The industry's top wizards, doctors, and other experts offer their best advice, research, how-tos, and insights—all in the name of helping you level-up your SEO and online marketing skills.
Last Friday I attended and spoke at the Jane and Robot Search Developer Summit in San Francisco. The idea of the conference was to cover technical SEO topics and help train developers and others. The 100 attendees (or so) were a mixed bunch; developers, SEOs, managers and the like. The sessions covered site archit...
The blog post - PageRank Sculpting - from the head Google's Web Spam team is a critical read for SEOs worldwide: So what happens when you have a page with “ten PageRank points” and ten outgoing links, and five of those links are nofollowed? Let’s leave...
Google Authorization is a topic which crops up a fair amount in our day-to-day search wanderings. Not really because clients are asking if we're authorized but more because they always claim that previous SEO companies they received pitches from claimed to be Google Authorized SEO consultants. Unfortunately (fortunately?!) no such certification exists so we have to set them straight....
I orignally wrote this blog post back a little while ago, but between the server crashes and all that I think it got lost in translation so.... This was my Saturday night at about 3-4am... *insert Twilight Zone music here* As I write this blog I am listening to Groove Armada's Superstylin, I just finished watching the video from Google I/O and quite frankly, Google Wave is Superstylin! Do the Wave!
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We all know by this time about the benefits of converting your parameterized URLs to human- and crawler-friendly URLs, but the stock tools of the trade (ISAPI_Rewrite, mod_rewrite, etc.) don't necessarily scale all that well when you have a large number of categories, product pages, etc. I'm going to walk you through what it takes to code this yourself, and I think you'll find it's less scary and complex than you thought, and gives you a number of benefits in terms of ongoing maintenance, flexibility, etc.
After a few months of working with a client, I've noticed a hard nosed kamakazi dive into social media by some of the employees there. Numerous emails were sent out alongside meeting requests that bubbled with excitement over this new found gold, "social media." It's not that new. However, despite my questions towards strategy, implementation, target market, budget allocations and the like, we all were whisked away into a board room to find out how Twitter works and how we all should be Twittering about the company.
I have been witness to many instances wherein people have judged the competitiveness of a keyphrase by simply searching it in Google, and then checking the total number of search results. For them the total number of results is a measure of the competitiveness of a given keyphrase. I could have understood if they were people who are new to SEO, but I have also seen many SEO practitioners do exactly the same. This post will attempt to clear this misconception.
A couple weeks ago I went to Sweden to speak at IMC Stockholm. I had a really lovely time exploring the beautiful city as well as speaking at IMC and networking with marketers from all over the world. I thought I'd provide a recap of my trip and share some conference coverage with all of you who didn't attend the conference but are curious as to what it entailed. Enjoy! Pre-...
I read two blog posts this week that touch on a fascinating suject, and both are worthy of perusal: How Google Profiles SEOs from Wolf Howl Google Openly Profiles SEOs as Criminals from Outspoken Media ...
For a long time now I have wondered what sets apart great search marketing articles (namely, YOUmoz posts) from not so great ones. Unfortunately, there is no short answer to this question. Extensive discourse both online and off makes search marketing a tough subject to get a definite answer on. Fortunately, the YOUmoz thumbs/comment system provides a great place for us to start, and by limiting ourselves to tangible factors, we can draw safe conclusions from its data. I will follow up with another post examining this information from a content-based viewpoint, but for today our discussion points will be strictly visual.
Learning SEO can be a daunting experience. To make this process a little easier, I have broken down my method for learning SEO into bite-sized chunks that can be completed in 30 minutes or less. I have also tried to create a mechanism to make it easier to get help and expand personal networks.
Happy June, evvabody! Here's what happened last month in case you were bedridden with swine flu: Best Blog Posts in May 2009 If I Could Go Back In Time & Give Myself Some Advice, This Would Be It. If Rand could turn back tiiiiiime......
Let's face it, Google is the best search engine hands down. I love it, you love it... and the only reason that we might use something else like Yahoo or Dogpile is if we just absolutely cannot find what we are looking for on Google.
In the last few months, Google's Local Business Center has implemented many changes that affect search marketing firms and our clients. One noticeable change has been how they have started marking listings as "Unverified" if you do not verify the listing by phone or mail. This includes every listing that is added with the Bulk Upload feature. One drawback to having a listing that is "Unverified" in the Local Business Center is that your ranking can be adversely affected depending on your industry. Another drawback is that if a user clicks "More" next to your local listing, the term "Unverified" is displayed prominently at the top of the listing.