Website Promotion is not Voodoo

With the recent release- and my more recent acquisition- of the new iPhone 4, I decided to do a little digging and compiled a list of the best SEO apps offered by the App store. My goal here is to make your productivity folder as cramped and overflowing as mine.

1) Domainer

This was one of the first SEO apps offered back in 2008 and it’s incredibly simple, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Just enter the URL for the page you want to check and Domainer provides the PageRank on Google, as well as some basic history. Free.

Last week I was asked by one of my client’s about her yellow pages ad which was up for renewal.  Hmmm … my response was half-hearted and I waffled a little.

Yes, the yellow pages industry is dying, some would argue it’s dead.

Unused and unwanted.

But a part of me hesitates at completely dropping out of the book.

While Google has reigned supreme when it comes to optimization, now may be the time to reassess your Bing strategy. As we mentioned in an earlier post, Yahoo anticipates that their organic search results will be fully powered by Microsoft sometime in August or September. However, Yahoo has already begun testing Microsoft’s organic and paid listings. Up to 25% of their current organic search results come from Bing, while up to 3.5% of paid listings can be from their AdCenter.

While the results may be coming from Microsoft, Yahoo assures that they will retain their familiar format. They offer up the following image, where the boxed areas are those that come from Microsoft:

Last week, Yahoo sent out emails explaining how the merger with MSN/Bing would effect paid search advertiser.  The most interesting piece of information the email provided was about the transition to Bing search algorithm in early Fall.

Organic Search Transition
To date, we’ve focused most of our communications to you on the paid search transition to adCenter. However, another key aspect of the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance is the transition of Yahoo! organic search results (those found on the main body of the page). Assuming our testing continues to yield high quality results, we anticipate that our organic search results will be powered by Bing beginning in the August/September timeframe.

What’s the Difference Between White, Gray, and Black SEO Hats?

When I was starting out in SEO, I was so confused by what the best practices were and I remember at my first search conference a speaker (I want to say it was Matt Cutts but it probably wasn’t) started explaining the “hats”. There are three different hats a SEO can wear and each color represents how clean they are with their  search engine tactics.

Nice Hat.

White Hat SEO

One of the most important and oft-overlooked aspect of SEO is link building. Link building strategies are one of the simplest concepts, but most make it more difficult than it needs to be. For instance, Sage Lewis defines link building as, “The integration of useful elements into a whole Web site to allow for the accretion of links through natural means.” Sage obviously doesn’t follow one of the mottos I live my life by: Make things as simple as possible, but no simpler.

It has come to my realization that I am in a rut. An external linking rut.

Well, I knew I needed to revisit linking strategies … it’s one of those things that I never sat down to research and really dig into because I have procrastinated incredibly well, but the past week has propelled me in that direction, not necessarily with my consent. But once I started digging into the data and ignoring the world around me, it was good.

It was good to see what I have been doing right and to discover those little opportunities that I have missed but can now take advantage of.

As it turns out I have a spared

up pompeii online download

download the express movie full pass to SES San Jose. One of my team mates couldn’t make it.

So, anybody who’s been procrastinating rejoice! You’ll have to sport the brand of my friend Mike Jansma’s online jewelry store Gem Affair. They have a great selection of birthstone jewelry watch deal online

download balls of fury download blur movie

by the way.

Since we bought way ahead in bulk we only paid $850 or so, and so for you (because I like you) I’ll happily give it up for $500.00.

I got this email from a friend and web designer. It’s no wonder SEO sometimes gets a bad name. I do wish my conscience would allow me to include the redacted points but you get the point.

Subject: Another SEO that sucks

http://www.XXXXXXXX.com/

They claim to rank #4 for XXXXXXXX on their web site…

They are XXXXXXXX’s SEO (remember he is an Olesen friend/LJCSC competitor).

Dr. XXXXXXXX isn’t ranking well is he? www.XXXXXXXX.com

• Flesh Gordon Meets the Cosmic Cheerleaders video

At the risk of repeating myself, Miriam of Solas Web Design in her SEO Igloo blog has been engaged for a few weeks in an investigation of Local SEO culminating with a series of interviews. Miriam was nice to include me and most recently asked me to respond to some questions from the comments on one of her recent posts.

This is an answer both to Miriam and to current and future clients wondering about our process.

What this post will not cover:

• Managing offline conversion (I’m working on a case study for this)