Category Archives: Seach Engine Optimization - Page 2

People genuinely don’t understand the work involved behind SEO

Found this really good article called “SEO as a Marketing Discipline” written by Rishi Lakhani. It illustrates in a very good way the problems the search marketing industry is going through and what it is that is holding back the upper management. It’s a reccomended read for those wanting to understand how we can make this industry more professional.

“I don’t mean ignorance in a negative way – I mean people genuinely don’t understand the work involved behind SEO – especially at the top level of any organisation. Most people use search engines – but most assume their existence and the results pages as part of life.”

The question of a white hat or a black hat

Just came from a session at the SES called Black hat/White hat “Unconferenced” hosted by Matt McGowan, Publisher & head of U.S. Incisive Media and Mike Grehan, Global VP Content, SES/Search Engine Watch and ClickZ (believe they are merging). Everyone that came to this session was offered a white hat or a black hat to wear, in my case I got the black.

Not that I am a black hat in the sense that I use under the radar none ethical tactics when marketing online, nobe more because that the size of the black hat fitted my head better. Great session that taught me black hats have bigger heads than white hats or that Matt and Mike did not order enough hats for people with big heads, either way fantastic session and great fun!

JD Sports in the UK comes up in the US but does not have the product

I was recently traveling on the US, speaking at the SES in NY. My eight year old daughter asked me to buy her a pair of shoes, to be exact Apple Bottoms. As I went to Footlocker to buy them I realized that they did not carry them anymore so I decided to Google and see what came up.

First when I searched Footlockers internal search nothing came up and as I have learned through the years Internal search on big sites can by quite faulty so I tested if Google found something but no results. But what happened was that JD Sports came up as a PPC result. JD was most likely not targeting me as I was in the US at the time with my Icelandic keyboard. But as I was searching on Google UK JD came up, with a nice ad saying

Apple Bottom at JD
Get the new line of Apple Bottoms
Women’s ware quick and easy at JD!

When I saw the add I tough to myself well if I cannot buy it in the US I might as well when I am next over to London. But when I clicked on the ad I got nothing, that is I got a page saying “Sorry, we have not been able match anything to your search” it was not a 404 page it was a search result page with no results. Still not sure where to buy the Apple Bottoms for my daughter.

SEO guidelines for big sites

Firstly what is a big site? Is it 10.000 pages or 100.000 or even 100.000? My experience is that sites that more than 10 .000 to 15.000 pages start to show the same symptoms, the main problem in most cases is the WCMS (web content management system), how it is used to manage the sites content.

This can be how templates are designed to show and possibly reuse content. Little problems within sites that contain millions of pages can occur again and again and grow from being a minor glitch in being a huge disaster that prevents search visibility. Read more »

Internet Marketing Conference, Reykjavik Iceland

rimc.isReykjavik Internet Marketing conference is just around the corner with speakers from Ericsson, Bing/Microsoft, Anomaly, CCP games and Icelandair to mention few. In its 6th year the conference is going to be bigger than ever, attracting a wider audience on an international basis. The conference is accompanied by an Expo that lasts all weekend, Netið 2010 (roughly translates Internet 2010). Some 40 – 50 companies are expected to show their Internet related products and services.

You can get more information about RIMC 2010 at www.rimc.is

Is the speed of your web page an important ranking factor for Google?

Fast-Loading-WebsiteA few weeks ago, Google announced its new focus on fast loading pages as part of quality involved in the searching experience. This means that Google´s ranking algorithm may take into consideration the speed of a web page.

Since Google’s ranking algorithm isn’t 100% clear, the points below are rather a theory that may improve your website ranking in Google.  Experiment if you can and share your results, here are some easy to make changes: Read more »

Search Engine Optimization is not a legitimate form of marketing

Derek Powazek says that Search Engine Optimization is not a legitimate form of marketing. It should not be undertaken by people with brains or souls. If someone charges you for SEO, you have been conned. He is titled author, designer and troublemaker, I am gona write this statement on the troublemaker part I am also going to write this statement on the realization after reading his post that he does not seem to know much about SEO and what it is all about, it’s not only for viagra and poker sites.

I really like this paragraph “Occasionally a darkside SEO master may find some loophole in the Google algorithm to exploit, which might actually lead to an increase in traffic. But that ill-gotten traffic gain won’t last long. Google changes the way it ranks its index monthly (if not more), so even if some SEO technique worked, and usually they don’t, it’ll last for a couple weeks, tops.” I really love this guy!

You can read his post here http://powazek.com/posts/2090

Should one get into Google’s real-time results?

google-real-time-search

On 7th December of 2009, Google launched real-time search results into search pages but what do these real-time results look like? Google search page results update currently discussed topics from social network sites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku and Identi.ca just as they are happening.

How Google chooses the real-time results or finds out which posted messages are true is yet unknown. However, there are some things one can do. Google analyzes the content from blog posts, tweets etc. to verify the value and the quality of the posted message to place the real-time results and avoid anything that looks like spam. Later on the collected text will be used to update page rankings for every contributing user. Read more »

85 percent of travel companies make SEO the number one priority for 2010

img-bookingAccording to www.travelmole.com, the second global travel survey, 85 percent of travel companies are due to increase or maintain the same online marketing budgets for 2010, which promises to be a highly competitive year in the travel industry for internet marketing.

27 percent of the participated 227 companies including hoteliers, travel agents, tour operators and airlines expect online budgets to increase by up to 50 percent, as securing online bookings pushes for more advertising. Read more »

Paid links and their real effect on your Google rankings

A website’s ranking is based on the analysis of those websites that link back. This link-based analysis is a very good way to measure a website’s value and can help greatly improve the quality of web search. To get a good ranking on Google the quality of links is the most important aspect followed by the quantity.

There are numerous websites one can buy links from to get them to link to your website. Some webmasters and SEO use this method of buying and or selling links regardless of their quality in order to increase popularity on the Internet. However, search engines do not support paid links. Google even has an official form for webmasters to report paid links. Read more »