Marketing on the Web
I have written before about never deleting or renaming a page, but there are times when it is unavoidable. Restructuring a site, removing obsolete products and changing scripting languages (moving to shtml from php, or php from html) make this a common problem. I am in the middle of two large projects that will involve changing the names of many pages. These are both Joomla-based sites, so I am mitigating some of the problems by using sh404sef. It does a great job of helping you control page ...
MoreLinking Google Analytics and AdWords Accounts
Google Analytics is updating their their system. To ensure AdWords continues to pass information to your Google Analytics account, a setting change may be needed. I have already taken care of this for my customers and in doing so found several cases where a change was required. I wanted to alert other readers that you should check your AdWords account to be sure the information is correct. For instructions see this Google Post Important change to AdWords/Analytics cost data importing T...
MoreRel Canonical now supported by Google, Microsoft and Yahoo
There is a new Canonical tag that is supported by Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. This is important news, especially as people are working more and more with CMS systems and database driven websites (such as Joomla, WordPress, etc). The issue is that people can arrive at your content in a variety of ways. The simplest variation being www. versus non www. version of your site. What's that, you say they are the same? Au contraire mon fraire, to a search engine www is a separate sub-domain. There...
MoreBuilding Incoming Links
One of the cornerstones of improving any business is referrals. Nothing promotes a product or service better than positive comments from someone you know and respect or from an authority in the field. The same is true for your website. To explain the importance of incoming links to grow traffic to your website, I often use a metaphor of selecting a roofer. You don't know a roofer, but you have a friend that builds houses, so you ask who he would use. The answer provides not only who to call,...
MoreLinking Pay Per Click Campaigns to Google Analytics
It is beneficial to separate and track your Pay Per Click traffic from Organic in Google Analytics. If you don't make the effort, PPC and Organic traffic will be lumped together, making it difficult to know how your SEO efforts are progressing. Once you make the link between Google AdWords and Google Analytics accounts, the tracking will occur automatically. To set this up, simply access the Analytics tab in your AdWords account and then either select Create New or Link to Existing. Once you...
MoreGoogle Publishes Quality Score Explanation
Google just published updated information on 'Quality Score' and how is it calculated. Quality Score is a major factor in determining what advertisers pay for ad phrases. I believe this is the clearest information so far on this import, evolving algorithm. What is 'Quality Score' and how is it calculated? Past Articles: How Google AdWords Bidding Works - Quality Score Landing Pages to Improve Quality Score PPC Campaigns and Quality Score Chasing the Long Tail
MoreGoogle Publishes SEO Guide
Google has a number of good resources for webmasters, but they have just released an Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide. So, if you ever wondered if all that stuff you have heard about optimizing your website for Google is hooey or not... this is a great place to find out.
MoreLaunching a new Website / Changing an existing one
Whether launching a new website or changing an existing one it is important to do a little upfront work. I have had a couple of clients come to me recently either wanting to toss out their old site and start over or who have sadly, already made wholesale changes to page names or content only to find that their website can no longer be found in search results. Things to consider when launching a new Website or changing an existing one: Never rename or delete a page (well almost). If you a...
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