Archive for the 'Miscellaneous' Category

Getting more blog traffic with BlogRush

Monday, September 24th, 2007

We’re trying out BlogRush to see if it generates more traffic and links to this blog. (Note that this is a referral link.) BlogRush is an interesting little tool that shows headlines from “related” blog posts alongside your own blog. All you need to do is sign up for an account and insert a little [...]

Website usability is critical

Monday, September 17th, 2007

Too often I come across websites that have what appears to the designer/owner to be a slick, beautiful, or otherwise superior design that presents challenges to users. All too often usability comes a distant 2nd or 3rd to other design considerations. Website usability is a critical determinant of how effectively you convert visitors in customers. [...]

Search engine share and advertising network statistics

Thursday, September 13th, 2007

The comScore Data Center offers useful information about search engine market share and top advertising networks and sites. The statistics are published/updated periodically. Search engine share compares month to previous month and the same month from the year before. The statistics are quite broad and likely aren’t particularly useful for making detailed decisions other than [...]

Tool for importing keywords into AdWords Editor

Thursday, August 23rd, 2007

We’ve just updated the AdWords Keyword Matching Options Generator so that the output can be consistent with the AdWords Editor interface for importing multiple keywords. Simply check “AdWords Editor Mode” to switch from the bracket and quote notation to the AE’s comma-delimited format.

What’s wrong with no-www

Friday, July 27th, 2007

There is a rising debate regarding the use or omission of “www” for website addresses. For instance, should a company use “http://widgets.com” or “http://www.widgets.com”? The debate is debate is getting somewhat heated in some venues, and there is even an organization advocating the omission of “www”. We have a problem with this. We don’t have [...]

Breadcrumbs for SEO

Tuesday, April 10th, 2007

Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox recently included a post about the usability benefits of breadcrumbs. We have long counseled clients to use them when their site design and organization allow for the same reasons that Jakob advocates their use. We add one more reason: SEO. One of the important aspects of site optimization is creating abundant, keyword-rich [...]

Yahoo Directory takes friendly fire

Wednesday, March 28th, 2007

According to recent posts at the Search Engine Roundtable Forums, Yahoo! has removed category links from search engines results. In doing so, we feel that Yahoo! has significantly devalued the directory and reduced the justification for the Yahoo! Directory Submit fees. It is our opinion that the primary value of Yahoo! Directory listings has been [...]

Free backlink checker tool

Tuesday, March 6th, 2007

We have just launched our simple and free backlink checker tool. Simply enter the URL of the website that you’d like to check, click Submit, and wait a few seconds for the number of backlinks to be displayed. The tool will show the number of links that Google, Yahoo, and MSN see linking to you. [...]

Alexa statistics self-selection skew

Tuesday, March 6th, 2007

Alexa is Amazon’s search engine and web toolbar. The toolbar sends data about its owner’s online behavior back to the Alexa servers which compile the statistics and provide free information — including traffic estimates and popularity rankings — about virtually any remotely popular site on the web. It is tempting to take statistics, particularly free [...]

Understanding the Google cache

Thursday, December 28th, 2006

Google and other search engines cache pages, storing copies of them that they use for indexing. You can think of the cache as a snapshot of a page at a moment in time. You can examine the cached copy of a particular page by creating a query like this: http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:http://www.web1marketing.com You can look at any [...]