The economy is in a rut because of Big Risk – beyond just the subprime housing market. First, it was Big Finance – AIG and company. Second it was Big Media – the NYTimes and friends. Third, it was Big Auto – GM and gang. It’s quite plausible that the next victims will be Big Advertising – WPP et al.
How to Practice Kamikaze SEO
One of the key aspects of any SEO strategy is knowing the risks of the tactics you use. As those tactics approach or break Google’s guidelines the more likely they to get you penalized or banned. Knowing where you are on the risk scale helps you know when it is imperative that you take precautions and try to create a … [Continue reading How to Practice Kamikaze SEO]
How Google Profiles SEO’s
At SMX one of the more contentious subjects was the debate over Google’s Android Phone giveaway, and demonstration that they are in practice profiling SEO’s.
Can You Get a Website Indexed with No Links and XML Sitemaps?
This weekend I was doing a little housekeeping on some of my domains and hosting accounts and decided to test and see if it was possible to get a website indexed using XML Sitemaps and no external links.
Checking for Broken Links and Link Rot and the Importance of Good Site Architecture
Recently I’ve been experimenting with a plugin for checking broken links, on several of my blogs, and I’m fascinated by what I’ve discovered.
Why Old School Real Estate Brands are Losing to New Web 2.0 Innovators
The following is a Guest Post from Joe Hall. The internet is changing the real estate industry on a daily basis. And, not surprisingly, it’s the Web 2.0 innovators that are leading the revolution. Of course this isn’t the first time that new media gurus have redefined an industry. However, this time around old school brands are being left in … [Continue reading Why Old School Real Estate Brands are Losing to New Web 2.0 Innovators]
How To Figure Out What Parts of Your Website Aren’t Being Crawled
When Google took away the supplemental index last year, they killed one of the key diagnostic tools in the SEO’s toolbox, the ability to identify which parts of a site were unimportant (and being infrequently crawled) in a search engines eyes. However with the use of some structured text and clever searches I’m going to give you back that valuable … [Continue reading How To Figure Out What Parts of Your Website Aren’t Being Crawled]
Why You Should Be Worried About Google Search Wiki
I’ve been beating the drum about why personaized search and google’s search wiki are bad since their rollout. Even though I understand why google does it, and get that why they push it’s adoption. But I still think it’s a bad idea, and late last week I saw an example of why it’s bad and dangerous, and why it’s something … [Continue reading Why You Should Be Worried About Google Search Wiki]
HCards, Microformats and Address Data does it Matter for SEO
A few weeks ago @etnainteractive asked me a question on twitter about HCards and Microformats, and do they matter for SEO. I’m going to explain what they are for those of you who don’t know what thay is. I’m also going to be taking a bigger look at address data and SEO implications.
Dear Matt Cutts, What We Have is a Failure to Communicate
Dear Matt Cutts, I know you and I don’t always see eye to eye on everything, but I think we’ve got enough of a working relationship that I feel comfortable saying, that the way the brand update/ Vince change, went down could have been better. Indulge me while I make an analogy to prove a point.
Why You Need Different Templates for Your Website
Recently I’ve been talking with some friends who don’t fit into the traditional SEO, publisher, or writer-with-delusional-dreams-of-becoming-a-famous-blogging-rock-star categories. They want to build and run websites in their spare time about subjects they are interested in. But they don’t want them to be hobby websites; they want to use them to supplement their income. One of the lessons I’ve tried to … [Continue reading Why You Need Different Templates for Your Website]
Why Offline Stores and Small Businesses Need to Embrace Online Shopping and Build Better Websites
I recently wrote a story How Brick and Mortar Stores Can Use eCommerce to Drive Sales about tips that eCommerce stores can use to drive traffic to their brick and mortar locations. However, what really needs to happen is offline stores and small businesses need to grow up and stop hiding in the corner from online commerce bogeyman. They need … [Continue reading Why Offline Stores and Small Businesses Need to Embrace Online Shopping and Build Better Websites]
Tips to Prevent Negative SEO
In mid July of 2012, Google sent out a wave of “unnatural linking warnings” to many webmasters. They later said you could ignore these warnings. This was followed up by a Microsoft clippy style passive aggressive letter saying they were going to discount the “unnatural links” but that you should file a re-inclusion request anyway. The whole situation is insane … [Continue reading Tips to Prevent Negative SEO]
Building a Niche Website
Tips on how to build a successful niche website, that is easy to run and doesn’t require much maintenance.
How to Build an Affiliate Website Google Doesn’t Hate
In over a decade of working on websites I’ve see a lot of affiliate websites. Some were good but a lot were very bad. In this post, I’ll share my experiences about what I think Google is looking for and the common traits of things I’ve seen fail.
Why Simple Websites Will Always Lead to Better SEO
Earlier this year it was discovered that Google was having a problem crawling Apple’s website and, as a result, direct links to apps weren’t showing in the results. The next few days involved lots of finger pointing, blame shuffling, and hang wringing; but, a few non public changes later, things were sorted out. This, however, set a very bad example that … [Continue reading Why Simple Websites Will Always Lead to Better SEO]
Cloaking Affiliate Links, How and Why
Today’s topic is one that gets asked about pretty regularly, should I cloak my affiliate links to search engines, why or why not, and what are some of the best ways to do it.
WordPress SEO: How to Create Living URL’s
If you watched any of the congressional hearings about the newspaper industry where Marissa Mayer testified one of the concepts she brought up is Living URL’s. Danny Sullivan has an excellent write up on it on Search Engine Land. The basic concept is a story lives at a single URL and gets added to/edited/updated over time (the way wikipedia articles … [Continue reading WordPress SEO: How to Create Living URL’s]
WordPress SEO: How to Choose a Permalink Structure
For this post we’re going to be taking look at the optimal permalink and URL structures for wordpress. There are a lot of different options, and there isn’t a one size fits all answer, however there are definitely better and worse choices you can make.
WordPress SEO: How to Use RSS and Scrapers to Build Links
As of July 2012 I no longer recommend using this tactic, as it creates too many low quality links to your website When you run wordpress or any other blog for that matter, chances are your blog is getting scraped, and re-used without your permission. In this post I’ll show you how you can use this to your advantage to … [Continue reading WordPress SEO: How to Use RSS and Scrapers to Build Links]