SEO Tips City » Blogging

GoDaddy SmartSpace – you could win one of three $5,000 grand prizes

Seo Men — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 01:59:14 +0000

Create a blog or video testimonial to show how SmartSpace helps you make the most of the Web. If your message convinces our judges that you’ve found the best, most creative use for GoDaddy SmartSpace, you could win one of three $5,000 grand prizes or one of ten $1,000 runner-up awards – PLUS, all winners receive FREE SmartSpace for life! So how smart are you? Get smart, get cash…

Winning up to $5,000 in cash prizes and SmartSpace for life can be as easy as 1-2-3!

Build your SmartSpace site (if you don’t have SmartSpace, purchase below for as little as $4.49/mo).
Blog/video/podcast about how you use SmartSpace, post it online, and tell your friends.
Enter your “SmartSpace” story in the form below, be sure to include a link to your story.

Contest Rules! …but this contest ends April 15, 2009, so hurry!

Create your best SmartSpace – godaddy.com

GoDaddy.com is the world’s largest domain name registrar and is the flagship company of The Go Daddy Group, Inc. As an ICANN-accredited domain registrar, Go Daddy has more names under management than any other registrar, offers products at prices up to 70% less than the competition and supports them all with world-class 24/7 live customer service.

Blogging Tips From an Expert Blogger

Seo Men — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 09:18:04 +0000

Blogging Tips from an Expert. What makes some blogs better than others? How important are subscribers, Google PageRank, and Technorati score? What can you do to make your blog stand out? Jim Kukral and Paul Richlovsky of fathomseo.com/blog discuss some blogging tips for what really makes a good blog.

More info: http://www.fathomseo.com/blog/

SEO Software Tips

Seo Men — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 10:45:04 +0000

In this greedy world we live in, we always take advantage of anything that’s free. Everyone loves free stuff. It’s just the way we are. So, what better way to track your site than with the free SEO tracking software available? According to Aaron Wall, the Author of SEOBook, there are many useful software programs for tracking SEO results that are either free or relatively inexpensive.

These include:

Google Analytics
Mint Site Tracking Software
Digital Point Forums
SEO for Firefox
Compete.com
SEO Digger

Before accepting every free offer that comes your way, you need to research the software first. Each software program should contain a means with which track analytics, page rankings, your back links as well as your competition’s, the number of indexed pages, keyword density within pages, and all historical data.

Email scams are another matter that need to be carefully examined. These scams make unobtainable promises and then take your money and run! Aaron Wall describes this type of marketing as “the marketer is never above the medium.”

He explains that these spammers cannot comprehend what true marketing is if they think they have to use email spam to sell their product or service.

For more information, tune into the WebProNews video “Advice from Aaron Wall on SEO Tracking Software” and see which tracking programs he recommends.

MSN warns on Google, so why should online publishers like aggregators?

Seo Men — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 06:04:56 +0000

Search engines, RSS readers and a range of new social media developments are playing an increasingly vital role in filtering out the “noise” of the web.But many online gatekeepers are viewed with suspicion by many media organisations, who believe they are cashing in by freely taking content which is often originated by other companies at great expense.

The news aggregators had a platform at the Association of Online Publishers conference in London yesterday. They say they drive readers to existing media websites, those readers often being an audience that would never have considered clicking through to a new source. But there was still a warning about Google News’s move into publishing its own news content from MSN’s executive producer Peter Bale.

He said:

“While the agencies will consider it welcome news, publishers should be very aware of what that really means to them. Publishers such as the Times, the Guardian, the Sun, will see a bump down in traffic towards them from Google.”

He said MSN took a different approach to its competitor, though, with its outlook not just about bringing content together, but placing tools around it. And one of the keys to that was encouraging publishers to choose to make their content “discoverable”, through networking and publishing tools such as meta data, tagging tools and existing applications.

He said:

“Journalism is not free. We have to work out how to pay for it.”

He told the conference that MSN’s news was organised by 30 journalists and so its news story listings were based on real human-based search assessments rather than computer algorithms.

“We really value the work our partners such as ITN, Reuters and PA, We pay for their content and we respect it,”

he said.

“What we are trying to do on the MSN home page is to consolidate our place on Internet explorer browsers – we want to make it the destination, not the default.”

Despite Google’s move to publish news agency content, Josh Cohen, its business product manager said: “We don’t own content but help people find it instead.

“Google focuses on news enthusiasts – we show them other perspectives on a story and so generate fresh traffic and new readers. Hosting stories from Associated Press is a big shift, and there’s a clear line between being a distributor and being a destination.”

And Angus Bankes, the founder of Moreover Technologies, took a similar line when he said:

“We don’t take content, we pass content on – we’re driving big amounts of traffic through our relationships.”

His company was also supplying and developing further products for publishers, with more “widgets” planned and more “pinging” of servers to let aggregators know when blogs are updated – with a move towards pinging for news sites not far away.

Meanwhile, Duncan Dunlop, general manager at Oodle UK expects a shift to performance-based advertising, with a merging of yellow pages, classified and the other mainstream advertising channels. His company’s technology enhances content and opens up the local advertising market.

Semantic Web and SEO

Seo Men — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 10:23:34 +0000

What is The Semantic Web?

The Semantic Web is a (currently theoretical) future state of the World Wide Web where information is machine-processable, rather than just machine-renderable for human viewing. Software will then be able to better find, organise and merge the data as it will have more “understanding” of the meaning of the data.

For example, if I go to a web page about a particular conference, my calendar software would be able to interpret the web page to extract the date, time and location of the conference. This may then allow it to show me available flights for the conference or transfer the data directly to my car’s GPS system. This is a simple example, but demonstrates the power The Semantic Web could provide.

The are many different technologies which have been proposed to describe this “meaning” to computers including: Resource Description Framework (RDF), RDF Schema (RDFS), Web Ontology Language (OWL (sic)), XML and many more. The discussion of these is beyond the scope of this article.

How could The Semantic Web effect search?

The Semantic Web will allow search engines to be much more intelligent and give answers to more general queries. For example, rather then searching for “Florida Holidays”, I may be able to search for “Sunny holiday destinations that are fun for kids in America”. Most humans would be able to give Florida as a possible answer to this query. However, for a computer to come to the same conclusion it must “understand” information much better than it currently can. A search engine needs to know that Florida is a sunny place, that is it good for kids and that it is in America. Thus, significant amounts of AI technology will also need to be developed.

How will this change SEO?

It is hard to say how The Semantic Web will change SEO, as the technology has not really developed into a useable state yet. However, if webmasters are required to label the meanings of the items on their web pages then their may be large amounts of spam annotations.

No matter how The Semantic Web changes the WWW, it likely that the fundamentals of SEO will still remain relevant for a long time. They may even become more important, because as search engines understand more about your content and the links to your content they will be better equip to judge the quality of those links.

Michael Hawthornthwaite works at Acid Computer Services

Speculation on Yahoo’s Search Plans Abounds

Seo Men — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 06:13:57 +0000

A Web rumor of late has Yahoo selling off its search business, possibly even to its adversary Google.

It’s not surprising that Yahoo would consider giving up on search, considering Google has the most market share in that ever-important category. Plus, over the years Yahoo has focused more and more on its media offerings, and has put much emphasis on developing its Panama ad management technology. Indeed, the company seems to be aiming to manage display ads for other publishers, and selling their inventory to national advertisers.

If Yahoo were to sell off its search technology and related contracts, surely other firms besides Google would be interested. However, if Google ever does agree to buy that business, one would expect the Federal Trade Commission, consumer advocates and firms like IAC’s Ask.com and Microsoft to raise eyebrows. After all, if Yahoo’s search contracts were to go to Google, the firm would have much even more defined control of the search market.

There’s been so much speculation about Yahoo over the past year or so, I guess we can add this one to the pool of what-ifs.

A simple way to get more storage

Seo Men — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 06:23:41 +0000

As someone who tests Google products daily, I know that the simplest solution is often the one that works best. In the case of online storage, whether it’s a picture, a video or an email, you should just, well, be able to store it without having to worry about whether you’ve got enough space in each particular product.

That’s why the Picasa team is pleased to tell you that in a few hours we’ll be rolling out extra storage that you can purchase to use across several Google products (today, Picasa Web Albums and Gmail; soon, other applications like Google Docs & Spreadsheets). That will help make storage really useful, like letting you upload lots of full resolution images to Picasa Web Albums.

When you reach the limit of free storage (i.e., 1GB for Picasa Web Albums, 2.8GB for Gmail), consider this your overflow solution. Plans start at $20/year for 6GB (yes, $5 cheaper than before), with larger plans ranging up to 250GB. If only testing everything were this easy. We’ll update this post as soon as we’re ready to take your order.

Professional Search Engine Optimization with PHP: A developer’s Guide to SEO

Seo Men — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 08:07:09 +0000

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the last process I would think of when making my homepage. However, when fighting for customers or the possibility for an audience and thus advertising revenue through page clicks then understanding SEO and placing it in the center of your website’s design is vital for your personal/professional wealth.

Professional Search Engine Optimization with PHP: A Developer’s Guide to SEO by Jaimie Sirovich and Cristian Darie and published by WORX as part of its Programmer to Programmer series details many, many valid tactics.

My first impressions were very positive: a potentially theoretical book made alive through the valid use of PHP code examples that permeated the pages with context. A well described book detailing many types of pressures and risks for the budding Search Engine Marketer or website engineer. The book taught me — without pain — a great deal on a complex subject area of which I knew little.

This book at wiley.com

Google Tests New “Show More” & Related Words AdSense Units

Seo Men — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 07:54:08 +0000

A DigitalPoint Forums thread reports spotting new Google AdSense units being tested. It appears Google is mixing a typical text ad unit with what are called link units.

Here is a screen capture taken from the forum thread: Google AdSense Link & Text Ad Unit Mixed. Notice the links at the bottom of the ad. You can click on the image or go to the thread to see a full size version. These ads are also being tested on other ad formats, as you can see on page two of the thread. I was unable to reproduce the ads, but they seem to be real.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

SEO Is Dead?

Seo Men — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 07:54:00 +0000

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as we know and detest it is obsolete in this day and age. When some while ago Philipp asked me to write an article How do I optimize websites I couldnt do it: The way SEO works in Germany on Google.de can not really work for international websites in English. Moreover nowadays you do not need conventional SEO tactics to have success on the Net or in Google. In order to make a site succeed in these times you have to forget everything you know about on page optimization and link building first.

Now we can start our ten step guide to Google and traffic heaven.

His advice on what to do instead of SEO to promote your website is pretty solid”but man, it sure walks like SEO and quacks like SEO.

Discover your niche”Be different, choose a topic or product that not everybody else already covers or sells. Discovering it is not to be confused with keyword research as in conventional SEO. You try to introduce a new niche not just obeying the Google users demands.
Use WordPress”Thats WordPress. Instead of on page optimization you can install WordPress that is search engine friendly out of the box. Well, dont tell the large number of SEO bloggers on WordPress whove done posts, series, vidcasts and more on making WordPress SEO-compliant.
Create a killer CSS design and submit it to CSS galleries”Traditional SEO is all about link building or getting links. Sites doing SEO often look crappy. These days people link web sites that look great just for the sake of the design.
Allow trackbacks, use dofollow.
Socialize, write comments and link other blogs.
Include social media on your site, use social media yourself.
Write your own content, say something new, express yourself.
Compile what you know or what others said and publish it”If everything was said and done already in a particular case, compile it and create a list. Top list are the best solutions.
Contribute to your favorite online publications”Most publishers will link to your site.
Add new content at least every second day

On one pass through, its easy to accept this advice as materially different from SEO, especially with the care that Tadeusz has taken to point out the differences between SEO and his advice.

But the more I read this (as it was reblogged), the more I started recognizing some of these techniques as fairly standard SEO practices today. In Tadeuszs defense, perhaps optimizing for Google.de is unlike what is currently required to optimize for Google.com, but heres my take on his tips:

If you dont have a niche, are you sure you have a website? If your website, blog or business doesnt have a niche, thats a more fundamental failing than marketing problem. Its definitely step 1. But why limit yourself by not doing any keyword research? If you want to blog about crane flies (gross), shouldnt you somehow find out that theyre also called mosquito hawks, mosquito eaters (or skeeter eaters), gallinippers, gollywhoppers, and jimmy spinners?
Tweak WordPress to make it more SE friendly. Yes, use WordPress if it makes sense for your site. But at the minimum, do something to enhance its search engine optimization”SEO Title Tag and Add Meta Tags plugins enable you to customize various settings. Why pass up the chance to control your snippet on the Google SERP?
Over here, CSS is SEO – Okay, this is debatable, but lots of SEOs will tell you that CSS is the preferred SEO design method (specifically external CSS). And most of the time, a crappy-looking site that hires a professional SEO will get a redesign. Usually, a killer design can only increase your linkability. Submitting your CSS design to galleries to get more links back to your site is also just another example of link recruitment, which, again, is pretty old school SEO.
Get links, give links.
Promote your site/business and your brand and get links, give links – Pretty much SEO 1.0 to do something to draw attention to your site from other sites. One of the most popular ways: link to a site, get the site owners attention.
SMO - isnt perfectly equivalent with SEO, but really, where do you think the idea to heavily promote your site using social media came from? Diggers?
Avoid duplicate content/dont plagiarize and create lots of original content – Technically, I usually tell clients something about keyword-rich original content designed to be attractive to visitors and search engines, but if you selected a niche up in #1, at least you have some sort of keywords that youre using (even if youre absolutely not allowed to look at how other people articulate those concepts).
One word: linkbait. Of course it works. I linked, didnt I?
Become an authority/promote your site on other sites and recruit links.
Create original content and update regularly!

While many of these tips arent directly on-point as current SEO techniques, I think most people offering holistic SEO services will at least address everything he mentioned.

The bottom line? Why avoid the established principles of search engine friendly and search engine optimized sites? If theres something that can help make your blog, site or business rank better, trying to prove a point by not using the technique is shooting yourself in the foot. Im not trying to dismiss Tadeuszs sound advice”but I would like people to recognize that SEO isnt just keyword research and comment spam.