• Monday, December 22nd, 2008
Keywords are the core of every search marketing campaign, paid and natural. Knowing which word combinations to focus on is like getting the perfect site for a new store, it’s all about the location. There are some locations that you need to be in and others that you need to stay far away from. Positive and negative keywords act as your locators and you want them to be as precise as possible. They are the key to the best performing online campaigns.
Positive Keywords
The first step in identifying the best positive keywords is keyword research using the tool of your choice. I personally like the free Google Keyword Tool, but some people swear by other tools. Use the terms are found on your site (Google has an option to just enter a URL and it returns related keywords) and terms you (or your client) use internally. This is the best place to START, but by far not the only thing you should do. If you have access to your clients, ask a few of them. Sometimes what is used in-house is not what real people use to search. Keep an open mind.
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• Thursday, December 18th, 2008
Do as we say, not as we do
If you are even remotely involved in marketing, communication or PR, you have no doubt heard of Ragan Communications. The good folks at Ragan have been providing expert advice for years. Ragan, like many others in their field, have been getting more involved in Social Media, e-marketing and even Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
One of Ragan’s staff writers recently posted an “aticle” (UPDATE: Original article now resides in member’s only area. Here is a Google cached version) (UPDATE: Now the Google cache is dead too…sorry) on how to land on the first page of Google. In the story, author Michael Sebastion summarizes for us a presentation made by John Spagnuolo at a recent Ragan conferance (which generally are quite good – you should go to one).
Michael’s summary was well-written and John’s suggestions, aside from implying Web teams are slow and difficult to work with, were accurate.
How many SEO rules can one article break?
The page this article is on breaks many of the rules talked about by John, and a few other important rules of SEO. more…
• Tuesday, December 16th, 2008
Moist, tender beef bathed in a smooth, thick sauce with a wonderful taste, perfect for dipping bread into. This was already a family favorite, but with this last variation it was declared perfect and DONE! This recipe takes a bit of time to prepare, but it is so worth it. Save some prep time by buying pre-cut veggies. more…
• Friday, December 12th, 2008
A friend of mine on Twitter @djpaisley sent me these questions to answer as part of an interview. I decided to post them hand post on my blog which he is also posting on his blog, Dallas SEO Blog.
- How long have you been working in SEO and Internet Marketing and what attracted you to it?
I started doing web design and programming in 1994 after seeing a demo of Mosaic. I fell in love with the web that day. I opened my own Web design company in 1997. As a part of our regular development processes we made sure that sites were designed with the reader in mind, followed proper guidelines for accessibility and had good structure. In the beginning, we didn’t realize we were doing “SEO”. We just called it building pages the right way. After ten years of that, I decided it was time to go back to the corporate world and I accepted my current position of Director of Internet Strategy and Operations. more…
• Thursday, December 11th, 2008
I’m a Search Engine Optimizer (SEO). I like to think I do a pretty good job. By no means am I an SEO industry rock star. While I’ve done a few SEO site reviews for friends and small business, and made some suggestions on how they might improve site rankings on Google and the other Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), I primarily work on my employer’s corporate Web sites.
Because I don’t consider myself an SEO rock star, I find it curious that for each of the phrases below I rank on page one of Google (tested on 12/10/2008). These rankings are not just here in Austin, Texas. Thanks to testing done by some of my Twitter pals, I know the pages have similar ranks in other parts of the country and the world. more…
