Archive for the ‘Marketing/SEO/Monetization’ Category

Jan 26 2007 at 2:43pm

Search Words vs. Marketing Words

Gerry McGovern had an interesting article the other day about the difference between search words and marketing words:

The words that people search with may not always be the words they would like to read when they arrive at a webpage.

The word “cheap” is a good example here. You probably don’t want to brand yourself as “cheap”. “Cheap” brings connotations of poor quality and bad service – something you probably want to avoid. Words like “affordable” or “low-cost” would be more more appropriate. But you can bet that people will be using the word “cheap” when they search for sites like yours.

Mr. McGovern, unfortunately, stops just when the idea starts to get interesting. Read more…

Posted in Marketing/SEO/Monetization, Writing | 5 Comments »

Dec 20 2006 at 3:21pm

People are totally clueless about SEO

I see it all the time on the forums. People popping up with rather stupid SEO questions. What is my PageRank? How do I increase my PageRank? Why won’t anyone trade links with me? Hello??? Have you not read anything about SEO in the past year???

The way I see it, there are two subsets of people here: the designer/developer types who don’t even care enough to ask questions about SEO, and the average webmaster types who for some reason have seriously inaccurate ideas about SEO.

Great websites: NewsTarget.com

I came across this NewsTarget.com when my mom sent me a link to an article on fake avocado dip (seriously. Read it, it’s good). I was really impressed with the NewsTarget site for a couple of reasons. Obviously it’s got lots of great content, written in an informative and engaging way. It’s also got a great design: upbeat, colourful, clean, elegant, and above all, appropriate for the site (although unfortunately table-based).

The W3C supporters page

Take a look at the W3C supporters page. It costs $1000 to become a supporter of the W3C and get your link on this page. This page is a PR 9. That’s right, PR 9. Now check out all the sites that are listed.

I’ll give you a sec to skim through that.

Didn’t I see some of those in my spam folder the other day? “Cheap Hosting Provider”, “Wholesale Childrens Clothing”, “Dubai Furnished Apartments”, “Online Gambling Guide”??? Many of the links appear to be for legit but it’s these spammy ones that caught my attention. The W3C is effectively selling PR 9 linkbacks from a highly respected site for $1000 apeice.

Just disgusting. And sad. You’d think that google would recognize that as a spam page with all those shady links on it. Maybe it does, I don’t know.

(This was pointed out to me by this post about digg spamming which really has nothing else to do with this post)

Posted in Marketing/SEO/Monetization, Web Culture | 4 Comments »

Nov 21 2006 at 4:24pm

Fixing my WordPress Title Tags

Update 03/07/2008 – I am no longer using this solution for my title tags. Read more about my new solution in Fixing my wordpress title tags, revisited. The solution below may still be useful for anyone who finds the plugin options to be overkill.

Also note that this code was posted in 2006 and may not be compatible with current versions of WordPress.

I thought I’d document this just for my own info and in case anyone else is looking to do the same thing.

Default title format

The default wordpress titles look like this:

Home page: Blog Name (and that’s it)
Category Pages: Blog Name » Category
Archive Pages & individual posts: Blog Name » Blog Archive » Post Title

I wanted to reverse this for a few reasons. Firstly because it’s good for people that have a lot of tabs open and can only read the first part of the title. Secondly, it might be better for SEO and actual reading of SERP’s. Thirdly, because I just like it better that way.

Designers and Marketers: why the disconnect?

We see it all the time in the forums: someone shows up asking all kinds of questions about SEO and promotion but the site is terribly designed. Or, on the opposite side, someone asks for a design review but clearly has absolutely no concept of SEO or marketing. You tell them they need to get some keywords in their title tag and they give you the equivalent of a blank stare
Read more…

Posted in Design, Marketing/SEO/Monetization | 1 Comment »