As far as social media tools go, Twitter is easily my favorite. While I am by no means an expert (I’m not a fan of people calling themselves an expert at anything, even Tiger Woods), I’ve been around the Twitter block so to speak. A user for over two years now, I’ve seen Twitter go […]
Twitter is notorious for having their servers go down and for having a limited feature set. So how in the world did they outlast Pownce and drive them to their extinction? Pownce had everything going for it. It had a slicker UI, an AIR app, and better uptime than Twitter. It was also a collaboration […]
Return on Investment (ROI) is what every client wants from a search marketing agency. It’s an easy thing to calculate if you’re doing Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising. If your revenue is higher than your spend, PPC management fees and cost of goods, then your client is getting a return on their investment. Although it’s simple to […]
It’s not uncommon for a site to have mutiple domains and sub-domains pointing to the same content. For example, you can get to this site using sitening.com or www.sitening.com. But for on-site SEO it is important that all requests are 301 redirected to a single hostname. If Google can get the same content by going […]
Over at SEO Black Hat, QuadsZilla demonstrates correlation between traffic, specifically Google traffic, and bounce rate, claiming that bounce rate is being used to determine quality and factoring into rankings. Except his or her graphs show direct, rather than inverse, relationships between traffic and bounce rate. In other words, in those graphs, on days when […]
In the past few years, archetypes for search engine optimizers have emerged. They include a three point spectrum that includes “White Hat,” “Gray Hat” and “Black Hat.” SEO hats, like most labels, were designed to pigeonhole and simplify what a person does. However, as the practice of SEO had matured and search engines like Google […]
Stop words are words that search engines, like Google, traditionally ignore in searches. For that reason, they’ve been shunned by SEO specialists in regards to how they name domain names, page titles and other keyword-centric onsite SEO elements. However, that strategy has been changing lately, because search algorithms are starting to include stop words in […]
There are many reasons to link out from your website. Sometimes it’s to link to a trusted partner or to a sister website. If you’re a search engine optimizer, you link out because it helps your website perform better on search engines (I’m not talking about link exchanges). However, there are still many websites, especially […]
Oh sweet “nofollow!” I use you on my blog to keep my link juice from spilling out onto the shady, dark world of the Internet underbellies. I even use you to sculpt my sites, hoping to wrangle PageRank and content into my own little silo of SERP love. Yet you are fickle and have proven […]
There’s a belief among many search engine optimizers that links from college websites (aka EDU links) carry more link juice than typical COM, NET and ORG TLD links. Because of that belief, many SEO specialists spend a ridiculous amount of time and energy trying to build up links on any page that resides on an […]
Every SEO campaign is a process unto itself. It is contrived of many components that, when executed correctly, form the sum of one large piece. Without each component working to its fullest, the benefit of the end product cannot be truly felt. 8 Steps to a Succesful SEO Campaign 1. Keyword Research 2. Competition Research […]
There’s an ongoing obsession with tracking search engine result pages (SERPs). Both seasoned search marketing specialists and know-enough-to-be-dangerous webmasters can’t get enough of them. So what’s so special about these stats and why do people track them? Why Track SERPs? There are generally three reasons why people track SERPs: Research, Trends and Performance. Research tracking […]
“The problem with social media is… there are more people writing it than reading it.” Mixx After being granted a credibility boost from the New York Times recently, it seems like Mixx is here to stay. The underdog of social networking, Mixx has a smaller following than other user generated content (UGC) sites, but was […]
Why is the Raven blog a “Do Follow” blog? The short and simple answer has to do with rewarding our blog community. There’s too many high quality comments that don’t deserve to have their links “no followed” in the comments. Running a “Do Follow” blog does take more effort. You have to be more vigilant […]
From a user experience point of view, 404 pages are not something you want to see. If you reach one, it means the content is gone or has been moved. Also, the average Internet user has no idea what the “404” actually means, even though that’s usually the message they see. For webmasters and search […]
Promoting a locale-based website can require different and somewhat modified search marketing techniques. For example, if you’re marketing a website with a national or global audience, you may focus on building links from other websites that have a similar audience. However, for websites that have a local audience, it’s generally best to focus on websites […]
Like most code based SEO enhancements, optimizing an image with text involves utilizing existing accessibility options already built into HTML. For example, adding the text in an image to the ALT attribute into the IMG element will help users with certain disabilities (or users with a text browser, like Lynx) and also provide more copy […]
I’ve never liked the idea of renting links. Text Link Ads, one of the pioneers in link selling, continues to use misleading terminology in their marketing through their use of the term “Buy Links.” The problem is that you’re not buying links, you’re renting them. Not only that, you’re renting them at the detriment to […]
Using linkbait is a great way of attracting traffic to your website or blog. The only factor you’re limited by is your own imagination. Whether you run a sports blog or are part of a corporate website setup, linkbait should be part of your SEO campaign. If executed correctly, it can have a significant impact. […]
As most SEO specialists know, Matt Cutts — aka Google Search King — hates paid links. In fact, he has an all out war against link brokers like PayPerPost and Text Link Ads. Unlike other search marketing conferences, PubCon is known for teaching the darker side of SEO and SEM. It’s been called the DEF […]
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