SEO > SEO: General
Apr. 24, 2008 at 8:57am by Jill Whalen
Diagnosing The SEO Health Of Your Website
Is your website sick? In many ways, SEO consultants are like doctors, only instead of analyzing your personal health symptoms, we analyze the overall health of your website. It's true we're not working with life or death situations the same way doctors do, but having a website that is...
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Apr. 22, 2008 at 1:24pm by Elliance
Search Illustrated: International SEO Tips
Search engine optimization can extend far past domestic versions of the major search engines. Some globally-focused companies want increased visibility in country-specific search engines outside of the U.S. market. This week's infographic illustrates some tips and best practices associated with successful international optimization....
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Apr. 17, 2008 at 11:44am by Stephan Spencer
SEO Is Not Free Traffic
One of the first jobs I have to do as a consultant going into an SEO engagement is to debunk the myth that SEO is "free." SEO has never been, nor will it ever be, free traffic. It takes work, and that comes at a cost. You need to...
See Related Stories In: 100% Organic, SEM Industry: General, SEM Industry: Outsourcing, SEO: General
Apr. 10, 2008 at 2:22pm by Shari Thurow
What SEO/SEM Professionals Should Know About Website Usability
In an effort to differentiate themselves from competitors, many SEO/SEM firms come up with interesting unique selling propositions (USPs). Some SEO/SEM firms emphasize search engine advertising and create quite useful tools to help manage PPC campaigns. Some SEO firms specialize in training, again creating tools that help newbie and...
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Apr. 8, 2008 at 8:45am by Jonathan Hochman
Legitimate, Useful Subversion For Search Engine Marketers
Often, the hardest part of any search engine optimization or marketing campaign is getting changes made to the website. Figuring out what to do is often easier than convincing all the stakeholders—including marketers, IT departments, web developers—to take the necessary actions, and coaching them along the way as they apprehensively...
See Related Stories In: SEM Tools, SEO: General
Apr. 7, 2008 at 7:09am by Greg Sterling
iProspect: Blended Search Resulting In More Clicks On News, Images, And Video
Since the advent of "blended" or "universal search" last year across the major engines, there's been ongoing discussion and speculation about its impact on user behavior and search marketing. Gord Hotchkiss last year wrote extensively about how blended search (on Google) has in fact shifted the user focus from the...
See Related Stories In: Google: Universal Search, Microsoft: Live Search, Microsoft: Live Search SEO, SEO: General, SEO: Video Search, Search Marketing: Branding, Search Marketing: General, Stats: Search Behavior, Yahoo: SEO, Yahoo: User Interface
Mar. 26, 2008 at 8:21am by Eric Enge
Is Hiding Content With "Display: None" Legitimate SEO?
If you're doing SEO on a site with thousands or tens of thousands of pages, it's likely you're working with some sort of content management system (CMS). However, CMS systems frequently cause problems with search engines. The great majority of the time these problems arise through ignorance on part of...
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Mar. 18, 2008 at 3:04pm by Elliance
Search Illustrated: Factors That Increase TrustRank
Just like you choose to buy products from companies you trust, search engines factor in levels of trust when determining which websites to include in their search results. Whether it's an issue of security, privacy, or just easily-accessible information, every little bit helps when it comes to the search...
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Mar. 14, 2008 at 9:30am by Barry Schwartz
The Google Quality Raters Handbook
Brian Ussery has discovered a revised copy of the Google Quality Raters Guidelines, which he archived on his own site. The documents are used by Google Quality Raters to aid them in classifying queries, measuring relevancy, and rating the search results. To do so, the Quality Rater must understand how...
See Related Stories In: Google: SEO, Google: Web Search, SEO: General
Mar. 6, 2008 at 8:34am by Shari Thurow
You'd Be Wise To "NoFollow" This Dubious SEO Advice
For the past few months, I have been listening to some of my colleagues talk about the nofollow attribute and how to use it to sculpt a page's PageRank. I heard this SEO advice first at SMX in Stockholm and most recently at SMX in Santa Clara. Stephan Spencer...
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Mar. 5, 2008 at 7:01am by Jessica Bowman
SEO Site Audit: A Wise Investment For All Companies
More and more savvy companies are undertaking search engine optimization (SEO) site audits to assess the current search-effectiveness of a site, what needs to be done to improve it, and to track a site's performance over time. I've been recommending website audits for years—after all, the accounting department has...
See Related Stories In: In House, SEO: General
Feb. 5, 2008 at 7:07pm by Vanessa Fox
Super Tuesday, Internet Style: How We're Using The Web In The 2008 Elections
Today is Super Tuesday, which means that voters in 24 states are carefully reviewing their candidate research and doing last minute thoughtful analysis in preparation for voting in the primaries. Well, maybe that's hopeful optimism, but in any case, the place these voters are turning to for information is...
See Related Stories In: SEO: General, Search & Society: General, Search Engines: Government Search Engines
Feb. 5, 2008 at 8:45am by Danny Sullivan
A Bad Month For SEO's Reputation
We seem to be going through another wave of "SEOs are scumbags" incidents, and I find myself with little energy to push back against them with yet another defense of the industry. It's not that SEO doesn't deserve better treatment. It's just that I feel anything I could say, I've...
See Related Stories In: SEM Industry: General, SEM Industry: Organizations, SEM Industry: Outsourcing, SEO: General
Jan. 31, 2008 at 7:12am by Jill Whalen
5 Reasons Why Rankings Are A Poor Measure Of Success
Are you still measuring your SEO success by the rankings you obtain? If so, you need to stop—right now! Here's why:...
See Related Stories In: 100% Organic, SEM Tools: Web Analytics, SEO: General
Jan. 22, 2008 at 12:09pm by Elliance
Search Illustrated: The Power Of Anchor Text
Having relevant keywords as the anchor text of a link is extremely beneficial to an SEO campaign. Because search engines depend on links as a sort of pathway around the Internet, anchor text helps categorize what a destination page will be about as well as what it may be...
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Jan. 15, 2008 at 11:36am by Elliance
Search Illustrated: An SEO Checklist
When it comes to SEO, there are certain elements that need to be in place for any newly-designed website. Have 301 redirects been put into place? Is the robots.txt file authored to allow adequate crawling? This week's infographic depicts a handy checklist that will help get you through any...
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Jan. 10, 2008 at 2:50pm by Shari Thurow
Understanding Search Usability - Part 2
In part 1 of Understanding Search Usability, I looked at search usability and the wide variety of search behaviors it addresses. SEO professionals tend to focus on query-related behavior, and web site usability professionals tend to focus on browsing behaviors. When both groups open their eyes and realize that...
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Jan. 9, 2008 at 11:28am by Jessica Bowman
Where SEO Belongs In The Web Site Development Cycle
Many in-house SEOs are actually marketers with minimal technical background or insight into the web site development process. Often, these people either have an interest in SEO or were already managing other marketing functions. Because they are new to SEO (and often times new to web site development), they...
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Jan. 3, 2008 at 8:22am by Jill Whalen
How SEO Has Evolved Over The Years
As I write this on New Year's day, I can't help but reflect on how SEO has changed during the more than 12 years since I first started optimizing websites. I was browsing through my hard-drive looking for a document I had saved that had various article ideas in...
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Dec. 20, 2007 at 8:47am by Stephan Spencer
Sculpting Your PageRank For Maximum SEO Impact
If you are a large online retailer, you're looking at thousands upon thousands of pages that have the opportunity to get crawled and indexed in the SERPs (search engine results pages). You're also looking at near infinite choices for how you interlink all those pages. Out of all those...
See Related Stories In: 100% Organic, Link Building: General, SEO: General
Dec. 20, 2007 at 7:15am by Jill Whalen
SEO Is Not An Option, It's A Requirement!
Recently, there was a thread in the High Rankings Forum asking whether SEO is an extra skill or a prerequisite for any website designer/developer. It was a great question that spurred a lot of conversation. It goes without saying that the average small-business owner in 2007 knows that they...
