Archive for the ‘SEO’ Category

SEO Advice – The Horse Pill

Sunday, September 28th, 2008

The other night I had a lady ask me how to solve a tricky SEO problem she was having with a competitor and she asked me because a friend of mine told her I am an SEO Consultant.

She told me her SEO problems and I gave her a solution that was a bit outside of the box and she didn’t understand that it was the solution to her SEO problem. She kept on saying here is the problem, here it is and I told her just to remove it. Sometimes you have to let go. But above all, sometimes you have to listen, then you understand.

When you know your competitor is your superior at SEO or worse yet is a SEO Consultant with far superior SEO knowledge, SEO Experience and link energy than you possess. It is time for you to get your own SEO Consultant and then LISTEN to him. Sometimes the answer is going to be a horse pill you aren’t willing to swallow, but like a rip tide, if you fight it the wrong way you are always going to lose. So if your way clearly isn’t working and you have wasted two years doing it your way. Listen to good SEO advice when you ask for it and try it another way for six months. What do you have to lose when you have already lost? Nothing, right?

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Posted in SEO | 2 Comments »

Legend of the SEO Champion

Saturday, August 30th, 2008

Last Thursday I was at the August Presentation Style South Florida SEO Social Meetup and I got to hear about the SEO Champion at SES, basically a crazy guy that showed up at SES, crashed a private Microsoft event and caused all sorts of mayhem.

The SEO Champion’s legend (infamy?) is spreading like wild fire around the blogosphere and some people even think the SEO Champion is legit.

I have some tips for The SEO Champion’s next event:

  1. Don’t go drunk
  2. If you are on meds, take them
  3. Don’t start any fights
  4. Don’t wear a chicken suit
  5. Don’t try to sell SEO Services at SES to legitimate SEO Consultants. (that is just like selling snow, ice and a refrigerator to an Eskimo)

Anyways this guy is sort of smart because he is being linked and talked about quite a bit. Maybe all the crazy clients will find him.

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User Experience Design and SEO

Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008

What does user experience design (UX) have to do with SEO? EVERYTHING!!

Usability and user experience design can help improve your conversion rates, but this takes time and effort. Bad design can lead to a poor user experience. Tweaking your website’s UX can have big time payoffs for your SEO efforts, leading to more conversions and an increase in your bottom line.

A good UX design incorporating business and marketing goals while catering to your end user’s Experience isn’t easy and it doesn’t happen over night. The template and graphic tweaks can take a week to do and roll out. Then you have to wait a month to see test the results of your new UX design tweaking. One of three things will most likely happen: nothing will improve; your stats and conversions will remain steady (+/-3% on your conversions); you will have a modest gain in conversions (maybe 3-9% more conversions, which is a pretty good gain in conversions) or you will have a substantial gain in conversions (over 10%, up to 30% increase in conversions)

The key is patience and being able to afford tweaks and changes on your website. Who does User Experience Design and SEO tweaks on their website(s)? How about Google for starters. I recently listened to one of their podcasts and they had a 30% gain on conversions for one of their products, Picasa. Want to know why Google does so damned good? They spend time and money on good UX. And if Google doesn’t get the UX tweaks right the first time, they do UX tweaks again until they get the bump that they need.

Don’t just think you are going to make a website and get the user experience design right the first time. This is never the case. Every website is always in Beta, it just might not say it on the logo. If you care about keeping a healthy defensible competitive edge on your competition keep user experience design in your mind and your budget. Defending and improving your Defensible competitive edge like this can be dangerously awesome for your bottom line.

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Posted in SEO, UX | Comments Off

Colbert Once Again The Greatest Living American

Tuesday, September 25th, 2007

After having his site taken off Google for the term, “The Greatest Living American” for being Google bombed to the number one spot. Stephen Colbert is back with a vengeance. The Cobertnation is now winning for the term “The Greatest Living American” both with and without quotes. I guess Google’s work around for Google Bombing isn’t working again.

The Greatest Living American SERPS 09252007

The Greatest Living American SERPS 09252007

Update 10.01.07 Looks like this was very short lived. Google updated the day after I posted this blog. I also fixed the typos. Sorry to all who were offended over two typos.

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The Difference Between SEO And SEM

Monday, July 23rd, 2007

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) are Two different things altogether. The two things go hand in hand but are often thought of as one thing. Search Engine Optimization is what is done to your site to ensure that the end users have a friendly easy to use web site with SEF Menus and SEF URLS that Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com crawl through and find your content. Search Engine Marketing is doing the advertising and marketing of your site. Ironical this is all done “offsite” whereas SEO is mostly done “onsite”. SEO is a more technical process than SEM and involves a deeper understanding of search engine algorithms.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) involves advertising and target marketing in order to draw traffic to websites. This includes:

Pay-for-inclusion – Many SEM companies guarantee your site will be indexed by the search engines within a short period of time, and if you really want to you can directly submit your site to the engines. DO NOT DO THIS until your site is done. Also do not go around your SEO/SEM advertiser’s back and do this multiple times, this is a form of spam which you are penalized for. Patience is the key. Submission fees are required for submissions to search engines and directories.

Email Marketing (aka “Email Blasts” and “Spamming”) – I firmly do not believe in Email Marketing. Unless you already have your own list of clients that read your emails, don’t Email Market. I never open spam and everyone I know hates being spammed. So why pay to piss off 10,000 people or more every week? Conversely the Email Marketer will tell you not to SEO or SEM your web site in more cost effective ways. They want you to keep paying for Email Blasts. I think spending your time and money on natural position on Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com is a much better business model then sending out 10,000 emails where 90% of them are not even read.

Traditional Ads (PPC – Pay Per Click) – Ads are displayed on the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) generally these are text based ads, where the copy is written by the SEO/SEM advertiser. Ads are based on the Keyword entered in the search and fees are triggered by impressions. You pay for the ad even if it’s not clicked through. You want to work with your SEO/SEM advertiser so that your ads Click Through Rate has a high percentage. You can easily spend hundreds a day for very little ROI.

Link Exchanging – The SEO/SEM advertiser trades for one way, reciprocal and three way link exchanges while making sure they are of the same niche as you web site is and not spammy web sites. Its the hardest part of getting your web site going.

ROI tracking - The SEO/SEM advertiser tracks your Web Site’s stats

SEM and SEO are both a necessary evil if you want a successful web site. Make sure that you work with your SEO/SEM advertiser to Market your web site very strongly both before and after you enjoy organic listings in Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com. Remember if you website is brand new and has no content its going to go no where fast. Content is King. Listen to your SEO/SEM advertiser.

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Posted in SEM, SEO | 1 Comment »

Search Engine Friendly Web Design

Sunday, June 10th, 2007

A search engine friendly design can greatly decrease other search engine marketing and advertising costs. Search engine friendly web design is often an after thought when someone has the idea for a flash web site. People rarely start out thinking about search engine friendly web design in the early stages of their web development. Search engine friendly Web design, Good content and usability should the corner stones of your web site. Flash should be an afterthought or used in small doses.

What is search engine friendly web design? Your web site should have: Search Engine Friendly URLs (SEF URLS), Search Engine Friendly Menus (SEF Menus), dynamic titles, and dynamic headers. Never use Flash or JS scripts in your web site’s menus if you want your web site spidered by any of the search engines. A menu that looks just as good if not better than flash can be done with CSS, XHTML or DHTML. A lot of web sites have the same header on every page, a bad header or a non matching header.

If your site is brand new, it will take three to six months to get listed on the major search engines. Have us use our Search Engine Friendly Web design methods to help your web site have a strong foundation so you can get into the search engines. Search engine friendly web design should never be an after thought.

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Is Stephen Colbert the Greatest Living American?

Friday, May 4th, 2007

It seems that Google bombing isn’t going away. The internet nerds are all doing the dance to make Stephen Colbert the Greatest Living American. In less than two weeks the position for the term “the greatest living American” in Google has gone up to the number one spot in Google for the www.colbertnation.com. Now I am sure Stephen is a great guy, but is he really the greatest living American?

The cool people over at Digg seem to be getting behind this Google bomb of “greatest living American” so they can win the top spot for the term in Google for Stephen Colbert’s The Colbert Nation – www.colbertnation.com. As of today The Colbert Nation only has spot six in yahoo, spot two in MSN and its not listed in Ask.com on page one at all. However the number one spot in Ask seems to be the Google bomber:

SEOmoz | Help Make Stephen Colbert the “Greatest Living American”
Help Make Stephen Colbert the “Greatest Living American” … Use the anchor text “Greatest Living American” …
www.seomoz.org/blog/stephen-colbert-the-greatest-living-American-… www.seomoz.org/blog/stephen-colbert-the-greatest-living-American-a-Googlebombing-campaign

Notice that the SEOMOZ.ORG site has a good Header with the title of “Greatest Living American”, keywording of the term “greatest living American” and it has “greatest living American” in the URL as well.

This proves to me that Google’s removal of older Google bombings were a limited manual process to appease President Bush, not in anyway an improvement in their Search Engine. It also shows the power of one way linking. Google needs to start working on their code to keep up with Ask.com now. I think they are getting away from being a leader in good search and trying so much to be a profit machine. Maybe we should Google bomb Google as “talentless hacks”(the first Google bomb) and see how quickly they fix the Google bombing issue.

I bet Stephen Colbert loves being the greatest living American on the internet. Stephen Colbert might be the best fake Neocon Demagogue but he is not the greatest living American. Why can’t I be the greatest living American instead? I like to think Eddie Van Halen is the greatest living American. Or maybe Micheal Moore is the greatest living American.

But who knows? One thing is for sure, The greatest living American isn’t President Bush.

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Posted in Ask.com, MSN, SEO, Yahoo | Comments Off

George Bush No Longer A Miserable Failure

Sunday, February 18th, 2007

At least thats what Google not says. Google removed the link to the white house page of GW Bush recently as the number one hit for the search “Miserable Failure” They have also undone a few other Google bombs such as the one that was making the site for the movie “Super Size Me” win for the term “McDonald’s” This looks like a crack down on Google bombing in general.

Also the White House has changed the URL for the target link from:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html

The old link redirects here:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/

I used to think that the people at Google have a sense of humor. This change seems to have a human hand to it. It was good while it lasted. However they still keep the term “leave” results as Disney.com Most porno sites link their “Leave” button on their splash page to Disney.com. So it looks like they don’t have this feature fully fleshed out just yet.

In case you don’t know what all this Google bombing stuff is about, I have it explained here

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Posted in George Bush, Google, SEO | Comments Off