SEO: September 2009 Archives

One of the biggest keys to success in the world of SEO is differentiation. The reason for this is two-fold:

1. Potential linkers are much more likely to give you a link. It will make a stronger impression on people who visit your site, and is therefore more likely to result in a conversion (i.e., they buy something, fill out a lead form, ask you to contact them, etc.).

The reason these things are true has to do with the intense competitiveness of the environment on the Internet today. Those who understand the basics of how search works are making a lot of money, and more people are investing serious dollars in their Web site marketing strategies. The result: Web sites are getting plentiful in virtually every category and subcategory you can imagine.

See the full story at: http://searchenginewatch.com/3634895
One of the biggest challenges in SEO is the ongoing lack of recognition it plays in getting traffic to your Web site. This can be especially true in larger organizations where key members of management aren't familiar with it, and how it works. Uninformed senior managers can easily make decisions that are catastrophic from an SEO perspective.

Here are some of the most common mistakes made as a result:

1. Not Starting Early Enough

Even organizations that are aware of SEO's importance have a tendency to start the process too late.

See the full story at: http://searchenginewatch.com/3634797
Unless you've been living under a rock, you don't need me to tell you that social media has legs. And it's getting leggier by the minute.

Many companies don't fully understand what to do with social media. They don't see the path to benefit from it. Others have tried using it and walked away not seeing the value of social media. Others still don't get it at all, and have left themselves completely to the mercy of the online mobs.

See the full story at: http://www.clickz.com/3634426
International SEO specialists like to talk about the importance of "accents," those marks that reside either above, below, or between existing characters in a piece of text in the relevant language, for search engine algorithms.

But don't search engines these days actually compensate for accents automatically? Some argue that all you need to do is directly place the character in HTML and Google will do the work for you. So what's the story?

See the full story at: http://searchenginewatch.com/3635055
What's the state of online video advertising as we enter Q4 2009? Last year around this time, some bemoaned that, as a consequence of the economic crisis, experimental budgets for online video advertising were gone. Ad rates all over, including those for online video, fell as much as 25 percent and many of us held our breath to see how our clients' budgets would be affected.

Suddenly, though, a slew of good news about online video advertising came out last month:

See the full story at: http://www.clickz.com/3635030
Hulu, which distributes TV and movie video content, has experienced a 265 percent increase in streams over the past year, making it the second largest online video site, according to Nielsen data. Although the number of video viewers is increasing, comScore's Tania Yuki believes the more important trend is the growth in viewing engagement and intensity, where the same viewers become more engaged and spend more time watching quality long-form video content. This has fueled speculation that traditional television content business models will experience serious damage, similar to that experienced over recent years by the newspaper and music industries. Increasingly consumers are looking to watch long-form television shows on their favorite electronic device wherever they are and whenever they want.

See the full story at: http://www.clickz.com/3635007#comment
If you're creating videos, hosting them on your website, and aim to optimize those videos for competitive search engine placement you'll want to pay attention to this one.

Google today announced support for Facebook Share and Yahoo! SearchMonkey RDFa for videos.

These markup formats (micro-formats) allow you to specify information (like titles, descriptions and even preview images) about videos and potentially influence how they are indexed - although it's doubtful that videos utilizing this technique will be given preferential treatment. While Google does pretty well at discovering this information by itself as it stands today, using these format structures enables you to give them some help and guidance.

See the full story at: http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2009/09/15/video-optimziation-google-supports-fb-share-and-rdfa.aspx
About 9,999 times out of 10,000, companies that begin a redesign of their Web site do so with the following reasons in mind:

1. "We want to freshen the look/feel."

2. "We need to update our content, to be more relevant for where we are today."

3. "We have too much information on our Web site...we need to clean house and provide a slimmed down version."

It's rare, even in 2009, that companies will speak to things that also matter a great deal: usability and SEO.

Usability and SEO go hand-in-hand. Search engines want to rank Web sites that provide a quality user experience for the searcher. How that's defined can be somewhat subjective (every Web site is unique and its target audience will also be unique).

See the full story at: http://searchenginewatch.com/3634964
The number of companies performing SEM in silos is still surprising. They'll hire one agency to do PPC and another to do SEO. Or they'll have an in-house marketer doing PPC, while SEO is delegated to their IT department.

These scenarios aren't inherently bad. They can work very well -- if there's communication between the two. In Part 1, we outlined ways to integrate PPC with e-mail marketing. Today we'll talk about the key information that should be shared when integrating PPC with SEO.

Step 1: Develop a Master Keyword List

In school, we knew we had to do our homework if we wanted to get good grades. It's no different in search marketing.

See the full story at: http://searchenginewatch.com/3634874
When a company hires a person for online promotional strategies, too often they want to put the position in a tight box. This is especially true when it comes to social media and link marketing. I prefer to think of this person as public relations as opposed to promotions.

We've all seen it. A person is hired for online promotions. Often their boss knows little about what is truly involved. The position quickly turns into low-quality link trading and trying to get to the first page of Digg.

Then, a couple months later, the company wonders why they're getting little or no results. At that time, they realize they can outsource it to a developing nation for a fraction of the cost. This story is repeated time and time again.

See the full story at: http://searchenginewatch.com/3634873
Social media is frequently looked at by search marketers as an exercise in SEO. And, in some cases, it might be. But looking at social media from an SEO perspective will get you into trouble.

What's Your Definition of Social Media?

See the full story at: http://searchenginewatch.com/3634798
Social marketing is a shiny new toy and almost everyone is wising up and getting involved, as they should. In fact, a rumor is spreading that the new Mac OS, Snow Leopard, is integrating Facebook addresses directly into its own address book app. There's no question that social applications are becoming central to our online lives, and soon social apps will be a central part of the very operating systems we use. People are tweeting, flickring, and facebooking like mad, with no signs of slowing.

See the full story at: http://www.clickz.com/3634815
It's the one discussion that every Website promoter wants to know - which traffic source is more valuable when it comes to conversion.

Search marketing service and software provider Engine Ready released an update to its ongoing study which compares conversion data of visitors arriving on sites from PPC ads, organic listings, other websites and direction navigation (typing the URL).

See the full story at: http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2009/08/24/seo-vs-ppc-the-engine-ready-study.aspx
Share/Save/Bookmark

Web Design Blogs - BlogCatalog Blog Directory

Add to Google
Via BuzzFeed

About this Archive

This page is a archive of entries in the SEO category from September 2009.

SEO: August 2009 is the previous archive.

SEO: October 2009 is the next archive.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.