Facebook is not the Web

A worrying trend I see over the past number of years is that fact that with the dominance of Facebook with what I call non IT literate people who don’t spend every waking hour in front of a PC is that they think Facebook IS the web.  Likewise they think the Google search bar is the Address bar for a site and this is where they put in domain names.

It may be easy to snigger at this but SEO professionals and website designers need to consider this and cater for it.  You need to make sure that you have crisp titles,  good meta descriptions (even though they do not factor in search they do factor in decisions to click).

For Facebook the effort put into creating a powerful landing page is worth it if your audience uses Facebook.  I encourage businesses to think about Facebook but if your target

Penguins and Pandas – Google Search Updates

I read all the news that comes out on Google updates and it is now blindingly clear that they are animal lovers but why the letter P.  This question was the first one that I had when I saw the latest update being called after a Penguin.    But like the detail behind he update we are never sure.

It is now over 2 weeks since it was rolled out and if you aren’t seeing any change in your rankings as a result I am not surprised as lot of these updates are geared towards two ends.  Rewarding people who are doing the right things on their site and punishing those who are trying to game the search engines.

As always SearchEngineLand wrote a nice post on the Google Penguin Update which explains that simply put it is geared to tackling web spam which is still with us and is like

Matt Cutts Explains How Google Crawls

I would keep this on my iPad and show it to all customers who are looking to understand how sites get crawled and indexed.  Matt explains in this the basics of how Goggle crawled the web in the past and up to today.  Watch this and you will have a solid no nonsense understanding og how Google works for this part of the search algorithm,  I note he mentions PageRank and reputation several times through this presentation where reputation is measured in surprise surprise in good (not GOOD) links back to the site. I also note he never actually answered any part of the guys question but he wouldn’t as Google rarely answer any questions they are asked.

Where is Your Call to Action?

Lets face it there is no such thing as the perfect website. But it doesn’t stop people fussing over the last details to produce one and in the process forgetting that a site is are worthless unless they have visitors.  They mumble SEO to but think that it is a magic dust that can be sprinkled on a site to make the traffic magically grow.  I could show Google Analytics’s data for dozens of  sites with happy clients which have single digit daily visits and in some cases none at all.  But they look great!

The word SEO has become diluted in the past 12-18 months into several different segments (and that is a good thing) but one of those that is coming to fore more and more to the fore is content marketing.  To embark on a

The Content Conundrum

Writing content is something that is elusive to people to understand but is something that should be a staple part of your website habits.  It is isn’t hard it is about developing a habit.  I would recommend setting 15 minutes aside per day for just writing or updating content on your website.  For instance I sat down to write this post at 15:00 on March 12th.  It may be updated multiple times around the time of its creation and over time I will revisit it to make tweaks and changes.

As today’s topic was about how to write content for your site I decided that I would show you some of my sources of inspiration for creating website posts. I bet in your own niche you could find a similar list.

Finding Time to Write Content

TEst

My website customers don’t want to read hundreds of pages and blog posts about SEO. Likewise they don’t want to page through many Slideshare presentations about content creation and improving their social media presence. However too many of them still think that getting good ranking is down to just getting links back to their site.

Writing content is something that is elusive to people to understand but is something that should be a staple part of your website habits. It is isn’t hard it is about developing a habit. I would recommend setting 15 minutes aside per day for just writing or updating content on your website. For instance I sat down to write this post at 15:00 on March 12th. It may be updated multiple times around the time of its creation and over time I will revisit it to make tweaks and changes.

As

SEO for New Business Information

My website customers don’t want to read hundreds of pages and blog posts about SEO. Likewise they don’t want to page through many Slideshare presentations about content creation and improving their social media presence. However too many of them still think that getting good ranking is down to just getting links back to their site.

This is one of the many methods that does help but isn’t the only way nor will it always work on its own.

Below I have listed what I call brutal must do facts about your site and activities that if you commit to acting on regularly will improve your ranking. In addition I show what most people really do.

Lets Look At Panda

Panda other than being a cute Chines animal is also a Google Employee from

SEO for Your Business

It is clear that these days that having a website without an SEO or SEM solution and plan is really pointless. It is also clear that it is becoming more and more complex to explain the many facets of Search Engine Optimisation to people. However it is important for people to know that it isn’t just a matter of writing lots of keyword rich content and getting links. Yes these all help. But it is like saying to win the All Ireland you need clean gear and to be fit. You need to work on many facets of the plan and for every business there is a different approach. View this video from SearchEngineLand

For some it may rely strongly on a social approach on others a business to business approach and for others a mix of

The Magic Wand of Content

I had a conversation with a client today about him developing content for his website. He wanted to sit down with me and work out a website design strategy and explain the business and show his vision. I listened patiently as he spoke at length about his business and where he wanted to go.  Search Engine Optimisation is the art of getting ranking for your keywords and is called SEO for short but below is a tale of how you need to begin at least with writing content!

He was very convincing and in fact the product he is selling is interesting and unique to the Irish market. When he paused for breath I said I didn’t want to meet him this week and thought he should write the content himself.  I was happy to go off and get the website

How to Get Boatloads of Traffic to Your Site (aka Kidnap the Cat)

We all want traffic to our sites with people waving their wallets,spending money and looking for the PayPal button.   SEOs would have you say it takes time and effort but actually it is actually really easy and now the secret is finally out and I am going to do the big reveal like in one of those reality TV shows.

Kidnap The Cats of Social  Media Experts

Mail all the social media experts who claim to be experts in blogging and social media and tell them that you are stone cold broke and need some backlinks.  When they refuse (which of course they will)  kidnap their cats.

All social media experts own cat,  its part of the job description. And