If you have visited a news site or blog recently, you have probably seen social media buttons throughout their content.  This makes it easy for a user to share and spread the word about content they like, by using their favorite social networks.  A blog post or news article can go viral extremely fast because of how easy it is to share content across these social media sites. There is starting to become a shift in how and where people go for content.  Social bookmarking sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, and Delicious; Twitter search engines like Tweetmeme and Topsy; social networking sites...

Usually I blog about SEO related topics, however I thought I would discuss something that is relevant to  anyone who wants to increase their productivity.  Now days, many people have more than one computer.  Usually you have a computer at work, a computer at home, and maybe even a laptop.  So do you really want to have to worry about which computer you were working on for a particular file? email? stored password? bookmark? note? Well there is a solution called cloud technology that will allow you to sync all of your computers.  No matter which computer you are working on, you will be able...

I have been addicted to Digg for over three years…active for two… and in SEM for a little over one.  Each phase of my relationship with the site has yielded a different return.  I am just like every serious Digg user. I am a click-happy, instant-gratitude seeking tech-nerd who shares an affinity toward bacon. I have had the pleasure of submitting and helping several articles rise to the front page of Digg.  It is strangely satisfying to occupy that coveted real-estate. In fact, it is so satisfying for some that at one time the top 100 Digg users were submitting over 50% of the articles that...

Ten years ago, hiring a good search engine optimization firm was enough to get great search engine rankings and relevant traffic.  Since then, the internet has evolved and become saturated with millions of websites.  Everybody now fighting for the 1st page of Google, trying to either move above their competitors or maintain their high organic rankings. From a paid placement standpoint, their are more advertisers than ever before, all trying to outbid each other for top ad positions.  For a keyword that use to have a max CPC of $ .80 is now $3.40.  For an industry that had 8 PPC advertisers,...

At the beginning of the week I thought it would be a good idea to create an anonymous poll for other SEOs and Internet Marketers, to find out a little more about their current clients and processes.   The survey includes questions about the client sales cycle, monthly budgets, marketing strategies, client communication, managing SEO clients, and reporting. Below are the results.

Have you ever heard of Conversion Rate Optimization?  I hope most of you are already aware of it but for those who don’t. Here is its simple definition - Conversion rate optimization is a process intended to increase the percentage of visitors who are converting in to customers by enhancing the website’s capability to pursue its visitors. Few years back, nobody used to pay any attention to Conversion rate optimization. Getting large amounts of traffic to the website was the only aim of almost all online marketers.  Companies used to spend huge chunk of their marketing budget in PPC and SEO...

I thought it would a good idea to create a short poll to ask SEO’s about their everyday clients.  I’m sure there are a lot of Internet Marketers out there, wondering how they stack up against other agencies and interactive firms.  This is a great way to get anonymous feedback from other SEO’s in the industry. Take 60 seconds and fill out the poll. The results of this poll will be posted on Friday, January 29th, 2010. This survey is powered by SurveyGizmo’s online survey software. Please take my survey now The results of this poll will be posted on Friday, January 29th,...

It can be difficult to know which directories should be restricted from search engines and which should be allowed.  I thought it would be a good idea to create a robots.txt reference guide for popular content management systems and shopping carts.  Depending on what backend you are using, all you have to do is copy the the text into a robots.txt file and upload it to your server.  This should help manage the issue with duplicate content pages on your site. Wordpress Robots.txt File**If your blog is in a sub-directory, prefix the below with the blog directory name. (ex: /blog/directory) User-agent:...

SEOmoz launched a new link analysis tool yesterday, called Open Site Explorer which leverages the Linkscape index to provide comprehensive link data.  Currently it will provide up to 1,000 backlinks and link metrics in its analysis.  There is also an API that you may use that allows you to do almost anything you would like with the data. For the first 48 hours, you may try the new tool with full functionality.  Once the free preview is up, you will have to purchase a PRO member in order to use Open Site Explorer. To get started, just enter a url and Open Site Explorer will provide complete link...

Lauren Varges, Community Manager at Radian6, was nice enough to take time and lend her expertise and insights into questions regarding social media and online reputation management.  For many businesses owners out there, I’m sure you have wondered how you can get started with social media and how it can help your business. Well Lauren gives some useful information you can apply into creating your social media strategy. Are there certain types of companies that could benefit from social media more than others? Any organization has the potential to benefit from social media if their culture...