Monday, August 27, 2007

Your boss thinks you're a genius because ....

In one of our original posts, we previewed a few websites and blogs you should be reading (or subscribing to?) ..... if you have a need or desire to keep up the the ever-changing face of this incredibly dynamic Internet and 'who's winning'....

Whether you believed it or not, it's not just video, or higher bandwidth connections, but undoubtedly Web 2.0 in general is changing the Internet forever. As in the past, it will change entire industries and the way they do business!

Now many of the better sites (and blogs) are directly or indirectly cross-promoting each other.

The result is MEGA - HITS !
.... for them, and in some cases for YOU.

Take a peek at the new look of Zimbio.
TechCrunch and Mashable (add a dash of Newsgator) ... The beginnings of an information empire for Net geeks (and private equity investors ? ... ).

Finally, a site not mentioned in our original post belongs to CNET and although as not as dynamic as some of the others, deserves an 'honorable mention'. Check out Webware.

So, where's the promised bloglog, daily posts ... ???

Just the beginning crew. You too can sound like you know everything about everything.
Just for fun, to impress the boss, or maybe someday .... be your own boss?

Stay tuned.

Charlie Anzman

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Favicons and SEO

If you're using IE7 or Firefox, you've probably noticed more and more websites using favicons.

We started deploying them on client sites about 6 months ago as we began noticing the increased use of the mini desktop graphics.

Now, the proof.

As we wandered through a live hit weblog the other day it was apparent that some search engines are now looking for them as part of their algorithm.

While we're not sure if having a Favicon says your site is really 'relevant', it does say you're up to date with the technology trends.

If you're not using them, add them to part of your SEO toolkit.

If you don't know what a favicon is, just do a search. You'll find everything from descriptions to free online favicon generators!

Monday, August 20, 2007

Search Engine Sitemaps and Google Dynamic Indexing

It was that long ago that Google, Yahoo, and Live (MSN) announced that they would cooperate on a sitemap protocol that would make it easy for webmasters to submit their xml sitemaps to the search engines. They collaborated on delivering some information at www.sitemaps.org. and, 'Ask' recently started 'looking for sitemaps' as well.

Regardless of what you've read, all four search engines can very easily be 'pinged' right from your browser address bar to alert them of changes to your sitemap (more on this in our next post).

Don't confuse your website's sitemap with the xml and/or text sitemap the search engines are looking for. This is the sitemap your visitors don't see but the search engines do. To some non-coder types, it may look confusing but there are plenty of websites and generators out there to help you.

While some banged their heads against the wall writing automated code, or manually delivering the sitemap info to the search engines in the early stages ... there have been many changes, and yes, it does help get you noticed.

While submitting a sitemap may not get you visited more often by the 'bots', it will help the search engines discover pages they didn't know about (and potentially rank them).

Some complain that delivering sitemaps is doing the search engines work for them. We see it as one of the greatest (and easiest) steps towards true 'White Hat' SEO since verification.

Here's some stuff you may not know ...
1) Be sure to reference your sitemap in the robots.txt file! The syntax is easy and in some cases, it really makes a difference.
2) It's probably a good idea to directly submit and validate your sitemap to Google's Webmaster Central. A slew of new features have been added including one that let's you mess with your robots.txt file ...
3) Yahoo's sitemap home is at their 'Siteexplorer' page and allows you to upload simple text files (If you aren't xml-ready yet?). It also allows you to validate your site.

MSN appears to be allowing submission via Moreover. While these seems a little funky and we've always ranked well with Live Search .... we'll keep you posted on the progress here.

Be sure to try the various browser based ping addresses (be sure it's for search engine sitemaps, not websites, blogs, or feeds!). Do at least one submission and see if you get 'sitemap accepted'.

In other news .... Recently, Matt Cutts posted a piece to his blog about Google indexing 'current event' pages in HOURS. Not just news stories, but webpages and blog posts. We found this totally fascinating so we tested it out. We posted a unique (and yes, relevant) news story to one of our blogs, pointed it at the story pages, pinged 'the majors' and checked back about four hours later. Honestly, we're not sure if it's because we used Blogger (owned by Google) or fed the RSS feed through Feedburner (owned by Google), but the story was indexed in the TOP-10 under numerous phrases. Very cool stuff with lots of possiblities for all of us.

That's another 'interim' post as we get this place ready for a clean and formal relaunch soon .....

Thursday, August 16, 2007

The Real Deal - SEO and Tech Daily launch

To those of you who have dropped notes, we anticipate daily (possibly more) posts and the complete re-launch of the 'blog you've been wating for' to occur on or about September 2nd 2007

(Thanks to our Beta testers on the other websites)

We appreciate your interest.

Saturday, August 11, 2007

Getting more from your Adsense Campaign

There are two simple tags that you can add you your adsense pages that have the potential of doubling, even tripling your income!

Most sites don't use them (despite the fact that their right there in Google's instructions).

We've tested it. It works.

Most SEO's will tell you that bots don't read comment tags. Google's Ad-bot (one of several) DOES.

The Adsense - specific tags are:
-- google_ad_section_start --
YOUR COPY
-- google_ad_section_end --

Although Adsense bots already do a pretty good job of making ads relative to your copy, the start and end tags above can help you target a higher CPM audience.

One example can be found here. You'll find, in the source, that the ads are going beyond the local audience and targeting the higher CPM honeymoon crowd.

The result may not be more clicks but it will be higher CPM clicks (that in return will pay you more).

If you already have a solid-return adsense page, try the tags if they apply to your topic.

It could take a week or two, but you'll be surpised (maybe shocked!) at the difference.

Thursday, August 9, 2007

What Firefox didn't learn from Netscape ... ?

Many of you remember the days when Internet Explorer was 'in planning' at Microsoft and the prominent web browser of the time was Netscape - A commercial, refined version of the Mosaic Browser.

Netscape's refinements and commercial status (you paid for it!) quickly took the lion's share of the market in a very short period of time.

The gang at Microsoft, later, swiftly 'took' the a large chunk of the market (at a rocket pace) by giving away Internet Explorer for free and bundling it with all kinds of Microsoft software. The 'now-infamous' web-standards and browser wars followed for several years.

I can remember several pundits of the time including Robert Seidman (then at IBM with an e-mailed web newsletter) asking the question. "Why doesn't Netscape allow advertising on their homepage?" No doubt, it was one of the biggest financial mistakes of the early commercial Internet.

We did some metrics earlier this week, and Firefox continues to pick-up market-share. During the past 5 weeks, the sites we monitor were averaging 8% of users logging in using Firefox. (Compared to about 2% for Apple's Safari - a fairly constant number).

That is a more-than-respectable number, and up 2% from the last time we checked about six months ago.

As a non-profit (with a separate commercial entity), The Mozilla gang no doubt can use a few extra bucks to accomplish their 'manifesto'.

There are many vehicles, according to what we can see, to allow income front the download page. Is is politics? Is it a 'promise' by Mozilla to a major contributor?.

Regardless, it simply doesn't make sense to us that there aren't a few 'paid supporters' right there on the primary download page. No doubt, numerous major companies would 'donate' to be there.

We will be opening the blog to comments after the test period and redesign next month. We'd like to know what you think, or, if anyone has the REAL answer.

Sidenote: For those of you that have a 'beta box' , be sure and check out Apple's Beta 3 of Safari FOR WINDOWS. It's a great way to see how you look on Safari and, at least here, Beta 3 seems to have gotten rid of the lock-up and video bugs (not to mention, it's FAST!). It right there at apple.com.

Five Great Tech, SEO and Web 2.0 News and Tips Sites

Everyone knows someone that thinks they know everything. On the other hand, we've never met two IT guys (or gals) that agree on too much of anything?

Instant Internet and IT genius is here! ...
If you want to sound like you know everything, here's a few of our favorite daily 'quick-take' sites:

SEO - Early this year, the guy that started it all with searchenginewatch.com launched a new venture. After a contest to find a name, some excellent blog design, and well-known contributors, Danny Sullivan's latest (and potentially the best search engine news blog currently) can be found at www.searchengineland.com .

Web 2.0 Start-ups and Search Engine news - It seems the venture capital and private equity crowd is having a hard time giving out money .... so they're just giving a little to everyone?. Check out this post http://mashable.com/2007/08/08/social-shopping-2/ . Just one example. The recently 're-invented' www.mashable.com is now in our daily top-5 must-reads. Aggregating from www.WebProNews.com and numerous other 'contributors', Mashable's easy-to-absorb layout and navigation is simply elegant.

It simply never gets boring ... A little re-arranging on August 3rd, have a peek at www.popurls.com - Cool code and aggregating a little bit of everything!.

For Tech News and Beta Junkies, another daily must-read is at www.betanews.com.
(For those of you that just found US, yes our very still simple design is a roll-out of yet another 'beta' blog :)

Some of these sites can be a little addictive. Just a warning before YOU stay up two hours a night.

Finally, we've never met Jill Whalen but somehow she was one of our original inspirations in SEO. Be sure to checkout the archives (and the new Northeast SEO group) at www.highrankings.com .

To those who faved us here and there on 'the soft launch' ... Thanks!
Hopefully, you'll find a new place in this little 'starter kit'.

Next up - The worst major site mistake of 2007 .... Stay tuned

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

The Big SEO Bang is coming .... SEO Secrets and more

There are now thousands of SEO and Tech update blogs and websites out there. Some are good, some lie, some hope and pray, some are just trying to make a few bucks ... and some are simply GREAT.

For the past eleven years, we've spent about two hours each day watching and reading trends on the Internet, both for our own use, and our clients. During the past 5 years, our focus has been 100 % legitimate (white-hat) organic SEO and the latest in the the 2.0 revolution. With over 97 websites currently under management, we've watched the trends in Analytics, Metrics, REAL ROI, and top-10 nightmares and successes.

This blog (still in beta until September as we refine the 'must-read list', look and feel) is being created to share our best SEO tips as well as steer you to the TONS of new start-ups.

It's free. It'll be fun. You'll be smart (Probably smarter than your boss) and there's absolutely no catch. Just SEO tips and Tools, the latest in tech and blog stuff, no BS, great links, a quick read ... every day and absolutely free.

It's all out there anyway. Some SEO's 'hide' the best stuff. Our mission is to help the sites that belong in the top-10 get there (and get rid of the sites that offer nothing or very little).
To help you learn exactly what Google, Live, Yahoo and Ask want you to know, and more importantly, help make it unnecessary, over time, for legitimate sites to 'code for SEO' instead of delivering what they really want to.

As we ponder a name for this place ... line up a few friends ... and get the 'ultimate blogroll' in place, you may want to subscribe to our feed (Yes, it's free too), so you'll know when we launch ... (or bookmark us and check back in a week or two).

The little SEO company in the middle of nowhere, is going to deliver what you can't learn in a classroom. At least we're giving it our best shot.

Stay tuned

Charlie Anzman