If you’re like most companies, you spend a lot of time obsessing over your home page, but maybe not enough time on your destination pages. As a proponent of doing things wrong quickly, I don’t recommend spending hours on each page trying to make it perfect. So, instead, what’s a quick way to check out the information architecture of those pages?

If you take a step back and look at it, the SEO industry is rather odd. SEO experts who are paid thousands of dollars by companies will also freely share tips, tricks, principles, pricing structures, and SEO advice.

This is actually a great trick to get people reading exactly what you want them to notice the most in your web copy, literature, brochure, proposal, etc.

People are too busy today to read every word of what you say (especially if they are being sold). If you overdo this little “highlight trick” … it won’t work!

Here is how it work. ………. You highlight it for them. Simple enough?

This can work on your website as well as in your direct mail copy. All you have to say is the following;

This week, for some reason (largely to do with thinking I could still handle caffeine and being horribly wrong), a number of pieces fell into place for me when it came to looking at how we might interact with computers and the Internet in the future. 

A thread over in the Google Webmaster Groups talks about the Google Sandbox, and about 301 redirects. In this thread, Adam Lasnik jumps in and sets some expectations on the handling of 301 redirects, and also does some myth breaking. Here is what Adam has to say:

The Inside Adwords Crew have announced that the proposed quality score update has been rolled out today, expecting to last up to 3 or 4 days until complete. The article confirms –

Lots of promise, the hype is there, will it make it, and what will the impacts on the corporate network be?

The folks who brought you Kazaa, and then Skype are taking a long hard look at IPTV, and will most likely shape how that media channel will look for the next 4 or 5 years. I have applied for a Joost beta key, but have yet to get one (so hint, if anyone has a joost beta key that they don’t want, let me know, no its not worth money to me).

Risk management is a huge portion of information security; we gauge risk and in many cases accept risk because we can’t build a ROI on the technology or issue.

However, Google Desktop Applications, or Google Apps is a risky decision to be making, small company or big company it does not matter, it’s a risk, and here are the risks involved.

It’s really annoying to suddenly remember I have a few domains of 2-3 years of age, that I actually set up links for – but never had any real content on.

Reason being: complacency.

I bought the domains for an early client, with the aim of setting up a small network for link benefits for them.

However, early success meant the domains went undeveloped.

Lots of sites reporting news that Google has taken down a Blogger blog, after it posted a death threat against a New Zealand politician.

Google spokeswoman Victoria Grand today said the weblog was taken down this morning after a complaint from the Ministry of Social Development. She said it was not just yesterday’s death threat that prompted the site shutdown, but that Google believed it was repeat violation of site rules.

It appears Google’s finally starting to realize that if YouTube is to continue its success, they need to figure out how to protect copyright holders from video piracy.

Looks like Yahoo’s not the only one to be experimenting with helpful add-ons that go overboard.

The Skype extension for Firefox appears to be picking up numbers that aren’t phone numbers, erroneously displaying a country flag and a phone number with a little green phone icon. Trust me Skype, those account numbers in those private secure interfaces are not phone numbers. I know, three digits followed by a dash, especially when those digits are "617," looks like a phone number. But looks can be deceiving. They might just be part of an account number.

One of the easiest ways to strengthen a leading market position is to give others in your market incentive to place your brand on their site. It is even sweeter if it comes with a link to your site.

Many top destination sites are adding blogs and other publishing formats to their site to build their authority and market-share. This editorial content creates value, builds trust and authority, and allows for a more profitable blend of content and advertisements.

Shane, an attendee from the first Elite Retreat, posted about why it is not best to monetize a blog right out of the gate:

So, your focus at the beginning has to be on attracting and retaining readers. You do that by having a great site, and nothing turns visitors off more than a brand new blog with just a handful of posts and ads splashed everywhere. It says to them that you’re more interested in making money than you are in providing good content.

MSN and Windows Live have chosen to try and gain the hearts and pageviews of China’s growing Internet userbase by teaming their job search with Baidu’s paid search ads.

The Google Custom Search Engine Blog has informed that Google has added supplemental results to the results displayed in Google Custom Search Engines.

Google has gone to great lengths to defend free speech, and has protected a lot of questionable material (posted by users) on both Orkut and Blogger. It appears that Google draws the line at death threats, however, as a blog containing threats against a New Zealand politician was shut down this morning.

Searchers looking for last minute gifts for the special someone, researching the origins of Valentine’s Day, and music enthusiasts soaking in the coverage from this year’s Grammy awards comprised the majority of Google queries last week.

The Internet-delivered movie industry is set to take off. This is welcome news for Hollywood and the Motion Picture Association of America. According to Adams Media Research the Internet movie industry will reach $5.8 billion in revenue by 2011. Video downloads will account for $4.1 billion in the US.

The legal spat between Apple and Cisco over use of the term "iPhone" was nothing that, speculatively, a big bag o’money couldn’t solve. Though the terms of the settlement both companies announced yesterday are confidential, it isn’t unreasonable to think that Cisco got some benefit beyond mutual use of the term and an interoperability agreement.

The statement reads this way:

Some people would assert that Google launched an assault on Microsoft earlier today; others would just say that the search engine giant launched a paid version of Google Apps. Either way, Microsoft may have a ready response: reports indicate that the company could take aim at YouTube by acquiring Revver, another video-sharing site.

Every now and then some ancient blogger will post a world-weary, “been there, done that” missive about how blogging is tiresome, bordering on useless, and so they are giving it up, etc.

Ever since Google first launched things like “apps for your domain” and bought Writely, CEO Eric Schmidt and others have been singing the same song: namely, that the Internet behemoth has no intention of putting together a competitor to Microsoft Office. At the Web 2.0 conference, for example, he said “We don’t call it an office suite.