Marketing on the Web
There are hundreds of thousands of sites online today, and nearly every business that is looking to succeed has added to that vast quantity by making a site of their own. Trying to get your site to the top isn't as easy as it once was, and those interested in staying ahead of their competition must create effective websites. A good website is more than just a great landing page and some additional media. In fact, a great website should have at the bare minimum: The Ability to Create a Good...
MoreDealing with bad reviews in Google Places
Everyone has a bad day, tempers often flair and it is easy to strike out when your facing your opponent through a computer screen. The bad news is that a review whipped out in anger can live on the Internet for a long time. Highland Hardware had an unhappy customer and despite their best efforts to resolve the issue the customer was still unhappy. However when the customer struck out at them publicly, its owner and founder Chris Bagby took action and sending this letter to his customer base: ...
MoreDilbert Exposes the Dark Side of SEO
I was surprised in February of 2010 to see that SEO had become mainstream enough to be the subject of a Dilbert strip. Scott Adams continues here, not only confirming how mainstream SEO has become, but also acknowledging that there is a dark "black hat" side to this industry. ...an easy road to go down, until those chickens come home to roost.
MoreDon’t use PDFs as Web Pages
I routinely provide SEO audits as a part of my services and a common situation that I encounter is the use of PDF files as web pages. In general, using any non-web file such as .pdf, .doc, xls, etc. as primary content on a website is a bad idea. When people enter your site on these pages, they have no logical way to find information about related products and services (say they land on a page about blue widgets and need information on red widgets) or navigate to your Contact Page. In addition...
MoreSEOMOZ, Ranking Factor Study for 2011
Great report on ranking factors. Biggest surprise is the influence facebook continues to have, even with much of its data blocked from Google. I think moving forward, slide 49 may be the most important indicator of where our efforts need to be. Ranking Factors Data 2011: SMX Elite Sydney
MoreStarting a Google AdWords Campaign
I am always encouraging my customers to start a Google AdWords campaign. You can start relatively small budget and, in addition to generating additional traffic and sales, you can gain some fantastic marketing data in the process. While your website may be optimized for the many of the phrases in your space, I am always able to find phases to drive incremental business. In addition an AdWords campaign is a great way to test and evaluate ad copy to find out what messages are best at capturing ...
MoreMonitoring Site Speed for Better Ranking
Google uses page load speed as one of the signals in their ranking algorithm. While they previously provided an indicator of your sites speed in Webmaster tools, but it wasn’t on-going (they only sampled periodically). With this announcement, Google has added Site Speed To Google Analytics. I think page load speed is something everyone should be monitoring, especially if you’re in a share hosting environment (like most of my customers). It will also be beneficial in identifying slower page...
MoreCreating Quality Content
It is often said that “content is king”. However, more content is not necessarily better. Content must stay focused on the subject of the site. Sections should only contain information that is closely related. Pages should focus on a single topic and contain variations of key phrases to be relevant for a wide range of searches. So how do you create great copy? The key to creating great content is to think in terms of solving a problem. Then describe the problem and the solution in generic ...
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