WordPress is arguably today’s most popular blogging platform – for reasons that the most brilliant Web programmers and developers or novice bloggers and startup business marketers can appreciate. Actually, WordPress is popular for reasons that even search engine giant Google can appreciate. Matt Cutts – the well-known SEO guru and Webmaster behind Google (which, by the way, has Blogger as its own blogging platform) – even went so far as to praise WordPress, saying that: “WordPress takes care of 80 to 90 percent of (the mechanics of) Search Engine Optimization (SEO).” But we’re getting ahead of ourselves – let’s go into more detail about SEO later. For now, let’s go through the list of highlights of WordPress as a blogging platform. Getting Started The process of signing up for WordPress is simple and easy enough. The most awesome part? It’s free. WordPress is open-source software, which means that you don’t have to pay any license fees to use the core – Read the full article
Have you ever thought about how to get your website or blog included in Google News? Well, you wouldn’t be the first. Business owners, Internet marketers, online reputation management and public relations (PR) professionals, and SEO specialists all recognize the value of having their content show up in one of today’s biggest online news aggregators (and search engines). Why get listed on Google News? If you’ve never given a thought to getting listed, consider these benefits and key features of Google News. Millions of people use it to keep abreast of what’s happening. (It cannot be a bad thing to be able to tap into that, right?) These users access Google News using a variety of ways: via search, personalized Google News pages, regular E-mail alerts, mobile device or a tablet (like the iPad), RSS or Atom feeds, and more. Get listed and immediately you have a multitude of ways to reach out to an audience (search engine marketing, mobile – Read the full article
The Facebook “Like” button has a new friend. Or rather, a new “competitor”. After a series of unsuccessful attempts to incorporate social into search – such as Orkut, Buzz, Wave – Google is launching what observers believe can serve as a rival product to Facebook’s “Like” button. It’s called the Google “+1” Button. In an announcement made last week on the official Google blog, the search engine giant is rolling out the new +1 button as a way for users to share their recommendations to others, as well as to give a “public stamp of approval” on search results and linked sites that they like. This then enables other Google users to find more relevant – and more social – search results. “Sometimes it’s easier to find exactly what you’re looking for when someone you know already found it,” reads the explanation on the Google +1 Button page. “Get recommendations for the things that interest you, right when you want – Read the full article
Now that your website is up and running, it’s time to start working on your Google PageRank (PR). My what? What is PageRank? PageRank, in simple terms, refers to the value given to your site by Google. Sometime ago this value was measured by link popularity, or the number of links pointing back to your site. (It was thought that the best and most relevant pages attracted the most links.) So the more links you have from other sites, especially those sites with a higher PageRank, the higher your website will be ranked by Google. And what does the high ranking do? Well, a number of experts consider PageRank to be the most important factor in establishing the relevance of a website or page, for each particular phrase, keyword, or search term entered on Google Search. Nowadays it has changed. Search engines like Google no longer rely solely on the quantity of links. They’re taking link quality and reputation into – Read the full article
Watch out, WordPress and Tumblr. Blogger is about to undergo a major makeover this year. At this year’s SXSW in Austin, Texas, search engine giant Google provided a glimpse of the new and improved Blogger, its very own blogging and publishing platform and sixth largest website in the world (according to Alexa). To be included in the series of updates to Blogger are: a brand new interface, a revamped post editor, a more customizable template designer, and a new content discovery feature. These and more are going to be rolled out throughout the year. “2010 was a big year for Blogger,” wrote Chang Kim, Blogger Product Manager, in a blog post covering the announcement. “We introduced template designer, real-time stats, comment spam filtering, mobile templates, web fonts and more. 2011 promises to be another exciting year. We’re kicking things off at SXSW by giving folks a sneak peek at our next-generation user interface. The new design is not only cleaner and more modern, but it also – Read the full article
Google, under fire these last several weeks for allowing webmasters, marketers, and spammers manipulate its search engine, recently made changes to the way it ranks search results. The move, announced and detailed in a blog post Thursday at the official Google blog, signified an effort by the company to push down low-quality websites and pages that appear on its search engine results pages (SERPs), while rewarding sites with original, high-quality content and information as well as “in-depth reports” and “thoughtful” analyses. “In the last day or so we launched a pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking—a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries—and we wanted to let people know what’s going on,” wrote Amit Singhal, Google Fellow, and Matt Cutts, Principal Engineer. “This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites, or sites that are just not very useful.” The change in ranking algorithms also supports – Read the full article
I publish this to you guys because in the time I have spent working for Lakeshore Branding, I have learned a lot in what is SEO. As I will be taking a drastic turn in my life and begin working for the man, there are a few important lessons I have learned. First, a quick background. After graduating from the University of Iowa, I helped a colleague start up a webhosting company, Host Duplex. Afterwards, I joined Lakeshore Branding as an SEO Hero (self modified title ) to expand my technical knowledge in the SEO industry and further develop my web development skills. Here are the lessons I have learned as an SEO Hero. 1.) You Don’t Know Jack! One of the many lessons I have learned through life is that real life experience is king. From research and different books, I had thought that I knew my fair share of how to optimize a website. It wasn’t until I began – Read the full article
Successful modern businesses know that the best way to cash in on an ever-decreasing post-credit crunch consumer market is to gain trade online. Any entrepreneur who has noted the decline in passing high street trade and dipped their toe into the web market will know that gaining a share of online business is a complex process. One extremely important piece of the Web marketing puzzle is pay-per-click (or PPC) advertising. What is PPC? PPC advertising offers businesses access to an intensely targeted range of online marketing services. Depending on their own needs and the perceived habits of their potential client base, websites can draw in customers using a number of clever targeting techniques. PPC advertising is offered by online giants, such as Google and Yahoo, and by social networking sites like Facebook. It also comes in bespoke form through professional PPC companies, who can place PPC anchor text links in web copy posted on third-party sites and blogs. Choosing a PPC – Read the full article
