Jeff Cotrupe, Founder and CEO
One of my favorite comedy lines ever, which in this case emanated from the magically twisted mind of Steven Wright, goes like this: “I bought some batteries. But they weren’t included. So I bought ‘em again…I bought some powdered water. But I didn’t know what to add…”
Open letter to Steven and ROW (rest of world): When it comes to websites, I can tell you exactly what to add.
It’s always a good idea to keep your keywords and metatags complete and current on a website; many search engines still key on that when deciding whether to list you in search…
Here’s an internet marketing conference this week in Toronto, Canada. These kinds of gatherings for idea-sharing have increased relevance in this down economy. 
Google apparently is still considering the usefulness of PageRank in its Toolbar. Search Engine Roundtable notes, in fact, that “No longer is Google showing the PageRank score in the marketing image used on the Toolbar page. Plus, it seems like Google is making it harder for users to turn on the PageRank indicator within the toolbar itself.”
There’s been a lot of Web chatter on PageRank, which is based on links to a page and is considered slow to respond to a page’s current “pull.” It’s not popular among Web designers and folks who feel it doesn’t reflect their earnest SEO…
Here’s a discussion from TechNewsWorld of Hadoop, the incredibly fast software behind searches at YAHOO! and other corporate powerhouses. Hadoop, says the report, could “sort through the entire Library of Congress in less than half a minute.” 
YAHOO! has Hadoop linked into its massive computing grid and uses it to “analyze the company’s endless flow of data – now well over 10 terabytes a day – on the fly.” It helps match the searching preferences of visitors to YAHOO! Search to YAHOO! Finance to YAHOO Mail, etc., to match ads that might catch their attention.
YAHOO! is using Hadoop to boost not…
Faced with a likely Department of Justice anti-trust action if it proceeded with its Web ad-posting deal with Yahoo, Google today cancelled the deal.
You can’t, it would seem, have Google, the dominant search engine, appear to be getting even more dominant, even though Google and Yahoo! insisted that wouldn’t have been the deal’s effect.
Larry Dignan, Sam Diaz and Tom Steinert-Threlkeld speculate on the consequences of Google’s action on ZDNet’s Between the Lines blog. They include possible adversity for Yahoo! and an opening for Microsoft.
When was the last time you saw an online display ad you’d click on? Or, better put, when was the last time you clicked on an online display ad? I seriously never had unless I did once in 1994 or something. But I saw this ad and was intrigued enough, and entertained, that I’d click.
I had to write this post first, so I haven’t yet. It’s my next order of business. Good job Very Short List, whoever you are and whatever you’re selling!
(i.e., Why try to game the system when you can do just plain good work?!)
— Abigail
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My work life straddles design and marketing, and corporate vs. small-business approaches to each. And I’m seeing a lot of variation in how people understand and advocate for SEO strategies.
I see larger businesses with a team of marketing specialists are leaning past plain-old keyword optimization. I personally suspect that they were led in this direction by their lust for Flash and dynamic page technologies that cloak content and disorient spiders. And now that bots can better read Flash, along comes Silverlight; the jury is out on the future of rich-media page readability.
So, to compensate for having hard-to-search pages, and relying…
You’ll find this bit of news all over the web; Google is implementing search suggestion over the next week or so. What you may not find all over the web are SEO tips for maximizing traffic from these suggestions. Fear not, friends. SEOBook is ahead of the game on this one, and lays out what other features Google is implementing, the effect they will have on search, and what YOU can do to stay optimized.
Here’s what you need to know from this post:
- Google is also implementing automatic matching and updating the quality score.
- Industry keywords may consolidate- outlier terms will become more difficult to…
Every once in a while I find something so amazing, so interesting, and so well executed that I feel I must heap some praise! Well, Other then the new Batman move “The Dark Knight” being on the verge of being the highest grossing movie ever it was also the best movie I have seen so far this summer, but what was even more amazing to me was the online presence that was created just for this film. Sure, the movie had its homepage, but it was all of the other pages that dealt with the story, city, and characters that…
With new evidence from Online Publishers’ Association showing branded environments are much more effective venues for online advertising than directories and portals, many directories come more into focus as SEO-only spends. How do you measure their effectiveness? What role do they play in your advertising or the advertising you recommend to clients? Has this changed in the last year or so? A lively discussion would be fun!
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Abigail Hamilton is a professional with over a decade of experience in small business, enterprise, and business-to-business design and marketing. She loves writing for the Web, creating and maintaining brand identities,…
