If you’re active on the Internet (because you don’t happen to live under a rock), you’re probably familiar with most popular customer review websites. Some top dogs are Yelp, Angie’s List, TripAdvisor, Zagat, and Urbanspoon. Customer review sites allow people to log in, find companies and services, and review them by giving a star rating and/or a written review. It’s a simple process, and it has serious implications for your business.
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CommentsLast week, Google rolled out the most recent update to its search algorithm. As you may already know, Google periodically makes updates to improve search results and user experience. The latest update (code named “Penguin”) targets websites that are manipulating search engines by using “black hat” tactics such as buying and selling links strictly for SEO purposes. Although this update is expected to have a larger impact on spam sites, it could affect other sites as well, especially if they have over-optimized content.
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CommentsA few months ago, I wrote a post about Domain Names with regards to what constitutes one, how to choose one, its associated search engine optimization (SEO) value and what happens if you change it.
The changing of a domain is what I want to focus on here, so if the decision has been made, let’s recap some basic SEO preserving items.
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CommentsA previous post I wrote a few months ago discussed the emergence of blended search results and how the landscape of search results pages, in particular Google’s, is expanding beyond just text-based listings.
Now since Google + has emerged into the public consciousness, it’s no coincidence that SEO practitioners are trying to work out how much value it has for rankings. Google + is essentially another social media profile, but there is more to it. If you run a few searches on brands, popular bloggers or important news items, we see more and more rich snippets.
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CommentsIn the SEO field, a day in the life is typically about staying on top of what search engines have changed or what others are predicting will change. It is a moving target, but it is moving toward a natural conclusion.
It’s a complex relationship we have with Google, when either the work you’re doing does not yield expected results, or seemingly subtle changes yield big gains.
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CommentsEverything begins with a domain name and the decisions you make about it can affect your business for years to come. Making the right decision can be difficult.
A great new idea that takes off can be helped or hindered by a good domain name but what defines ‘good’ is complicated. As the web industry matures, less and less good domain names become available and can be traded for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
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There is a reason a book has no duplicate pages and a machine has no duplicate parts. They’re not needed.
This is just how search engines view content. It’s not very usable or informative for search results pages to contain multiple copies of the same thing. This is why your website may not be listed if a search query turns up other pages with content exactly like yours. However, there are grey areas to this, and you may not be aware it’s even happening to you.
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CommentsA third of all searches performed on Google now generate a blend of traditional website listings along with other media. If you are a commercial business owner or have a personal blog, understanding blended search results can help you better market your business.
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CommentsThe website industry moves so fast, that keeping your website aesthetically and technologically fresh is a no-brainer. There are also personal and branding reasons that could force a re-design, but making good design choices with good SEO in mind can be a challenge.
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CommentsIn this post I wanted to turn my attention to an oft-misunderstood basic SEO practice—and one that I get a lot of questions about: the title tag.
The title tag is one of if not THE most important piece of text information that search engines look at as a signal of relevance on a web page. These innocuous words and phrases appear at the top of your browser. They also appear in search results and sometimes as link anchor text, from external links.
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