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SEO-sans Greetings – Taking advantage of Xmas through Search Engine Marketing

by on Nov 06, 2008 (0) Comments

While I’ve been involved in SEO for a while it still surprises me quite how unfamiliar many people are with the concept of Search Engine Marketing.

My Mum, for example, while she might not have been familiar with SEM she certainly is affected by its outcome. She, like many others will be doing a large proportion of her Christmas shopping online, the BBC reported last year how as much as £7bn will be spent online in the run up to the festive period, while the credit crunch is sure to have an effect the trend definitely is away from the uber busy town centres to shopping from the comfort of your sofa.

But how can search marketers take advantage of this?

Like most people, a lot of where those billions are spent will be decided by what appears on the search engines results pages and the search for the gift for the difficult friend or relative, provides a unique opportunity for websites small or large:

Has Google Cache killed Page Rank?

by on Nov 04, 2008 (0) Comments

This is an old post that I found in the depth of my documents, while the test is old I certainly think the point of the article remains

Ages ago Aaron Wall made a short post promoting a friends online web tool. In the post Aaron suggested, given Page Rank’s infrequent updates and old data that the date Google last cached your site was a better indication of how much Google “trusted” your site than the green strip in the Google Toolbar.

It got me thinking, quarterly updates of Page Rank with data from who knows when, while quite useful isn’t the most reliable indication of how respected you are in the halls of the Googleplex. With the rise of blogs, RSS, social media & user generated content how long ago the search engine spiders visited your site probably is pretty good indication of how important your site is.

How To Create a Self Sufficient SEO Site

by on Nov 01, 2008 (0) Comments

Managing an SEO campaign boils down to measuring and managing key performance indicators. Rather than focusing on one keyword for example, optimize an entire array of related keywords.

Rather than looking for links obsessively, focus on capping the link flow and internal linking within your own site to seal up any hemorrhages your website may have. By doing this, your pages become less dependent on external links (granted they have authority).

Create Authority:

Naturally the next question is what is authority, to put it simply, an authority website has a great foundation of useful content. By the merit of the content it attracts a steady base of readers or new visitors.

Create Popularity:

Website popularity toggles authority and trust, so without igniting the proper metrics, you can have solid internal links and great content, but without traffic to endorse your site or a few backlinks from the right places, the time it take to gain authority and trust will take longer.

Is Your Keyword Research Methodology Up To Scratch?

by on Oct 30, 2008 (0) Comments

There’s no avoiding how fundamental keyword research is to the natural search marketing process. Without it how will you know if your site is sending the right relevance signals to search engines? Without them how will you measure your performance? (Admittedly ranking reports are rapidly becoming less and less relevant though they still have a place in most clients KPIs) How will you know you’re looking at the right competitors when carrying out back link analysis?

Getting Your Site to Play Well With All Browsers

by on Oct 24, 2008 (0) Comments

A customer is visiting your e-commerce Web site. She’s decided to do more online shopping this holiday season to save on gasoline and find the lowest prices. She’s using a Mac running Safari, but your site is optimized for Internet Explorer (IE) 7 and your development budget is mainly focused on preparing for IE 8. She selects a few products and heads for the shopping cart, but the “checkout” button isn’t available. Frustrated, she’s off to another site. You’ve lost the sale.

IT managers are now working feverishly to avoid this type of incident, which underscores a current fact of life for Web site designers, Web application developers and your entire IT department: Web pages can look and perform differently from one browser to another.

Local Business Marketing Tip: Turn Economic Lemons Into Sales Lemonade For The Holidays

by on Oct 20, 2008 (0) Comments

The chain-reaction of foreclosures, mortgage company failures, banking sector woes, and see-sawing stock market are making for a very scary-looking retail season here in the fourth quarter. The U.S. Department of Commerce recently said that business sa…

Cloud Computing: The Dark and Stormy Side

by on Oct 16, 2008 (0) Comments

A number of leading authorities have been urging caution on the adoption of Web-based services as a new wave of vendors unveil cloud initiatives. Cloud computing involves computing resources hosted in an off-premise “cloud” rather than an in-house computer room.