In my opinion an educated SEO client is much better than an uneducated client.  An educated client is usually more involved, willing to allocate more budget towards your strategy, and will develop into a longer lasting relationship. So, what level of SEO knowledge should a client have? How Websites Are Ranked? It is important for the client to understand the basics of how search engines rank websites.  This will help a client better understand your SEO strategy and why you are doing the tactics you are doing.  Here are the fundamentals I believe a client should be able to understand.Domain...

With Christmas right around the corner, retailers are trying to tailor every marketing message on their site to compel holiday shoppers to buy some last minute gifts. Here are a number of call to action graphics and headlines the top retailers are using to stimulate shoppers to spend!  I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! Best BuyGuaranteed Christmas Delivery: Ensure Gifts Arrive By December 24th No Shipping. No Waiting. Buy Online. Pick Up In-Store Give the Gift of Endless Entertainment Shipping Countdown Sale. 3 Days Only. Online Only.REIOrder by 8 p.m. PT 12/21...

With social media having a huge impact on brand marketing and online reputation, I thought it would be a good opportunity to ask Michael Fraiette, the Community Manager and Chieft Listener at Filterbox,  a few questions that I’m sure are on the minds of anyone looking to start a social media strategy. 1.  What are some of the biggest challenges when dealing with negative reviews? Well, I’d say the biggest challenge is to win the customer back, but I do not believe that is extremely difficult.  If you are honest and genuinely try to help them out, they will respect you for listening...

WebProNews:  Things to Consider if Page Speed is Becoming a Ranking Factor ProBlogger:  How to Make $30,000 a Year Blogging Google Blogoscoped:  Google Tool to Check How Much of a Page Appears in Typical Browsers Mashable:  Track Social Engagement for Any Website With PostRankSEOmoz:  How To Monitor & Track Google’s Real-Time Search Wiep.net:  My Link Baiting Idea Generation Process Search Engine Journal:  Lets Try to Find All 200 Parameters in Google Algorithm SEOmoz:  8 Predictions  for SEO in 2010 OutspokenMedia:  Ignore Robert Scoble, SEO Still Matters For SMB’sWebProNews: ...

In April 2008, Google announced that page load time would effect your ad quality score for Pay Per Click ads.  They stated the main reason for implementing this factor was to give the user a better experience and to be able to serve web content faster.  In further efforts, Google released a great resource for helping webmasters  to increase their sites loading time.  This resource is packed with helpful articles, tools, best practices and discussions that talk all about how you can improve your sites performance. With all of these measures Google has taken to promote site performance, leads...

Duplicate content and plagiarism can be an easy way for a website to get penalized by the search engines or possibly banned.  The search engines have gotten much better at being able to check for duplicate content.  If you are interested, here is what Google has to say about duplicate content.  For website owners, bloggers, and writers there are a number of tools you can use to identify duplicate content.  This post will talk discuss tools used to identify plagiarism, how to deal with duplicate content and what limitations there are for having duplicate content on your site. Tools To Help...

Have you ever wondered how much your site or blog is worth?  Well there are a number of website valuation tools out there that can help give you an estimate as to what you could sell your site for.  Of course these numbers are not going to be 100% accurate because you need to take into consideration a number of factors like monthly ad revenue, partnerships, client base (for freelancers, agencies), industry credibility, and overall brand recognition. Valuation Factors Considered When a website is valued there are a number of factors that go into it.  All of the tools mentioned do not necessarily...

Search Engine Land: SES Chicago ‘09: Day One Live Blogging Search Engine Land: SES Chicago ‘09: Day Two Live Blogging Search Engine Land: SES Chicago ‘09: Day Three Live BloggingReadWriteWeb: 5 Fabolous New Features Google Unveiled Today StayOnSearch: 100 SEO Blogs You Should Subscribe To Mashable: Google Launches Real-Time Search Search Engine Land: Google Goggles: Take a Picture With Your Phone, Search By ImageGoogle Webmaster Central Blog: How Fast is Your Site? DailyBlogTips: The Best of Daily Blog Tips in 2009 Search Engine Land: 12 Social Media New Year’s...

If you needed one more reason to switch Twitter clients, well here you go.  Hootsuite released their iPhone application today, that will allow you to perform all of the functions the web application can do, on the go.  Even with the long list of twitter iPhone apps currently available like Tweetie, Twitterific, and Tweetstack, they have no match for the new Hootsuite app.  The new twitter app will be the first to allow you to view tweet statistics, schedule future tweets, and manage multiple accounts. Key features of HootSuite for iPhone include:Customizable user interface with sortable tabs...

Google is making some news today at the Google Search Event, with the launch of real-time search and Google Goggles.  As we all know users are needing information faster than ever before.  With blogs and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook allowing people to publish content easier, it was only a matter of time until Google started showing real-time content in their search results. With Google announcing new partnerships with Facebook and Myspace, to compliment the existing partnership with Twitter, means that facebook pages, profiles and status updates have the opportunity to show up...