Sitemaps were first introduced by Google in 2005, since then they have been implemented by all major search engines including (Yahoo, Bing and Ask).  Sitemaps allow you to inform search engines about content on your website.  The information you can communicate includes: when it was last updated, how often it changes, level of importance and related URLs.  Sitemaps allow search engines to intelligently crawl your site without exhaustively scanning every page for changes.
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First impressions do matter, especially when potential customers are visiting your website. Your prospective customers will start making assumptions about your organization at the first glance of your website. If your website has an unattractive user interface or poor navigation, potential customers will immediately leave your website in search of something better.

So what factors do prospective customers evaluate on your website to decide whether or not it’s worth their time? Is all the content on your website relevant to your business? Do you think it’s time for a website redesign?
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I had the pleasure of attending SMX Advanced, the premier Search Marketing Expo, earlier this month. SMX Advanced is recognized as being the go-to event of the year for Search Engine Marketers and all the big names in the industry are in attendance.

Let’s take a look some of the information that was put forward that business software resellers can use in their inbound marketing strategies. Continue Reading…

A quick, linkable reference of the most common terms used in Search Engine Optimization.

Domain Authority (DA):

The level of legitimacy for a given website in the eyes of a search engine. Based on the quantity, quality, and diversity of inbound links. Continue Reading…

Search engines have evolved to use hundreds of different indicators on a website to determine what, where, and when a website will be listed in search results.

Google’s Matt Cutts announced recently that the META attribute “Keyword” is not factored into their search engine ranking algorithm at all. This doesn’t come as a shock to SEO professionals who have discounted the META keyword attribute’s value years ago, but rather an acknowledgment that search engines have progressed to the point where any “easy” manual manipulation of a website’s search engine ranking is a distant past.

What about the other Search Engines?

There is evidence that other engines Continue Reading…

Previously, we had posted an announcement about the updates to Google’s search engine; codenamed “Caffeine”.

We’ve uncovered a new tool that we wanted to share with you. It allows you to compare your current Google rankings against your rankings in the Google “Caffeine” Sandbox. (The developmental testing server)

Compare your current rankings vs. the new Caffeine rankings for yourself and tell us about your findings.

Please note: Results fluctuate on a daily basis and the Caffeine development server may change drastically before it’s rolled out.

Google recently announced that they have been secretly working on a new version of the “World’s Most Popular Search Engine”:

Here’s what Google wrote:

“For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google’s web search. It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions. The new infrastructure sits “under the hood” of Google’s search engine, which means that most users won’t notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences, so we’re opening up a web developer preview to collect feedback.”

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We’ve seen this happen time and time again when we engage with new SEO clients.  They’ve just had their website redesigned by a company unfamiliar with SEO, and launched the new site.  Next thing they know, search engine rankings have dropped or disappeared altogether and traffic has dropped significantly.

The main problems with website redesign arise from changing a website’s structure, file paths, and filenames, or from deleting old pages. If done without proper planning, a website redesign can often result in a traffic drop once you relaunch.

Often we do find it necessary to rename files and change a site’s structure — primarily for search engine optimization purposes, but sometimes to maintain better file organization on the server.

Here are a few issues that can arise… Continue Reading…

As you upgrade your website to improve its demand generation power, it is helpful to know some of the ever changing guidelines that can make your work more effective. We have collected the following Do’s and Don’ts to help Partners avoid common Search Engine Optimization (SEO) mistakes and embed sound technical and human content to increase their website visibility.

You should be aware that these guidelines have a tendency to shift over short periods of time, so make sure you come back occasionally to look for the latest updates. Continue Reading…

A few days ago, I got into a discussion on a forum about meta tags and their benefits for search engine optimization. The original poster had asked about which meta tags were the most important for SEO.

The overwhelming response was, “Meta tags?! Nobody cares about those anymore — don’t waste your time!” For SEO maybe, but ignoring meta tags altogether could mean that you’re missing out on valuable clicks when your site shows up in the SERPs (search engine results pages). Continue Reading…