Alexander Zagoumenov

3 kinds of SEO tactics: black-hat, grey-hat, white-hat

Zagoumenov — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:15:38 +0000

I just had a conversation with a client who brought up a few suggestions to tweak his site for better search engine rankings. As a result of our talk I decided to write this quick post... There's generally 3 kinds of SEO tactics: white-hat, grey-hat and black-hat.

Black-hat techniques will definitely get a website unlisted from major search engines as a spam content. An example of this will be page sections invisible to users but targeted at getting higher search engine recognition (i.e. invisible text on pages). Here's a few examples:

Grey-hat techniques will likely get your site unlisted from search engine like Google as these techniques boarder with black-hat. An example of this will be stuffing image alt text with strings of keywords. There is though a certain extent to which this technique is acceptable (i.e. to write a clean and descriptive alt text for visually impaired users).

White-hat techniques are "the rules of the game". These allow sites to play the game clean and stay listed on Google. Our main concern as SEOs should be clients' (sites) reputation with search engines. We've all seen examples of sites being unlisted and it had cost a company time and money to reinstate the website with major search engines. These are a few examples of white-hat SEO techniques:

As all three types of tactics evolve over time we follow the trends and make sure we use the right tools and techniques to reach our clients' goals. After all, there are many other things online where we can outperform the competition and even play a bit "grey", but on-page SEO should stay clean.

Google product innovation in Canada at MRU, event in review

Zagoumenov — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 17:40:43 +0000

This week was definitely full of events, meetings and talks. I even missed a couple of interesting engagements. The "Google product innovation in Canada" event at Mount Royal University was one of the events I attended and it did stick with me.

The event took place at the Bissett School of Business on MRU's campus. It was a great good networking opportunity. The room was full at about 70 people capacity. As they say, "when Google talks, you listen". Yes, it was a promo event to get students excited about Google products and potentially interest them to seek careers at Google Waterloo. However, there were a few things that I found valuable in terms of organizational development and digital workplace.

Google doesn't hire experts. It hires personalities. Be ambitious, creative and wanting to change the world... and you are pretty much in.
Google Waterloo is a fun place of over 100 people. The office was originally opened up for mobile development purposes. Over time projects grew and now one of the key initiatives is Chrome OS.
According to the two presenters (Alex Coman, Software Engineer and Steven Woods, Director at Waterloo) Google has no traditional hierarchy. The initiative is coming from bottom up, which makes it an engineer driven company.

The event was put together by Google, MRU and Alex Bruton, Professor of Entrepreneurship at MRU. Many big thanks to presenters and organizers. This was certainly a valuable event to attend.

Canada - Russia game at Brewsters in Calgary last night

Zagoumenov — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 16:13:41 +0000

It was a good game. Canada won because they played better last night. Thanks to Anton Matveev for getting us all together. Thanks a huge lot to Valerie Fortney, Stuart Gradon and Rick Donkers of Calgary Herald.

Photograph by: Stuart Gradon, Calgary Herald

Valerie Fortney has put it well in her article in today's Calgary Herald. A video from the event by Rick Donkers is available on Calgary Herald website. Something that the article missed was that there were two Russian groups at Brewsters that night. The other group was mostly represented by employees of Trican Well Service lead by Konstantin Dyskin as well as a group from Forum.RusAlberta.com community.

On tranparency in relationships

Zagoumenov — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 19:24:10 +0000

I just got a follow up call from one of the dentists in town. They wanted to follow up with me on the matter discussed 2009. New year, new problems, new opportunities. In any case, I was very pleased with the call but had to reject.

The most surprising thing was that I know that I will have to reject and I picked up. This was a feeling unfamiliar to me. I tend to feel bad when I have to reject, which sometimes results in me not picking up the phone. However, this time, knowing who it was, I picked up the phone. I rejected.

In the recall of the conversation I realized that I felt good by telling the truth. The lady on the other side was very pleasant and understanding. I now commit to answer the phone even if I know I have to reject.

Shopping for presentation remote control or slide clicker

Zagoumenov — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 19:24:49 +0000

As I’m getting into more speaking engagements I start to think about proper tools. One of those tools is a presentation remote control or a slide clicker. So, I went into a bit of research before making my buying decision. Here’s some useful pieces of information I found in my research.

First, an good article on the process of choosing a clicker. The author goes into describing a few key characteristics of presentation remote controls and explains why you may need them. Choosing a Presentation Remote Control

Second, an article from About.com going over the main options for clicks on the market. Top 6 presentation devices

Finally, here’s a few product comparison pages from various vendors and portals on the web:

I hope you found this useful. If you did, share with others. Thanks a bunch!

Update: February 18th, 2010:

I ended up buying this one: Kensington 33374 Wireless Presenter with Laser Pointer... Already used it in a few talks. Very happy with it. Advantages: Plug-and-play, works flawlessly, simple.