A few months ago one of my clients has changed platforms. The new platform changed almost everything we’ve optimized on-site for years. It even messed up the obvious SEO basics like title tags and we’re struggling with them to this day as the platform maker insisted that title tags “get assigned automatically” in their system.

While title tag optimization is the daily bread of every SEO, for many people, like

1. software vendors
2. content creators
3. business leaders

title tags appear to be completely random and negligible. They assume that

title tags won’t get even really seen by the average user so why bother with them at all?

They forget that title tags get displayed in search results on Google and elsewhere and that it’s still one of the most important ranking factors for Google.
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Web analytics is perhaps the most important discipline for businesses online. In case you don’t know who and why visits you, buys your products and talks about you, you are blind on the Web.

Web analytics goes beyond simple SEO metrics.

It’s about

• usability
• conversions
• branding

among others. Continue Reading »

On July 19th I noticed that I could us the AdWords Bid Simulator tool at the ad group level rather than at the keyword level as is normal. I thought this was a very useful feature so I tweeted:

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Chess by Alejandro Fernandez

Everybody seems to agree with the “content is king” mantra. At the same time most articles, blog posts in and outside the SEO industry seemed to ignore it. Not anymore: Content SEO and marketing resources are ubiquitous in 2010.

SEO blogs used to deal with other aspects of Web strategy. Content has often been taken for granted and thus on page optimization, web design, usability and link building took center stage all the time.

Good, great or even killer content for flagship blogs isn’t there automatically.

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Three of the most trusted SEO and social media experts, Rhea Drysdale, Tamar Weinberg and Lee Odden. Photo by toprankonlinemarketing.

Interviews are often overlooked pieces of distilled wisdom. They aren’t very popular on social media but they definitely should be! In interviews experts often provide the most valuable nuggets of their knowledge in a very concise form. You need to study dozens of other blog posts to learn as much.

Moreover experts often tend to focus on one aspect a time when they write something themselves, even when compiling a list like this. On the other hand interviews focus on several key questions an expert wouldn’t even attempt to cover in one blog post or seminar. These facts combined result in in a very condensed piece of advice.

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In recent months I have been reading all kind of material on Facebook, search and SEO. I’m not here to predict the future or to hype Facebook as the new better search. Instead I’d like to analyze the clues we already have.

Others have done great work on Facebook SEO by now.

Moreover I’d like to combine these clues with the statistics suggesting that people trust their friends when it comes to products, services and other recommendations while at the same they by now distrust social media in general.

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Crossroads by Captain DJ.

Getting targeted traffic for a website is just the first step in a thorough SEO process. What comes next? Landing page optimization or conversion (rate) optimization/CRO follows. After all you want the visitors you get to stay on your site and perform the desired action (like ordering or subscribing).

One of the foremost ways to optimize landing pages for more conversions is A/B split testing

sometimes also referred to as simply AB testing. The concept is pretty simple. In the most basic set up you show version A of a page to half of your visitors while in the other half will see version B.

Of course in reality it’s a bit more complex.
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Happy waiter by howard N2GOT

Today someone was searching for a “client’s guide to SEO” over at my SEO 2.0 blog. I think this topic is more fitting here on SEOptimise so I will explain the best approach to SEO companies and Internet marketing agencies for potential clients.

In 2010 most people in business already know at least something about how Google works.

Business people know about keywords and often pay for Google Ads already. That’s why it’s easier nowadays to deal with clients. You don’t have to explain anymore that SEO is needed or how it works. They already know and thus they contact you.

There also some drawbacks as many SEO clients already have had a bad experience with SEO practicioners, are convinced they know themselves what’s best for them and last but not least have too high expectations for a too low price.

A client can gain a competitive advantage by approaching SEO agencies in the right way.

Basically finding a fitting SEO agency is like finding a good restaurant and eating out. Thus I will use this allegory to make my explanation easier to grasp. You need to know a few more things to approach an SEO agency correctly.
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Recently a client of mine has been once again approached by someone who wanted to sell him an exact match keyword domain for one of the main keyphrases we optimize for. It was a German domain so I will use another similar phrase as example instead.

In this SEO tutorial I want to show you the process of assessing a keyword domain for purchase and finding out whether buying it does make sense or not.

Most common domain names that have keywords in them have been grabbed already.

That’s a shame as many are empty or only filled with low quality ads. We know for sure that both Google and Bing prefer exact match keyword domains in some cases. Continue Reading »

Image by spaceamoeba.

Many people in the SEO industry write list posts about SEO myths. The authors always want to debunk myths but why repeat the myths over and over in the first place?

Why not just speak out the brutal truth instead? Is it because people love myths? Is it because people love to believe in the myths they are taught?

Several recent posts by Aaron Wall, David Harry and others have inspired me to write down the things that bug me. Thus I compiled this list of 25 brutal truths about SEO, Google & main stream media.
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