Consider the nature of the two previous, most prominent times Google took a hand in changing its search results manually. During last year’s holiday shopping season, JC Penney’s SEO company engaged in black hat link manipulation practices. The New York Times picked up the story in mid-February of this year; we covered it here...
To me, the worst aspect of trying to get someone’s attention online is that the Internet added itself to that daily list of distractions without taking any of the others away. Yes, it’s a great research tool, but we still need to get our daily tasks done. Everyone only has 24 hours in a...
If you want, you can catch up with the original article before reading the rest of this one. Much of it boils down to being a good writer – know your audience, know your topic, and know how to cover that topic in a way that your readers will find compelling. But it takes...
One of the things that you might think important as a website owner is knowing the value of your website, in dollars. This might sound like an easy task, since there are lots of calculators on the web that can be used to compute your website value. Sadly, they are all inaccurate for depicting...
This tutorial is all about managing 404 errors for search engine optimization. Tip #1: Make a well-designed 404 page A 404 page is where any user will land when the URL requested is not found on your server. You might encounter this error most often as 404 Not Found. The first step is to...
At the time of writing (June 2011), schema.org uses microdata (HTML5), which is basically a specification to convey semantics within an existing web page’s content. Search engines, like most machines, can only read and extract information on the page, but are not capable of understanding the real meaning of the content as intended by...
Before I dive into this topic, you need to be aware that not all browsers fully support HTML5. In fact, as Kerry Dean notes in an article for Search Engine Land, to date, none of the popular Internet browsers fully support all of the features and codes in HTML5. But there are certainly degrees...
Cyber Monday is the day after the long weekend, when those of us in the US get back to work. We point with pride to our reputation for productivity, but few of us can resist the call of high-speed Internet access at the office to goof off at least a little bit. On Cyber...
I’m talking about user-generated content, of course. This kind of content gives you something your competitors don’t have. But that’s not the only reason you should enlist the help of users and visitors to your site to add content. When visitors to your site leave comments in your forums or on your blog posts,...
Not convinced that viral content can work magic for you? As Jordan Kasteler explains in a post on Search Engine Land, viral content builds links. When search engines see these links it sends three clear message about your site… is active…is current…is invested in the needs of your audience, notes Kasteler. This is exactly...