Posted by RobOusbey Search Engine Optimization covers a huge range of tactics – all of which can bring direct benefit to a website. In this post, I’ve shared examples of different tactics used at different websites, and the effects that have been seen. If you’re considering an SEO campaign for your site, or are trying to persuade someone else to invest in internet marketing, I hope this post will help demonstrate the potential of internet marketing. The post includes real screen shots from Google Analytics (click any of them to enlarge) but the sites and data have been anonymized. Target Your Target Terms Remember that post about building a page with perfect keyword targeting ? SEOmoz wasn’t kidding around. A website that sells homewares had issues with site structure and on-page targeting. Their category level pages were at subdomains such as http://kitchenequipment.sitename.com or http://livingrooms.sitename.com whilst each sub-category was back on the main subdomain at: www.sitename.com/find_product2.asp?url1=living+room&url2=rugs+and+carpets Category and sub-category pages had a distinct lack of semantic HTML or term targeting. Getting appropriate H1 tags onto each page was a quick job, improving title tag structure took a bit longer, clean & friendly URLs and internal links with appropriate anchor text were also added. The site saw ranking improvements across the board, which brought new traffic through head, mid and long tail terms. Can you guess when the changes were made? Getting sorted in Google Local Before getting into the nitty-gritty of ranking factors for Local Search , dead simple tactics , etc, it’s important to get the basics right. A large chain of restaurants created a ‘bulk upload’ file with the correct data for each one of their locations. After uploading the file, they applied for it to be reviewed and ‘whitelisted’. Local data that’s been uploaded by the business owner and whitelisted is treated as authoritatively as locations that have been manually verified by postcard. Despite various issues (Google’s best practice guidelines still aren’t quite the best solution in some cases) the traffic generated by visibility in Local Search has been significant and valuable. (The uploads were verified in late November when the traffic begins its steady rise.) Architecture of Change A current affairs magazine wanted to get more from their website. Because of falling advertising revenue, the publication was at risk of being closed down. They’d seen some growth from SEO already, but wanted to prove that the website had greater value. Although the site had a good brand and some great content, it suffered from similar problems to many news-type websites, including badly archived content, duplicate issues and a CMS that hampered keyword targeting or promoting individual articles. Recommendations were made to improve the site’s architecture and migrate to the new structure. The effect of the changes was immediate growth which took the organic traffic to 257% in three months. A month later, the magazine’s owner explained that the falling revenue from print advertising meant that they couldn’t continue to lose money publishing the mag, and closed it down. Hook, Line, Sinker An office cleaning company wanted to improve the profile of their site through SEO. Amongst other tactics, a member of staff spent a day writing a ‘linkbait’ post to publish on their blog. This generated huge amounts of traffic from social media sites (dwarfing their regular daily visitors) and was subsequently linked to from dozens of sites. This post, along with other content published on the site to attract links, helped the site grow in strength and authority, and it now ranks position 3 for ‘office cleaning’ in their country. Paid In Full This is SEOmoz, but I’d like to share a graph from a PPC colleague working on a site that sells scooters. They were initially bidding on very broad terms (scooter, scooters, buy a scooter, etc) but the campaign was adjusted to target more long tail terms, including descriptions, specifications, etc. Over a period of around six weeks, the cost per click was reduced by 30% and the more targeted traffic converted increasingly well – this allowed the site owners to increase their ad budget and generated more sales than their paid search campaign ever had before. If you’re new to SEOmoz and this post has inspired you to get involved in search marketing for your site, do browse the site for the PRO & free SEO guides and the SEO blog . If you’re a regular, do share any stories you’re particularly proud of in the comments. Do you like this post? Yes No
Posted by randfish Last week, while in London, I received an email from Paul Graham , whom I’ve long admired, possibly even idolized a bit. He asked if I was available to come speak at a YCombinator SEO event in Mountain View. Tonight, I presented at that evented and thought I’d share my experiences, recommendations and yes, my presentation. Not everything that was discussed is public, in fact, much of it is “classified” at YC’s request. However, there’s so much good material that it would be criminal not to share. First up, my presentation from the YCombinator SEO for Startups event (naturally, hosted on YC company and prior SEOmoz consulting client, Scribd ): SEO for Startups: YCombinator February 2010 Next, since it’s hard to do any slide deck justice with just the slides, a list of top advice and recommendations, not just from the slide deck, but from many years of interactions, consulting and Q+A help for startups: SEO as a Strategy, not a Tactic Yelp uses SEO as a strategy. When their community finds something new in the neighborhood, content is created. They are limited in scale only by the physical world’s local businesses. Plus, it’s only natural that local businesses with good rankings will want to share those via
Many motorcycle lawyers are noticing that accidents seem to be increasing with two-wheel drivers despite the fact that a lot of them do not speed or don’t wish to speed. In the year 2008 studies provided information to see how the drivers behaved when being next to a vehicle that had only two wheels. The surveys took place via the phone and showed that 19 times out of 20 motorcycle accidents had nothing to do with the automobiles on the road. There are a lot of accidents that happen on intersections with motorcycles involved because of that reason and because people usually speed plus they often don’t pay enough attention when they are on intersections. In Canada a lot of people might ride motorcycles it is still not a very safe place to ride one. Listed below are some of the other things that came out from the studies with the Traffic Injury Research Foundation. ¿ Latest studies show that automobiles speed at least 24.3 percent and that the motorcycle riders speed 25.5 percent. ¿ A very risky thing to do on the road is driving and being impaired at the same time. Speeding and running lights are two of the other most common things done on the road. Before this study people thought that riding a motorcycle was risky but it is not. ¿ Drinking and driving still remains another problem. When drinking and driving on the roads at night and even in the day time people cannot use their driving skills like they could if they had not have been drinking, putting themselves and other people at risk. If driving drunk all of the body takes toil and coordination is almost impossible. Transport Canada founded the Road Safety Monitor and they provide annual surveys that TIRF conducts. Other organizations that the Road Safety Monitor was founded by include: The Brewers Association of Canada, the Canadian Motorcycle Association, The Moped Industry Council, and a few other organizations have helped with founding. There are many other aspects of motorcycle safety to be found here at this educational motorcycle accident blog .
Posted by randfish We all work hard at the SEO process – analyzing sites, gathering data, researching potential problems and identifying the solutions. Today’s post is on how to work smarter and faster using bookmarklets for SEO. No matter your browser, these plug-and-play links will let you get your job done faster and easier, and look like a pro in front of bosses and clients. The list isn’t completely comprehensive, but it covers 95%+ of the SEO data points I retrieve on a monthly basis and a few extras I don’t personally use that may be valuable to others. It also has a section at the end on how to make your own bookmarklets for any site, tool or service you use.
Posted by drummerboy9000 This post was originally in YOUmoz , and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc. Inspired by a great post by Vaidhyanathan , I began answering questions on Yahoo! Answers near the beginning of this year. Since then I have answered over 50 questions, nearly always related to metal roofing . Nearly 12 months later I sat down and did a study to find out: Was the time I was spending answering these questions resulting in a reasonable amount of usable leads? On to
Statistics show that each year there are motorcycle accidents that end with severe or fatal injuries and this is not just inexperienced motorcycle riders that are involved in these accidents. The way that many motorcycle accidents occur is due to negligence on the part of vehicle drivers, and many occur during turns when the rider might be in a blind spot from the vehicle driver. Another thing that statistic show is that most motorcycle accidents are not due to speed or younger riders, the largest percentage of motorcycle accidents and injuries involve riders that are in their 30’s and 40’s. There are several things that can be done to avoid motorcycle accidents, or being severely injured. ·
Getting sorted in Google Local Before getting into the nitty-gritty of ranking factors for Local Search , dead simple tactics , etc, it’s important to get the basics right. A large chain of restaurants created a ‘bulk upload’ file with the correct data for each one of their locations. After uploading the file, they applied for it to be reviewed and ‘whitelisted’. Local data that’s been uploaded by the business owner and whitelisted is treated as authoritatively as locations that have been manually verified by postcard. Despite various issues (Google’s best practice guidelines still aren’t quite the best solution in some cases) the traffic generated by visibility in Local Search has been significant and valuable. (The uploads were verified in late November when the traffic begins its steady rise.) Architecture of Change A current affairs magazine wanted to get more from their website. Because of falling advertising revenue, the publication was at risk of being closed down. They’d seen some growth from SEO already, but wanted to prove that the website had greater value. Although the site had a good brand and some great content, it suffered from similar problems to many news-type websites, including badly archived content, duplicate issues and a CMS that hampered keyword targeting or promoting individual articles. Recommendations were made to improve the site’s architecture and migrate to the new structure. The effect of the changes was immediate growth which took the organic traffic to 257% in three months. A month later, the magazine’s owner explained that the falling revenue from print advertising meant that they couldn’t continue to lose money publishing the mag, and closed it down. Hook, Line, Sinker An office cleaning company wanted to improve the profile of their site through SEO. Amongst other tactics, a member of staff spent a day writing a ‘linkbait’ post to publish on their blog. This generated huge amounts of traffic from social media sites (dwarfing their regular daily visitors) and was subsequently linked to from dozens of sites. This post, along with other content published on the site to attract links, helped the site grow in strength and authority, and it now ranks position 3 for ‘office cleaning’ in their country. Paid In Full This is SEOmoz, but I’d like to share a graph from a PPC colleague working on a site that sells scooters. They were initially bidding on very broad terms (scooter, scooters, buy a scooter, etc) but the campaign was adjusted to target more long tail terms, including descriptions, specifications, etc. Over a period of around six weeks, the cost per click was reduced by 30% and the more targeted traffic converted increasingly well – this allowed the site owners to increase their ad budget and generated more sales than their paid search campaign ever had before. If you’re new to SEOmoz and this post has inspired you to get involved in search marketing for your site, do browse the site for the PRO & free SEO guides and the SEO blog . If you’re a regular, do share any stories you’re particularly proud of in the comments. Do you like this post? Yes No 
