I hate pay per click campaigns. I love Google and even respect Adwords’ capabilities, but I hate pay per click and everything it represents. Pay per click is an Internet black hole that sucks you in so deep, you can’t get out. As an SEO consultant, it’s everything I can do to drag you and your hesitant self back out into my world of free organic search. I’ve talked to a lot of prospects and clients who have ongoing pay per click campaigns. When I say ongoing, I mean they’ve been spending hundreds to thousands of dollars per month for years. They’ve been doing it for so Read more
Pay Per Click Campaigns: The Black Hole of the Internet
Posted in: Search Engine Optimization | April 2, 2010
When You Know Good SEO, Bad SEO is Like a Neon Sign
Posted in: Search Engine Optimization | March 26, 2010
This week I was working on a project for a long-term client of mine. In doing some online research I visited a large number of B2B software developer websites. Some were large companies and some were smaller niche players. I was disappointed at the large percentage of these websites that were using less than stellar SEO practices. Technology companies own these websites and I would have imagined they’d know better. Back in my early days of SEO (search engine optimization) I was overwhelmed by the over abundance of SEO information on the Internet. I didn’t know whom to believe and I Read more
The Value of Search and the User Experience
Posted in: Search Results | February 21, 2010
I’m currently reading a book titled Search Patterns by Peter Morville and Jeffery Callender. Picking up a book is a rare treat for me, so even though this book is technically work-related I’m don’t mind. It is a good book and speaks to the Internet geek within me. As I read through the pages I’m awestruck by the explanation given for the qualities associated with the searcher’s experience. The authors boil this down to a simple illustration called the User Experience Honeycomb. Read more
SEO Scams and Newbies Realm of Gullibility
Posted in: Search Engine Optimization | November 25, 2009
This blog post was authored by marketing consultant, David Jackson, who is the owner of Free Marketing Tips Blog. This article is available as a courtesy entry from SiteProNews.com. One of my all-time favorite tv shows is The Twilight Zone. I particularly like Rod Serling’s memorable opening narration: “There is a sixth dimension, beyond that which is known to newbies. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, and it lies between the pit of newbies gullibility and the sunlight of their naiveté. This is the Read more
When a Website Designer’s Good Intentions Go Bad
Posted in: Website Design | November 23, 2009
Today I am meeting with a client to review the design and build of his new website. Quite frankly I’m not looking forward to this meeting. I am the barrier of bad news. When I originally accepted this project, I could see Google had indexed about 1,000 pages within his domain. While it would take some time to migrate and optimize this many pages, I was up for the challenge. The goal is to give him a more SEO friendly site that he can maintain himself in WordPress. If that meant throwing in some plugins and optimizing 1,000 pages, so be it. Last week I reviewed his Google Read more
State of the Index Presentation is a Great Read
Posted in: Search Engine Optimization | November 18, 2009
At last week's PubCon conference in Las Vegas, Matt Cutts gave a presentation on Google and recent Google advancements. This is a good read for website developers, in-house webmasters, and SEO consultants. From Social Search to Pagetest to Google Web Toolkit, Matt gives a number of good takeaways. State of the Index Read more
Google Degrades PageRank
Posted in: Search Engine Optimization | October 22, 2009
Much to the surprise of many Internet marketing consultants, Google recently removed PageRank information from their Webmaster Tools. In a response to a posting on Google’s Webmaster Central forum, Susan Moskwa stated “We've been telling people for a long time that they shouldn't focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it's the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true. We removed it because we felt it was silly to tell people not to think about it, but then to show them the data, implying that they should look at it.” Ms. Moskwa then points Read more