It’s why Shoppers Drug Mart is more successful than I.D.A.

If you go into a Shopper’s Drug Mart, you realize that every inch of the store has been thought out, has been ‘designed’, to get you to want you want, quickly and beautifully.

The same theory applies to web design.

Unfortunately, it appears that Shopper’s Drug Mart hasn’t taken the same philosophy to their web design as they do to their merchandising. Instead of being clean, airy, and clear, like their stores, their web site is cluttered, disorganized, and squeezed into a tiny box. Boo!

I think the real question about these directories is how long they will be viable for. Paid link listings are clearly against Googles terms of service, and as these directories degrade the quality of Google’s primary product (search), I think you’ll see harsher PageRank penalties for paid-link directories.

What this might end in is a battle between SEO professionals (who are using paid link directories), and Google (currently the only game that counts). I don’t think either is a safe bet.

I think that the success of your site will soon be proportional to your (positive) participation in the web community. I now get most of my site ‘recommendations’ from social bookmarking sites (del.icio.us, digg, reddit), and now only ‘google’ something if I can’t remember the URL, or if I need an answer to a very specific question. I am not the average internet user, but I’m not the only one of my kind, and it *is* a growing trend.

I think the new face of search will be based off of some sort of ’social’ aggregator. 50matches.com is a great example of a search engine leveraging the social web to get the most effective results.

What does this mean for SEO? Not much. The current ’social web’ is flawed in the same way as the Google algorithm, and it will be cheated by the SEO industry in the same way. But I do believe that the ’social’ web is the next phase of the web. That means that to successfully market your business on the web, you’ll have to do it the same way as you do it in the ‘real’ world: get out there and talk about it.

Post (insightful) comments on blogs, and leave a link (hey, I just did it!). Be an active member of the community. Start your own blog, and promote discussion. It’s no different than helping out the local Scout troop, or participating in your Chamber of Commerce, or having a sidewalk sale.

The current mantra of internet marketing seems to be ‘get your link on every page you can, and surround it with the right words’. It’s an unsustainable model because it’s in-genuine, and people *want* genuine. As the technology that powers the web evolves, it is going to be harder and harder to cheat the system. Pretty soon you’ll have to build your business online the same way you build it in reality, and that’s by contributing positively to your community (in this case, the web).

For users, a movement to a more social web is a positive thing. It means that *people* are the taste makers, not the Google algorithm. For the relatively young SEO industry, it spells almost certain doom. Fortunately for them, Google is will remain in its position for the foreseeable future.

Ugh, I just wanted wanted to post a link and I left you with this huge rant! Maybe I’ll finally get my own blog and spare the comments section of yours.

Bell was asking if I wanted Voice Mail, 3-Way Calling, Call Display, Call Answer, Call Return, Call Waiting, Call Forwarding, Visual Call Display, High-Speed Internet. My answer was no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, and what? High-Speed Internet available on a cottage phone, that is in the middle of the Northern Ontario bush, with no street address and water-only access? It normally takes Bell all summer just to find the cottage to connect a simple phone.

One week later, I was sitting on the dock at the cottage with my laptop, accessing the Internet through my wireless high-speed connection, and doing work for my clients. The best part of the story, the cottage Internet connection was quicker and more reliable than my connection in Whitby…

Careful for what you wish for, you might just get it.

Your business is your baby - so it is understandable that it is hard to see changes that might need to be made or problem areas. Talk to collegues, get a mentor or get someone not directly involved to look at things as your clients or potential customers would see things. It helps!