• Follow-Up To Whalen's Boondoggle
    In an interview with Andrew Goodman, Jill Whalen elaborates on her controversial article "Is Most of SEO a Boondoggle?" that "associated much of the SEO industry with 'boondoggle,' defined as 'work of little or no value, done merely to look busy.' Reminds me of unnecessary road paving projects!" notes Goodman. Some disagreed with Whalen; but overall, the debate around her article highlights the need to seriously question the direction of measurement for relevance,says Goodman. In her interview, Whalen chose to kick things up a notch, according to Goodman. "I don't think I meant to imply that some SEO …
  • Optimization For Real-Time Search
    Dana Lookadoo, a guest on Bruce Clay's weekly podcast, SEM Synergy on WebmasterRadio.fm, shared her recommendations on the strategies that make real-time search work for marketers. Some of the advice included "frontload your tweets with keywords," "put retweet references at the end," "include keywords in custom, shortened URLs," and "include keywords in hashtags," explains Virginia Nussey. Tweets have their own page and own title tag. While Twitter generates these tags, users do have some control over what shows up, Nussey writes. She explains search marketer Edward Lewis wrote about his experiments with Twitter title tag optimization and …
  • A/B Experiments In Google Analytics
    Shawn Purtell provides an update on how to view Google Website Optimizer and other experiment data within Google Analytics to measure A/B experiment results. He writes it has become much easier to use since Google added a feature called Advanced Segments. Purtell steps through the benefits of this feature -- including the ability to segment and customize data, see statistics for more than one goal, look at transaction and revenue data, and exclude internal traffic.
  • Former Search Engine Insiders Go SEO
    Rand Fishkin looks at three sites where former search engine insiders took the lead role and attempted to spearhead SEO efforts: Eytan Seidman and Oyster.com; Avichal Garg and PrepMe.com; and Jeff Weiner and LinkedIn.com. Fishkin asks, "have they engaged a secret formula that the rest of us don't know to achieve incredible results? Or are they languishing in poor accessibility and SEO tactics gone awry?" Seidman, Garg, and Weiner left jobs at Microsoft, Google and Yahoo, respectively, to build the startups. Fishkin steps through the good, the bad and the ugly for each site. An example of "the …
  • Another Take On Nofollows
    Google's Nofollow policy continues to baffle SEM professionals, such as Eric Enge, who believes Google wants people to use your information architecture to communicate to users what are the most important site pages, not an artificial mechanism like NoFollow. Providing examples on how nofollows are commonly used, Enge explains the difference between the most important pages on the Web site for search ranking purposes and the most important pages for users. He writes the reason why the About Us page has a link on every page is because it is one of the most important pages for …
  • Free SEO Tools
    These days online services make it easy for even the non-technical person to create a Web site. Once you've built it, though, how do you attract users? Investintech.com's list of 101 free SEO tools will help answer that question. For example, the research tool section details tools that help optimize Web content, track competitors, find popular links, and get updates on emerging trends.
  • Determining The SEO ROI
    "Yes, I realize that measuring SEO ROI sounds simple enough," writes Laura Callow. But it's not, as she points out when detailing what's wrong with the basic formulas traditionally used: "a case of 'is what you're measuring enough?'" She also provides advice on giving the SEO professional hired to do the job full access to such necessary tools as analytics.
  • How To Gain Subscribers For A Boring Blog
    Tad Chef believes that even the most boring blog topics can gain subscribers. He uses SEOpitimse as an example, because the site pretty much focuses on SEO and not search engines, yet was able to expand its subscriber base from !,000 to 5,000. Start by admitting that "SEO is boring," Chef writes. Follow the realization with diversifying readership to similar audiences, finding the right voice, targeting a few platforms and communities that make sense, and guest-blog elsewhere to get exposure.
  • Bill's Favorite Travel Site
    In a departure from analyzing a patent filed by Microsoft, Google or Yahoo, Bill Slawski tells us about his favorite travel site -- apparently one filled with descriptive details rather than a focus on price: "the word 'sale' doesn't show up once," he writes. There's also "no keyword stuffing of page titles or headings or content." No, he won't tell us exactly which site it is, beyond noting that its focus is apartments in a charming city; "I don't want you to book one of the apartments before I do," he writes. Still,in describing all the site's plusses, Slawski …
  • Department Of The Interior To Tap SEO
    Government agencies have begun to use SEO to help raise the visibility of Web sites, as well as improve search engine results page ranking, according to Brafton. Blue Water Media, a Washington D.C.-based Web design company, will work with the Department of the Interior Office of the Inspector General (OIG) to help update its Web site and increase its presence online, as well as develop the OIG's Internet marketing campaign using SEO.
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