Sherwood Stranieri
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Sherwood Stranieri

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About Sherwood Stranieri

Sherwood Stranieri runs Skypromote, an SEO agency in Boston and NYC, and has been doing search since 1998. You can follow him on Twitter @SherwoodSEO.

Sherwood Stranieri's latest articles

Apple

Comparing Mobile Blog Designs: What Works Best?

One area of mobile site design that is particularly important for mobile SEO is the blog. Blogs get special treatment in search engines, as sources of fresh content and easily-digested RSS feeds. In the mobile space, blogs are also one of the few areas where users expect to find lengthy text — so, the pressure […]

SEO

eBay Offers A Mobile Search Shortcut For Online Stores

Last month, I touched on several ways that businesses could use apps as an alternate channel to reach mobile searchers. Online retailers have a couple opportunities to use apps in this way, by tapping into the eBay and Amazon marketplaces. Let’s take a closer look at eBay, and some strategies for using it to extend […]

Apple

Mobile Search Beyond Google: In App Search Tools

A couple months back, I covered the rise of a new generation of Windows Phones, and how they will slowly bring more mobile search market share to Bing. But, there’s more to mobile search than just Google and Bing. The app stores for iOS, Android and Windows offer countless of downloadable apps that offer built-in […]

Apple

iPhone 5 Won’t Change Mobile Search, But Can Nokia?

With the launch of the iPhone 5, perhaps the most eagerly awaited electronics launch ever, speculation has been rampant on the impact it’ll have on the mobile phone market, on Apple’s future as an innovator post-Steve Jobs, and on the coolness of the next gadget to get dropped into your pocket. But from a mobile […]

Apple

Is Mobile Search Taking Over The Restaurant Space?

In the last few months, there’s increasing evidence that mobile search activity for restaurants is growing by leaps and bounds. Consider the following: Yelp recently shared that mobile usage now accounts for 40% of their activity, up from 27% in 2010. According Groupon’s CEO, 30% of all transactions on Groupon’s platform are now attributed to […]

Bing

Switchboard Tags: Like Canonical Tags, But For Mobile SEO

When Google published their new guidelines for mobile SEO, the item that made headlines was their declaration of responsive design as the preferred option. Last month, I covered the basics on how responsive design works and how to optimize it. But the second option Google discussed got lost in the headlines: increased support for purpose-built […]

SEO

Building Mobile Landing Pages That Succeed In Mobile Search

Inertia is always a problem when you’re starting something new. The start seems like a very tall wall, and we often make that wall taller by imposing a lot of requirements and parameters on what needs to be done. Mobile marketing must seem that way to a lot of companies, and as a result, far […]

Google Analytics

Untangling Your Mobile Metrics With Better Redirects

A lot of mobile sites owners have trouble making sense of their metrics. In some extreme cases, they can’t track referrals from any website besides their own desktop site, which of course is sending visits their way whenever someone approaches from a mobile phone. The trouble is potentially two-fold: not only is it hard to […]

SEO

How To Improve Mobile Commerce SEO Using JQM

Last month, I took a look at mobile commerce and the issues that online retailers face when trying to adapt their desktop content (or worse, their offline catalog) to a mobile website. I left-off with a promise to revisit mobile site design, since this can have a big impact on your options for slicing and […]

PPC

Tips For Optimizing Content In Mobile Commerce SEO

This month, a lot of mobile commerce sites are being put to the test for the first time. Mcommerce sites are expected to cross the 10% mark in their contribution to online retail sales, and retailers will be collecting usage data to figure out what users like and dislike. In my own shopping experiences, both […]

Apple

Siri, Are You Taking Over Mobile Search?

The new iPhone 4s comes with a feature that is bound to impact how search marketers try to reach iPhone users. Siri, the voice recognition app that comes standard with the new iPhone, can be used to control text messaging and reminders inside the device. But it can also be used as a search tool, […]

Google algorithm updates

Mobile SEO & The Need For Descriptive Links

It’s a well known fact that links play a key role in search engine optimization. In addition to providing a physical connection between pages, search engines also use links to get advance notice of the content they’ll find at the other end of that link. While it’s true that search engines place the greatest value […]

SEO

Mobile Search Strategies For Online Retail

Previously, I took a look at how the travel industry can use mobile SEO in conjunction with desktop-based campaigns to reach customers at two points during their vacation planning: at home while booking the trip, and at the destination while planning their activities. This timing element could be applied to a lot of other industries; […]

SEO

How To Integrate Desktop & Mobile Search For The Travel Industry

Living in the old Italian neighborhood in Boston, I come across tourists everyday. It’s interesting to observe their behavior, particularly in a setting like Boston, which is famous for being a walking city. Most tourists already have a hotel booked by the time they arrive. They have a set timeframe, and a short list of […]

SEO

Do Mobile Blog Templates Have Enough Substance For SEO?

As more online activity shifts to mobile devices, bloggers are becoming aware of the benefits of having mobile versions of their websites. As luck would have it, the developers of major blogging platforms recognized this, and stepped-in to provide default solutions for those wanting to serve-up content to a mobile audience without a lot of […]

SEO

The Mobile Content Dilemma: Brevity Vs. Optimization

Search engine optimization is a neverending quest for better content – and the more, the better. When approaching a site build, there’s often a tug of war between SEOs and site designers over what the page should say. Designers favor a “don’t make me think” approach, giving their users visuals and navigation but holding back […]

Content

Online Video Tactics For Small Businesses

Online video has been explored as marketing tool by large companies, and as a buzz-builder for content producers of all sizes. But what about small businesses: can they jump into the fray and get noticed by video audiences? The short answer is yes. Let’s look at some formats and how they can fit into your […]

Content

Video Search Hacks For Checking Competitors

There are plenty of analytics tools available to help you measure traffic to your collection of videos. These range from the straightforward stats supplied by YouTube Insight to the complex dashboards available from TubeMogul. One area where we’ve not seen much progress is competitor analysis. In conventional search marketing, we have a variety of tools […]

Content

Is Google Universal Search A Walled Garden?

Although Google Universal Search (GUS) is still very much in flux, it’s been a part of the SEO landscape for a while now. In that time, there have been some good studies about how often GUS presents video results, and some research into how it ranks videos versus text pages. One aspect of GUS that’s […]

Content

Searching For “Kitten Videos?” Me Neither

A new survey from ClipBlast! about how people find video content has started a discussion about search and how it relates to entertainment content. In the survey, ClipBlast! asked 1000 online consumers if they had a preferred method for finding video content on the Web. Of those surveyed, almost half had no preferred method, indicating […]

Content

The Trouble With All-In-Zero Video Players

Although YouTube hit pop-culture status just a couple years ago, online video has been a staple of corporate and content websites for quite a bit longer. In that time, web designers have tried many approaches to viewing experience, trying to combine compelling content with a user-friendly interface. After many experiments with plug-ins and third-party players, […]

Content

Tagging 10,000 Videos: Science Or Sweat?

In the last SEL video search column, Eric Papczun described the dilemma faced by content producers that are striving to keep up with the insatiable demand for new video content. Producers are looking for efficient methods of discovering what online viewers are interested in, and then packaging their content to maximize exposure. The example used […]

Content

Does Online Video Pay? And How Much, Exactly?

Grant Crowell’s article about video promotions through Internet Yellow Page programs raises a point that’s probably on the mind of any serious marketer. The hype surrounding online video is deafening, and getting louder: its bizarre mix of content, the experiments by mainstream broadcasters, the sporadic announcements of success from vendors and agencies. But really: does […]

SEO

SEO For Seasonal Promotions

The need to promote an annual event occurs… that’s right: once a year, every single year. Yes, each event comes and goes. But unlike the real world, where we just celebrated our annual Independence Day holiday here in the U.S., there’s no need to pop all the balloons and tear-down the “4th of July Fireworks” […]

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