Archive for the ‘SEO Guides’ Category
July 9th, 2009 by Benj Arriola
Microsoft has remodeled their search engine over and over again. The Microsoft Network, or MSN whose origins started as an ISP and an online portal when Windows 95 was launched, grew into a search engine that was always trailing as the 3rd most used search engine behind Google and Yahoo in terms of search engine usage with the United States.
From MSN.com to Live.com and finally Bing.com, it is now branding itself as a “decision engine.” Do they mean Bing has some unique decision algorithm in giving relevant results and that it can (more…)
Tags: Bing, Guides, Microsoft
Posted in SEO Guides | 4 Comments »
April 10th, 2009 by catfish
My recent presentation at Search Engine Strategies (SES) New York afforded me the opportunity to talk about:
- The importance of measuring the right data from each step in the “search cycle” and then,…
- Taking action based on that data.
Many people get caught up in metrics and measuring all kinds of things that don’t drive any tactical optimization activities. In an ongoing SEO campaign, resources for continued optimization need to be prioritized based on analytics data, so as to maximize ROI. Therefore, we need to measure the right data in each step of the “search cycle” in order to understand the proper allocation of those resources.
The “search cycle” is a five step process that illustrates how potential customers become customers through search:
Each of the steps in this process have certain metrics that can be leveraged to (more…)
Tags: Analytics, Guides, ROI
Posted in SEO Guides | 4 Comments »
March 3rd, 2009 by catfish
Upon further review of the new tag rel=canonical, that is used to let search engines know what URL you want indexed for any given page of your site, I can’t find any reason why you wouldn’t want to make it a standard part of every Web page on your site. This tag proactively handles a number of potential duplicate content issues.
*special note about “duplicate content penalties”: Some people feel that it is very important to be clear that a duplicate content “penalty” is not really a penalty. Google is not punishing your site for having a Web page that has the same content as another Web page. But what it is happening is, (more…)
Tags: Canonical, Guides, URLs
Posted in SEO Guides | 5 Comments »
February 13th, 2009 by catfish
Good news from Google, Yahoo and MSN/Live who have announced support for the rel=”canonical” tag. This new tag with the following syntax: (more…)
Tags: Canonical, Google, Guides, Live Search, Yahoo
Posted in SEO Guides | 4 Comments »
January 5th, 2009 by david
The crucial element to any effective strategy for link building is to have a consistent ongoing campaign. Much like the fable of the tortoise and the hare, slow and steady wins the race. Incorporating link building as part of an overall SEO campaign involves deciding on a pace that is realistic and sticking with it. If you are just beginning a link campaign a good starting point is to build 3 links per week, and then gradually increase your weekly number. There are always new and inventive ways of building links. One such strategy which will be discussed here is by (more…)
Tags: Blogs, Link Building, Link Development
Posted in SEO Guides | 13 Comments »
January 2nd, 2009 by catfish
I just finished reading Google’s guide to SEO. It was very gratifying to see that our process is consistent with the content of this document.
Here are some of the highlights:
1) Always focus on User Experience.
2) Always have unique page titles and Meta descriptions.
3) Use short concise URL strings, preferably with descriptive words.
4) Make your site navigation as flat as possible.
5) Avoid using generic page names like page1.html.
6) Be consistent in your internal linking (caps versus no caps, www versus no www).
7) One URL to each document, avoid duplicate URL paths to the same content.
Have an xml and html sitemap with no errors.
9) Use breadcrumb navigation
10) Make sure the link text of all internal links is keyword focused.
There is a lot more in this document that makes for a great read about SEO, especially for those just learning the art. Reading it is the perfect way for any SEO to start a great new year.
Tags: Google, Guides
Posted in SEO Guides | 4 Comments »
December 12th, 2008 by catfish
There are a number of reasons why any company should consider blogging. The social media opportunities, networking opportunities and ability to enhance brand reputation are all compelling reasons to participate in blogging. Often times however, these benefits are hard to quantify in a way that illustrates the ROI that is achieved through blogging. Fortunately, blogging is also one of the best available tools to improve your SEO campaign if leveraged properly. Therefore, it is much easier to justify the expense of blogging when one can show the direct SEO benefit to the Web site because search activity is much easier to tie to ROI than brand management or even social media in many cases. Here are the 3 of the top ways that you can use your blog to enhance your SEO campaign: (more…)
Tags: Blogs, Guides, Link Building
Posted in SEO Guides | No Comments »
November 24th, 2008 by catfish
There are a lot of small details in the world of SEO that are important to understand in order to maximize your SEO campaign. Everything from PageRank sculpting using rel=nofollow, to XML sitemap feeds, to analyzing competitor backlinks. But some of the biggest gains in SEO can be accomplished by paying attention to the basics. Here are my top three basic SEO tips we apply at our search engine optimization firm that can help you increase your search engine rankings TODAY! (more…)
Tags: Guides, On-Page SEO
Posted in SEO Guides | 6 Comments »
November 17th, 2008 by Benj Arriola
Lightbox JS was popularized by Lokesh Dhakar where he made a nice friendly degradable JavaScript function where thumbnails can be linked to their larger images but load dynamically using JavaScript in a separate <div> box that loads in an animated manner. Many webmasters have adapted this and users like it too since there are no more page reloading and the need to hit the back button to go back to the thumbnail view. You can see demonstrations on the Lightbox JS website. After Lightbox JS came out, many other implementations of this technology emerged where the applications have been used not only for images, but for videos and also any content in general. The benefit of using this technique aside from the seamless fluid integration, they do not open as separate popup windows using a new web browser instance that is sometimes anti-popup blockers.
Generally, when would you use Lightbox JS?
When you need to display something briefly to the website visitor and you do not want them to leave the current page where the page has to reload again and to move back, you would have to press the back button. Often you see this in: (more…)
Tags: Ajax, Code, Greybox, Guides, HighSlide, JavaScript, Lightbox, Thickbox
Posted in SEO Guides | 2 Comments »
November 10th, 2008 by catfish
One of the things that I notice about a lot of Web Design firms and even creative agencies who say they bake SEO into everything they do, is that very few of them bake it into there own sites. Now I don’t want to call anyone out today but I do want to give people a quick little guide on the top five things to look for when evaluating the SEO ability of design firm that says they know SEO. I mean, if SEO is part of their overall offering, they would be silly not to SEO their own site right? And if they haven’t taken the time to do that, is that a firm that you can really feel confident in? I think you know my answer. *lol* So here is the top 5 things that I would look for in a design firms web site that will give you some idea if they know what they are doing: (more…)
Tags: Flash, Guides, JavaScript, On-Page SEO
Posted in SEO Guides | 9 Comments »
