 | June 5, 2013Pauline Jakober looks at three ways SEO and PPC work together to create a mutually beneficial relationship for a website. Read More >> |
 | May 22, 2013Nothing and Everything Read More >> |
 | 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 >> |
 | 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.
Read More >> |
 | 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.
Read More >> |
 | 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.
Read More >> |
 | 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?
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 >> |
 | September 5, 2012This week, rather than a High Rankings Question of the Week, I've got a rant of the week instead. 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.
Read More >> |
 | 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...
Read More >> |
 | July 11, 2012Ever since Panda and Penguin have hit, a lot of companies have lost a large percentage of their website visitors. Unfortunately, many of them were taken advantage of by shady SEO companies.
Read More >> |
 | June 27, 2012What are you supposed to do if there aren't any long-tail keywords for your niche?
Read More >> |
 | 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 >> |
 | 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 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 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 7, 2012It's pretty amazing and very cool that a simple gesture can have such a profound effect on someone's career – and, I daresay – life. 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 >> |
 | December 28, 2011Click through to see which HRA SEO articles were the most popular of 2011! Read More >> |
 | November 30, 2011If you could only ask 10 general (non-industry-specific) questions of your new SEO customers, what would they be and why would their answers help you help them? Read More >> |
 | 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 >> |
 | November 2, 2011You know you're supposed to get on Twitter to somehow promote your website. So you start randomly tweeting out links to a product or service page on your website. But who is going to care? 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?
Read More >> |
 | 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?
Read More >> |
 | 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 >> |
 | August 10, 2011Adding value to your website through free articles, blog posts, videos, and any other type of content that may be helpful to those at the not-ready-to-buy-yet stage, is a great way to gain extra traffic. The problem (if you want to call it that) with all this "value-added" content is that it brings those very people who will rarely convert into a lead or a sale. Read More >> |
 | July 27, 2011I have many questions about SEO. Any help you can give me will be greatly appreciated! Read More >> |
 | July 27, 2011What are your quick words of wisdom for a business owner just starting out with SEO for their site? Read More >> |
 | July 13, 2011Today's feature article is a guest post from my friend and B2B marketing consultant Dianna Huff. If you're a B2B company in need of online content writing and marketing, you'll be in good hands with Dianna! In addition, she’s also hosting local, low cost, lunch time web marketing seminars in the MA-NH Merrimack Valley area. Read More >> |
 | June 29, 2011As you try to choose the best keyword phrases for each page, you will have to work them into the content of that page. They absolutely must be highly relevant so that you don't drive your copywriter crazy when s/he sits down to do the writing.
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, 2011Do you think the hashtag in a URL affects the site's SEO or link building in any way? Read More >> |
 | 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 >> |
 | 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 >> |
 | 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.
Read More >> |
 | April 6, 2011Name a common SEO tactic that doesn't actually move the needle in terms of rankings or traffic. Read More >> |
 | 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 >> |
 | February 16, 2011Hi, my name is Jill, and I’m a %#@$ stirrer! 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 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 15, 2010When a client hires an outside SEO consultant during the design and development of a new website, it's often not looked upon kindly by the development team. Chances are the team has had bad experiences with an SEO who forced them to design for search engines and not for people. Read More >> |
 | December 1, 2010Today's article focuses on your first line of SEO defense -- keyword research. Optimizing for the wrong keywords -- either those that are not truly relevant to what your business offers or those that aren't being used by searchers -- will have the dire consequence of making you think that SEO is mythical marketing magic that doesn't work. Read More >> |
 | 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 3, 2010We are moving our site to a new CMS and have a few questions regarding URLs and our sitemap. Read More >> |
 | October 6, 2010What's your measure of a successful SEO implementation? 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 >> |
 | September 22, 2010Getting Better Rankings for Category Pages Read More >> |
 | September 8, 2010...If you don't keep your SEO abreast of website changes. ...If you think your SEO can work independently and not need (a lot of) your help. ...If you know enough SEO to be dangerous. Read More >> |
 | September 8, 2010What's the biggest reason you've seen for SEO failure with clients? Read More >>
|
 | September 8, 2010It's somewhat late, but I have free passes available to Karon Thackston's SEO copywriting telesummit this Thursday, September 9, 2010. Read More >> |
 | September 8, 2010Keyword Phrases in Product Listings 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!
Read More >> |
 | August 11, 2010Looking at the latest search marketing conference agendas, articles, and online news in the SEM space, it certainly appears that social media marketing and networking are the wave of the future. Read More >> |
 | August 11, 2010Is Switching Domains a No-no?
Read More >> |
 | July 28, 2010I'm considering starting my own SEO company and working with local businesses and I was wondering if you could offer any advice.
Read More >> |
 | July 28, 2010Are articles a smart and strategic way to invest our money? Is this person being completely honest in saying we "will rank on page 1" with their articles? Read More >> |
 | July 28, 2010I noticed you do not use meta descriptions or meta keywords on many of your pages. Why not? Read More >> |
 | July 28, 2010Do you use "article marketing" as a form of SEO? Read More >> |
 | July 28, 2010Using Divs and JavaScript for SEO Purposes Read More >> |
 | July 14, 2010If you're a small-business owner, you know you need a website in order to compete online. But I sometimes wonder how many owners know they don't just need a website, but one that's been developed with SEO baked in from the start. Read More >> |
 | July 14, 2010If you're a website designer, do you work with SEOs? If you're an SEO, do you work with developers? 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.
Read More >> |
 | June 30, 2010Have you seen sites obviously penalized by Google and, if so, what was the cause? 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 16, 2010Lots of new SEO website reviews and site audits to take care of over the next few weeks. Let me know if you're interested in one for your site.
Read More >> |
 | 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...
Read More >> |
 | 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?
Read More >> |
 | June 2, 2010If websites have links pointing externally, is there a difference when pointing to high- or low-authority sites?
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, 2010How often do you view your web analytics? Read More >> |
 | May 19, 2010Title Tags and H1 Tags: Same or different for best SEO? 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, 2010Coding from Scratch or a CMS? 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?
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 >>
|
 | April 7, 2010High Rankings Online SEO Course Read More >> |
| March 24, 2010Okay to Launch a New Site Without Redirects in Place? Read More >> |
| March 10, 2010Which Parts of SEO Do You Outsource? 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, 2010New Affordable SEO Small-Business Package. 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 >> |
| 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, 2010When you begin optimizing a website, does it have to go down while creating meta tags – title, description, keyword? OR do we need to back up the website first? 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, 2010I was wondering what the differences are between SEM and SEO. 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, 2010What (if anything) will you be doing differently with your SEO strategy this year? 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 >> |
| January 6, 2010What has changed most in Search Marketing since 2000? Read More >> |
| December 16, 2009You need to address a number of SEO tactics before you get too deep into your website redesign. The reason you need to keep SEO front and center during this time is twofold: so that you do not lose your previous traffic, but also so that you can gain additional targeted search engine visitors when the new site goes live. Read More >> |
| December 16, 20092010 SEO Class Dates Announced: March 12 or April 16, 2010 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, 2009The easiest part of SEO is... 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, 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 >> |
| October 14, 2009Last week at the SMX East conference, a Yahoo representative stated on a panel that the Yahoo search engine no longer supported the meta keyword tag, and supposedly hadn't for months. Unfortunately, what the Yahoo rep stated was simply not true. 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 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 16, 2009So you're probably wondering what's up with the price slashing in the newsletter ad for our SEO services. Have I finally lost my mind completely? Is this a last-ditch effort before we go bankrupt? Read More >> |
| September 2, 2009I've been asked to provide some info on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) description of my site, and how to manage it. 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 >> |
| September 2, 2009I am new to SEO. I am writing my first website and would like to get a better understanding of building a great website that will attract my target market to my site. Can you suggest any good books that can help me achieve this goal? Read More >> |
| September 2, 2009The Twitter Question of the Week is: "Do you give 'ballpark' SEO quotes to companies if/when they won't tell you what the website is? It's kinda necessary, no?" Read More >> |
| August 19, 2009Few things in an SEO's life are sweeter than watching one page of a site hit pay dirt for a high-volume, high-relevance keyword in Google. Read More >> |
| August 19, 2009Forum moderator "Qwerty" noticed that Microsoft's Bing search engine is indexing 301-redirected pages, which is very disconcerting. 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 >> |
| August 5, 2009My Twitter question for this week was: "The hardest part of SEO is...?" Read More >> |
| August 5, 2009In response to my "Most of SEO Is a Boondoggle" article, my buddy Andrew Goodman from Traffick.com had some very interesting follow-up questions for me. Read More >> |
| August 5, 2009Forum member "jsp1983" wondered which might be better, "Essentially, a very localised domain, but with less content vs. a less specific domain, but with lots of content." Read More >> |
| July 22, 2009A lot of companies get so confused when attempting to hire an SEO firm that they simply give up altogether and don't hire anyone. Part of the problem is that they simply don't know whom to trust for this service. Read More >> |
| July 8, 2009I asked my Twitter peeps, "What are you not doing on your own website that you often
recommend your clients should do?" Read More >> |
| June 24, 2009Have you ever noticed that ecommerce sites have their own set of challenges when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO)? If you're a small ecommerce site owner, I'm sure you have. One reason is that copy plays such a vital role in the optimization process. Read More >> |
| June 24, 2009Forum member "taterchips" (great name!) is interested in tackling a specific niche within their profession and was looking at the most effective way to play to that niche. Their question has to do with whether they should add a new page or section to their existing website or start a new website for this particular niche. 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.
Read More >> |
| June 10, 2009Thought you might be interested in my TalentZoo column from last week entitled:
"The Time for SEO Is Before You Need It!" Read More >> |
| 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, 2009Are the Title, Description and Keywords (the metadata) always the same for each blog post? Read More >> |
| May 27, 2009We want to put a calendar of events on our website. Google Calendar appears to be a great product but since it is not hosted on our website the long-tail SEO value (which is one of the main reasons we want to do the calendar) is lost. 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, 2009A few months ago, I was quoted by Google's Matt Cutts as saying that "website developers keep SEOs in business." I honestly do believe that and have for a long time. While I don't mean to say that ALL website designers and developers believe or do all of these things, you'll likely encounter many who have done or believe in some of these. 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 >> |
| May 13, 2009A couple of weeks ago, I received the following request from an email address in India:
"sir/madam.i want to start SEO(search engine optimization)business.but before
that i want to know about SEO.how to intitate this?can u please help me?" Read More >> |
| 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.
Read More >> |
| April 1, 2009I am doing SEO for a website, and I have tried to persuade the owner to include some copy on the home page to sell their services and for ranking, but they prefer just an image and navigation. Is this going to be a big setback in terms of SEO? 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, 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, 2009What do you think about a potential SEO client who asks you to agree not to work with any related company for 2 years after the conclusion of the business relationship? 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 7, 2009While traveling by plane to Florida to visit my grandmother for the holidays, we were sitting next to a couple with 2 small children, probably around 2 and 3 years of age. We expect a lot of children during holiday travel, and typically it's not that big of a deal. With this family, however, it was a different matter. Read More >> |
| 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, 2008In Google's Webmaster Tools there is a section where you can submit someone you think is buying links. Here is what I don't understand – can Google really penalize you for purchasing links? 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 >> |
| November 19, 2008The High Rankings / MarketingSherpa free webinar that was held last week was a huge success! Read More >> |
| November 5, 2008SEMNE (Search Engine Marketing New England) is offering High Rankings Advisor Newsletter subscribers 6 free passes to the November 18, 2008 networking event in Providence, RI featuring Nick Gerner from SEOmoz (one of the developers of the much talked about "Linkscape" project). Read More >> |
| November 5, 2008In today's forum thread of the week, it was actually ME who had a question! I noticed that our robots.txt file had been indexed by Google and was curious if others had ever had this happen. 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?
Read More >> |
| 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, 2008In case you missed them, my September columns for both Search Engine Land and TalentZoo are definitely worth a read (if I do say so myself!). 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.
Read More >> |
| 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.
Read More >> |
| 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).
Read More >> |
| 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, 2008I had the pleasure of being interviewed recently by a number of online marketing folks and thought you might enjoy learning more about me and my thoughts on a plethora of search marketing issues. 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 >> |
| July 2, 2008Over the past few weeks, I've had a few run-ins with plagiarism in various forms and thought I'd take the opportunity to have a little rant about it. My hope is that by discussing it, people will become more educated about the issue and perhaps it will become a little less rampant online. Read More >> |
| June 11, 2008Karon Thackston has a great article on her blog that I highly recommend. Read More >> |
| May 28, 2008When the term "linkbait" first appeared on the search marketing scene a few years ago, I wasn't too keen on it because it has a lot of negative connotations. In fishing, bait is not really a good thing (to the fish). One minute the fish thinks he's going to have a tasty meal, and the next minute he IS the tasty meal! Works out nicely for the fisherman, however. Read More >> |
| May 28, 2008Today. Here are some thoughts on another one of SEMPO's online training courses. Enjoy! – Jill 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 >> |
| April 30, 2008Regarding long-tail keywords, I often find it difficult optimizing them in an article, mainly because it can look unnatural if you include them too often. How do you recommend I deal with this problem? Apart from in the headline, at what density do they need to be mentioned in an article in order to maximize our chances of getting good listings? Read More >> |
| April 30, 2008Is your website sick? In many ways, SEO consultants are like doctors, only instead of analyzing your personal health symptoms, we analyze the overall health of your website. It's true we're not working with life or death situations the same way doctors do, but having a website that is not receiving all the targeted search engine traffic it could be, is a sign of a sick website. 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, 2008Read the third installment of my "Avoiding SEO Brain Freeze" series at TalentZoo. 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, 2008Forum member "lenwood" has provided a client with lots of SEO recommendations that should ultimately increase their search engine traffic. That is, however, if the client would only implement them! 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, 2008If you're looking for an organized SEO method that won't confuse you, you may want to check out my recent columns at TalentZoo. I'm writing an series of articles on how to do on-page SEO from start to finish in a step-by-step manner. 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 >> |
| 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 16, 2008I have a customer who is convinced that for maximum SEO, the page length must be between 450 and 625 words. He has a software program that tells him this. Is there any truth to it?
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 >> |
| January 16, 2008I really would like to go to a SEO conference someday, but which? I'm not an SEO novice and PPC is not my strategy. Plus being #1 what could anybody teach me, anyway? Now, I know that is a very stupid and dangerous statement. ;-) Future trends or expert hints very specific to my site are what I think I need. What do you think?
Read More >> |
| January 2, 2008This week we read Marketing Sherpa’s 2008 Search Marketing Benchmark Guide, and have provided our thoughts about it for you here. Enjoy! – Jill 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 19, 2007We haven't hit you up for a poll in awhile because we didn't want to wear you out. But now we have a survey for you that's a little bit longer than
usual. Don't worry, it's really not that long, only 10 questions, and one
of those asks for your email address (if you want a crack at the free gift).
Read More >> |
| December 12, 2007SEMNE, the search marketing networking organization for New England, is having an event entitled "Wikipedia & Search Marketing" on Jan. 9, 2008 in North Hartford, CT at the Tumblebrook Country Club from 6:30PM-9:30PM. 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 >> |
| December 12, 2007The Search Marketing Expo (SMX) West Conference is quickly approaching!
It's going to be held on Feb. 26-28 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. Register before Jan. 11 to save $400. I'll be there speaking at some sessions, and I hope to see you there as well!
Read More >> |
| December 12, 2007Forum member "Vini" wonders why his/her website keeps going down in the rankings rather than up. 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 28, 2007Market Motive is a new, subscription-based website which brings together
some of the top minds in the Internet marketing world to teach you SEO, Web
analytics, PPC, social media, online publicity, and more. Read More >> |
| November 14, 2007It appears the text Google is now showing [for a particular keyword phrase] is from our DMOZ directory listing. 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 >> |
| November 14, 2007Search Engine College has launched Search Engine Wiki Read More >> |
| November 14, 2007Forum Member “Deverill” is ticked off at the SEO guy in his office due to some strange advice he is giving. Read More >> |
| October 31, 2007One of my biggest headaches is working out how to charge and how much to
charge my clients for my services. 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 16, 2007Pauline Kerbici has put on her interview hat once again, this time to speak
with Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief of Search Engine Land, about in-house SEM/SEO vs. agency SEM/SEO.
Take it away, Pauline! - Jill Read More >> |
| October 3, 2007I have a question: I created a site (read a book on HTML, a book on SEO, and
a book on globalization of websites). After about 10 months, the site is
doing very well and I am pleased with its rankings.
Read More >> |
| October 3, 2007I am currently looking at doing SEO work for a [generic type of alcohol for
drinking] industry-related website. I have come across one problem though.
Read More >> |
| October 3, 2007We have an information site which sells nothing. Our site consists of about
140 articles. I have authored several, and I'm wondering about submitting a
couple of my articles to certain type of sites which claim to boost links to
your site.
Read More >> |
| October 3, 2007To gain credibility, I
often send my clients to sign up for your newsletter to show that I am not
the only one telling them whatever it is I am telling them at the time.
With that, the answer to a question from your last newsletter could severely
hurt my (our) business.
Read More >> |
| October 3, 2007I hope you will take the time to read my latest column at Search Engine
Land, where I wonder whether SEOs have lost the plot. It's all about making
sure that when you make changes to a site for SEO purposes, you truly
understand the reasoning behind why you're making those changes.
Unfortunately, many people don't.
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 >> |
| October 2, 2007I wonder if you can help me. We have a website in New Zealand and it is
hosted here too. We are expanding our business to Australia and building a
new website for this. My web company has said that the new site should be
hosted in Australia as we would get a good start with Google.com.au. Do
you agree with this? Does Google take into account where your site is hosted
for rankings?
Read More >> |
| September 26, 2007I am a small business owner with a circa 2003 website that needs an overhaul
both in terms of SEO optimization and visual appeal. I have no time or
talent to do this and want to hire a company.
I have received a reply from one company that said the problem with my
website is that it was written in FrontPage. They implied that that was a
problem both from a design perspective and for SEO. Do you agree? And if
so, does my website need to be recreated in HTML? 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 >> |
| September 25, 2007I have a really quick question I hope you can help with. There is a small
business in town that is paying $200 a month to have another company make
sure it stays at the top of the ranking lists in search engines. Now if
there is no new competition, except maybe a new office every few years, is
it necessary to pay them, or could they do it themselves with the guidance
you offer on your website? Read More >> |
| September 19, 2007I came across your site on Google while trying to find some information and
found it very helpful. However, I did have a question that was not covered.
Will the search engines be able to find text in a PDF document, or am I
better where possible to include the information in a web page? Read More >> |
| September 18, 2007In Part 1 of this series, I introduced you to
Announce It!, an online candy-bar-wrapper manufacturer that was seeking
professional help with their search engine copywriting. Read More >> |
| September 4, 2007The old cliché is wrong. All our lives we’ve heard, “It’s not what you say,
but how you say it.” That may occasionally be true, but for the most part
it’s what you say AND how you say it. 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 “SEMMatt” wonders if it’s good or bad that the Title tags on
his website are all the same. 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 >> |
| June 6, 2007There has been a debate about the use of keywords for years. Many SEO copywriters will tell you that using keyphrases in their entirety is the best practice for getting high rankings. Others insist it really doesn’t matter — that as long as all the individual words within the phrase are used, your copy will do its job. Before we get into whether keyphrases are best used in their entirety or as individual words, let’s sidestep for just a minute to talk about the inner workings of information-retrieval systems (aka search engines). 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, 2007In another post, "DannyAFC" says he feels that his site needs a redesign but
isn't sure what elements he can safely change without hurting his search
engine rankings.
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 23, 2007When I am searching on terms that apply to our website or our specific
products I’m finding that the perfect phrases or keywords have tons of
competition. And the more obscure phrases that don’t have a lot of
competition are not searched on much. Read More >> |
| May 23, 2007I have to create some pages for a client. They are full of images and little
to no content and have no title tags…however, they still want SEO
services…*groan* Read More >> |
| May 22, 2007My understanding is, if you have Meta tags with keywords and descriptions,
this should also be reflected in your actual page content. But what if you
have an ecommerce site and a homepage that displays mostly products and very
short descriptions, and a menu with category names, etc.? Read More >> |
| May 16, 2007In case you missed it, my column at Search Engine Land this month called
"Don't Sweat the Small SEO Stuff" caused a bit of a stir online (which was
my intent!). 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, 2007What if you have 2 identical websites with the
same Meta tags and same content, but one is “100% HTML web design (clean
code, CSS design)” and the other is “100% Joomla, fully loaded with SEO
options”? Read More >> |
| April 25, 2007Forum member "rachellee" wonders if there are any good SEO software programs
around. Read More >> |
| April 25, 2007Forum member "fromtherooftops" has an ecommerce site and has a bunch of
SEO-related questions for the crew. 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 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 >> |
| April 4, 2007We have a website with tips and advice about health products. The
competition is quite tough in this field, but we have one product that is
doing extremely well in search engines and other websites are starting to
link to it as well. Read More >> |
| April 3, 2007There’s no doubt. Wholesalers USA knows their customers. They’ve spent the
time digging through log files to analyze site stats. They’ve spoken with
customers on the phone and emailed with them. They’ve used client feedback
to develop new products that have taken off like a rocket. 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 >> |
| March 21, 2007Are Sites Created with CSS Better than Those Created with Tables? 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, 2007My SEO’s Good. Now Should I Work On Conversions? Read More >> |
| February 28, 2007Forum member “seo_bright” has a couple of SEO questions for the High
Rankings Forum members this week. Read More >> |
| February 28, 2007A client of “Bobmeetin” was given some advice about registering a bunch of
alternate domain names. Bob knows it’s not good advice, but decided to come
to the Forum for a little back-up. Read More >> |
| February 21, 2007"Christelle" wonders if it would be useful to get some free hosting accounts
in order to test out some SEO techniques. Read More >> |
| February 21, 2007"Heather" wonders what to tell her clients when the rankings she sees for
their site at MSN are different from the ones they see. Read More >> |
| February 21, 2007"Jammin' Jake" tells the forum, "My employers would like to start three new
websites for these three aspects of our consulting services to focus on each
individual consulting service." Read More >> |
| February 21, 2007Recently I had the pleasure of speaking with John Jantsch of Duct Tape
Marketing about search marketing for small businesses. Read More >> |
| February 14, 2007The title tag has been — and probably will always be — one of the most
important factors in achieving high search engine rankings. In fact, fixing
just the title tags of your pages can often generate quick and appreciable
differences to your rankings. And because the words in the title tag are
what appear in the clickable link on the search engine results page (SERP),
changing them may result in more clickthroughs. Read More >> |
| February 14, 2007I found out quite by chance. I noticed a research brief in my inbox
entitled, “Bad Web Experience Impacts Brick and Mortar Shopping.” Being
primarily focused on Internet business, I really didn’t pay it much
attention. But then I noticed it made reference to a customer’s online
experience, too, so I read on. Read More >> |
| January 31, 2007I work for a nonprofit retreat center for which our main offerings are (you guessed it) retreat programs. Until recently, whenever we sent out email flyers about our programs, we had the link go directly to the program’s unique page on our website. Our marketing director has been trying to make a case for sending the clicker to the landing page that would then direct the clicker to a list of programs, including the one on which he or she clicked. Read More >> |
| January 31, 2007I have a question relating to Meta tags and the head document. Read More >> |
| January 17, 2007Keywords. I have been designing web sites for 5 +/- yrs, so I am aware of
what they are and how they are being used / can be used. I’m not saying I am
an expert, just that I’m not a novice. 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 3, 2007I am working for a Flash site that is brand-new. How can that be indexed and come up in the SERPs? Read More >> |
| January 3, 2007I recently met with a company that provides SEO as one of their services and I was told point-blank that our site is written with the “wrong code,” and therefore the search engines can’t read it. I use FrontPage and have nothing more fancy than text, tables, pictures, and some links to other industry sites. Should I be suspicious? Read More >> |
| January 3, 2007I recently SEO-ed my site. Yahoo started re-indexing my website: they already showed 37 of the new links (internal URLs) within my site. This morning I had another look at these links within Yahoo and got an unpleasant surprise: they showed the links from the previous version of my site. I’m wondering if you have an explanation of why this happened. Read More >> |
| January 3, 2007I really would prefer having company name come first, but I feel, looking at competition that the best search term leading off (3-5) words at beginning and the company after… Read More >> |
| December 13, 2006I have better backlinks than my competitor and my site is also optimized,
but why is my competitor’s ranking better than mine? Our backlinks are
around 90 and the competitor’s backlinks are around 55. What can I do for
better rankings than the competitor? Read More >> |
| December 13, 2006In the scheme of things, do you think it is important to add outbound links
from a web site? Read More >> |
| December 13, 2006I have a client who has a website in
England for his English branch. He also has a branch in Turkey that doesn’t
have a website yet. He would like to use the template for his existing
English website for his new Turkish website. Read More >> |
| December 13, 2006I recalled some advice you gave on redirecting multiple domain names
from a while back and to my surprise I was actually able to locate it on
your site... Read More >> |
| December 13, 2006I have been using Overture’s “Keyword Selection Tool” for a long time.
Lately I have experienced problems with it. Read More >> |
| December 13, 2006I have a client whose web site has been created in Cold Fusion. I am not all
that familiar with these types of pages but right now most of their page
text and metas are being pulled from another document and are not actually
part of the “live site code.” Read More >> |
| December 13, 2006At the beginning of October we regenerated our entire site and
ran into a very strange problem. All of a sudden all our search results were
showing up under one of our old domain names. Read More >> |
| December 13, 2006If my pages are in a table, and if I add a header to
that table for a caption, put my main keyword for that page in it, and make
it a bold and big h1 tag, will it help? Read More >> |
| December 13, 2006We’ve got a thread in the forum where we’re trying to figure out who coined
the phrase “search engine optimization.” Read More >> |
| November 29, 2006As you know there are a lot of so-called SEO/SEM experts/gurus claiming all sorts of things. The analogy to me is like "quack" doctors compared to the genuine article. Are there 6 or a dozen questions that would expose those purporting to be experts? 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 29, 2006We've listened to your feedback and understand that you'd like to be able to
have more advance notice for our seminars, so we're announcing that our
spring event will be held March 15th and 16th, 2007 at the Crowne Plaza
Northstar in the heart of downtown Minneapolis, MN. Read More >> |
| November 8, 2006My CEO has been forwarding me your newsletters for some time now. I am in
need of advice, and I am hoping you might be able to help me out. We offer
online services and have been online since 1997 with our websites. I know a
little about SEO because I was once a junior SEO rep for my former SEO
manager but my primary skill set is not doing SEO but more managing those
who do it. Read More >> |
| November 8, 2006Time for a pop quiz! Name three products that sell better when a
facts-based approach to copy is taken. 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 >> |
| October 11, 2006The length of search phrases continues to grow. Back when the Internet was
just an upstart, single keywords were the only thing you needed. But in
recent years we've seen the number of words used in search phrases triple
and quadruple. Read More >> |
| October 11, 2006
|
| September 27, 2006In cases where a client is smarter than you are about SEO, insists on
saturating his keyword pages (10 per 200-word page) at 5% (which includes
the keyword phrase in two header lines), and currently (without keyword
saturation) consistently hits in the top 20 on his Google searches. Read More >> |
| September 27, 2006My friend and fellow High Rankings® Seminar speaker Matt Bailey writes
today's guest article. Read More >> |
| September 27, 2006KeywordDiscovery announced today that they have a UK-specific keyword
database! Read More >> |
| September 27, 2006Are your search marketing results as good as they should be? Get the most
up-to-date tactics you should consider to improve your ROI for 2007. Read More >> |
| September 20, 2006Here's a question for you to answer in your newsletter. I was recently
quoted a job by an SEO consultant, and he kept using the term "organic" to
describe the methodology. What does this mean? And do I want it? 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 20, 2006I wonder if you can give me a steer on a particular SEO problem.
I have a client who specializes in acupuncture and other alternative
remedies in London We would like to optimise for the conditions she treats such as back pain,
insomnia, headaches, etc - about 40 different in all. Read More >> |
| September 20, 2006The site I'm asked to work on really has no room for keyword rich copy (or
any copy in general). Nor do they want it there. They're very much in favor
of the current design which is mostly products. They like the way it looks.
The copy -- in their opinion and to some degree mine too -- would look odd,
even though everyone now understands the value of this copy on the front
page. Read More >> |
| September 20, 2006I have been a regular reader of your newsletter for some time. I hope you
have time to give me your thoughts on the following comment that I received
from a website designer. Read More >> |
| September 13, 2006I represent a golf accessory manufacturer considering doing some serious
SEO/SEM. We are interested in determining the real efficacy of SEO/SEM as it
translates into online unit sales growth or online revenue growth. I have
searched through many, many sites and haven't been able to come up with any
good stats that demonstrate B2C improvements in eCommerce sales after
applying SEO/SEM. 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 >> |
| September 6, 2006I have an interesting case of a client who is wanting to do a “soft launch”
of his site. The client wants to make the landing page or homepage a login
section with little to no information about his product on it except for the
name of the product and login details, as he wants to keep […] Read More >> |
| September 6, 2006Forum member "suzstephens" asks: "Can anyone explain the difference
[between] ALT and TITLE image attributes? Read More >> |
| September 6, 2006I’d like to thank you for the great information that you make available. I
read it and implement it — and it works. Thanks! Read More >> |
| August 30, 2006The following is an email exchange I had with someone who was wondering
whether he would benefit from attending our High Rankings® Search Marketing
Seminar in Dallas on Oct. 19-20, 2006. Read More >> |
| August 30, 2006Here’s Karon’s latest and greatest article on…well…writing articles! Read More >> |
| August 30, 2006Forum member “excel30″ asks whether it’s worth getting a link on a PR0 page. 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 16, 2006In our forum thread of the week, new forum member “Carica” posted some information showing that many people have a lot of misconceptions about SEO. Carica was surprised by this, but we old, crotchety moderators weren’t. Read More >> |
| August 2, 2006I'm looking for some advice on the impact of natural search on two companies
that have merged so I can advise on how best to proceed. They currently have
two sites that perform well in the SERPS and have different content but are
obviously competing on the same keyphrases and are now one company. Read More >> |
| August 2, 2006I have a question for you. Do extensions have any bearing on search engine
return? For example, are sites with .com extensions returned at a higher
ranking than a site with .net or .org? Read More >> |
| August 2, 2006I have found some great
information on 301 redirects, but nothing which exactly answers my two
questions. Read More >> |
| August 2, 2006Do you know if repeating keywords in the URL will help increase rankings
within search engine results? If so does it have a big impact? Read More >> |
| August 2, 2006You were talking
about robots.txt files and how you want to use them to prevent the search
engines from indexing duplicating information. I use a Miva cart and custom
Miva pages. 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 >> |
