I just visited a site that boasts to be a search engine optimization company and looked at the source code. They had a meta keywords tag there that if they knew anything about SEO they should have known that it is totally useless!
I guess Jill Whalens is right when she said that there are only a handful of SEO companies that really know what they are doing.
I just read about a new tool at the Microsoft adCenter Labs. By typing in a search query it will give an educated guess on the people who search for that particular phrase according to their browser habits. The gender and age is displayed.
So, I typed in ‘toy trucks’ and guessed it would be male ages 8 to 12. What came back surprised me and prompted me to delete the shortcut from my bookmarks.
Toy Trucks
Male: 49%
Female: 51%
Age: 35 to 49
I guess the educated guess was really using the SWAG method. (Scientific Wild Ass Guess)
I finally upgraded to Firefox 3 and after doing so my back and forward browser buttons disappeared. Now it is working fine thanks to Google and Trouble Fixers.
I ended up having to restart Firefox in safe mode in order to resolve this so if anybody else has the same problem just follow the above link to solve it.
I just received an email today about Google sharing an API for the development of 3D websites. At first I thought it would pop out of the screen from wearing 3-d glasses, but it turned out to be different and still have the WOW factor.
To view the application you can visit Google labs to give it a try or view the demo. Will this become web 3.0? One thing for sure the gaming community will love it!
Click this link below to view the demo!
Hello Everyone!
Google has started implementing longer snippets and new search refinements. With longer snippets showing the text around your keyword phrase this means less real estate for people ranking on page one of Google. Imagine how many listing are showed with 800×600 screen resolution with browser add ons! You can read more about this at Marketing Pilgrim’s site at http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/03/google-rolls-out-longer-snippets-and-new-search-refinements.html.
MSN Live has started something called Active Answers. At first I though Active Answers was a copy of Yahoo’s Answers to create another source of SEO/SEM to tinker with, but it is something new. You can get live up to date answers to questions such as when a flight departs. To read more about visit the Search Engine Watch site at http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/090324-105508.
Facebook, with the way it is set up it cannot be crawled to easily (or at all?) by Google because you need to accepted as a friend in order to even access your pages. So this means Facebook for SEO (search engine optimization) sucks! But in a SEM (search engine marketing) way Facebook is GREAT! Google loves social bookmarking for the simple fact that is is more user like voting of the popularity of a site compared to linking from a directory. With Facebook’s popularity growing Chris Crum wrote a good article on it over at WebProNews entitled, “Ways Businesses Can Get the Most Out of Facebook“.
You can search for me on Facebook by typing in my name Michael Rock but there turns out to be pages and pages of people with the same name as me. After you have fun looking at all of the different pictures of what could be me. (try and guess which one is me) you can do a search via email address using beltanespirit at yahoo dot com.
Hello Everyone,
I have been pretty busy lately and that led me to think about what is really important in life. This below is one of them. Always have to keep a proper balance in life!
By now you know the importance of creating a sitemap and submitting it to Google. Don’t forget that sitemaps is NOT a ranking factor in Google but does allow Google to help you index more pages and more frequently which in the end does help with your ranking in a round about way.
However, many of you may not realize that Google allows you to submit Video Sitemaps as well.
Since blogs and video sites usually have a higher PR ranking than article directories you should consider to moving to these areas for marketing your website. Also since videos are listed in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) this would stress the importance even more and don’t even get me started on mobile phone marketing and SEO that would end up making this blog really long!
The first big move, in my opinion, that PayPal made was when they made it possible for non-PayPal members to use a PayPal merchant account on sites.
When I visit new businesses thinking about adding a merchant account and selling online I usually tell them that if they are not selling $2000 a month then it would be best to go with a third party merchant account instead of a merchant account of their own. One, because of the cost savings, and two I would recommend it for businesses just starting out.
Now PayPal is offering credit card readers that posts automatically to your PayPal Virtual Terminal order form. Since this card reader can be plugged into a USB port of a computer it would be handy when you travel to meet customers.
You can read more about this credit card reader here.
Michael Rock
SEO Consultation
Web Development
Hello Everyone!
Sorry for not posting lately, but I’ve been pretty busy. My post today will be on Google’s new browser called Google Chrome. You can download it from Google’s site at http://www.google.com/chrome.
I’ve always been a Firefox fan, but when I upgraded to version 3 I had problems with some of my add ons that forced me to downgrade to version 2. Also, when logging into certain sites I’m finding that more and more that I am forced to use Internet Explorer because Firefox leaves off the submit button when trying to log in.
So are we ready for yet another browser???
As a web designer I already have to design web sites so that they look great in Safari, Internet Explorer (and all of its versions with IE6 being the biggest pain), and Firefox. Now web designers everywhere will have to consider how their web sites will look in Google’s new browser called Chrome.
If anyone has installed and used Google’s new browser please leave a comment on this post.
I just read a killer article title entitled, “Google steals Microsoft code and you should cheer” that prompted me to read further. You can find this article at ZDnet. It is an interesting read and I agree with there comments on how this can be beneficial for everyone.
Google and Yahoo signed an agreement allowing Google to place paid search ads on yahoo for the next 10 years.
You can read the details over at Advertising Age.
You can read the pros and cons discussed over at Search Engine Land.
Things still have been pretty busy over here lately, but in other news I read that MySpace was looking into becoming a portal like yahoo.com. Will keep you posted if anything turns up.