January 2005

Jennifer Laycock

ClickTracks Releases Mid-Range Web Analytics Package

Bridging the price and feature gap between ClickTracks Analyzer and ClickTracks Professional, Optimizer has been designed for use by consultants and mid-range search engine marketers....

Bill Hartzer

Cell Phone Search Heats Up

Yahoo! announced a new tool last week that allows users of its local search service to send restaurant and business-type information in the form of a text message from a computer to a mobile phone....

Jennifer Laycock

Going Where the Searchers Are

One of the problems of traditional search marketing is that by targeting keywords and keyword phrases for products that you can easily sell, you may be passing up the chance to draw tons of traffic and and create new revenue from so called "trivial" searches....

Jim Hedger

Is Google One Step Closer to a Browser of Their Own?

Despite a volume of circumstantial evidence such as the registration of the domain Gbrowser.com or its organization of open source programming events, Google has repeatedly denied speculation they are developing a web browser or an operating system....

Scott Buresh

SEO: The True Cost of Doing It Wrong

Often, the cost of effectively performing SEO in-house, when fully calculated, will be equal to or greater than the costs of outsourcing (due to a sizable learning curve and the necessary testing and experimentation required)....

Jill Whalen

What to do with Keywords for your Search Marketing Campaign

There is no keyword registering process when it comes to optimizing your pages for the "natural" search results. The engines have to logically figure out what keywords are relevant to your site by how they are incorporated into it, and by the links pointing to it....

Jim Hedger

Search Engine Changes Blur the Line Between Myth and Reality

This year many common assumptions about search engine marketing have been made obsolete or require a different way of thinking. Many erroneous assumptions continue to be proliferated in hundreds of forum posts, emails and marketing articles....

Jennifer Laycock

Search Engine Users Head Offline to Shop

While search engine marketing has long been touted for its ability to deliver targeted traffic and generate high conversion rates, the reality is that most searchers research products online, but purchase them from brick and mortar stores....

Shawn Campbell

A Search Engine Optimizer's New Year's Resolutions

If you want to do well with your web site, stick to these resolutions and before you know it the traffic (and the sales) will roll in smoothly, just like the New Year....

Jennifer Laycock

Most Search Engine Users Still Naive

A new study released by PEW/Internet reveals that most consumers know very little about how search engines work and where the results they publish come from....

Jim Hedger

Adding Value to AdWords Advertising

Starting this week, Google appears to be taking steps to radically improve their relationship with their clients by offering advertisers more control over their AdWords campaigns....

Jim Hedger

Google and Overture in Contextual Conundrum

As long as Google, Yahoo and the web community at large can produce virtual real-estate, there will always be room to plant virtual billboards. The shear size of the market and their methods of contextualizing ads makes it an extremely complex business....

Matt Bailey

Planning Ahead for an Effective Redesign

The largest obstacle most sites face is moving from a static HTML site to more flexible dynamic programming, allowing the addition of a catalog or content management system....

Jennifer Laycock

AOL Expands Advertising Opportunities for Local Businesses

A new advertising format soon to be offered by AOL opens up a world of opportunities for small businesses that have not yet had a chance to build a Web site, or that have difficulty tracking the ROI of a traditional PPC campaign....

Jennifer Laycock

AOL Search Introduces New Search Features

AOL announced the addition of a variety of new search features to its site this morning designed to lead to a more directed search experience....

Jennifer Laycock

New No Follow Attribute Could Impact Link Campaigns

There are some pros and cons to this new attribute and search engine marketers need to think about how it might impact their marketing efforts....

Jim Hedger

MSN Removes Beta Tag from Search Site

MSN has removed the beta-wrap from its proprietary search engine and is now showing self-generated results at MSN.Com. Beta results had started bleeding into MSN listings over the past three weeks but since Sunday (Jan 16), the .COM (US / Global) version of MSN has consistently mirrored those found at MSN(beta). Regional versions of MSN continue to display Inktomi (Yahoo owned) / Regional partner generated results (Jan19, 05). ...

Jill Whalen

Dispelling Common SEO Myths

Pat had found every SEO myth ever discussed, and then asked me about them! So I wrote Pat back and basically said that he/she had obviously gotten ahold of some really old info and that he/she should erase it all from his/her memory bank and start fresh....

Bill Hartzer

New Link Attribute Gets Endorsed by Search Engines, Others

Google has introduced a new link attribute, and it's ultimately designed to tell the search engines to ignore the link when it comes to calculating their algorithm....

Jennifer Laycock

Businesses Must Target More Than Just Google

The days of simply worrying about gaining a strong ranking in Google, sometimes at the expense of rankings in other engines, are long gone. Companies need to focus on building a strong organic and PPC presence on all of the top engines, or risk alienating a large portion of their potential audience....

Scottie Claiborne

Google's Aging Delay for New Sites

If you have a brand new site, stop driving yourself nuts wondering what you are doing wrong! Stop tweaking and changing things, trying to influence your rankings; until the site has been in the index a while, it doesn't seem to matter what you do to it....

Bill Hartzer

Let's Talk About Links

It's important for your website to be a good member of the internet community, which means both linking to other websites as well as having links to your website from other websites....

Jill Whalen

Even Small Businesses Can Gain Valuable Search Traffic

Yes, there may be gazillions of sites competing for the search phrases related to your client's site, but that's what keyword research is for. What you want to do is carefully research your client's niche, then find the hundreds of phrases that people are using to search for their products or services....

David Wallace

Ingredients of a Search Engine Friendly Site

Many are under the impression that one has to sacrifice the end user if they are to please the search engine. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is the end user that you want to attract and as a result, covert to a customer. Therefore you should always design and market your site with the end user in mind....

Jill Whalen

Frequent Spidering Doesn't Help Rankings

There are people who think that a site that is visited often by the search engine spiders will rank higher for its optimized keyword phrases. The truth of the matter is that there's no evidence to suggest that rankings are affected by how often your pages are visited by the spiders....

Shawn Campbell

Content is King, but Linking is Queen

Ever wonder how or why your competitor gets better search engine rankings than you do? Does he know something you don't? Well, maybe he actually does…...

Jennifer Laycock

Will MSN Use PPC to Challenge Google?

How will a PPC product help Microsoft challenge Google and Yahoo! in the search wars? After all, no one selects a search engine based on their PPC offerings. That said, search engines rely on earnings from the PPC programs to help fund improvements to their organic search products....

Jennifer Laycock

Small Businesses May Benefit from Ego Surfing

An article in USA Today this past weekend explored the growing trend of CEO's looking up their own names on search engines. The practice may sound vain, but for small and large businesses, it can be a vital to public relations....

ClickTracks Releases Mid-Range Web Analytics Package

Cell Phone Search Heats Up

Going Where the Searchers Are

Is Google One Step Closer to a Browser of Their Own?

SEO: The True Cost of Doing It Wrong

What to do with Keywords for your Search Marketing Campaign

Search Engine Changes Blur the Line Between Myth and Reality

Search Engine Users Head Offline to Shop

A Search Engine Optimizer's New Year's Resolutions

Most Search Engine Users Still Naive

Adding Value to AdWords Advertising

Google and Overture in Contextual Conundrum

Planning Ahead for an Effective Redesign

AOL Expands Advertising Opportunities for Local Businesses

AOL Search Introduces New Search Features

New No Follow Attribute Could Impact Link Campaigns

MSN Removes Beta Tag from Search Site

Dispelling Common SEO Myths

New Link Attribute Gets Endorsed by Search Engines, Others

Businesses Must Target More Than Just Google

Google's Aging Delay for New Sites

Let's Talk About Links

Even Small Businesses Can Gain Valuable Search Traffic

Ingredients of a Search Engine Friendly Site

Frequent Spidering Doesn't Help Rankings

Content is King, but Linking is Queen

Will MSN Use PPC to Challenge Google?

Small Businesses May Benefit from Ego Surfing