In my last post on SEO conferences, “SEO Conferences: To Go or Not to Go”, I outlined some factors you should consider when deciding to attend an SEO conference or not. Today I’m telling you that if you’ll be in London on November there is a conference that is worth attending, the International Search Summit.
The International Search Summit will be held on November 19, 2009 at the British Library in London. The last International Search Summit was held only last month with the summit’s focus on social media. The upcoming search summit will be focused this time on “international SEO”.
Confirmed speakers for the upcoming search summit include Bill Hunt of SEMPO, Motoko Hunt of AJPR, Sean Golliher of SEMJ.org, Bas van den Beld of SearchCowboys.com, Gard Jenssen of Seobra.no, and David Sowerby of Straker Software. Other invited speakers should be confirming ...
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One of the biggest mistakes yet most common mistakes of new websites is not having a good site structure. It is a huge mistake not only because it can affect your users as they navigate from page to page but also because it can affect your site’s SEO.
Site structure for the user:
If your site is unstructured navigation can become confusing because jumping from page to page would be like leaping from portal to portal with no sense of direction. Structure is needed so that visitors can know where they are in the site with respect to other sections of the site or at least the homepage, making it easier for them to access the info they need. With this in mind note that having structure in your site won’t be enough. You need to have structure AND your navigation structure has to ...
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Thinking of more ways to get links from sites that can actually pass substantial link juice? In case you’ve overlooked them you should look into sites with .gov and .edu extensions. Note that while a good number of .gov and .edu sites rank really well the extension does not guarantee good link juice, hence, it is still a good idea to choose among the .edu and.gov sites you want to target for getting backlinks. In general though these sites rank pretty well because they get high quality links and are of institutes that are reputable.
So how do you get .gov and .edu sites to link to your site?
Comment on their blogs – Of course some blogs make use of the “no follow” attribute which will render any links useless. So choose which blogs to participate in and comment on those that not ...
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SEO conferences are everywhere with speakers ranging from persons as knowledgeable as actual Google employees to more obscure self-declared SEO experts. The question though is whether there’s even really any value in attending these conferences? The answer to that question is the same as for many questions: it all depends. Depends on what? I find that the value of attending SEO conferences depends on several things including:
1) The speaker(s) - The expertise of the speaker both in their field and their ability to convey information is vital if you want to get anything out of the conference. We all know how that geniuses doesn’t always make good teachers. On the other hand people who have a way with words can talk for hours on end without really saying something useful. So pick conferences where the speakers have a reputation both for their knowledge and presentation skills.
2) Your motive – If your motive ...
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SEOs look out there’s a new search engine that’s perfect for search engine marketers – BING.
Microsoft has unveiled its new “decision engine” Bing. The question now is if it’s any good, and the answer from all over is yes. Compared to LiveSearch, Bing definitely got my attention, and will probably be getting the search industry’s attention for weeks to come. So what does Bing have to offer?
Like any search engine you can look for information you need using Bing but unlike normal search engines it is a specialized engine that automatically collates the data you need and compares them for you to make it easier to come up with a decision. Areas where it really does well includes product reviews, movie listings, weather, travel, stock prices, restaurants, etc. If you look at it Bing is pretty much set to be ...
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SEO is a job that requires constant attention to any possible effects of Google’s frequent algorithm changes on the websites you maintain. Most days it is pretty boring looking at all the stats but some days sudden changes in PR, whether for the good or bad, can surprise you. If you manually check the stats of each website you maintain though it can be time-consuming and since most of the time there are really no major events happening that time consumed is frankly not worth it. This is why it is very important that as an SEO you learn to manage your time wisely by making sure that you find an efficient way to keep an eye on site stats so as to minimise the time you spend doing the repetitive task.
One way to do this efficiently is by installing browser plug-ins. SEO plug-ins are very useful because they allow ...
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Good news to everyone who doesn’t rank first in Google’s SERPs, which means good news for almost everyone. Google has announced that they have decided to expand their use of sitelinks so that website’s with multiple pages will not show a one-line sitelink even if they are not first in SERPs. For those who do not realize what sitelinks are they’re simply those links that appear at the bottom of the first result.
Sitelinks are desirable because it allows users to see with just a glance at the search results the other relevant pages in your website. This leads to a higher chance of users clicking on your link, although not necessarily the link to the main page, because they can now go directly to the more specific page where their chances of finding the info they need is also increased. What this ...
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So you’ve just bought an old domain, what should you do take the most of it? Rebecca of SeoMoz has a great post listing the pros and cons of the top three courses of actions she recommends you take. According to her what you can do with an old domain is to:
301 redirect the old domain to an existing one;
create a microsite that links to an existing domain; or
overhaul the old domain and operate it independently.
Obviously your course of action will depend on your current circumstance with the first two options possible only for those that are already currently operating websites RELATED to the old content of the expired domain you’ve just purchased. The fact that the content should be related is important because if it isn’t there isn’t much sense because you want to be able to inherit some of the value from the newly bought domain by ...
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It is no longer necessary to keep the links in your page to less than a hundred – at least if you’re looking purely at the SEO perspective. In his post, ‘How Many Links Per Page?’, Matt Cutts explained why the links need no longer be strictly fewer than 100 in a page. In there he said that originally Google was only able to index 100Kb per page so that having more than 100 links can lead to parts of the page not being indexed, however, these days Google can index more than that. Furthermore there is no truth to speculation that Google will automatically classify your page as spam if you have over 100 links in it. Google has never done this, unless of course the page truly is a spam page, but continues its recommendation of less than 100 links per page for design and ...
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Good news to all SEO firms. Razorfish’s 2009 Digital Outlook Report indicates that demand the demand for organic SEO will actually rise this year. Advertisers are starting to jump in on the SEO bandwagon and are finally realizing the importance and benefits that organic SEO can bring.
The flip side of the good news though is that those specializing in paid search campaigns will have to up their game or at least focus more on organic SEO methods as well because the budgets of these advertisers are estimated to cut as much as 10 percent compared to last year’s budget for paid search.
According to Razorfish the reasons for this shift in online marketing strategy of companies is due to the fact that “after three years of intense focus on paid search, advertisers are more confident they are covering the relevant ground in that area" so that "they can ...
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