SearchInfluence

If you surf the Internet casually, you probably don’t particularly care what browser you use. Internet Explorer is the default on most people’s computers, and friends I love dearly and don’t judge have told me they just don’t feel like downloading and installing a new browser. Laziness is also probably the same reason people don’t upgrade their browsers, though if you’ve managed to avoid upgrading Internet Explorer 6 for the last decade, I’m going to assume you don’t actually use the Internet (or your computer) for much of anything at all.

If you’re anything like me, when you visit a website that’s overloaded with Flash, an abundance of images, excessive menus, and just a general maze of content, your brain shrivels up to the size of a raisin and your eyes glaze over with no focus of what to look at or where to find it. (As far as I’m concerned, the same problem exists for social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter. Creating endless posts and tweets just for the sake of having more content and saying whatever pops into your fingers is the quickest way to get me to block or un-follow your posts. Then I’ll never hear anything you have to say!) The idea that the more there is to look at, the more visitors, friends, likes, and followers you’ll get is simply untrue in many cases.  You can still catch plenty of flies with sweet, sweet simplicity.

After the ringing success of her Google acquisitions infographic, we’re proud to debut Kate Voisin as this week’s Featured Influencer! Kate is an illustrator and graphic designer who, before joining the SI team, worked as a freelancer. Like just about every New Orleanean, she spends much of her off-time writing what she hopes will turn into a novel, or browsing the stacks at Tulane’s library (where she is not actually a student). Her interests include coffee, dystopian novels, and cartoons.

Hard-hitting question time: if you were an amphibian, what kind of amphibian would you be?

A newt! (I’d get better.)

With the most recent algorithm update, Google made it clear that a site’s user experience is now a factor for your search ranking. Though this may be a giant leap forward for assessment of site quality, the backlash against the farmer update shows that such metrics for SERP rank might not always be the best. But a user experience factor older than the Big Panda still gets some people’s goats.

Site Load Time

Site speed has been a significant factor since about this time last year. Reading some of the comments on Matt Cutts’s blog post could be an exercise in patience, but as always over-concerned webmasters bring up two good points: javascript and CMS design.

Have you ever searched for a business by its own name and come up empty-handed? What about searching for its own name PLUS the city it’s located in and still no luck? It happens! Google definitely makes stupid choices at times, but most of the time this happens when we are not telling it the most basic information about ourselves — as redundant as it might seem.

Alligator dogs from Dat Dog's Yelp page.

The number one rule in marketing is staying current.  To show that your product matters to a customer and help make the sale, you need to keep track of trends, impress with technology, and give your target demographic enough reasons to buy your product.  One effective way to wow people is Flash.

Flash technology has been in use in websites as a way to provide visual and audio interactivity on a website. Great Flash movies engage users and trigger their curiosity. What would happen if a Flash user clicks on a button or drags an icon on the page? Flash movies can answer that question.

Damn it feels good to be a Panda.

Over two weeks ago, Google scared the SEO community by publicly releasing what even they called a “ ...

Man of Steel Vs. God of Thunder, You Do the Math

Along with being a search marketing expert (that’s right, I said it), I am a huge fanboy (that means I like comic books A LOT). Very rarely do my two worlds meet but recently there was an article posted about the social media battle of rival comic companies Marvel Entertainment and DC (Time Warner) and I could not resist responding and explaining to how small businesses can win at social media. Despite my unending love for DC Comics, Marvel Entertainment does far better jobs at internet marketing. This post will explain how you can make your small business’s internet presence “marvelous”. 

So you have decided to take your business’s marketing to the next level and you hire a company that guarantees you a functional Web site, which will attract customers and grow your business. Seems flawless, right? Not necessarily.

The next thing you know, the site does not rank on any search engine and you turn to a SEO company to see what can be done. After implementing SEO tactics, if your site is still not ranking when searched organically, you may have the great problem of duplicate content.