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World Cup In High Demand Online
The BBC has handled more than 1.7 million requests to view live World Cup matches on its site, while the official site hosted by Yahoo surpasses Major League Baseball in viewership for the week ending June 24th.
Google Flips The Checkout Switch
The Google Checkout process officially launched, offering its users a unified shopping process that emphasizes safety and user control of the online retail experience.
Microsoft Exec Sees The Google Light
Another Microsoft executive has succumbed to the allure
of Google and will join the search advertising company
after spending his non-compete year...
MapQuest Offers Road Trip Tool
MapQuest is hoping to make your summer plans a little simpler with its new feature, dubbed Route Builder. According to the company, "this new tool lets travelers save time and money by mapping out their entire journey - and multiple destination stops in between - in one convenient step."
Rich Conversation May Be Poor Choice
The encouragement to engage visitors in conversations with one's blog or website could deliver an embarrassment of riches to the publisher - or a rich embarrassment. Few publishers will shun feedback from their site visitors.
Mobile Web Guidelines Published
A large group of major technology and Web companies have published a set of guidelines for developing mobile Web content. The Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C), consisting of companies like Google, Microsoft, and Nokia, released its "Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0" today as part of a larger effort to make Web more accessible worldwide.
Kent State Sports Says No To Facebook
Student-athletes at Kent State University will have to remove their profiles from Facebook or risk losing their scholarships. The first question that comes to mind is "Why just student-athletes?"
Microsoft No Longer Incommunicado
The Beast of Redmond is leaving no stone unturned in its quest to maintain its presence in the office. At a weekend conference Microsoft unveiled a slew of new communication products incorporating email, instant messaging, mobile and VoIP telephonoy, and audio-, video-, and webconferencing.
HR Training A Virtual Experience
The assortment of workplace hazards entrepreneurs face in the business environment include the litigation-happy, and companies need to take steps to train staffers against possible harassment activities...
Google Gives A Few Webmaster Pointers
Google published an array of tips and tools to help webmasters better analyze their web offerings. In addition to a Sitemaps update that creates a more robust view of 404 errors, Google Analytics reminds the ROI-minded of how to compare AdWords clicks to organic and direct links.
Video Ads Meet Google Video
A selection of content on Google Video has been made available for free as advertisers have signed on to support those videos. "Free video made possible by www.bk.com," reads the text above the Google Video replay of the Hatton-Maussa fight from last November.
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DM News Releases SEM Guide
The 64-page "Essential Guide to Search Engine Marketing" features a treasure trove of articles on a range of SEM topics. A host of familiar expert names like Dana Todd, Andy Beal, and David Berkowitz appear in the index of the DM News' newly-released Guide.
SEO Benefits For Online Shopping Sites
Having worked at a J.Crew store awhile back and now working as a project manager at a reputable SEO firm, I want to shine some light on how heavily branded and well-recognized retail shopping sites can benefit from SEO.
Being A Bigdaddy Jagger Meister
It took a little while to start to figure it out. Such things almost always do. After months of observation, research, discussion and debate, Search Engine Optimization experts appear to be getting a better handle on the effects of Google's Bigdaddy infrastructure upgrades.
SEO The Way It Should Be
I had a nice marathon meeting on a SEO project for a larger client that, despite the length, was a pleasure.
Blogs For SEO
In the past I've written tips about marketing business blogs with an emphasis on content, frequency and distribution...
Integrating SEO With Public Relations
Karen Sams over at our PR firm, Misukanis & Odden does a nice job explaining the value and benefits of incorporating search engine optimization with public relations in a short PR and SEO video case study.
Do You Want To Be Just An Average SEO?
As a marketer, I'm fascinated by television commercials. One commercial I saw recently talked about how no one grows up wanting to be "average." That really shoved the right side of my brain into overdrive.
Search Engine Optimization: Beyond Search Keywords
The words people type into a search box are not always the words they like to read when they click on the search result. Here's why.
SEO For Google
This article is part three of a four part series on optimizing your website for the the three major search engines.
SEO For Non-profit Organization Blogs
Blogs are an SEO powerhouse for a non-profit organization and its various programs and events.
Undesirable SEO And What To Do With A Small Budget
I got a lead through our website the other day with an interesting comment attached. The prospect was requesting specific information on pricing for our services but as you can read below, they simply copied the information from what another SEO provided them.
Does Traditional SEO Still Work?
I had the pleasure of dining with my good friend, Mike Grehan, just before Easter. We chatted about the topic of his upcoming article - Does Textbook SEO Really Work Anymore?
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06.30.06
Silly SEO Mistakes, Stumbles & Blunders Of Ecommerce Webmasters
 By
Mike Banks Valentine
Web business owners commit some SEO & ranking gaffes, sometimes without even knowing what they've done. In the manner of a Letterman top ten list, I'd like to offer the worst in the hope that I can prevent you making the same mistakes.
The laughtrack is provided by SEO's who understand the humor in these mistakes and see slapstick silliness in similar client mistakes every day.
Silly SEO Mistake #10) Removing a page from your site which gets 20,000 search engine referred visitors a day because, "It's time to change focus and concentrate on our core specialty." (laughtrack)
Capture those visitors with a "301 permanently moved" redirect and SEND them to your core specialty pages. Answer their questions about that missing page and sell them on a better solution. Removing any, even moderately trafficked page, is bad practice. You do KNOW that page gets 20,000 visitors a day because you saw it in your WebTrends report, right?
Silly SEO Mistake #9) Not paying attention to web traffic analytics data because, "I forgot my login and password" (laughtrack)
Worse, you don't have an analytics program or service because traffic data takes too long to analyze or isn't easy to understand. If you are a one man band - LEARN and USE a web traffic analytics program, as it is essential to web business success. If you have employees, make it the job of one person to study that data and understand where traffic is coming from and how it converts to business. Analytics software price is not an issue - Google Analytics is free and it integrates and tracks all PPC conversion and ROI data.
Silly SEO Mistake #8) Never searching for your own stuff in search engines for the most important generic keyword phrases representing your product or services because "We're number one in the pay-per-click-ads." (laughtrack)
We have the top position in PPC - so there's no reason to rank in organic listings. Your searches are intended to find out how you are ranking against your competitors in organic listings - which are FREE after you've paid an SEO to gain top positions. The PPC ads stop sending traffic as soon as you stop paying. Once the SEO specialist has gained top ranking for your site, you needn't pay them ongoing high fees - you are done and the traffic is now FREE. PPC can continue in areas you can't gain organic listings in or to supplement those top ranking phrases.
Silly SEO Mistake #7) Using embedded text links that read, "Click Here" and link to your most important products information or sales pages because you think people won't understand that those underlined product names are links to the products. (laughtrack)
If your site commits this silly mistake, invest the time to correct it immediately site-wide because that internal linking structure can have a significant impact on ranking for your most profitable products or services. Keywords in embedded hyperlinks are a crucial factor for ranking for your targeted keyword phrases. The same is true of external links from partners, press releases, articles and shared content linking to your site. Get those hyperlinks fixed. You aren't trying to rank well for "Click Here." Resist the temptation to use cutesy trademarked names like "x-pense trakker" instead of proper spellings unless you've committed millions to major media branding campaigns.
Silly SEO Mistake #6) Using gorgeous stylized text on image gif links as your site navigation. Heck, even ugly stylized image based text as site navigation. (laughtrack)
Gif images, especially javascript image swap navigation or flash navigation is one of the worst things you can do for your site ranking over the long term. Taking a hint from SEO stumble #7 above, use text based hyperlinks for your site navigation. The words appear on every page of your site and the embedded links lead to your most important pages, telling the search engines precisely what is on those pages you link to. Try to be more creative with text descriptions than "Products" or "Solutions" and use product descriptions or service names.
Silly SEO Mistake #5) Tweaking your site to rank well on MSN search (between 1% to 15% of referred search traffic) or Yahoo search (between 5% & 20% of referred search traffic) without regard to Google referred traffic numbers (between 50% & 80% of referred search traffic) because "MSN is my favorite search engine." (laughtrack)
If you are in business to make money, you shouldn't be making business decisions based on your preferences over what your largest customer base chooses. Right now Google gets about 60% of all searches performed and if you are checking that web traffic analytics software from SEO blunder #9 above, you are very likely to see the pie chart for referral traffic at about 50% (most sites see 70% or higher) from Google searches.
Silly SEO Mistake #4) Having the secretary (who hates her job) provide headlines through the content management system because, "That's why I paid so much for the CMS software - so it would be dimwit-secretary-easy to manage the content." (laughtrack)
You are the dimwit if you don't have an important employee, trained in SEO basics, input new articles, white papers and product descriptions. That task will determine your search engine ranking for the life of your web site on every topic that Sally (I-hate-this-company) Secretary adds to the site. Train your content manager in SEO basics of keyword density, position on page, headline writing, internal linking structure and word order issues.
Silly SEO Mistake #3) Not having a sitemap because, "it's too much trouble to add every new page manually" or because Sally (I-Hate-My-Job) Secretary fails to tick the little "Sitemap" box in the CMS software as she adds the page with a bad title to the site. (laughtrack)
Sitemaps are not often used by visitors to most web sites, but are critical to indexing crawlers and search engine ranking of new pages. Is it possible to make a sitemap visitor friendly? Take a look at: http://www.google.com/sitemap.html
Silly SEO Mistake #2) Using the same title and description meta tags for every one of your 50,000 pages, because your company name and tag line "ACME Products are the Best of the Rest" is snazzy and you like seeing that across the top of the browser window from every page. (laughtrack)
Title and description meta tags are the most valuable real estate on any web page and should address the content of specifically what is on THAT single page. Web sites are NOT about branding, but about selling or gathering leads after someone has come to your site. Your tag line will not bring search engine traffic looking for product or service details.
Silly SEO Mistake #1) The number one SEO stumble and blunder is ... Having your website redesigned by a top web development company for a "fresh new professional look," (that slick web development sales person), changing all the filenames and site directory structure! (uproarious laughtrack) (wild applause)
Either keep old filenames and site directory folder structure in place or use "301 permanently moved" redirects to new pages from all previous pages. I did this for a small client who quickly went from reasonably well placed in the search results - to the very top of the charts for all his important search phrases. Of course, we consulted on file and directory naming conventions and SEO friendly page design options during the redesign process. One smart client.
About the Author:
Mike Banks Valentine operates SEOptimism, Offering SEO
training of in-house content managers as well as contract SEO for advertising agencies, web development companies and marketing firms.
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