SEO is dead... 'ish.

It's impressive how "border" the so called "digital gurus" can be, crafting some sort of "exodus mottos" which falsely pretend to transform themselves into the new digital version of Nostradamus.

I must accept I've done predictions, from the upcoming stage for the digital market (a strange R.S.V.P. / I-may-not-accept-you time lapse) to the boosted digital stress that users will suffer in the next 5 years, when everything will toughly pause when it comes to digital innovation (not talking about mobile here, of course).

But I ask myself, HOW IS IT POSSIBLE that an expert in the digital world can state SEO is dead?
I mean, let's be honest... ironically, as in real life, nothing never truly dies, it just evolves, so does happens with digital, SEO can't be dead... it's actually not even close to it, it just became faster and wiser. So how everyone's shouting about it's days of glory and death after Google Instant came out last week?

Rather than compromising SEO integrity, Google Instant it's just YAGE (Yet Another Google Enhancement), based on search time optimization, and of course taking advantage of the new Caffeine search index also officially launched late this month.

Let us be realistic, it's NOT Google Instant what's changing SEO (and not killing it, as many would think), the user asks for less time spent on searches, less hassle to find appropriate/accurate results... isn't that what SEO stands for? Well, then Google Instant it's a new way to achieve SEO better, so why everybody's making a big deal about it? it means that finally there's a better way to offer clients and companies what the pay for, efforts have been compiled and simplified.

Google's updates in 2010 have sent us a message, it's not just about "keywords" or "tags", things can't be just systemized, there's always something that matters the most, and thats the user's habits. Even when we have several different analytic tools to retrieve and learn from those, we always found it a 24 hour job to do so, and then apply it, things couldn't be express (fractions of seconds), technology wasn't strong enough, but today is a different matter. GMail's Priority Inbox is another good example, where habits and actions from the user defines key invisible filters, customizing their experience with the service faster and better.

So what about the classic SEO strategy?... Still there, but now it will be just a part of the whole thing, as I said earlier in my GMail's Priority Inbox post, the time to listen users directly has come, to understand them in matter of fractions of seconds, is the new goal for any SEO person,  which means... PageRank still works as it should, AdSense and AdWords too... thats for classic SEO and it will work just as usual (among trillions of other tools), but to make the user go to your site as a detectable habit will depend on the CONTENT of it, seems that finally we reached one of my predictions earlier this year... it's time for QUALITY through channels... and if we think about it, it's the common cycle within the digital world...

We will never forget how SPAM mail became successful in the early years of internet... until users get fed of it, and asked for... quality... then SPAM filters appeared, or how so many knew about Nettalk (old PC Telephony company), they launched a nice piece of software late 90's, they didn't make it through... until a couple of guys decided to craft something with REAL user needs attended, Skype.
We could even talk about not so old examples, like Hi5 vs Facebook, or MySpace and its declined success... it's just part of the cycle.

So whoever stands for the murder of SEO... is wrong, and probably is one of those so many million "gurus" that learnt about SEO during the last couple of years, took a diploma or workshop about it, and just understand the logic behind it... not its nature, so then again, as I've said before, technology beats digital wannabe's, cause to understand and use these things goes way beyond reading a document or taking a workshop, it asks for prior experience, actual expertise based on reading the user, not defining pure keywords. So... Welcome then Google Instant, even though I turned it off ! (I use normal search time to think about million things, I don't need to loose those time glimpses, ha ha!).

Anyone isn't sure about what kind of impact Google Instant will have, and it's normal, but please, stop listening to the guys that need 2 months to assure that their job is not obsolete anymore because of a new technology appears, they will probably keep on doing the same until someone explains how evolution works, and how they need to do their job now. Instant Impact will be positive, that's for sure, it's time to move on!

App Review - Instructables

It's good to be back with some app reviews, in fact I must accept it wasn't lack of interest or time (got tons of that lately), it was just a simple fact, no iPhone, no reviews. My iPhone kinda died few months ago, well the screen at least which means half ot the phone wasn't working. Went to a gig, rain fell down like some kind of aztec punishment, and then I found out that iPhone is sort of a lady when it comes to water.

For anyone that has some trouble with these issues, here's a link that could probably give you an idea of what happened : http://gsfn.us/t/ah16 , seems it's quite normal to have such a fragile mobile xD.

Anywho, that link gave me the idea, ended up sending it to fix somewhere around the city, and at the end the real thing was about the screen, it burned out, so had to put a new one. Tadaaa, iPhone back working properly, sweet.

Ok, enough of fairy tales, back to the app review.


Instructables.

What about Instructables? It's actually a window of a cool creative online community www.instructables.com, so in few words, this app is just the iPhone digested version of their site. Why to be included in this blog as an app review if its already an online community? Well, most of us, people involved with the creative media find "inpsiration" in many places, Instructables ends up as one of my favourites, not just because it's contents, but also because it's portability, the iPhone app works smooth, easy to follow, and of course... on the go. I find myself most likely browsing Instructables app, than playing Doodle while I'm waiting for a meeting or so.

Best of all, if you fancy any invention, you can find the instructions on how to build it, some materials will be hard to find, but at least you've got the instructions, right? xD

So go on, get it for free at the AppStore , and enjoy it, you'll not regret it, this user powered do-it-yourself community will satisfy any geek's need.

Behold the power of GMail... again. Priority Inbox revealed.

It took a lot of effort for e-marketers and operators to actually find the way to go through GMail, and end up as a mail inside the Inbox, and not into Junk folders. GMail was actually a beta thing, it wasn't until 2009 that Google launched it's alpha version, but for the pain of many mailers, newsletters, e-zines, etc... to comply with GMails junk filters was hell of a challenge since it's early stages (back in 2004).

Worst of all, those great filters were one of their great features, everyone wanted a GMail account, but as most of Google important apps, there was an "invitation" stage, where just few users could test and use it. There are now 176 million monthly users/accounts, which means... it's a BIG potential client cluster, still, it's hard to break junk filter has been also evolving, learning, catching.

If any follows the "anti spam" rules, their mail will pretty much have a 25% chance to go all the way down into the Inbox. So, e-marketers, bulk mailers, and friends had a nice chance to hit their potential market, but now... all this is about to end, for good. It's time to deliver quality, not quantity.

Google just launched a new feature within GMails tools, it's called "Priority Inbox".

"The Priority Inbox alters the way email is listed in your inbox. Emails are now organised in descending importance (as calculated by Google) instead of by time. The goal, which is explicitly laid out in its launch video is to promote emails from people you know, and demote marketing emails that you aren’t interested in." Some of the actions that will help the system determine mail priority are involved with reply rate, and so on.

Seems that one of the April's fool Google's joke will come true, well... kind of.
"On April Fools' Day 2009 Google introduced a service called Gmail Autopilot by CADIE.
According to Google, the service purported to automatically read and respond to emails for the user. It appeared to work by analyzing messages for the emotions expressed in the message and either providing advice to the user or automatically responding to the message."

Well, Priority Inbox will surely not reply to your messages, but it will analyze them (among with your common actions through your mail habits), and it will "advice" you what will probably be most important, interesting and so on.

So how will marketers handle it?
The so famous "creative subject" strategy to create opening status is coming to an end, which means it will be the content that will actually generate the right markers to this new tool to keep it on top of other mails. Finally it's time for marketers to worry about engagement based on information, and not just "fancy clever subjects lines".

How to achieve it? I couldn't agree more with Riaz Kanani, alliances director at Lyris.
RECENT BROWSING behaviour will be the master key to generate both: an actual interesting subject, but most of all, a totally customized mail content based on real user interests. Which means, it's time to listen to the user... without showing up a registration form to receive this data.

Then again, technology beats wannabe's, and I'm so happy about it, it's been a long year where suddenly thousands of "digital gurus" appeared from nowhere, well.. this kind of things will filter (just as the Pirority tech) the ones that do understand and preach digital, from the ones that just repeat what they've heard and bluff about something they barely understand. To understand and use properly any browsing behaviour asks for expertise and time...so BEHOLDDDDD the power of GMail, I'm so much loving all this...!