As far as I know, the latest Common Look and Feel Guidelines must be implemented by December of this year - that is 2 months away.
Recently, CRTC (Canada Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) launched a National Do Not Call List for Canadian’s. Today I Googled
“Canada’s do not call list” and had trouble finding the official website where I could put my number on this list. My bad - CRTC has called it the National Do Not Call List - not Canada’s Do Not Call List - very similar to the US National Do Not Call Registry. *argh* The list applies to Canada only therefore I believe it should have the word Canada in the name of the list. American’s never put America or USA in the name of anything so we can expect that but Canadians think differently and this should be reflected in names of organizations, lists, etc. that are maintained by our government.
My next pet peeve is that this (likely new) website does not yet conform to CLF 2.0 which is due to be implemented by Dec 2008 - so did they launch a new website with a plan to revamp it within 2 months? I checked the CRTC home page and I see by the lack of the maple leaf in the header that the entire CRTC has not yet undergone CLF 2.0 so it makes sense that the Do Not Call List lacks the new appearance as well.
Last beef. I searched for Canada’s Do Not Call List and had to hunt to find what I was looking for - after major newspapers, Wikipedia, and a CRTC press release from 2006. Part of launching a new website should be an SEO strategy to ensure visibility in search engines for a variety of phrases that Canadians might use when they desire to add their name to this list.
Perhaps between Jan and Dec when many government departments are eager to use up their budget we will see some increased visibility of this page in the search engines?
…[/rant]

I hear it all the time - “Sorry to have bothered you but it turns out I don’t need your services - my brothers daughters boyfriend is going to SEO my site for $25″. Or “Thanks but my webmaster said he can do this so I won’t need to hire you” *sigh*
I can code HTML - do you see me offering to build your ecommerce website?
Shari Thurow, Founder and SEO Director at Omni Marketing Interactive, wrote a great piece for Search Engine Land recently as a followup to a 3 part article she wrote previously on different levels of SEO skills: beginner, intermediate, and advanced.
Shari placed copywriters at the beginner level, information architects and interface designers at the intermediate level, and web developers and programmers at the advanced level.
Read this week’s article to see what she thinks has changed in the industry - should your webmaster be your SEO?

Due to the overwhelmingly positive response from attendees, Neo Insight is pleased to announce that Gerry McGovern returns to Ottawa in May 2008! As well as offering an encore presentation of his Masterclass, Gerry McGovern is offering a special half-day Executive Session, plus opportunities to work more closely together to refine and apply his techniques to your specific needs.

May 5-6: Gerry McGovern Masterclass: Creating Customer-Centric Websites
This Masterclass is an updated, encore presentation of the November 2007 session. It will give attendees the tools and arguments to show why a customer-centric approach is the best way to serve customers in Canada—whether they are citizens, customers or your own staff. The future of Web management is task management—and this Masterclass will give you the road map to achieve it. Gerry McGovern will show you why the key to success for your website is a relentless focus on the tasks of your customers—and how to keep that focus.

More than 280 people attended the sold out November workshop. The response to Gerry’s powerful, communicative and entertaining style was overwhelmingly positive. Typical feedback included: “Gerry is an excellent, knowledgeable and entertaining speaker who captivates your attention throughout the session” and “Mr. McGovern offers some outstanding insights, research results, and advice.”

* See details of the Masterclass - Creating Customer-Centric Websites

May 7: Special half-day session: Managing Customer-Centric Websites - Executive Session
A special 1/2 day executive session focused on quickly getting quantifiable results from a Customer Carewords approach to managing your website. This Executive Session is for senior managers and executives who have to translate strategic plans and visions into coordinated actions by other people. It is for those of you who want to:

* Take your vision and manage your website to realize your strategic objectives
* Make decisions based on data rather than opinion
* Establish a clear return on investment
* Maintain a clear focus to get maximum impact from limited resources
* Develop actionable metrics for effectively managing the web channel

The Executive Session will take place in the Penthouse, Sheraton Hotel, on Wednesday May 7, 2008, from 7:30am - 12:00 noon. Seating is very limited, so reserve your place early:

* See details of Managing Customer-Centric Websites - Executive Session

May 8-9: Work with Gerry McGovern to apply his Customer Carewords techniques

In the two days following the Masterclasses, Gerry will be available for a very limited number of private team sessions intended to kick-off a Customer Carewords project within your organization. Visit the Customer Carewords website for full details of the process and pricing and details about applying the Customer Carewords techniques in your organization.

Note - The Masterclass and Executive Session will be presented in English only

Sitemaps.org just announced an update or upgrade that allows one to store their XML sitemap in a location other than the root folder.

XML Sitemaps are useful for telling the search engines about the pages of your website to make it easier for them to index said pages. Up until now, the xml sitemap had to reside in the root directory of the website to which it was applicable; with the recent update, the xml sitemap can be stored in any folder - even on a different website!

This means that webmasters or SEO’ers for example can store all of their client sitemaps on their own domain which would make management easier and eliminate the possibility of the client accidentally deleting.

This new feature makes it necessary to use robots.txt to indicate the location of the file in the format of:
Sitemap: where should be the complete URL to the Sitemap, such as: http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml.

PS. Although this is a sitemaps.org protocol, Google is the only search engine that recognizes this update so far.
Want to know how a sitemap may assist your website in being more visible in the search engines? Contact us for details.

I recently was looking for a sony w950 in Google and the title of the first organic listing was “Oh no! 404 - Page not found”. I was puzzled! Looked at the URL - www.sonyericsson.com - seemed like a reputable URL so all I could think was they had not configured their server to return 404 error codes when an error was generated.

Using the RankQuest Server Header Checker, sure enough, the SonyEricsson site is returning code 302 (Moved Temporarily). Unfortunately I am not interested in now searching that website to find the Sony w950 so back to Google I went.

A good lesson in why your 404’s should generate 404 error codes at the server level - so you can monitor and repair broken pages/links/URLs on a daily/weekly/monthly basis!