If ever you’re looking for justification for not using large graphics on a site, look (sorry, no pun intended) no further than eyetracking heatmaps. In session after session, users skirt around large graphic blocks, focusing their interaction on text and navigation....
First of all, I'm not a big fan of checking rankings on a regular basis. This experiment began when I noticed the home page of one of my sites was ranking highly for a keyphrase that didn’t seem to appear anywhere in the text....
Last week I alluded to the next big project that I'll be launching here at Search Engine Guide. I'll be working with a team of volunteers from different areas of the industry in order to help an existing small business figure out the next steps that they need to take in order to get their online business moving....
I'm very excited to give you Tad Benson's community marketing strategy for Snap.com. I've leveraged an interview with Benson, the brilliance behind that blog contest I raved about a while back. Tad is, perhaps in the truest sense of the word, a search engine marketer....
There are many success stories on the web and one of the most interesting is WebmasterRadio.FM. The brainchild of Old, Old School SEO Daron Babin and his partner Brandy Shapiro, WebmasterRadio.FM has become the “go to” resource for live streaming radio and podcasts on all things related to search and interactive marketing....
Online competition has increased dramatically year after year. Today there are more websites doing business in every commercial sector than there were yesterday. Though the search engines are better able to sort information and rank relevant sites against keyword queries, achieving search engine placements for smaller sites has gotten more difficult as the environment evolves....
Clients that want everything done as "cheaply" as possible will push and push to get you to cut corners. A good search marketer will always turn up more in ultimate profits than it cost to hire them, so for forward thinking businesses, the issue shouldn't be about keeping prices down, it should be about your track record of ROI and what your plan of action is to maximize it....
From a competitive standpoint, it's always good to know what your competitors are doing, who they are targeting, and what areas they are venturing into. A failure to know this is poor business strategy and planning....
Undoubtedly one of the companies that has had a major impact on the convergence of public relations and search engine optimization is PRWeb. David McInnis and his talented team have created more innovations surrounding press release distribution than any other wire service....
According to industry research, most ecommerce sites are not optimized to rank well in the organic search results. Over 80 percent of the Internet Retailer Magazine's top 100 websites were found to lack the basic search engine optimization (SEO) techniques that would give them high rankings....
As Google continues to grab more of a market share in search with its three percentage point rise to 50 percent in April, its little brother social networks gains ground in overall online advertising impressions. Is this a significant milestone?...
The differences between how each engine works appears to be causing a bit of confusion among webmasters and search marketers, especially regarding how to optimize well for all four at the same time....
Why are analytics so difficult? Almost every company I talk to wants to know which data table, which numbers, which analytics package will provide answers. The unifying question is "What should we be looking at?"...
What would happen if the largest online advertising network in the world decided to skip past issues like click fraud by integrating an affiliate style advertising program straight into their already popular network? Apparently, Google is ready to ask that question and everyone else is awaiting the answer....
I have to admit, I admire many of the sole practitioners in the SEO industry. Frankly I don't understand how they do it; they perform the SEO, link building and copywriting while keeping up with current industry news and trends at the same time....
SEO’s will need to understand how to optimally work with Yahoo! Answers as part of their overall search engine strategy. As more SEO’s begin to participate in the process, hopefully they will contribute to raising the quality of answers currently given to people asking SEO questions....
There's been some buzzing so far this week about the premier of "Treasure Hunters," NBC's over-hyped version of The Amazing Race and the giant promotional tie-in with #4 search engine, Ask.com. I haven't watched the show, but apparently, Ask.com is pretty well integrated with contestants heading to the search engine to look up information, research clues and generally find the information that they need to get to the next step of the game....
Search just hasn't broken into the spotlight at the top of the corporate ladder. Senior execs don't get search, they don't want to get search and they certainly don't want to move significant budget to search. As you move down the corporate ladder, the love affair with search gets more ardent....
It wasn't but a few weeks ago that I wrote about Google's plans to add dayparting to their AdWords management system. The system is now up and running and for small business owners that are able to track their conversion rates down to the day or time of day, this new Ad Scheduling system offers up a world of opportunity....
Would having three separate sites help in getting more targeted incoming link PR? Or is it better to vary the incoming links if I did one site with all three product lines? Am I over-thinking this? Should I just make one mall-type site?...
Most people loathe writing, cannot write, do not have time to write (well), or all of the above. Factor in things like SEO, usability, and the need to say a lot with a little, and you have a frustrated author with a shortage of clients. Fortunately, common sense rules on the Internet....
There is, with only a few exceptions, a common denominator in the websites that remain highly ranked throughout these algorithm shifts. They offer something of value to their visitors and are considered a resource for their industry....
With so many blogs being created every day, it’s a mystery to many bloggers how to make their blog stand out. There are many types of blogs or purposes for blogs and a certain number of tactics are applicable to just about all of them, so here is a "short" list of tips for marketing and optimizing a blog....
The social network is not going away soon. In fact, it is splintering and growing in rapid fashion. As like minded people find each other, they begin their own sub communities and develop again. The Medusa-like growth of these networks is attributed to the ability of a group to form its own identity using the available tools for a social site....
One a customer has bought from you; there is a good chance he or she will buy from you again, provided that the experience was positive. If you don't do any follow up, there is a good chance that you’ll miss the boat the next time that customer needs your product....
I'm going to jump on a pop culture bandwagon, but I'm doing it to prove a point. Search trends reflect the interests of our society, and they can provide an invaluable way to gain intelligence about what's on the public's mind....
With blogs, there exist as many or more optimization opportunities to optimize as with a web site. While most blog software is more search engine friendly out of the box than many web sites, the opportunities for blog optimization are readily available....
Search marketing works because people pre-qualify themselves by typing search terms in a search box. What makes search so powerful is that you can get the right message to the right person at the right time as search engines attract people with a high level of interest in their search topic....
Anyone that's spent some time in a search related discussion forum knows what a popular topic the sandbox is for debate and a great deal of the search community accepts the concept as fact. Guess what? They're wrong....
If we convert some of our pages from XML format to ASPX format will that affect our rankings? In other words, do the crawlers prefer certain formats over others?...
About ten days ago, the light at the end of the intellectual tunnel became eminently visible and SEO discussion forums are abuzz with productive and proactive conversations regarding how to deal with a post-Bigdaddy Google environment....
Understanding and prioritizing your Key Performance Indicators will help ensure that you are measuring the success of your business (or from a SEM point of view), the success of your online campaign....
The nofollow was merely a band aid fix to one kind of blog spam, but not a solution to the real problem. But since there is not just one kind of blog spam there is no single solution either....
For most Internet users, links have always been pathways between points of interest. Link-paths might be intricate and informative but they are not necessarily seen as complex....
When it comes to internal site search engines, companies need to focus on the "short tail" of search rather than the more commonly evangelized "long tail." Now I realize this may sound like I'm about to tell you to go against everything you know about the power of the long tail, but it's essential to keep in mind that with this article, we're talking about internal site search, not search conducted on a search engine like Yahoo! or Google....
My first lesson with mobile data roaming came soon after getting the iPAQ. We hopped in the motorhome and headed to California. We reached San Francisco and in trying to locate Molinari’s delicatessen we just searched for the website, found the address and walked right to it. This was what being wired was being all about! Then we got home and found out what being hosed was all about. We got the mobile bill: $800 in data charges for two weeks!...
Search is part of the mainstream marketing consciousness but as the online environment evolves so quickly, what works in the mainstream world often needs to morph through several experimental stages before finding a way to adapt....
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