Thu, 28 Feb 2008 15:40:14 by Craig Wilson
If you're looking to start up a new blog — or switch from an existing blog software — then I can't recommend WordPress enough. In my opinion it's the best open source blogging platform out there, it's easy to use and highly flexible.
There are so many great aspects to WordPress that I could write about it all day, but maybe another time. Today I will be focusing on i...Read More.
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Thu, 28 Feb 2008 12:21:35 by Kerry Dye
I worked in a company previously that had a travel arm, and throughout the period I was there we noticed a trend towards people booking holidays later instead of the traditional rush in January.
So what is surprising to me moving in to the SEO arena, where we monitor and drive traffic for quite a few travel industry clients, is how important January still is for travel.
For ...Read More.
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Wed, 27 Feb 2008 16:23:45 by Kerry Dye
Embracing a more open source philosophy, after their Hadoop roll out, Yahoo has also announced that they will be opening their search results.
Whilst as several people have pointed out, this is similar to Google's
Subscribed Links it won't necessarily require people to explicitly sign
up - some of them will show to normal searchers.
After the continuin...Read More.
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Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:09:33 by Joe Bursell
As Matt reported on 31 Jan 2008, Google released enhanced mobile search in the UK. Since the official release of the application on February 21 I've been playing with the Symbian S60 incarnation on a Nokia n95 8gb. Here's what I found:
The claim by Robert Hamilton (Google Mobile's Product Manager) that using the ‘phone app, rather than opening a web browser, reduces the initial...Read More.
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Tue, 26 Feb 2008 10:18:56 by Kerry Dye
After wading through the official blogs http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000521.html
on this subject, which mainly deal with the fact it is the world's largest
Hadoop installations, I've got a few interesting facts from the SEO point of
view.
The Webmap (which is the database that feeds their algorithm)
now generates in a third less time
than it did bef...Read More.
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Fri, 22 Feb 2008 07:32:20 by Matt Hopkins
Google has recently launched its public beta of Adsense for videos in the US.
This will not be video ads - but a new system to embed adwords/adsense text ads into videos on blogging sites and yes, sites similar to YouTube.com (which currently has its own format). As a viewer, I may find these ads intrusive - despite how relatively low-key they are. As an adve...Read More.
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Thu, 21 Feb 2008 12:54:07 by Kerry Dye
This blog is actually a result of me misremembering a possible blog title that was on our list of suggestions. I’ve actually concatenated two titles, but it should do the trick in covering what I wanted to talk about.
So, in thinking about the title that I remembered wrong, my answer to the question was at first "It isn’t!" and then I considered my answer a bit ...Read More.
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Thu, 21 Feb 2008 07:05:51 by Cameron Winslow
There was a recent Investor relations report released by Google: http://investor.google.com/releases/2007Q4.html
There are some really intersting references that everyone can draw upon by analyzing the data released and integrate into your own online marketing strategies. Here are some important highights to review:
"Financial Release
Read More.
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Wed, 20 Feb 2008 16:22:28 by Kerry Dye
I've written several times now over the last few months about MSN/Live Search, and they have been pretty popular blogs on our website, with traffic from search engines, Sphinn and StumbleUpon among others.
This is just a quick post to tie them all
together all in one place.
What Everybody Ought to Know About MSN/Live Search and 301 Redirects
Read More.
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Wed, 20 Feb 2008 09:56:09 by Joe Bursell
When you contact someone/make a request/post a comment etc etc through a website form you are likely to be seeking a response- otherwise why bother? It could be that (e.g.):
-someone will get back to you
-your words will appear on the site
-you'll get to download that plugin you've been jonesing for
...whatever the response, it is utterly reliant on the form mechanis...Read More.
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Wed, 20 Feb 2008 07:46:57 by Matthew Hopkins
Local search is important and as the volume of information (web pages, businesses, products, etc) continues to be so overwhelming, more people will start to make their world a little bit smaller.. and search locally.
Google offers a service called the "Google Local Business Center". Although it is a separate service to its maps product, they are closely linked. Googl...Read More.
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Tue, 19 Feb 2008 12:49:32 by Kerry Dye
It has been reported for quite some time
that MSN/Live does not handle 301 redirects gracefully.
Whilst putting in a 301 redirect is picked up in Google within days and Yahoo
within a few weeks, on MSN it might never be interpreted correctly.
As search engine optimizers something we
often do is recommend 301 redirects - perhaps because a page has moved, or
se...Read More.
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Fri, 15 Feb 2008 15:12:47 by Matt Hopkins
If you show a simple image to a group of people and ask them to write down what keywords they would use in a search engine like Google to find the object, you'd be amazed at how varied the responses will be.
We typically use this technique to help people understand that not everyone thinks like they do. I know - it shocks me too sometimes.
Take the following ima...Read More.
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Thu, 14 Feb 2008 17:00:23 by James Daniels
In recent times Google have released many new tools to help assist people like me manage PPC campaigns productively. A new tool called the conversion optimizer caught my interest as I manage quite a few CPA target driven campaigns. To actually use this tool, the campaign that you wish to test needs to accumulate 200 conversions within 30 days. I managed to achieve this and was ready to use th...Read More.
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Thu, 14 Feb 2008 13:03:07 by Kerry Dye
I was reading
Matt McGee's excellent post on local search queries when I was
researching for my local search in the UK post.
Whilst
it isn't relevant for the UK
(Craigslist exists in some UK
localities but hasn't taken off), I was spurred to do some research to find the
answers to similar questions in the UK, because it is of interest for our local SEO c...Read More.
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Wed, 13 Feb 2008 07:45:12 by Matthew Hopkins
We often speak about there being two halves to search engine
optimization - "on-page optimization" and "off-page optimization". But
an on-going search campaign also has two main phases - "core build" and
"on-going".
In the "core build" phase, our main function is the
ensure that the site is raised to a certain standar...Read More.
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Tue, 12 Feb 2008 15:33:33 by Kerry Dye
After reading quite a few of the forum
posts for my last MSN/Live help blog
I was struck by how passionate (or possibly obsessive) people were about
ranking in the MSN/Live search engine.
As I do SEO every day, I am quite familiar with
the relative traffic from the different search engines, and how much
traffic you will get for a number 1 position in Go...Read More.
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Tue, 12 Feb 2008 14:16:20 by Matt Hopkins
We spend a lot of time analysing and tuning the performance of search marketing campaigns. With SEO, we look at the number of rankings, the traffic, the keyword growth, weighted strength, and of course - conversion rate. On the PPC site we are constantly reviewing the CTR of ads, the conversion rate of both keywords and ads, and the overall CPA (cost per action / acquisition) amongst o...Read More.
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Mon, 11 Feb 2008 16:10:15 by Pete Handley
“Content is King” is a common term used by search engine optimisation companies and internet marketers and is especially true of a websites home page.
I had been encouraging one of my clients to add some content to the home page for over a year, and there are some clear statistics on how this has improved things.
For a long time, I was battling with &ld...Read More.
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Fri, 8 Feb 2008 03:19:47 by Cameron Winslow
This new Search Service is similar to Google News and Digg, but with a few differentiating factors. There is something called a "Big Factor" that takes into account four variables in determining the score of each story.
These are: Breaking, Impact, Media and Discussion. Each variable takes different aspects relating to the story to determine how it "ra...Read More.
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Thu, 7 Feb 2008 09:18:22 by Matt Hopkins
Businesses, business owners, hoteliers, restaurateurs, search
marketers, social media marketers, authors, bloggers and so on who
create any online review where they pretend to be a consumer of the
product or service could face criminal prosecution when a new EU law starts to be enforced later this year.
Increasingly, search engines and other aggregators
of "user-gener...Read More.
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Wed, 6 Feb 2008 09:27:28 by Matt Hopkins
Google has recently implemented a change to how they display the local search results map in the main web results (aka the "OneBox").
When Google detects that your search query may have "local intent" and is related to a single location (e.g. The London Eye) or local business or service, it will display a map at the top of the results along with a company ...Read More.
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Tue, 5 Feb 2008 05:28:38 by Cameron Winslow
Just a reminder that there is still a few spaces available for the February 14th, yes I know it is Valentine's Day, Search Engine Bootcamp in Brisbane.
We have participated in previous Bootcamp's in both Sydney and Melbourne, and the feedback from attendees has been very encouraging.
This particular bootcamp focuses on some of the challenges and strategies for the ...Read More.
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Mon, 4 Feb 2008 13:29:09 by Joe Bursell
Yesterday Google came out with a full, sanctioned, comment on the possibility of Microsoft's takeover of Yahoo!
The Microsoft bid has been interpreted by Google as hostile, and the tone of Steve Balmer's email to Yahoo!'s board doesn't suggest otherwise. In fact the email of January 31st refers to a letter that he received in February 2007 from Yahoo!'s chairman Roy Bostock, Bostock...Read More.
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