Blogs

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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In conjunction with Pubcon this fall, the US Search Awards will be held in Las Vegas.  These awards have been around a while outside the US, but 2013 marks the first time they’ve come to the USA.  If you think you’ve done outstanding work, or know of something amazing that was done somewhere, now’s your chance to give a huge shout out.  Duane Forrester from Bing’s Webmaster Tools program is on the judging...
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It’s a busy world and things move fast.  With that in mind, I’m going to do a light touch on a few features we added in the not-to-distant past, in case folks missed them the first time. Site Move Need to move your site?  This feature lets you scope whether you’re moving a directory, a subdomain or a domain.  You can then spec where the destination is to let us know about that move.  Two options exist to...
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Today we are making some changes to the way webmasters can manage deep links in Bing Webmaster Tools. Deep links are additional links in our search results that show up underneath the primary search result URL and that generally link to popular destinations on the website. For example, here are the deep links shown for the MSN site on Bing.com (outlined in orange):     These deep links are generated algorithmically. Generally, the...
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Is creating useful content really that hard?  That kind of depends on who is defining “useful”.  From the POV of the person creating it, “useful might look like “300 words built around <insert keyword>, answer <three> key questions as listed, scan for typos and grammar, then post.  Move on to the next topic.  In fairness, we know not everyone follows that pattern, but far too many do. &ldquo...
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Shortcuts.  Such a negative term, isn’t it?  Perhaps we should call it “seeking efficiencies”?  But you, it won’t matter what you call it, it’s a bad path to follow when seeking support for your SEO and social activities. Every day, webmasters are surprised to learn that some tactics they thought were safe because some so-called expert told them it would work, are actually harming their chances of...
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