Below are all the article which provide information on how to receive more targeted Google search visitors to your website.
 | April 10, 2013What do you do when you accidentally provide the search engines with a bad URL? Read More >> |
 | April 10, 2013I am wondering if numbers in URLs negatively affect SEO. Read More >> |
 | April 10, 2013Are you happy, sad or indifferent when Google puts out a new Panda / Penguin update? Read More >> |
 | March 27, 2013Do you often see an unlevel playing field these days in either the Google organic search results or paid search? Explain either way below! Read More >> |
 | March 13, 2013When you add great content to your website on a regular basis and get the word out about it to your target audience, you'll gain more rankings, traffic, conversions, leads and sales.
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 | February 13, 2013With the introduction of the Panda filter by Google (originally dubbed "Farmer") in February 2011, one commonality of sites that were hit was what I called merry-go-round sites.
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 | January 16, 2013In my "18 SEO Killers" article from the end of last year, I mentioned footer links as a potential SEO problem. I know this confused many people because I didn't explain what I meant by them. This article takes an in-depth look at footer abuses. Read More >> |
 | January 2, 2013Missed any of Jill's articles in 2012? Do not fear, today's HRA recaps the most popular ones! Read More >> |
 | December 19, 2012By now you've heard the news that a few of the major SEO tool companies will no longer be providing ranking reports as part of the website data they supply. While you are probably still in shock and scrambling to figure out what to do about it, if you're serious about your online marketing, it's actually the best thing that could happen to you.
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 | December 5, 2012As part of my SEO for 2013 and beyond series, I promised to provide more in-depth information about the "SEO killers" I mentioned last time. Today I'm delving into duplicate content as it relates to SEO. Read More >> |
 | November 14, 2012There's a lot of talk lately of Google having finally killed SEO through their Panda and Penguin algorithms, which continue to ensnare more and more websites with every new update. So is SEO really (finally) dead?
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 | November 14, 2012What are the top 3 website / SEO issues you've seen that were likely to have caused traffic losses from any of the Google Panda / Penguin updates? Read More >> |
 | October 3, 2012When I searched a phrase on my computer, I did not come up at all but I get traffic for that phrase. How does that happen? Read More >> |
 | September 19, 2012Does moving from an HTML site to a WordPress site have any big SEO issues? Read More >> |
 | September 5, 2012I've put together some of the main metrics that I like to look at when I'm evaluating the SEO progress of a website, as well as how to find or gather those metrics via reports and dashboards. Read More >> |
 | August 22, 2012Karon's been noticing for quite some time that the top sites in Google didn't always have the exact keyphrase used multiple times within their copy. So she went to Matt Cutts from Google to confirm her suspicions--that we no longer need to use keyword phrases as a whole, but should use the individual words contained within the phrases. Read More >> |
 | August 8, 2012In some of my recent reviews of websites that have recently lost Google traffic, I've found a common thread: lots of low-quality content pages. But the interesting thing is that this wasn't the sort of low-quality content created by some scammy SEO in an attempt to boost search engine rankings.
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 | July 25, 2012As you know, I've been reviewing tons of websites that have lost Google traffic lately. Most of the reasons that the sites lost favor with Google have been fairly obvious (to me)--especially the sites that have seen steep declines. Most of the reasons include any combination of...
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 | June 13, 2012I recently did a site audit for a client who was wondering why they were having a hard time showing up in Google. When I read through the information they sent me and took a quick look at their website, it was obvious to me what the problem was: They simply didn't deserve to be there. Let me explain... Read More >> |
 | June 13, 2012How do you get ahead in Google when selling the same products as a zillion other sites? Read More >> |
 | May 30, 2012This post provides 5 mistakes I've seen often enough to warrant a mention so that you can learn from others who weren't so lucky. Read More >> |
 | May 16, 2012Today I'm happy to showcase an interview about Google AdWords with my colleague and friend, Pauline Jakober, CEO of Group Twenty Seven. Read More >> |
 | May 2, 2012Today I browsed through the 3,500 or so SEO questions people asked at Google and chose the most common ones to answer. Read More >> |
 | April 18, 2012Have You Received a GWMT Notice: Artificial or Unnatural Links? Read More >> |
 | April 4, 2012What does Google expect honest search marketers to do when we can no longer accurately report the natural keyword segmentation of traffic? Read More >> |
 | March 21, 2012Google Is Heavily Weighting Words in the URL Read More >> |
 | March 7, 2012Google Changing Title Tags Read More >> |
 | January 25, 2012What does a good online marketer do when stuck for topic ideas these days? Go to Twitter, what else! I asked my followers to hit me with their burning SEO questions and they didn't disappoint. Read More >> |
 | January 11, 2012If you're thinking that implementing the Rel-Author tag on your content isn't worth the trouble, Jill Whalen provides 5 6 reasons why it's super important. Read More >> |
 | January 11, 2012Google passes value from an iframed link. Read More >> |
 | December 28, 2011Click through to see which HRA SEO articles were the most popular of 2011! Read More >> |
 | December 14, 2011If I am looking at Google Analytics and it says we received, say, 15 unique visitors on a particular day, does that mean real live people or does that also include Google bots? Read More >> |
 | December 14, 2011We were wondering which types Title tags would potentially rank higher in the search engines.
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 | November 16, 2011The keywords and phrases you use in your Meta description tag may not affect your page's ranking in the search engines, but this tag can still come in handy in your overall SEO and social media marketing campaigns. Read More >> |
 | October 19, 2011Similar to weight loss being a poor main goal for your health and fitness regime, where your pages rank for specific keyword phrases is also a poor main goal. Read More >> |
 | October 5, 2011Learn why many websites that were making their owners tons of money in the past through traditional SEO, no longer work as well "post Panda." Read More >> |
 | September 21, 2011I was wondering if you had any advice about which option is better SEO wise…buying a domain for a microsite or adding the information to your website as additional content?
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 | September 21, 2011Is there any harm in going in adding a Google Analytics account ID and getting rid of the Omniture info in the code?
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 | September 21, 2011Recently I had a conversation with an SEO expert who claimed that the most important thing we need to do for SEO on our website is URL rewriting. Our old CMS system still uses parameters in the URL ("?pageid="). Read More >> |
 | September 7, 2011When building links or doing other search marketing tasks, it necessary to lie? Isn't that sort of thing exactly what gives marketers in general (not just search marketers) a bad reputation?
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 | August 24, 2011What's the first thing you think of when writing with keywords? Probably one of the first is that keywords and phrases are descriptive of the products and/or services you're writing about. But what happens in those circumstances where you can't (or don't really want to) use your chosen keyphrases descriptively? Read More >> |
 | June 15, 2011Not a week goes by where a reader or a client doesn't ask me a question based on some bad SEO advice they heard or read somewhere. In this article, I try to figure out where it's coming from and why it gets spread. Read More >> |
 | June 1, 2011We have top organic rankings for the most important keywords, so should we really go for the expensive PPC positions above the organic results?
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 | June 1, 2011Do you think the hashtag in a URL affects the site's SEO or link building in any way? Read More >> |
 | June 1, 2011One of our connections came across a horrible website that copied our homepage and used it for their "About Us" page. What can we do about it?
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 | June 1, 2011I have noticed for a long time that we have many keywords that we will rank fine for, but then one week they are not ranked at all and the following week they will be back to around the original ranking. Read More >> |
 | June 1, 2011What is the protocol on using competitors' brand terms to drive traffic to our site for related services? Read More >> |
 | June 1, 2011Do you recommend bidding on competitors' brand keywords in your paid search campaigns? Read More >> |
 | May 4, 2011It's been more than 5 months since my open letter to Google lamenting the state of their search results and how web spam was getting the best of them. Jill takes a look at how far they've come with improving their search results. Read More >> |
 | May 4, 2011Have you noticed much change in Google's results since Farmer / Panda? That is, less spam? Read More >> |
 | April 20, 2011Is there a way to tell Google which states the site is relevant for? Read More >> |
 | April 6, 2011In an effort to keep you from spending your precious time on supposed SEO tactics that will have absolutely no effect on your rankings, search engine visitors, conversions or sales, I present you with 16 SEO tactics that you can remove from your personal knowledge base and/or SEO toolbox as being in any way related to SEO.
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 | March 23, 2011If your company wants people to actually understand what you do when they come to your website, how does playing with the spinning balls further this goal? Read More >> |
 | March 2, 2011By now you've surely heard of the recent Google algorithm changes dubbed the "Farmer Update." This article highlights some of the interesting things I noticed that made me go hmmm...with the small set of sites I've looked at so far. Read More >> |
 | March 2, 2011What're 1 or 2 main factors you feel caused massive drops in traffic to some sites w/Farmer update? Read More >> |
 | February 2, 2011I'm tired of Google (and Bing) returning sites that use anchor text link spam to get on the first page of results. Read More >> |
 | January 19, 2011Jill writes about why Google wants their organic search results to "suck just enough." Read More >> |
 | January 19, 2011Is there a viable alternative to Google? Read More >>
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 | January 5, 2011Going live with a redesigned website without considering the SEO implications is like being ensnared in a nasty trap that you cannot escape from. Read More >> |
 | December 1, 2010What's the most difficult/frustrating part of keyword research in your opinion? Read More >>
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 | December 1, 2010Google Is Reindexing Old Redirected URLs Read More >>
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 | November 17, 2010Last week I was speaking with a potential client in need of SEO consulting who told me that they had been working on their product part e-commerce website over the past few months by adding "SEO articles" to it on a regular basis. Read More >> |
 | November 17, 2010Google Choosing Its Own Titles Read More >>
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 | November 3, 2010We are moving our site to a new CMS and have a few questions regarding URLs and our sitemap. Read More >> |
 | November 3, 2010If I add to a page of my website a widget that enables my blog to show on that page, do search engines recognize the blog content delivered via this widget? Read More >> |
 | November 3, 2010Have you seen the new Google Place Page results right in their regular listings yet? Read More >> |
 | November 3, 2010What do you think of the new SERP display for local listings in Google? Read More >>
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 | October 20, 2010So many people think that the term "long-tail keywords" means keyword phrases that have more than 2 words in them, but that's not at all what they are. Read More >> |
 | September 22, 2010Jill Whalen writes an open letter to Google lamenting the amount of spam still found in their search results. Read More >> |
 | September 22, 2010What type of search engine spam do you see still working well in Google? Read More >> |
 | August 25, 2010When you review the keywords from which people clicked to your site, are they only peripherally related to what you offer? If so, your website is likely suffering from BlindWebsititis!
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 | July 28, 2010I noticed you do not use meta descriptions or meta keywords on many of your pages. Why not? Read More >> |
 | June 30, 2010For the past few weeks I've been tasked with reviewing a few different sites that have seen a loss in traffic – their owners hoped to find out why... I can usually make some educated guesses based on what I dig up in Google Analytics.
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 | June 30, 2010Have you seen sites obviously penalized by Google and, if so, what was the cause? Read More >>
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 | June 30, 2010Forum member "KemoSabe" wanted to mask a keyword-rich domain with a more memorable one for humans. Read More >> |
 | June 16, 2010True or false? Today's SEO could be tomorrow's search engine spam with the turn of an algo crank. Read More >> |
 | June 16, 2010Jill's response to whether today's SEO techniques could become tomorrow's search engine spam. Read More >> |
 | June 2, 2010In last week's newsletter you mentioned appending email signature links with campaign tracking codes. Can you please detail how to do this?
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 | June 2, 2010I have a question about the duplicate content issue when you append tracking codes. But, as a safety measure to avoid duplicate content, I've included a 301-redirect in the htaccess file...
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 | June 2, 2010Why does one of our websites come up #5 on Google under the keywords "our keyword phrase Los Angeles" when the keywords "Los Angeles" are nowhere to be found on our pages? Read More >> |
 | June 2, 2010My client has a local shop. Should every keyword phrase contain the locale, such as Denver, Arvada, Westminster, etc., and then just change up the item?
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 | June 2, 2010If websites have links pointing externally, is there a difference when pointing to high- or low-authority sites?
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 | June 2, 2010Do you ever use nofollow links, and if so, for what purpose? Read More >> |
 | June 2, 2010Did any of you experience that faster load speed of pages got you better rankings at Google SERP? Read More >> |
 | May 19, 2010Think you're doing a good job of tracking and measuring the success of every link to your website that gets announced to the world in some fashion? Do you ever wonder where some of your "Direct Traffic" came from? Read More >> |
 | May 19, 2010How often do you view your web analytics? Read More >> |
 | May 5, 2010Here are some of the more prevalent myths I hear and see bandied about in SEO articles, at SEO conferences, in SEO blogs and on SEO forums. Read More >> |
 | May 5, 2010What's Your Favorite SEO Myth? Read More >> |
 | May 5, 2010Help Choose: Subdomain or Directory? Read More >> |
| April 21, 2010This week I learned through Search Engine Land that Google had changed this feature's name from Google Local Business Center to the simpler Google Places. In addition, they've added even more cool things you can do with your Google Page, once you've claimed your listing. Read More >> |
| April 21, 2010Do you like it when local map listings show up in the regular Google results? Read More >> |
 | April 7, 2010As a long-term subscriber I would like to ask for your advice concerning optimisation of an e-commerce site for multiple countries. Read More >> |
 | April 7, 2010Due to my very low link popularity, is that enough to send my pages to Google's Supplemental Index?
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 | April 7, 2010Do we need to have .html at the end of the URL? Read More >> |
 | April 7, 2010Should one manually submit a site to a search engine? Read More >> |
 | April 7, 2010I have one main website and own about 10 other domain name versions that are similar. Read More >> |
 | April 7, 2010On my web page I have H2 tags that include the HTML ampersand (&) character code. I've been told that this confuses crawlers. Read More >> |
 | April 7, 2010What do you feel is THE most important SEO tactic for any website? Read More >>
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 | April 7, 2010High Rankings Online SEO Course Read More >> |
| March 24, 2010Duplicate content has been and always will be a natural part of the Web. It's nothing to be afraid of. Read More >> |
| March 10, 2010Global Search Marketing SEMNE Event in Connecticut! Read More >> |
| February 24, 2010I've had the opportunity to work with a variety of businesses through the years – from tiny one-person small businesses to huge international companies. While there are many similarities in working with different sized companies, there are also important differences. Read More >> |
| February 24, 2010Do image links have the same weighting engines as text links? Read More >> |
| February 10, 2010One thing that can help you figure out how to SEO your site is to learn the whys behind the specific techniques you always hear about. But to understand the whys, you first need to get the gist of how search engines work. Read More >> |
| February 10, 2010Do you build links for the traffic or for rankings? Read More >> |
| January 20, 2010Do you have any info on the issue of spamdexing – specifically the practice of adding keywords into text unnaturally and then emphasizing just the keywords (for example, boldfacing and/or italicizing them)? Read More >> |
| January 20, 2010Is it OK to have the same articles on your site as you do on your blog? And, if not, is it better to have a blog with a link back to your site, or to put the article directly on your site? Read More >> |
| January 20, 2010Is an XML sitemap mandatory if you have a CMS? Read More >> |
| January 20, 2010I own many domain names related to my business. Would I have a problem with Google if I made one-page websites with good related copy on these domain names and linked the one-page websites back to my main website? Read More >> |
| January 20, 2010Inbound, good-quality links are a struggle for me. I can sort though all sorts of tech stuff resulting in a good-looking, professional website, but link building is a real challenge. Read More >> |
| January 20, 2010Forum member "krisflex" wants to know how to increase his or her PageRank. Read More >> |
| January 6, 2010I've been SEO'ing websites long before the 21st century began. Sometimes I feel I've been touting the same SEO processes and procedures for the past 10 years. Read More >> |
| December 16, 2009Chopping and Changing Titles Frequently Read More >> |
| December 2, 2009Each year around this time, I like to review the traffic trends to our High Rankings website, and compare the traffic to the previous year. I usually learn a lot from this exercise, and I highly recommend it to everyone. Read More >> |
| December 2, 2009Rankings Are Dead? Read More >> |
| November 11, 2009This morning I woke up to someone having submitted a pile of SEO questions using our newsletter question form. At first I thought, "Yikes, that's kind of pushy to think I have time to answer all those questions!" But then I remembered that this was a newsletter week and I still had no idea what I was going to write about. Read More >> |
| November 11, 2009Meta Description – Beyond 155 – Still Alive? Read More >> |
| October 28, 2009Will you care if Google turns off toolbar PR? Read More >> |
| October 28, 2009SEO Best Principles for Local Service Read More >> |
| October 14, 2009I know that you HRA readers know that what's good for your users is almost always what's good for search engines too, but not everybody gets this yet. Read More >> |
| September 30, 2009The title tag has been – and probably will always be – one of the most important factors in achieving high search engine rankings. Read More >> |
| September 30, 2009Have you heard about Google's new project called "SideWiki" yet? Read More >> |
| September 16, 2009Advanced Forum Thread of the Week: New forum member "wsajay" was wondering if and how the traffic to a given website affects its search engine rankings. Read More >> |
| September 2, 2009My plan is to move all the home decor products from the old site to the new one AND change the products of the old one back to selling the jewelry, perfume, wallets, etc. – that is, the "gifty" stuff.
What is the best way to make this change? Read More >> |
| September 2, 2009I have a corporate client that is planning to purchase a company in Switzerland and they are wondering if I can do the SEO. But then it dawned on me, checking their rankings with a U.S.-based IP address might deliver different search results…do you think? Read More >> |
| August 5, 2009I'm a Keyword Discovery subscriber, and I use the tool for organic SEO keyword research purposes. I've recently discovered that the keyword analysis information (competition and thus KEI info) is based on exact match search instead of partial match. Read More >> |
| July 8, 2009To further add to your web analytics knowledge, today I'm going to explain how you can more accurately measure email and social media marketing efforts by using tracking links to create "campaigns" in GoAn. Read More >> |
| July 8, 2009The other day I stumbled across Google's 1-click for free program, which is a way of indexing content that can normally be viewed only by registered users. Read More >> |
| June 10, 2009We are being contacted more and more by companies asking if we will add to our websites and/or clients' websites a short paragraph of text that includes a link to one of their clients' sites – i.e., a text advertisement.
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| June 10, 2009There was big news last week from the SMX Advanced conference, which we've been discussing at the forum, regarding the use of PageRank sculpting. Read More >> |
| May 27, 2009Do you think a positioning video has value on a website, or does it interfere with the structure and architecture of the website?
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| May 27, 2009Are the Title, Description and Keywords (the metadata) always the same for each blog post? Read More >> |
| May 27, 2009We have a website of which the home page has 5 PageRank. This website has 5,000 pages that are indexed in Google.com and many of the pages have good PageRank. Read More >> |
| May 27, 2009I have a series (15) of keyword domains (3 to 5 years old) that are related to my site. Currently most of them are mirrors with just a slight content differential. Read More >> |
| May 27, 2009Forum member "vanzist" asks what the best Title tag for a page would be. While my first response was the usual "it depends," additional comments make for a very interesting forum thread. Read More >> |
| April 29, 2009I've spent the last few weeks reviewing scads of websites for our new SEO Website Review clients and have noticed a lot of interesting things in the process. Read More >> |
| April 29, 2009Forum moderator Randy has some interesting observations regarding Google Labs' "Similar Images" program.
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| April 15, 2009My question is: How does Google know that the blog is part of my website if the address isn't under my website address or hosted by my server? Read More >> |
| April 15, 2009I realize that Google picks up Alt text data (aka Alt tags), especially if the graphic acts as a link; however, I am a bit puzzled on how Google ranked a particular site. Read More >> |
| April 15, 2009Forum member "cswilliams" wonders if hosting your videos on your own server rather than on YouTube would provide any SEO benefits.
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| March 18, 2009Forum member "whitespark" is wondering if he could get in trouble for asking his customers to add a link to his website in exchange for a discount on a future purchase. Read More >> |
| March 4, 2009I run an apartment search website. The sites search results pages are dynamic and pulled from the database. If these dynamic pages also have dynamic page titles, will they be search engine relevant? Read More >> |
| March 4, 2009I disseminate news releases for clients using online wire services. Additionally, the releases are posted on my clients' websites, usually as PDFs, and on my firm's website, the same PDF. My programmer just told me that unless I make these releases different I am causing search engine apoplexy. Please let me know the facts and, more important, what I should be doing. Read More >> |
| March 4, 2009My question is, how should SEO services be evaluated? In other words, what measurable objectives beyond landing above the fold are appropriate? Read More >> |
| March 4, 2009We have a travel website where people can enquire about beautiful small hotels we offer. Even though each hotel has a unique URL with unique content, the categories pages have a duplication problem. Read More >> |
| March 4, 2009I would like to ask a question too, please. Our website is geared to sell GPS equipment. Many of the products have a life of about 6 months to a year. Google indexes these very well, and we rank highly. However, some searches display discontinued products (I guess because they have been around the longest). Read More >> |
| March 4, 2009Forum member Convergent7 has a website that uses a subdomain along with the main domain. He/she wonders if it would be better to combine them into one. Read More >> |
| February 18, 2009To many people, the idea of guest blogging is fresh and new and very "Web 2.0." Personally, I find the discussion to be a rather déjà vu–like experience. In fact, one participant on my blog responded to a post about articles by asking how I would contrast guest blogging with article marketing. He wanted to know how I chose between placing my articles on directories and writing an exclusive blog post. The short answer is: I don't. Read More >> |
| February 18, 2009Forum moderator Jonathan Hochman posted about Google's new method for specifying canonical URLs, which the other major search engines have also agreed to use. Read More >> |
| February 4, 2009I have a new website selling children's eco friendly toys. The site was designed to enable customers to search for toys by age, by type of toy, by brand, and by country of manufacture. A given toy description would be in each of these categories as well as in multiple age categories and multiple toy types (i.e., in puzzles and wooden puzzles). Read More >> |
| February 4, 2009I'm writing now because a colleague and I have some questions on search engine/directory submission and we are hoping to get your expertise on the subject. We currently submit new sites to major SEs once they go live, but are wondering if some of the services are worth pursuing or if you advise against these? Read More >> |
| February 4, 2009If I hire people through something like crowdsourcing just to Google some keywords from various areas of the globe to click through to my site and stay there for 5 minutes, will it improve my rankings? Read More >> |
| February 4, 2009I've been researching absolute vs. relative links and there seem to be two camps -- one that advocates absolute as better for SEO purposes and the other that says that absolute links won't improve your rank. My site is set up with relative links, so is it worth the effort to change them to absolute? Read More >> |
| February 4, 2009I'm redesigning my website using CSS for the layout. In the HTML code the navigation information comes before the actual page content. What worries me is how I have my navigation set up. I use CSS and span tags to make neat little information boxes appear when my navigation links are hovered over. These boxes will tell the visitor more about what to expect from that particular link. Read More >> |
| February 4, 2009Karon Thackston and I were discussing copy length the other day (yeah, we're total geeks when it comes to that stuff) and decided to share our conversation via a podcast. You can click to it and listen from Karon's copywriting workshop page. Read More >> |
| February 4, 2009Forum member "anne999" was wondering how many keywords she could target on her website. Read More >> |
| January 21, 2009It was a few weeks before our annual trip to Pompano, FL to visit my grandmother and get away from the nasty New England weather. We had our plane tickets and hotel reserved, but still needed a rental car. I'd been reserving cars for years through a rental car aggregator website that I found many years ago when searching online for rental cars in Ft. Lauderdale. Read More >> |
| January 7, 2009The Search Engine Marketing New England (SEMNE) organization's next event is on January 27th, 2009, at the Newton Marriott in Newton, MA from 6:30 to 9 p.m. Network with other search marketing enthusiasts and learn about Google AdWords best practices from Malinda Gagnon, an account manager and traditional media specialist at Google, Inc.
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| December 17, 2008In 2005, when I originally wrote the article below, I thought by the time 2009 approached, things would have changed. Yet many businesses continue to have unrealistic expectations of what an SEO campaign is all about. We've had a number of calls to our office recently from companies who continue to be hung up over one specific keyword phrase, with no interest in branching out to others. Surprisingly, I changed very little of the content of this article because the message is still as valid as the day I wrote it. Read More >> |
| December 17, 2008Forum member jass_blink is looking for tips on optimizing a local school website. Read More >> |
| November 19, 2008If organic SEO is so important, why are we being sold on PPC as most important by PPC trainers? Why is there less about organic SEO? Read More >> |
| November 19, 2008I work for a nonprofit that since 2000 has been operating an e-commerce website to provide emerging artists with a web presence. It has earned a toolbar PageRank of 5, thanks to some decent inbound links. Due to a variety of things, the parent company of the website has decided it's time to shut the site down. Read More >> |
| October 22, 2008How important is it to have a large number of indexed sites through Google? If so, how do we increase the number, and how do we edit what text appears under the link? Read More >> |
| October 22, 2008I performed a keyword analysis for one of my projects, picked several powerful "traffic juicy" keywords and optimized the landing pages for those keywords. My site went to the first page in the search engines, and yet we've got no more than 100 unique visitors per month. Have you any idea why?
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| October 22, 2008Forum member "bobmeetin" explains how a business he's evaluating has a main website plus 4 subdomains and seems like one big organizational mess. Read More >> |
| October 8, 2008Forum member "wassim" asks if a domain name affects the search results, and if so, how much effect does it have? Read More >> |
| September 23, 2008Sales are down for many businesses due to the slow economy. Business owners and CEOs are looking for that one thing that can pull them through the hard times and keep them afloat. When times get tough, many turn to SEO, hoping that it will be the ticket to increased sales. While SEO is almost always a good idea, if you're counting on it to save a failing business, you may want to rethink things.
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| September 10, 2008Last week Twitter decided to remove the ability to gain any link popularity via people's Twitter profile page. This set off a firestorm from some SEOs who always look for as much link popularity as they can gather. What really made them mad was that they felt that Google (via Matt Cutts) had "bullied" Twitter into the decision.
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| August 27, 2008For purposes of discussion, let's say my main URL is www.example.com. I have a plethora of links in my site for indexing purposes between pages. The page links all go to their respective pages properly, but are linked to example.com (without the www part).
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| August 27, 2008I'm wondering if there is more link value provided by a new blog if it is hosted on an IP with a different C block than the IP address of the web site itself. The owner of the business would be writing the blog and sharing business expertise with the idea of building the brand of the business. Read More >> |
| August 27, 2008I recently set up a new site, which isn't something I often do, and forgot to set up the meta title and description. Now what is called up on Google for my site is HOME and a sentence from mid-page. Now that I have fixed the Web problem, how do I get the search engines to do another crawl of the site? Read More >> |
| August 27, 2008I'm about to renew our contract with our search engine ranking optimization software, but thought I'd check out other options before committing. What do you folks use? Read More >> |
| August 27, 2008Google has announced that they are rolling out "Google Suggest" this week, which will provide searchers with a list of query suggestions when they start typing into the search box. Read More >> |
| August 27, 2008Forum member "don h" discusses a website problem that's been plaguing him for ages. Read More >> |
| July 16, 2008I recently signed up as an advertiser with [a blog review website] so I could purchase blog review postings for one of my clients. After enrolling, I purchased a PR5 blog review posting at the standard PR5 price of $40. Eventually my offer was picked up by a blogger, but the review posting only stayed on their PR5 home page for one day as the next day it was shifted from the front page of the blog to an archived page that had a PR0. Read More >> |
| June 11, 2008Google's Matt Cutts has informed us that they've improved many things in their SEO documentation, including what they've written about robots.txt, IP delivery/geolocation vs. cloaking, the nofollow attribute, doorway pages and more. Read More >> |
| May 14, 2008The front page of my website has a [toolbar] PageRank of 4 and most of my inner pages had a PageRank of 3. After this quarter's Google [toolbar] update, my homepage remained a 4, but most of my inner pages went down to a 2. Read More >> |
| May 14, 2008I have a client who has 2 domain names: namehere.com and differentnamehere.us pointing at the same IP address. Is it bad SEO to have multiple domain names for the same site? And will this negatively impact search engine results for each? Read More >> |
| May 14, 2008While this question may not be directly SEO-related, I'm wondering if there might be any negative SEO implications to including a social bookmarking and sharing button to the more popular pages on our website to leverage some of the popularity of social networking? Read More >> |
| April 23, 2008If I have the same title tags and keywords as the company listed first in Google, Yahoo, etc., why don't I get a high ranking? Read More >> |
| April 23, 2008Today’s guest article is written by Dave Collins, from UK-based SharewarePromotions Ltd. I really liked because it shows a similar philosophy to that of High Rankings (i.e., create good stuff and good stuff will happen!). Read More >> |
| April 9, 2008Here is the scenario: I had a Virtual Private Server (VPS) with 9 websites on it that were all interlinked. It worked great for awhile. Then in Nov. 2004, Google did a big adjustment, and all 9 of my sites dropped out of sight. Read More >> |
| April 9, 2008Search engine results seem to vary for US states. For instance, one of my clients gets top results while one of my clients from another state doesn't get the same results. Read More >> |
| April 9, 2008When you're done reading the SEO Standards threads, here's a good one on sitemaps. Read More >> |
| March 26, 2008Let me enlighten you about something you might not have considered. Ultimate conversions from pay-per-click (PPC) ads come from a process, not a single event. Oftentimes, online marketers focus on the effects of PPC copywriting and the clickthrough rate it achieves. That clickthrough rate is thought of as the end-all, be-all for the campaign. But the overall goal of PPC copywriting is not to get people to click. Clicking a PPC ad is merely step one. The ultimate goal is to get visitors to take action once they reach your site. Read More >> |
| March 26, 2008Now that the nofollow link attribute has been around for awhile, and even sanctioned by Google's Matt Cutts for "PageRank Sculpting," forum member "nethy" is wondering what your thoughts are on it. Read More >> |
| March 26, 2008I wanted to give you a heads-up that ROI Revolution is starting their next Google Analytics Training Series on April 10, 2008. As you may remember, our High Rankings SEO associate was trained in Google Analytics through this series. They have been kind enough to continue to offer a $100 discount to any High Rankings Advisor subscribers who wish to attend. Read More >> |
| February 20, 2008I was checking to make sure that all my client's PDFs were appearing in Google's index and noticed something odd. Luckily all the PDFs appear when I do a site:yoursite.com filetype:pdf. Read More >> |
| February 6, 2008There's a good thread in the forum from member "fishermack" explaining why toolbar PageRank is not an effective measurement for website traffic and sales. Read More >> |
| January 31, 2008Is someone more likely to click on my organic or paid search result if they appear side by side? Read More >> |
| January 23, 2008You briefly hit on ROI and basically described perfectly a dilemma I have. We are a B2B manufacturer of machinery that costs anywhere from the 10's of thousands to the 100's of thousands each. We sell a handful of these machines each year. Consequently, the buying cycle can take up to a year or more. How would you suggest we figure ROI and conversions for this kind of business? Read More >> |
| January 23, 2008An interesting topic of discussion has broken out in the forum regarding whether Google understands the "theme" of a website.
Read More >> |
| January 23, 2008Today's guest article is written by Andy Komack, the President of KoMarketing Associates. I had the pleasure of meeting Andy through SEMNE, the search marketing association for New England (see...networking *does* work!). Andy has been creating online marketing strategies for clients since 1999, so he's one of the old-timers who definitely knows what he's doing. KoMarketing provides search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, social-media marketing, and corporate blogging strategies for their clients. Read More >> |
| January 16, 2008I have plain html pages that describe the various health-related products that I recommend. If one of my readers wishes to purchase a product, they click on an "order now" button, which takes them to the desired product at my shopping cart.
Read More >> |
| December 19, 2007I am coming across a lot of offers for software for SEO. A lot of them are
offering different sorts of analyzers, etc. — which I’m not sure are
helpful. Is there any sort of software that is real SEO software and
actually does some actual SEO work to your site? Read More >> |
| December 19, 2007I mentioned last time that we were going to start offering highly personalized SEO training classes (limited to 10 people per class) at our High Rankings headquarters in Framingham, MA.
Read More >> |
| December 19, 2007If you'd rather learn from the comfort of your own home/office, we have an alternative for you -- our video of a past High Rankings seminar (different from the training sessions mentioned above, but just as good!). Read More >> |
| December 12, 2007Our friends at ROI Revolution are starting their next round of Google Analytics online training classes on January 10, 2008. There's still time to sign up, and still time to get a $100 discount using our affiliate discount code of HIGHRANKINGS in the coupon field. Read More >> |
| November 28, 2007I am in the process of changing all my URLs from things like news123.html to
OurCompany_Announces_New_CEO.html Read More >> |
| November 14, 2007My company is considering building some new sites where content is loaded from a database. We plan on using static URLs no matter what, but we are wondering if it matters whether the content comes from static, unique HTML files, or if the HTML page is served from a database. Read More >> |
| November 14, 2007Two weeks ago, my Google PR was still at 0/10. We have a 6-month-old site, for which I've been doing many of the "slow growth" SEO tactics as my time allows.
This week, I find that my Google PR is now 5/10. Read More >> |
| October 31, 2007Karon Thackston has just finished her new ebook on how to write successful
PPC ads. It’s so new, in fact, that it hasn’t even been announced to the
general public! Read More >> |
| October 31, 2007Forum member “Reflections” is looking for a quick way to increase PageRank
because the usual routes take too long. Read More >> |
| October 24, 2007The SEO world is abuzz today with Google’s smack in the face to a number of
websites that are selling obviously paid-for, keyword-rich text links. Read More >> |
| October 24, 2007I noticed something interesting the other day that made me wonder whether
links that have the nofollow attribute on them can/do still pass anchor-text
“juice” in Google. Read More >> |
| October 3, 2007The Google Analytics Online Training Course from ROI Revolution that we
mentioned last week is starting this Thursday, Oct. 4. You can still apply
the $100 High Rankings discount by simply typing "highrankings" into the
discount code field when you register. I believe that even if you miss the
first live class you could watch it online, so don't be shy about signing up
late.
Read More >> |
| September 25, 2007I submitted our website sitemap to Google a while back, but I was reading a
forum this morning where somebody was saying you have to submit every page
to Google. What is the real procedure and are sitemaps important? Read More >> |
| August 29, 2007Hey everyone! I’m back from vacation and the conference and raring to go. Today’s article is an updated version of one I wrote back in 2004 on the art of SEO. I recently reviewed it and was surprised at how accurate it still is today. I figured there are many of you on the list who never read it the first time around, and for those who did, you’ve probably forgotten it by now. Read More >> |
| August 29, 2007Forum member “malhyp” asks if there’s a benefit to using both the singular
and plural forms of his/her keyword phrases when optimizing. Read More >> |
| August 1, 2007Google has decided to stop labeling pages in their Supplemental Results Index as such, and some webmasters are up in arms over it. Personally, I think it’s smart of them not to differentiate the results anymore, as all it served to do was cause unnecessary grief for people. Read More >> |
| July 25, 2007Forum moderator Jonathan Hochman (jehochman) noticed a post on Matt Cutts’ blog asking people to vote for what features they’d most want added to Google’s Webmaster Tools. Jonathan thought it was curious that one of the proposed features would tell webmasters which pages on their sites don’t validate. He wondered why Google would do that if they don’t care about pages that validate. Read More >> |
| July 11, 2007Last night was our third SEMNE event (Search Engine Marketing New England), and we were humbled to have Dan Crow, director of crawl systems at Google, spilling the beans about how to get your site into Google. He talked for a half hour or so, and then proceeded to answer audience questions for at least another hour. As I sat there listening to him (yes, I actually listened to this one!), I was struck by what an awesome opportunity it was for everyone in that room to be provided with such important information — straight from Google. It was clear that the 100 or so people in the room agreed. In fact, at 7:30 on the dot, everyone spontaneously stopped their networking activities and simply took their seats without being asked to. These folks definitely came to hear Google! Read More >> |
| May 30, 2007Forum member "DannyAFC" tells us that he ranks well on the competitive
keywords in his industry, but he's getting concerned because his cache dates
are starting to get quite old. Read More >> |
| May 30, 2007Forum member "Brandon C" asks, "I want to be able to offer a true breadcrumb
for customers in an ecommerce store, but I am afraid that the product page
will get penalized for duplicate content if I'm not careful." Read More >> |
| May 23, 2007Does what you name a page (not the “Title” but the file name) matter to
search engines when they crawl a site? Read More >> |
| May 22, 2007If you’re in the New England area on July 10th, we’ve managed to convince
the product manager of Google’s crawl systems, Dan Crow, to come speak at
our next SEMNE event! He’s going to be speaking on “Getting Into Google”
and will be taking loads of audience questions. Read More >> |
| May 16, 2007Forum member "Nystul" remarks: "Due to the long name of my website
(keyword), a couple of my backlinks are anchor text as 'thisisme,' instead
of 'this is me.' Read More >> |
| May 16, 2007Forum member "bims" asks whether it's necessary to keep his/her Google
AdWords campaigns running for keywords in which he/she already has decent
organic rankings. Read More >> |
| May 9, 2007 I wanted to discuss the possibility of developing a best practice/checklist
guide for our company to follow. Our new initiative will be to launch 50
or so micro-sites focused on our key product categories. These sites will
need to be rolled out quickly. Read More >>
|
| May 9, 2007Last week’s SEMNE blogging event in Connecticut was a rousing success! Read More >> |
| April 25, 2007Forum member "sleidia" wonders why his or her website isn't performing well,
even though it has a high ranking for a specific keyword phrase. Read More >> |
| April 25, 2007Forum member "stacykan" tells the group that she filled out a recent spam
report on one of her competitors, which apparently resulted in the site
being penalized/banned. Read More >> |
| April 25, 2007Forum member "chorn" sees his or her rankings constantly fluctuating, gets
freaked out by it, and wonders why it's happening. Read More >> |
| April 18, 2007I started answering this question with the usual answer, but
as I looked at the site in question, I realized there was more going on than
meets the eye. Please read through the entire question and my response to
see what I mean! Read More >> |
| April 18, 2007Forum moderator Michael Motherwell (aka “ProjectPHP”) wondered what all the
hubbub is regarding a post Matt Cutts made at his blog asking for people to
report paid links to him/Google. Read More >> |
| April 4, 2007Someone emailed me with a list of quick questions about some SEO terminology
they didn’t understand. I figured if one person was looking for these
answers, many of you would be, too. Read More >> |
| March 21, 2007I recently had an inquiry from someone who was looking for some possible SEO consulting with me. He was in the process of a redesign and wanted to be
sure not to make any mistakes along the way, which is super-smart! The time
to be looking at SEO is definitely in the beginning stage of any design or
redesign project. Read More >> |
| February 28, 2007Your email newsletter is one of my favorites, and I get a bunch of them from
SEO “experts” and others. Read More >> |
| February 28, 2007Great newsletter. My business partner is developing our site and wants to
put a list of keywords at the bottom of some of our shop pages (i.e. below
the text) in the hopes that this will get the search engines to notice us
slightly more. Read More >> |
| February 28, 2007My SEO’s Good. Now Should I Work On Conversions? Read More >> |
| January 31, 2007Did you know that Google supposedly doesn’t crawl nofollows? My understanding was that they are to be used for untrusted links, not to keep Google’s spider out of places. (There are already tags/attributes for that.) However, Google seems to keep changing what they want to use the nofollow attribute for. Read More >> |
| January 17, 2007Not quite 2 years ago, Scottie Claiborne wrote a brilliant article here in HRA on
how to switch to a new domain while avoiding the nasty effects of the aging
delay. Read More >> |
| January 17, 2007If your rankings have slipped in Google recently, you’re not alone. Check
out this thread regarding a recent Google update that killed a few sites’
rankings. Read More >> |
| December 1, 2006Back in June, Jill and I were front and center at SES Toronto listening to Seth Godin, entrepreneur, best-selling author, and marketing guru. He is as excellent a speaker as he is a writer! Seth delivered a thought-provoking as well as motivational keynote speech, and if you ever get a chance to hear him speak, it is a truly remarkable experience! Read More >> |
| November 29, 2006Karon's back today to show us the results from the Julie's Jewels
copywriting makeover that she wrote about last time. Read More >> |
| November 8, 2006Do you have a page that used to rank #1 in Google that is now suddenly
ranking #31? Read More >> |
| October 25, 2006Sixty-year-old newbie here with his first e-book! My site is unlinked -- just "up there." I teach project management for a living -- but ill health is forcing early retirement, and I have an urgent need to keep paying the mortgage! Read More >> |
| October 25, 2006It's one of the best pieces of copywriting advice I've ever been given. "As
often as possible, start your paragraphs with sentences that hook readers
and drive them deeper into the copy." Read More >> |
| October 25, 2006Forum member “arteworks” noticed a competitor site that had a keyword phrase in a comment tag wrapped with an H1 tag. Is it spam or just stupid? (Or perhaps both!) Read More >> |
| September 20, 2006I have been receiving your excellent newsletter for more than 3 years and
find it an invaluable help to understand the ins and outs of SEO.
Indeed I am sure that your advice has been instrumental in achieving a top 5
listing for the last 3 years in Google for my London site. Read More >> |
| September 20, 2006How many characters are allowed in the keyword Meta tag? How will the
crawler treat a page that goes over this limit of characters? Read More >> |
| September 13, 2006The usually unflappable High Rankings® Forum admin Alan Perkins has had it
with all 3 PPC providers and rants about it this week. Read More >> |
| August 16, 2006Push the button of every SEO expert and he/she will start talking about the
importance of links for high rankings.
Read More >> |
| August 2, 2006Do the search engines see the addition of this character: | in the title tag
as words/characters, thus reducing the amount of words you should put in the
title tag? Read More >> |
