Marketing on the Web
Google recently announced changes to its approach to Quality Score. Quality Score is the bane of my existence. It turns previous 'best practices' into bad practices and dooms the long-tail to obscurity. Sure it makes sense to have the keywords relevant to the ad and the landing page relevant (duh!), but in practice Google weighs click thru rates (CTR) in the overall campaign to judge what you should be paying and if your CTR drops too low for the ad group, you'll receive a Quality score minim...
MoreMarketing Overview for Web Developers
I was recently asked to speak to the North Alabama Web Developers group. I created a slide presentation that discusses organic versus paid search results and some of the elements that come into play when improving Search Engine Rank. Here is a link to that presentation. Marketing Overview for Web Developers.
MoreMatt Cutts Addresses Webmasters
Matt Cutts addresses the German Webmaster community in this video, but he hits essential points that can benefit anyone who wants to improve their search engine rank (10 minutes).
MoreWorking with CMS Systems
CMS is the future If your here, you are likely already familiar with the concept of Content Management Systems (CMS) and what they do. The attraction is simple, the ability to give your marketing folks (yourself in some cases) the ability to directly edit content of your website without any HTML expertise or a concern that they might break the site. I bought into this idea working with the folks at one of the local design firms. A BIG attraction for me is the ability to tweak key SEO elements...
MoreSearch Optimization for Google
This is a short video by Google's Matt Cutts. In the video he offers tips on basic things you can do to optimize your website for Google:
MoreStarting your SEO Efforts
When optimizing your site for traffic, you will need some means to see where you are, track your progress (or your lack there of), and help identify mistakes. Here are the core elements I recommend: Sign-up for a Google Analytics (GA) account, it's free and it some if the best information you can get about visitor activity and how they got to your pages. If you do PPC marketing on AdWords and don't have Google Analytics installed you can add it under the Analytics tab in AdWords. If you a...
MoreeBay Search Optimization
I just ran across this article on Website Magazine titled SEO Your eBay Store . Its a great article and offers some critical insights on getting picked up by the search engines. Website Magazine Article
MoreBot Herding (aka Page Sculpting)
Bot herding, sometime referred to as "sculpting," is the act of shaping what search engines sees, and therefore what content you are ranked on. The idea behind bot herding is to keep the search engines off the content you didn't want to be known for. One of my clients has a consumer reports aspect to their business and actively blacklists companies who don't provide good customer service. As a service to their customers they listed other services (more…)
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