Search Marketing Gurus | Online Marketing Professionals Give Search Marketing Tips, Advice, Strategies & Tactics

5 Basic SEO Rules For Launching A New Website

By Li Evans

Today I was reminded about the simple steps any site can take when they are first launching on the internet to help them get off on the right foot for the most basic of search optimization steps.  I found myself thinking, "if only" when I saw this new site that was launched. 

I discussed how this site missed out on just some simple things that could have gone along with the launch with Alex and he politely nudged me and said "wouldn't that make a great topic for SMG?" So I present, 5 basic "SEO Rules" to follow when you launch a new website.

• #1 Don't Re-Use Your Title Tag On Every Page
  Many times your website designer doesn't even realize this is being done.  Your creative team is more concerned with the visual presentation than to worry about something they consider more of a minor 'nuisance". 
  
  Most of the time, your website has been created from a template, which ensures that everything looks the same -design wise- from one page to another.  This is perfect to get the site off the ground and out there.  Most WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editors work this way as well, templates allow for easy production of web pages.
  
  The drawback to this from an SEO perspective is that the Title and Meta tags are all repeated.  To get your website off on the right foot, change each page's title tag to reflect what the page is about.  You'll be surprised at the good this can do for each of your web site's pages.

Web Analytics Wednesday in Philly - July 11th

By Alex Cohen

If you're in the Philly area, please join me at Web Analytics Wednesday on July 11th.  This time it'll be more centrally located in Conshohocken.  They haven't settled on a speaker yet, but it'll be a great group of people talking numbers!

Flanigan's Boat House
113 Fayette Street
Conshohocken, PA  19428
Phone: 610-828-2628

Wikipedia & The Chris Benoit Murder-Suicide Twist

By Li Evans

Wikipedia has found itself under fire again.  This time it's all about a high profile double murder suicide.  Over the past weekend, Chris Benoit a professional wrestler with the WWE, strangled his wife, suffocated his 7 year old son and then took his own life by hanging himself.  Now you are probably wondering how the heck is Wikipedia involved with this.

Chris Benoit, also known as the "Rabid Wolverine", has an extensive Wikipedia entry.  Approximately 14 hours before the police found any of the three bodies, the Wikipedia entry for Benoit was altered, not once but a few times and the alterations were questioned.  The alteration/edit mentioned Nancy's death as the reason for Benoit missing the matches in Texas.  So someone who knew something before the police did, went in and added Nancy's death.  Did they really think someone wasn't going to notice that?

To add further to this the story, Wikipedia and the authorities have tracked down the I.P. address of the entry.  The twist?  The I.P. address comes from Stanford, CT.  If you are a wresting fan (yes, believe it or not I am), you'll know that the head quarters for the WWE are located in Stanford.

Update:  It seems an editor at Wikipedia who lives in the Stanford, CT area has confessed to writing the post. This probably even goes more to the point about "anonymous" editors and posters on Wikipedia.   (hat tip to Simon Heseltine for im'ing me this link)

SEO Articles & SEO Podcasts

By Li Evans

Some of you in the audience already know that I've been asked to write a continuing series about Search Marketing for InformIT.com, however, if you don't now you have been given the link. :-)  I really like the folks over there, Dustin, in particular is a great person to work with to flush out ideas.

My first article was Ten Tips for Getting Out of Google Hell.  There's another article going through the actual editing process, and it will be featured in the next week or so.  I did get to discuss it with the guys that run the Beginning SEO Podcast, David Brown and Brian Mark posted the podcast interview today, so check out the "tips on optimizing a web page" podcast.

10 Blue Links

By Li Evans

Everyone wants their website to be towards the top of those ten blue links listed when a searcher types in their query string and then the search engines return their magical list of links.  It use to be that those 10 links were all to websites.  Over the years, we've seen all of the major search engines change their algorithms and adapt to the changes in technology as well as the creation of new types of content.

Google's been changing the playing field.  Perhaps, the better analogy is that Google is actually defining the game, they are setting the rules, they are deciding which teams play in the league, how points are scored and who gets sent to the penalty box or ejected from the game.  Although everyone would like to say Google did this overnight, with the release of a simple press release announcing Universal Search, I'd counter that Google's been working up to this for quite a long time now.

Now, don't be sending me death threats, honestly - that's not cool.  Folks, those 10 blue links that we use to strive to be one of, are changing, morphing and to some degree disappearing. 

Kevin Ryan - The New Face of SES

By Li Evans

While at SES Latino in Miami, I got the pleasure to sit down and talk with Kevin Ryan.  Who's Kevin Ryan?  Well Kevin's the guy that is now in charge of programming the SES Shows all around the globe.  Lee Odden did a great interview with Kevin about 2 weeks ago, right after Incisive Media announced he was the person chosen to replace Danny Sullivan.

Undoubtedly, there's a lot of curiosity surrounding this man, who isn't a household name in our industry like Danny Sullivan, or Chris Sherman.  However, from what I read in Lee's interview and what I experienced while at SES Latino, I'm very optimistic about the change being a great thing for SES.

SES Miami / Latino 2007

By Li Evans

At the beginning of this week I was in Miami speaking at and attending Search Engine Strategies Latino Edition.  I have to say, I was really impressed with everything at this event.  Nacho put together a great show, Stewart, Marilyn, Tim and Matt made sure things ran very smoothly and people were taken care of.  Believe it or not, the lunches at the Inter-Continental were great, in fact it had a bunch more food in the boxes than I've ever seen at San Jose or New York.

Google The Electric Company & Car Company?

By Li Evans

A few months ago, Google made headlines with the installation of their 1.6 megawatt solar power system, on Monday they added another side to their "Green" efforts.  Google's Philanthropic arm, Google.org, invested $1 million into developing a "vehicle-to-grid" system which allows hybrid cars like the Toyota Prius, to be plugged into grid for charging, or for selling back electricity.

Google claims that the already eco-friendly Prius which gets well over 40 mpg without the "vehicle-to-grid" alterations, will get up to 70 mpg once the alternations are done.  Not only will the higher gas mileage be a draw to the conservationist side of society, but the ability to sell back the stored electricity (quite possibly up to $3,000 a year) to Pacific Gas & Electric Company will appeal to those on the "Froogle" (hey, I could resist!) side.

Google calls this project RechargeIT and states  the following about its goals for the vehicle fleet its created:

"Recharge a Car: Google.org is working with A123 Systems and Hymotion to convert our growing fleet of hybrid cars into plug-in hybrids and to collect performance data to demonstrate their efficiency."

And just to wrap this all up - Google's even produced a video to demonstrate both how the cars works and its benefits.  It really can make one sit and wonder about what would happen if a lot more companies took the initiatives Google has.

eBay vs. Google: Google Protests, eBay Pulls U.S. Adwords

By Li Evans

A collective sigh of relief can be heard from a lot of online marketers right now.  eBay's pulled all of their U.S. ads on the Adwords network.  According to Computer World and other industry blogs,  eBay spokesman Hani Durzy characterized the decision to pull the U.S. Google ads as "an instance in a continued experiment eBay does to determine the best allocation of its advertising and marketing budget."

eBay's rather notorious for there ads on every imaginable keyword out there.  At one point you could even buy "Danny Sullivan" on eBay.  That was at least, according to their paid advertising if your searched for information on Danny.  One of the most annoying things for almost all online marketers is dealing with EBay and its very broad marketing campaigns, tonight at least for a little while, perhaps campaigns might see some relief with not having to compete with eBay.

With saying that, you might be wondering why eBay's "really" pulled there ads. 

Google Analytics: New features rolled out

By Alex Cohen

Manoj at Web Analytics World scooped the announcement of some new features just implemented for Google Analyics.  Here's the list of search related updates. 

• Adwords Integration- It’s now easier to add an AdWords account to an existing Google Analytics account.
• Search Engine Detection - The list of French search engines has been updated to include aol.fr, club-internet.fr, and voila.fr. US search engines now include mama.com.
• Cross-segmenting by Network Location has been added to the standard list of segmentation options throughout the interface.
• Hourly Reporting - Many of the reports now have a "View by: Daily/Hourly" switch that allows you to select whether you want to see your data by day or by hour.

More after the jump...