Queen Bee Marketing’s Blog About Marketing, SEO, and Design.

It’s been a while since we’ve posted anything, due to Holidays, family, and work issues. Sorry, but we’re back. I recently ran across an article discussing how researchers are now using social networking sites to record data about today’s users. Everything from tracking habits and moods to identifying users at risk for suicide.

We’ve all heard of people getting fired for what their employers found on their myspace page, but it was a surprise to me to realize that researchers are now monitoring social networking sites to gather data. We also know that stings are used to find online pedophile predators, but are police now beginning to watch myspace pages to crack down and find underage drinking or drug use?

Social networking sites have become the latest rage of the internet and continue to grow in popularity. Over the last several months I have seen more and more activity revolving around eons.com, a website targeted at users that are 50 years or older. Business networking sites like Linkedin and Merchant Circle are also starting to complete for their place online.

While the internet can be a great source for data, business, and entertainment, I believe that many people are using it as a way to connect, to feel socially accepted, and ironically, find humanity.

Since we are off for the next two days, and many people have already cut out of work early today (we’ll be leaving around 2pm this afternoon), it’s been pretty quiet around the office and we started doing a little Turkey Day research online. We found a ton of interesting stuff and figured we would share a few:

Each year the president pardons two turkeys from the Thanksgiving dinner.

Change things up this year with some slider stuffing from White Castles.

Some interesting Thanksgiving facts.

Mix up your traditional turkey recipe with Orange Roasted Turkey.

Here is a long list of Thanksgiving Poems.

No list would be complete without some Turkey cooking techniques.

Adam Sandler’s classic Turkey song from SNL.

Some Thanksgiving horror stories.

Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade Web site.

A Thanksgiving guest liability and indemnification contract.

For many SEOs, directory submissions form a solid base of links for a Web site. Of course there are many ways to obtain inbound links, but you have the most control over directory submissions. But not all directories are worth submitting to. Some are spammy link farms that are best avoided. Here is my quick list on how I choose which directories are good enough to submit to:

1. Is it human edited? This is really important to me. If every single submission, spam or not, is accepted automatically it greatly reduces the integrity of the directory. It may take longer to get listed in a human edited directory, but it is worth it to keep out the spam.

2. Number of Inbound links. Does the directory have a substantial number of links? I like to check that both the Home page and the sub pages have some inbound, natural links.

3. PageRank on sub pages. There has been a lot of talk over some sites losing or having their PR lowered. Obviously, this is just a number, but it does indicate some level of trust with Google. Checking to make sure the internal pages of the directory have some PR lets me know the directory is trusted by Google.

4. Quality of current listings. If all of the listings in the directory are spam, I don’t bother submitting my site. It’s not a quality directory.

5. Submission Guidelines. I like to know what the submission requirements are up front. I’ve been on too many directories that don’t clearly state the cost and other guidelines before I’ve started the submission process.

6. Web site usability. If a directory has broken links, database errors, or is confusing to use, I don’t view it as a quality directory.

7. Visitor usability. I want to make sure visitors to the directory have an easy time navigating the site. We don’t just submit to directories for the link value, we also receive decent traffic from various directories. But if the directory is confusing and hard to use, we won’t get any traffic from it.

We also carefully track our directory submissions. By recording the date is was submitted, and the date it was included, it ensures we don’t double submit a site. It is also good to know how many directory links your site has, as opposed to natural links. It also helps to know how quickly a site is included in a directory for future submissions of other sites.

Last Friday the new Mac OS Leopard came out and was met with criticism from some, and praise from others. There are a few things I wish they hadn’t changed, but over all there are many new features that are useful. A few of the design related changes I’ve noticed are listed below along with my observations about them.

1. The Dock - The dock didn’t change much, but the parts that were changed, weren’t changed for the better, in my opinion. The blue orbs indicating a running program are harder to see than the previous black triangles. Also, the “ledge” that the program icons rest on now only comes up half way behind the icons instead of all the way. This reduces the amount of contrast between the icon and the background. These changes reduce the over all readability of the dock.

2. Stacks - Stacks is a new feature, and a helpful one. Stacks allows you easy access to downloads, programs, and documents. It makes navigating to these items much easier.

3. Preview - Preview works in two ways. One is Icon Preview. It displays the icon of a file as a miniature version of the real file. You can also press the spacebar while an icon is selected and it will bring up a preview window of what the file looks like. This is extremely helpful for text and PDF files. It’s no longer necessary to open a file to view its contents.

4. Spaces - Spaces allows you to have various desktops running at once. This could be good for organizing types of programs, differentiating between work and home, or just to reduce clutter. I haven’t had the need to use this yet, but I think it will be a great tool in the future.

5. Dashboard - Dashboard still works the same way, but has one new feature that I really enjoy: Web Clips. You just “clip” a portion of a Web site and it will display that part of the site on the Dashboard. I’ve been using this for Web cams. I clipped a Web cam of Waikiki, Hawaii and put it on my Dashboard. Now when I need a short break, I can check in on Waikiki beach and watch the surfers!

6. Coverflow - Coverflow is a feature I haven’t used a lot either, but I know a lot of people who think it’s great. It uses the same concept that iTunes has been using for a while, which allows you to flip through files quickly while previewing the contents.

These are the main design and usability changes that have stuck out to me. Feel free to agree or disagree, or leave your other observations in the comments!

I hope everyone is having a fun Halloween! I didn’t dress up this year, but I at least have on a festive orange sweater. Other SEOs are getting into the spirit, too. Here are a few links to Halloween related stories and pictures from the search community.

1. Larry and Sergey Halloween Costume 2007 - Great illustration of Larry and Sergey along with a caption contest in the comments! I haven’t come up with a caption yet, but some of the ones already posted are really funny.

2. Matt Cutts Costume Dilemma - Matt has links to pictures of his previous costumes, and he’s taking suggestions on what to be this year.

3. Halloween Google Logos - A time line of Google’s Halloween logos from 1999 to this year. It seems each year they get a little more involved. Also included are Halloween logos from Yahoo, Ask, and YouTube.

4. Halloween Costume Search Stats - Some interesting stats on the most popular Halloween costume searches. There are also links to some cool, geeky costume ideas.

5. Google Maps Halloween Icon - Instead of an icon of a person walking on Google Maps Street View, there’s a witch for Halloween.