is your friend on Digg 4. Add everyone as friends. Do it now!

4. Digg 4 is Honest

   What if there was actually something that wasn’t Bush’s fault? Would anyone have the courage to say so? From BP ads to “there is a x% chance that this is programmer Doe’s fault” errors, Digg 4 has some of the most honest messaging in all of social media. I challenge anyone to show me a site with more unabashed, straightforward admissions.

5. Freedom from Burynoia

   Don’t you hate it when you submit a great story that 99% of Digg users think sucks only to have your dream narrative tossed six feet underground in the same hole with Republican microsoft-loving spammers? Not in Digg 4. There are no bury brigades or left-wing smear campaigns.

6. Arrive Home Safely

   Are your Digg relationships so important that you scratch your friends’ backs via the Digg mobile app in traffic? Worry no more. The digg iPhone app doesn’t work (oops, now it seems to wo–)

7. No More Lost Password Worries

   Misplace your Digg 4 password? No problem. Take a deep breath. Wait it out. No need to panic. Digg 4 will be there exactly as it was before you got locked out.

8. Liberation from Powerusers

   Do you dislike with a passion how the poweruser elites take advantage of you by submitting stories from your favorite site BEFORE you? Never worry about rushing out to find good sources of news to submit before MrBabyMan gets his hands on your story and takes credit for it. With Digg 4, you don’t even have to worry about submitting. Just sit back in your chair, grab some popcorn and coke and watch the autosubmissions.

9. Better RSS

   Some people like living on the edge. Does the ability to manage your RSS feeds from your favorite sites give you a thrill that words cannot describe? Make you feel young again? You’re in luck because Digg 4 does an excellent job with displaying near real-time data from sites that YOU choose. You’ll never be forced to view the submissions of others with Digg 4.

10. Reduced Bannings

    Violate the Digg terms of service? Not violate the Digg terms of service? Yes, I know you’ve worried about being banned either way. Digg 4 makes getting banned less likely.

11. Programmers Can Move On

    You know that tool based on the Digg API that you put hundreds of hours of your time into building? It and the Digg API are “deprecated.”

12. Popularity Contests Ended

    You know you want to be the most popular user on Digg, right? You want the celebrity status. Admit it. It’s driving you crazy and you’re making bad submissions as a result. You can’t think clearly. Your significant other is asking you why you are staring at your Digg statistics all day long. With Digg 4, you won’t develop OCD over whether or not the story you worked hard to find and submit went popular. A story is a story after all, right? And, by the same token, a submitter is a submitter, is he not? Be confident that by design, all submitters are equal in the perfect social world of Digg 4.

13. No Training Required

    Confused about how to use the new Digg? Me too. I usually just sit there and stare for a while, then try and find an old friend or a story I like. Digg something. Feel confused. Leave. Come back. Rinse. Repeat. Some are saying that training would help. But why complicate things? Fortunately, there is absolutely no training required or even available to imply that you do anything you may not want to do. Digg 4 is about freedom.

14. Digg 4 Has a Sense of Humor

    Tired of seeing the common attempts at 404 error pages that scrub sites offer? Can’t access a digg.com page? The Digg 4 errors will leave you rolling in the dirt laughing.

You can see that the new shovel-ready Digg 4 relieves the daily stress that comes from interacting in social media. Digg 4 provides you more time to spend with people in the real world whether you want to or not. Digg 4 gives you more time for working, playing, sleeping or whatever you want to do. In short, Digg 4 makes your life more efficient.

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