Matt Cutts is a really nice guy but…
...must we all keep hanging on his every word? He is, for sure, a very helpful, and very friendly guy. But just look at what he does for a living will you? Now before I go on, let me stress that this is not a personal attack against Matt: He's a nice guy with an exquisitely difficult job. But the facts remain. I got thinking about this subject after a reader commented on my recent post on duplicate content issues over at Search Engine Journal, It seems that Matt said something to the effect that we don't need to worry about ...
Cloaking 101
Cloaking: Nefarious form of Black Hat Of all the various methods of getting a website to show further up in search results, cloaking is the one that's pretty much unanimously regarded as 'Black Hat.' There are some pertinent reasons why this is so. But first, what exactly is cloaking? Here's Google's definition: Cloaking refers to the practice of presenting different content or URLs to users and search engines. Serving up different results based on user agent may cause your site to be perceived as deceptive and removed from the Google index. The Penalty for Cloaking If you are caught cloaking by the search engines (it's ...
Why WordPress Can Help Your Business…
This is a follow-on post for my post on the Rise of the Blog as a Business Gateway over at SEOscoop. If you read the post and the comments you will see that Glenn over at Divinewrite raised so many good points that I realized I'd left out some important information. More About WordPress and SEO I can't find any decent usability studies, but there's a ton of information all over the web that talks about WordPress's SEO-friendly setup. There are a couple of hitches: duplicate content is one but you can largely cut that out by disabling the content preview ...
Ultimate List of Web Tracking Applications
Track Your Business to the Top An important aspect of getting your website optimization right is tracking results and monitoring visitors and how they move about on your site, to make sure you're getting targeted traffic (relevant for your product) and that your visitors 'convert' when they get there: that's tech-speak for they do whatever it is you want them to do! To make sure you get the mix right, a vital component of your website equipment is efficient tracking tools. The more accurately you can monitor who visits your website, why, and how satisfied they were, the more successful you'll be ...
17 Hot Reputation Management Tips
Online, as in real time, your brand is your reputation and your reputation is your brand. Any negative material about you or your business that shows up in searches for your relevant keywords needs to be fixed fast. M ake no mistake: those unflattering words can damage your business, reduce conversion rates and cause existing clients to look elsewhere. Here is a collection of effective strategies employed by professionals to make those nasty pages go away. Before we get into technicalities, I'd like to mention three things not-to-do. First of all, don't panic. The Web is not a static place and nothing is ...
17 Reasons Why You Need to Grab Your Space on Twitter
Blogging is a new industry, and while it is already huge, it seems the surface hasn't really been scratched yet. Learning how to use blogging to enhance business might be something you'll want to do in order to establish your online brand. One of the latest forms of blogging is micro-blogging, as in Twitter or Plurk. There are lots of reasons why opening an account with Twitter is a great thing to do for your business: Joining Twitter is free, easy and takes only seconds (OK you're right, that's two reasons right there). You can create a Twitter network that links you up ...
Proactive Reputation Management From the Ground Up
Overwhelmingly, and tragically, online businesses approach the subject of reputation management entirely from the wrong angle. That is to say they don't manage their reputation at all until disaster strikes. Without any doubt Proactive Reputation Management is the way to go. If you lay the groundwork your reputation is going to be a lot easier to protect. In fact, if you're truly proactive in your approach, you should end up in a position where no one single miscreant could possibly affect the way your audience or client-base sees you. The stronger your online network, and the wider your reputation, the more difficult ...
Why Twitter is a Great CPA Marketing Tool!
[caption id="attachment_652" align="aligncenter" width="580" caption="CPA Marketing for Social Media-Savvy CPAs"][/caption] Accountants can make great use of social media for business networking. In particular, Twitter will get your brand just where you need it--right in front of the kind of small business owners and freelancers who are most likely to be in need of an accountant. How do people locate accountants? Most of us don't make finding an accountant a priority, unless we're looking for a forensic accountant for example, or unless it's tax time and we're way behind. The rest of the time, we do know we need a CPA--but never get past ...
SEO
Matt Cutts is a really nice guy but…
…must we all keep hanging on his every word? He is, for sure, a very helpful, and very friendly guy. But just look at what he does for a living will you? Now before I go on, let me stress that this is not a personal attack against Matt: He’s a nice guy with an exquisitely difficult job. But the facts remain. I got thinking about this subject after a reader commented on my recent post on... [Read more]
Ultimate List of Web Tracking Applications
Track Your Business to the Top An important aspect of getting your website optimization right is tracking results and monitoring visitors and how they move about on your site, to make sure you’re getting targeted traffic (relevant for your product) and that your visitors ‘convert’ when they get there: that’s tech-speak for they do whatever it is you want them to do! To make... [Read more]
The Birth of the SEO Self Regulation Community
SEOs for Self Regulation I’ve been trying to get things going on the self regulation front for several years now. After approaching a number of big-name SEOs hoping they’d help by taking up the cause, I finally reached the point where I felt if I didn’t do it no-one will. So I decided that I’d start some kind of grass-roots movement myself. Why high-profile SEOs don’t... [Read more]
Online Marketing Strategies for Overcoming the Prevailing Economy
I f you’ve been hesitant about launching a full-scale online marketing campaign up till now you may be ready to make the move given the present economic climate. Online advertising and marketing can be both more effective and a lot cheaper than the real-world equivalents. As far as I’m concerned it no longer makes sense, either, to have all your eggs in one basket. At the very least,... [Read more]
Learning SEO Secrets
SEO Secrets by Glenn Murray Learning about SEO can be tedious and time consuming. If you’re determined to equip yourself for building a successful online business without much outside help, you need a shortcut to the right information. A few days ago I was privileged to download a new ebook on SEO. Called SEO Secrets, the book is a comprehensive guide to all aspects of SEO. It is perfect for... [Read more]
A Glance Back–and a Glance Forward
We are perched on the precipice, ready to hurtle into a new year and a new era! Isn’t it exhilerating that the first few days of 2009 will bring with them the most exciting new US president in living history? I’m feeling a little anxious, I suppose because we are all so desperately hoping for positive change and there is always a possibility that Obama somehow won’t live up to the... [Read more]
Obama, we’re holding you to your promises!
For the second time in as many weeks I’m breaking my own rule about no politics. Along with millions of other people around the world, I am thrilled that Barak Obama won the US elections. For posterity I’m embedding this video of some of his promises. Let’s review after a year and see how he gets on. SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Obama, we’re holding you to your promises!",... [Read more]
So you wanna put your brand name in the title tags…
Where to find your title tags All I can say is, whatever floats your boat. This post is loosely in response to Jamie Harrop’s comment on my guest post over at his blog. Jamie disagrees with me, so no offense at what follows Jamie. There’s always more than one way to do anything. When you get advice, the person giving it can only tell you what they think is best from their perspective. The... [Read more]
Good Web Content: The Definitive Guide
Search Engine Optimization makes for great web content! We’re still seeing a great deal of heated discussion online about what makes for good web content so I thought the subject is worth revisiting. It’s all very simple really. Websites need words, whatever their reason for existing, they need words. Each and every website is created to attract visitors–that goes without saying.... [Read more]
SEO Blackhat SMO Tricks Can Hurt You Even if You Didn’t Do it Yourself!
“Search engine optimizers’ Backhat social media optimization tricks can hurt you without you doing it yourself? Yes, it’s true, and here’s why.” Today’s search engine optimization or SEO is rapidly changing to meet the New World Wide Web order of things. SMM (social media marketing) SMO (social media optimizing) SSM (social search marketing) and ‘personalized search’ are not... [Read more]
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