Today I will make a case that nearly every organization should offer SEO training to anyone who even remotely touches the company’s web site, and why every senior manager should also be encouraged to attend. Failure to train people can lead to serious problems, with a frightful waste of time, blown schedules, wasted expenditure and […]
For a long time, links have been the largest factor in search rankings. While (in my opinion) this is still true today, other signals are gradually growing in importance. One of the most interesting of these is “web references” or “citations”. A web reference refers to a mention of a brand, product or web site, […]
One of the hardest things to deal with in SEO is when a setback occurs. I will outline how to deal with these today, with a focus on those that don’t result from a search engine penalty. Even when you do all the right things, you can still run into situations where it doesn’t work […]
One of the most common recommendations people make about link building is to find out who links to your competitors (aka backlinking your competitors). This is a great idea, but many people who do this miss the most important point of why you do it. Let’s explore the good things you can do while backlinking, […]
Local search is a huge opportunity for many businesses, particularly those with hundreds (or more) of locations. In this article, we are going to cover one of the most difficult aspects of that – getting your data to show correctly in the search engines. This turns out to be an extremely important thing to do. […]
One of the most important SEO decisions you make is the selection of your content management system (CMS). Your CMS can make SEO easy, or, in some cases, make SEO virtually impossible. Here are 14 crucial elements you should verify in a CMS before you commit to using it. 1. Control over titles, H1 headings […]
Publishing many web sites can be a very challenging process. There are times when organizations have a larger main site and decide to operate one or more smaller sites (aka microsites) as well. Other organizations publish a number of microsites without having a larger site at all. Whether publishing microsites are in violation of the […]
Back in the early days of search engines and search engine optimization it was an anything goes environment. Initially, SEOs stuffed reams of keywords into their page to get their pages to rank. Then when links became the driving force in rankings SEOs moved into link buying. The problem with all this is that it […]
The thumbprint of social media on search engine optimization is evolving. It used to be that the big rage was figuring out how to develop link bait that had a strong chance of making the front page of Digg, Reddit, or other similar social news sites. The results were good, mostly in terms of getting […]
Finding methods to chase the long tail of search—those less common, non-popular keywords that can nonetheless be worth their weight in gold—is kind of like seeking a holy grail. They are not easy to find, but it has a big payoff (presumably) when you find them. If you have been involved in SEO for any […]
The best time to start working on SEO is before you start building your site. It goes back to that old saying: “If you don’t have time to do it right, will you have the time to do it over?” And, of course you don’t have time to do it over. One of the biggest […]
Your web site’s bounce rate may be a significant factor in your search engine rankings. If the bounce rate on your site is high, you could end up with lower rankings in the search engines. Correspondingly, lower bounce rates may actually offer meaningful ranking boosts. (Don’t know what a bounce rate is? Hang on—definitions below.) […]
More and more businesses are realizing the importance their web site plays in their overall marketing strategy. They are also realizing the impact of organic search rankings on branding and sales for their business. And this is creating demand for SEO talent to help them improve their position in web search. Normally, this is a […]
In my last Industrial Strength post, Using Competitive Intelligence To Protect Your Brand, I wrote about how to use tools like Hitwise to protect your brand. I am going to explore this topic a bit more, but this time show some of the unique features of AdGooroo. Since I did not show an example of […]
You have probably heard the phrase “information architecture” but may not have given it much thought. That’s a mistake! In today’s article I am going to talk about why SEOs should care about the concept. The Information Architecture Institute defines “information architecture as the art and science of organizing and labeling websites, intranets, online communities […]
Protecting your brand online is an ongoing activity. It requires hard work and due diligence. One area of concern is when others bid on your brand, or use your brand name in their ads. My current understanding of Google’s policy is that it’s OK to bid on a competitive brand name, but it is not […]
If you are like me, when you implement PPC campaigns one of the mental notes you have in your checklist is to go into the Campaign Settings for each campaign and prevent your ads from running on the content network. It turns out that this might be a mistake. At the recent SMX Advanced event […]
Too many people rely on stats that purport to measure “averages” to guide their search marketing campaigns, and they are all potentially harmful. I am the opposite—you could say that I am passionate about accuracy when it comes to analytics and when it comes to all forms of measuring your marketing campaigns. In this article […]
The most important thing you can do when talking to an SEO client (be it your boss in your company, or a different company you consult for) is to learn how to explain SEO in the simplest terms possible. When you are dealing with a non-SEO type, use the 30 second rule: explain it clearly […]
For a long time there has been a tug of war between developers and designers who love to use Flash and SEOs who know how bad Flash can be from a search engine crawler perspective. The designer wants the beauty of an all Flash site. The SEO wants to bring the site traffic. It’s a […]
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 the CMS software developers. Basically, […]