Is SEO an Art or a Science?
I’ve been asked a lot of interview questions in my career, some more creative than others, but few have ever stumped me as much as this one: Is SEO an art or a science?
Think about it for a minute. You may have a strong opinion one way or another; I know people who fall [...]
SEO Career Advice for Power Digger Neal Rodriguez
A few weeks ago, my good friend Simon Owens introduced me via email to noted Power Digger Neal Rodriguez. As it turned out, Neal was interested in a career in SEO, and I was more than happy to weigh in with the following advice.
Don’t just be an SEO specialist; be an online marketer.
SEO is [...]
Explaining Blogs to the Uninformed
When I first mentioned the word “blog” to my wife back in 2005, she swore I’d made it up. It wasn’t until she started hearing it in mainstream media that she conceded blogs were real. (To this day, she still harbors suspicions that the whole thing might be some massive conspiracy I cooked up [...]
How to Spot an SEO Snake Oil Salesman
If you advertize online, you’ll eventually be contacted by SEO companies. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; as an SEO expert myself, I know how much value there is in ranking well. However, for every legitimate SEO company out there, you’ll probably hear from half a dozen SEO snake oil salesmen. These [...]
Social Media Experiment Update, Week Six
If you’ve been reading awhile, you may remember the social media experiment I started a few weeks ago. Well, after a month and a half, I figured it was about time to check on my Frankenstein monster and see how it was progressing.
So far, most of the readings are negative. It’s not lurching [...]
Cloak and Dagger: The Many Motives for Cloaking… and their Consequences
Cloaking is a touchy subject in SEO circles. Typically falling into the category of “gray hat,” it can be fairly safe or incredibly risky to your site’s search engine rankings, depending on how and why it is done. Unfortunately, the growing literature around cloaking does little to dispel the confusion over acceptable use.
Often [...]
My Social Media Frankenstein Monster
Since the dawn of search, SEO professionals have dreamed of controlling brand-related search results. Through the power of social media, I intend to do just that. I will wrest my name from the whims of the algorithms and take control of my own destiny.
The Hypothesis
By linking them together, social media profiles can be [...]
Amidst the TLD Frenzy, Bank on Trust
For those who haven’t already heard, the folks over at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Number (ICANN) recently opened the door for tons of new top-level domain names (TLDs). If the acronyms are spinning your head, here’s the simplified version: Instead of .com, .net, .edu, .gov, .org, and the other URL-enders we [...]
Improve Search Engine Visibility with Xenu Link Sleuth
When you’ve been in the search marketing game for a few years, you tend to add a few interesting tools to your arsenal. Xenu has always been one of my favorites. No, I’m not talking about that Xenu (although the program icon does have an interesting alien motif). I’m talking about Xenu [...]
10 Universal Truths of SEO
Google is great. I use its services on a daily basis and love the traffic it sends to my websites. As smart SEO professionals point out, however, Google isn’t the only search engine around, and may not be the biggest, baddest search engine on the block forever.
If you’ve got your SEO hat on [...]