Thomas Schmitz is a longtime digital marketing professional who works with startups, SMBs, enterprise, media and not-for-profit organizations. Regarded as an expert in inbound and content marketing, search engine optimization and social media, Tom's an innovative growth creator and turnaround specialist. Follow Tom at @TomSchmitz.
When conducting research, it’s not uncommon to perform repetitive tasks like downloading a group of webpages. A favorite tool I use to automate this is iMacros — it’s free and powerful. Just be sure to use the Firefox version, as its capabilities are limited in other browsers. Say you want a list of the Fortune […]
As my friends know, in January, I became an in-house SEO. Now that I have a few weeks under my belt, I thought I’d discuss some of the differences between agency SEO and in-house SEO, the type of traits it takes to succeed in-house, and some of the traps you can land in. Agency vs. In-house […]
Understanding the difference between the robots.txt file and Robots <META> Tag is critical for search engine optimization and security. It can have a profound impact on the privacy of your website and customers as well. The first thing to know is what robots.txt files and Robots <META> Tags are. Robots.txt Robots.txt is a file you place in your […]
They say the devil is in the details. When it comes to search engine optimization, those details include some important quirks you need to know about. Conforming to search engine behavior Keeping-up with changes in search engine behavior Playing well with other websites to protect your SEO Avoiding common practices that obstruct SEO Here are […]
I’ve thought about writing my 2013 SEO game plan since I hit the submit button for last year’s version. The problem is, since when my review of 2012 came out last month, I’ve read numerous SEO in 2013 articles, and many of them are quite good or complete. I have to give special kudos to […]
During the last 12 months (November 2011 to November 2012), SEO professionals have witnessed stunning changes from Google that impact SEO. Reputation & Trust Two words I frequently saw or heard this year were reputation and trust. I am writing about the credibility of a website’s content, design, and external links, not reputation management as […]
Does your company use SEO for online marketing guidance? If you are a regular Search Engine Land reader, I suspect you will answer with something like, “Of course we do. We’re enlightened marketers, not Neanderthals.” And, you probably are. Actually, I would not ask you this question without reason. Being an inbound marketing consultant, I […]
Poor URL structure is a frequent SEO issue, one that can impair rankings, keep pages out of the search engine indexes, and suck ranking authority from your other pages or even the entire websites. Some content management systems bake poor URL structures right into their websites. Lax rules can be a culprit, for example, not […]
Recently, I ran an audit on 56 music industry websites and received a startling result. Sixteen sites, 28.6%, forward people from their domain name to their homepage using 302 Temporary Redirects. These sites are tossing away valuable link authority! If your domain and homepage are different, determine how the domains forward visitors to the actual […]
Links are always a popular topic, and this year has proven no exception including Penguin, links vs. social media, negative SEO and disavowing links. Recently, someone asked me to distinguish between good links and bad links. First, there are really three types of links: Links that help SEO Links that hurt SEO Links search engines […]
Today, I want you to think about how a set of search engine optimization recommendations may be perfect for one website while lacking or wrong for another. I want you to think about strategic decision making. We know there is more to Internet marketing than search engine optimization and there’s a lot more bells and […]
Next month, I will speak at SMX Advanced as a member of the authority panel, so it makes sense to discuss authority in my column this month. Authority is a term that has been around as long as I can remember, probably longer than the term search engine optimization itself. That is because classic SEO […]
When you think about International SEO, it is easy to imagine Global 2000 companies with offices and employees around the globe. It can be equally important to the small business that sells globally from one location. How do you convince the search engines to include you in their international rankings on a country by country […]
My message today is to tear down the walls: not the ones in your website but in your company, between and within divisions. Too many businesses, especially larger companies, divide website responsibilities throughout different parts of the organization chart. Without strong central leadership, this can slow-down critical functions as each department fits their Web work […]
Website structure and internal linking is one of the most inconsistent topics within search engine optimization. Not only are SEO practitioners frequently at odds among ourselves, we must compete with the often conflicting goals of designers, usability experts, and marketing or sales teams. There is a lot of disagreement out there. Look for yourself. Pick […]
It’s a new year. Somebody needs to declare something dead. Recently, I gave a presentation on Google’s Search+ in which I said ranking reports no longer matter because there is no such thing as consistent Google rankings. What you see in the Google search results and what I see, for the exact same query, are […]
Search Engine Optimization is growing up. I am not ready to say the Wild West SEO days are completely eradicated, but in 2011 good search engine optimization is less about trickery and more about engaging content and audience development than ever before. Over the years, quality optimizers have become more prone to avoid technical tricks […]
Search engines want to populate the results with quality content written by experts as acknowledged by other Internet users. Documents with links from websites that have lots of links and documents with links from websites that have high quality links get rewarded. It is no wonder that when you ask a search engine reps how […]
Good keyword research is laborious. So is it no wonder that once you understand the basics, you may be tempted to use whichever tool you have at hand and try to automate or speed up the process. Except, should you want to do this? Keyword research is your time to understand the market you are […]
Is creating link bait good SEO? Emphatically, yes! If it does not get links it is not link bait. If it does, then people are finding value, which is exactly what the search engines want to reward. Whether you call it white hat or ethical SEO, link bait fits the bill. But what is link […]