Linkbuilding with wikis, html5 audio, and creating a better web form – The Monday April 19th Roundup

Straight to it this week: we’ve got a full roundup of news, advice, and how-to’s including link building with a wiki-wheel, using HTML5 audio, creating better form fields, and what ethical marketers can learn from spammers.

• We start the week with Linkbuildr and their guide to building links with a wikiwheel. You know, while I am a huge proponent of SEO, this kind of thing seems awfully spammy,  intended purely to offset lack of popularity with low quality links, but if it works, hey why not.
• Next up, BPWrap with how to build search engine rankings without a homepage. This goes into a lot of detail about how blogs can help with SEO.

• Get Elastic is back with a step by step guide for deploying eCommerce systems in the cloud. Pretty simple stuff, but a nice checklist for anyone looking to move over.
• Today I found this  post on HTML5 audio from some one who I am guessing is named Andrew. Additionally notice the great use of the @font-face property of CSS3.

• Google has announced more data in the top search queries report in Google Webmaster Tools. Data includes clickthrough at each page position and impressions (appearances on search pages). There’s also top queries visualizations.
• Next up, from Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely discusses why so many companies are scared to experiment. Online we get away with more – due, I predict, to the “faceless masses” nature of web traffic – but even here you get a lot of resistance to the idea of modifying a landing page design, lest you contradict the expert opinion.

• Our friends over at Unbounce (writers of our recent guest post on Conversion Centered Design) have a great post on why you should make fewer of your web form fields required.
• Slightly older, but nevertheless good: boxes and arrows has a post from Paul Adams (of Google) on designing for social interaction. This piece brilliantly separates social interaction into strong, weak, and temporary ties, and explains how you can design for each.

• It has begun. Wired reports that the FBI, chasing after a spammer, has gained a warrant to search his Google Docs account. This is one of the reasons that people are so wary of cloud computing: what jurisdictions have access to your data, and which can gain it Is my data open to American government officials thanks to post-9/11 laws, despite the fact that I’m in Canada Legal issues abound. Fortunately in this case, an actual warrant was required, which gives some hope.
• Copyblogger posts on 4 things that ethical marketers can learn from spammers. For the most they are fairly simple directives. However, I don’t agree with the last point: the reason that spammers have such low conversion rates is because they drive away customers. This isn’t a lesson in how much you have to send out, it’s a lesson in how the old broadcasting methods of advertising (let’s face it, TV ads are spam) are ludicrously outdated, and how everyone needs to start thinking about how they can increase their conversion rates.