The question inevitably comes to many website owners whether or not to bring in an outside expert to manage their site’s search engine optimization. It is, after all, a specialized discipline in and of itself, no less detailed than web development or graphical design. Given its importance, should it be entrusted to a competent but [...]
There is one completely unavoidable and occassionally catastrophic fact associated with search engine optimization. Search engines grow and change, modifying their algorithms to suit an ever-expanding internet. Often, this can cause dramatic shifts in their results, as evidenced by Google’s infamous Florida update or the more recent Burboun udpate. But what can be done to [...]
Often, when purchasing the domain name for your site, you may be compelled to purchase similar domain names, such as yourdomain.com, yourdomain.net, yourdomain.org, etc. This is perfectly fine and tends to help you gain an immediate hold of your site’s brand identity before it ever comes into debate. However, what effect does this have for [...]
It is an oft-spoken truth of search engine optimization, but it bears repeating nonetheless. Attaining high rankings in the search engines is a lengthy process, especially for popular key terms. New sites face a number of hurdles just to be indexed, and even well-established sites can require a great deal of effort just to get [...]
With the recent advent of Gmail, Google Talk, and the second-generation Google Desktop, the search giant seems poised to claim even more of the search market for its own. Chief competitors MSN and Yahoo have offered similar services for years now and still failed to overtake Google is the search engine wars. With this blitzkrieg [...]
RSS (which stands for Really Simple Syndication) has become the new buzz word in SEO circles lately, as its effects on optimization success can be phenomenal. RSS is an XML format that allows any website to create a content feed that can be automatically checked by end user aggregation utilities, typically news readers. Files of [...]
Web page editors can often be harmful to SEO campaigns because of the amount of excess code they tend to add. Something as simple as changing the font of an area of text, for example, could add several lines of code when the same effect could be accomplished with much less. This is important to [...]
A phenomenon has been touted in the SEO community lately that is described as a site’s Long Tail. Specifically, this refers to the thousands of unoptimized key terms that lead users to a website. Such terms are usually passed over for optimization simply because they are individually low-traffic or overly specific. However, it has been [...]
KEI, or Keyword Effectiveness Index, is a value often used in SEO circles to compare the value of potential key terms. It is the popularity of the term divided by the amount of competition. It makes logical sense to use this to decide on the best key terms because you ideally want high-traffic, low-competition terms [...]
If your efforts grow to any reasonable size, tracking your success becomes at least as involving and vital and optimizing in the first place. Thus, it is irritating at best and harmful at worst when spammers choose to exploit your web metrics utilities by inundating your site with false data. There are several good ways [...]