seo

It's very rare to find a web developer who has the whole bag of skills - someone who can create a website from start to finish, which is professional in all disciplines of the trade - I'm talking backend programming, frontend coding, usability, design, content creation, marketing, SEO, and anything else I have missed. As a general-purpose web developer / SEO, I find myself working with...
> articles/working-with-designers/

I just happened across a page published by Microsoft detailing 8 SEO tips. Oddly, the information is well presented and I find myself mostly agreeing with what they suggest. A lot of readers will be familiar with all this anyway, but I thought it might be relevant to some website owners or new faces. Microsoft: help people find your website[1]. I particularly like that they mention...
> articles/microsoft-seo-wisdom/

People often get obsessed by links, and get all wound up about whether a link is nofollowed or not. The truth is, many links have 'secondary' benefits that are far more powerful than a little trickle of link juice. This morning's example is how to get your page on finda[1] ranking in the top...
> articles/finda-presell-page/

seo.co.nz is currently for sale. It's been quietly doing it's thing for the last few years, and the owners (Intersect) are putting it on the market, available to the highest bidder. Of course, I considered making an offer. NOT BUYING IT FOR TRAFFIC However, I then got to thinking why I might...
> articles/seo-co-nz/

I have just been reading an interesting article on Search Engine Land about nofollowing internal links[1]. The author, Shari Thurow, argues that web developers should not be nofollowing links to low-priority pages (terms + conditions, privacy policy etc). Shari points out that it's odd to put a...
> articles/nofollowing-internal-links/

I'm revamping the tags system in Jojo CMS[1] this weekend, as we need a user interface that can scale well as more and more tags are added to sites (potentially thousands of tags). A simple list of all tags no longer works in this instance, so I'm basing the system around a search, with related...
> articles/spamming-the-api/

I wasn't entirely prepared for this news[1] when I checked my RSS reader this morning, but upon thinking about it, it does make sense. Microsoft have made an offer to buy a big wollop of Yahoo! shares for $44 billion (half cash, half MS shares). I have never been especially fond of Microsoft,...
> articles/microsoft-offer-to-buy-yahoo/

Long tail SEO is something that I have trouble getting people to understand - the long tail is an oft-forgotten part of the search engine optimisation process because it's hard to get excited about ranking for a phrase which brings in 3 people per month. However, long tail SEO can bring in 90%...
> articles/long-tail-seo-how-to/

I think most SEOs would agree that targeted anchor text is one of the most important elements of SEO. Anchor text being the words used inside a link that points to your website. Personally, I have seen great results from using rich anchor text wherever possible on links I build. If you offered...
> articles/135/targeting-your-anchor-text/

I generally avoid reading blogs and forums at PR update time, because it generally turns into a sea of whining and Google hate from some, while those that are doing well get all smug and cocky. Either way, it's not great reading. That said, I have just done a quick roundup of my sites...
> articles/130/some-notes-on-the-pr-update/

I got another payment from one of my affiliate providers the other day. Something that always puts a smile on my face knowing that that particular website hasn't been touched for 12 months yet...
> articles/120/american-cheques-take-12-years-to-clear/

When explaining SEO to a potential client I usually break it down into 3 key areas. TECHNICAL SEO, being all those on-site things they don't understand such as duplicate content and fixing ugly...
> articles/109/10-ways-to-kill-your-site/

A question is an invitation to find out more about something. We read a question, and the natural response is to answer that question. Maybe it's just me, but I quite like the idea of someone...
> articles/105/are-questions-in-search-results-more-clickable/

It happens quite often that on-page SEO is done to a site and it doesn't yield any results. This is generally considered a bad thing. I'd like to throw an alternative viewpoint out there. This...
> articles/93/on-page-seo-is-like-the-lottery/

People often ask what I do. A good question, I do lots of different things. I started off by saying I was a web developer - being the correct term for what I mostly do. But the term web developer...
> articles/69/so-you-do-seo/

Lately I'm spending more time spamming (cough - I mean adding useful and relevant content) to forums and blog comments. Even if they are nofollow links, it's all about brand building and getting...
> articles/70/2nd-hand-link-building-for-the-link-puppy/

I have been all bitter and twisted the past few weeks about Google putting some of my pages into the supplemental index. And not just my rubbish pages, some of my best content has gone...
> articles/68/that-trailing-slash-does-matter/

I have just completely revamped the NZ Coastguard boating education website tonight. When I say "revamped", I mean make substantial changes to the backend with virtually no changes to how it...
> articles/67/why-dont-people-use-301-redirects/

I have just released a beta of SEO Form - a Firefox extension which helps you with directory submissions and link exchanges. The tool simply autocompletes common form fields for you such as...
> articles/64/seo-form-new-seo-tool/

I'm a bit of a sucker for the little green bar at the bottom of my screen showing the PR of the page I'm looking at. Sometimes, I catch myself reading the PR before reading the content to decide if...
> articles/62/pagerank-dont-get-too-excited/