Guesses abound. Supposition runs rampant. So-called experts profess to know what it takes. Smart, quiet types confidently smile feeling they know the secret. And if the average inbox is to be believed, the secrets to ranking better can be yours for the low, Low, LOW price of $10, this Sunday, SUNDAY, SUNDAY! Since the first search engine crawled out of the early morning haze that was a late night frat party…or from a quiet-type’s...
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On the 23rd of May this year we released Bing XML Sitemap Plugin 1.0: the open-source server plugin for IIS and Apache that helps websites generate XML Sitemaps compliant with sitemaps.org. The Bing XML Sitemap Plugin — which you can download from here— is unique among its peers in that it: Generates comprehensive Sitemaps based on incoming traffic Generates “delta” Sitemaps based on signature...
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Links matter.  No secret there.  How much they matter, well…therein lies the secretive part of the equation.  And as much as readers of this blog would love for me to slip up and say they account for N% of the equation, I won’t. The fact is, the actual value links apply varies based on other factors, so there is no solid number.  Back when everyone was chasing “keyword density” as a ranking objective...
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You’ve built your site.  You’ve included the latest ways to let people login.  You’ve made social sharing easy.  You’ve streamlined your shopping cart.  You’ve optimized your pages for load times.  In short, you’ve built the perfect beast, if I can paraphrase Don Henley. And during this build out, your engineering tested everything they installed diligently, right?  I mean, they...
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Things change quickly these days, so let’s take a look at some things, that as an SEO, you should know about today.  It often takes years for new areas of focus to reach many businesses in a meaningful way.  Everyone’s list of things to work on grows, and it’s tough to find space for the newest things to be added and prioritized.  This is true of new ways to do things, new tools and new tactics. With this in mind...
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We’ve brought you lists in the past, such as 27 Things That Help and Hurt SEO, 8 Skills and SEO Must Possess and 4 Areas of Search & Social Focus.  They’ve been, in general, pretty focused.  Now we’re going to bring forward a broader view of a general plan designed to help businesses set up a reasonable starting point from which to grow. We see this type of planning lacking in so many businesses today, and with some...
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Many businesses are focused on the technical side of SEO, trying to gain either large increases in rankings, or striving to eke out incremental gains, knowing that ranking well equates to more traffic, sales and revenue. Now, that technical SEO has always been important (indeed, that work WAS SEO for many years), and it will continue to need to be managed.  But pinning your hopes on technical SEO alone is a mistake. For a year+ now you&rsquo...
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Doing business online has never been as complicated as it is today, or looked at from another POV, has never held so many options to succeed.  The question is, are you a “glass is half full” or “glass is half empty” kind of person.  More importantly, what is your company’s view of things. I recently had an interaction that’s becoming all too commonplace. I tried to make an impulse purchase via my...
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I get asked this frequently – what works with SEO?  And the flip side to that coin, around what to avoid.  Before we start looking at some of these factors, it’s very important that you remember that for any given search algorithm, there are hundreds (or more) of factors at play to determine rankings.  No list can encompass them all, partly because of readability, but mostly because it’s proprietary information...
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Serving your customers is important.  In the big scheme of things, it’s one of the most important factors that will determine your success.  And while most people think they know where their customers come from, they are often surprised to learn how many “international” visitors their site gets.  In some cases, businesses even make statements such as “65% of my visitors are from <insert country here>...
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