Q and A: How well have we optimized our site?

Dear Kalena...

Last year I took both your SEO101 and SEO201 courses. They were very informative and I really appreciate your putting them out there for us. Shortly after completing the course we did a complete overhaul on our website and implemented many of the lessons learned from your class. I'd like to continue to improve my rankings on search engines and I'd like to begin by targeting my product pages. Can you have a look at them and give me some pointers, please.

Thank you
Jonathan

Kalena's Answer:

Hi Jonathan, nice to hear from you!

I've taken a quick look at your site and to be quite blunt, I don't see much evidence of our lessons in your SEO implementation. Maybe your web designer has changed things since you sent me this, but looking at the site today, quite a few things worry me:

1) Where are your optimized Title attributes and META tags? There was a whole lesson dedicated to this in SEO101. I can't find them on ANY page. This is mission critical.

2) Where are the search friendly URLs you learned were so important in SEO201? For example, This URL doesn't tell users or search engines anything about the page content.

3) Where's the 250 words of optimized text on each product page?

4) Is there really a need to use session ids? As stated in our lesson notes, Google has stated in the past that they don't index URLs that use session ids.

5) Your home page text seems optimized for a very narrow selection of keywords or the keyword density seems too low. For example I can only find one instance of the word "flower".

I could go on but you get the gist. May I suggest going over your course notes again, particularly Lessons 5 and 6 of SEO101.


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Google's SPOOOOOKY Halloween Logo

Visited Google today? When you do, you'll see they've turned their logo into a spooky haunted house (pictured) to celebrate Halloween. Bwaa ha haaaa!! Happy Halloween Everyone!


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Search Industry Job of the Week: Manager, Search Marketing

Job Title: Manager, Search Marketing

Job Reference #: Unknown
Position Type: full time
Name of employer: Kayak.com
Location: Norwalk, CT (some telecommuting possible)
Date Posted: 30 October 2007
Position description:

The Pitch

• A smart, entrepreneurial marketer will enjoy working at Kayak. We have large ambitions for the business and the brand, and we are looking for help to realize this vision.


• Marketing at Kayak is both creative and quantitative. We look for new ways to educate consumers about the company and drive traffic to the site. Marketing is involved in building both a product and a brand. We experiment with new channels and media, and we are not afraid to fail.


• We pay well, we balance work and play, and we enjoy working together as we build the world’s leading travel site.


• Our board includes original CEO/co-founders of Orbitz, Travelocity and Expedia. Investors include General Catalyst, Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners, and AOL.

Key Responsibilities for this Position

• Management Kayak’s search engine marketing campaigns, which includes creative and keyword development and CPC bids.


• Help develop SEM management tools and technology to improve performance.


• Analyze customer behavior patterns to model customer value and direct marketing spend.


• Identify new performance-based marketing channels and build relationships with these channels. You can test anything you would like, but you need to own the results.


• Influence the direction of our product to build brand identity and user interest. We’re a small company and we expect you to have a voice.


• This position reports to our VP of Marketing in Norwalk, CT.

Candidate Attributes

• Curious, disciplined, irreverent, creative, thrives among very strong colleagues, comfortable working in an unstructured environment, eager to get his/her hands dirty, independent-minded.


• Fluent with data. This is a quantitative role, and you need to be comfortable with numerical performance goals.


• Fun, ethical, passionate team player.

Candidate Experience:

• Must be able to demonstrate required skills in a professional environment. Previous online marketing experience is valuable but we will consider candidates who do not have this background.


• It would be fun if you were a world-class kayaker or had world-class aspirations in something.

Salary range: Unknown
Closing date: Unknown
More info from: [wp.kayak.com]
Contact: Send resumes to Drew[at]kayak.com

For more search industry job vacancies visit: Search Engine College Jobs Board.


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Q and A: Is it necessary to renew your domain name?

Dear Kalena...

I just got a letter from the Domain Registry of America asking me to renew my domain name. Must one renew one's domain name at all? If so, does one do it with theses guys? I am very noobish in this respect, but I would not want to lose my domain name. I just need to know what to do to maintain my domain name. Any help appreciated.

Thank you for the information thus far.

Rudy

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Rudy

If you want to keep using your domain name, then yes, you will need to renew it. Best option is to renew it via the registrar that you bought it from. Do you still have the information sent to you when you bought the domain? Your domain confirmation email should have included login details for your registrar. Do you remember how many years you bought the domain for? Most registrars will send you a renewal notice automatically to remind you when your domain name is coming up for renewal. For this reason, you should keep the email address associated with your domain up to date.

From what I understand, Domain Registry of America (DROA) obtain access to domain renewal dates from public WhoIs lookups and send unsolicited "renewal notices" to domain owners inviting them to transfer and renew their domains with DROA instead of the owner's original domain registrar. This is likely what you have received from them. You are welcome to transfer your domain to DROA, but you will more than likely pay more this way than renewing it with your existing registrar. Read the (very) fine print on the back of the DROA letter carefully before you renew. You might also want to read my other posts about DROA.

If you no longer wish to receive letters from domain registrars you have no existing relationship with, your best bet is to pay the small fee to keep your WhoIs details private. Your existing registrar can advise you on this.


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Where's Your Social Responsibility Google?

During the initial excitement of the so-called PageRank penalties on Google this week, I wrote a rant for SiteProNews about how I felt Google had crossed the line by penalizing sites for linking activity that could have been misconstrued as PageRank brokering.

The article which began life as a minor blog piece has finally gone live on SiteProNews: Where's Your Social Responsibility Google? It now looks as though the PR slap-down on certain sites was merely the beginning of a full PR update across the web, but I think my points are still valid.


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Deal Dot Dummies?

I just popped my head in to Deal Dot Com to check out the latest product and couldn't believe my eyes. Check out the screen grab. Yes, you read correctly, the site is "Down for Maintenance Until Tomorrow".

Huh? I don't get it. What if Googlebot and other search bots come calling and find no content and no links? What about new site visitors? Have they even heard of the word USABILITY? Have you ever known a company to simply wipe all content from their site while they whip up a new one? Maybe it's just me, but that seems totally ridiculous. The last time I saw such stupidity was when a client of mine decided to switch off her (carefully optimized) site for a 2 week Christmas vacation. Ouch. Bye bye rankings!

If our sites fall over for even a few minutes due to unscheduled hosting outages, I am the proverbial monkey on the back of my hosting company for the entire time, pushing for them to get the sites live again. I just can't believe an online business find the need to close up shop for back-end maintenance. Deal Dot Dumb?

29 Oct 07 *UPDATE*

Ok now they've changed their white "site down" page to a more colorful "site down" page with a cute cartoon character. Oh and they've also added their email address. Yep, that will fix the problem.... NOT!


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Major PR Update - Sphinn Now PR 6!

Looks like some of us jumped the gun with assumptions about those directory PR penalties. I'm seeing major PR changes across scores of sites right now. Sphinn is now a PR6! Am I seeing things or did Sphinn not even have PR 24 hours ago?

Maybe my toolbar is crapping itself, but I'm seeing PR changes all over right now. Were the Google manual PR penalties not penalties at all? Could we have merely been looking at sites on datacenters that shifted PR first?

Some existing client sites have gone backwards an average of 1 PR point. A couple of our sites have also gone backward by 1. In all these cases, the sites are ones we haven't made any major changes to or built any additional links on. The sites where we HAVE spent time have stayed the same or gone up 1 point.

Even Adobe's News Aggregator has dropped from PR10 to PR9. Which suggests to me that this update is all about Google readjusting the benchmark for PR levels since the introduction of social media and the addition of so many new sites to the Internet. This was already predicted by many Sphinnsters (am I the first to use that term?).

Just noticed that some client blogs developed in the past 6 months have gone from PR0 to PR3 or 4. Nice! {cough}Not that PageRank matters or anything{/cough}

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Q and A: What files do I need to transfer from a client site in order to optimize it?

Dear Kalena...

I have a good fundamental knowledge of SEO and HTML, but have no practical experience. As such, I need answers to the following questions please. In order to do SEO from a remote location, it's my understanding that I will need to do a transfer from an organization's storage server drive to my computer, using FTP and Internet Explorer. However, I don't know exactly what should be transferred to do the SEO work. I would really appreciate some input on this please.

Also, once I have made the changes, do I simply save them and transfer the revised work back to the organization? In addition, do I necessarily need to use Dreamweaver or a similar type of program to make the changes, or can I just hand-code the changes? Please add as much detail as you think appropriate when answering these question.

Thank-you very much.

Peter

Kalena's Answer:

Hi Peter

Geez, I would've expected a cup of coffee or two to answer all these! Here goes:

1) If you have no practical experience in SEO, you have no fundamental knowledge, it's that simple. Until you have actually optimized code, you really have very little knowledge of SEO.

2) Again, if you don't understand what needs to be transferred in order to do the SEO work, in my opinion, you don't know enough yet to successfully optimize a site.

Basically, to SEO a site, you need access to the HTML code of all pages being optimized. What I do is ask my client for FTP access to their site and then I download a full copy of the pages to be optimized, including the CSS files, javascript and any images used on the pages. This is so that the pages render correctly in my WYSIWYG page editor while I'm working on them.

I generally hand code the title and meta tags first, then do the actual code optimizing in a text editor (EditPlus is my current favorite), before importing all the changes into the HTML code and tweaking any on-page optimization in my WYSIWYG editor. You might find you don't need to view the page in WYSIWYG and that hand coding is all you need. Every SEO works differently.

3) Before you start the SEO, you should find out from your client whether they are happy for you to have full FTP access to their site and simply upload the optimized pages, or whether they want their in-house site admin to implement your SEO changes. If the latter is the case, I create detailed code instructions for each page, hand them over to the client and then check the integration for errors. Some clients will want to see what the page will look like before it goes live so they can approve/edit your changes. That's when a WYSIWYG version comes in handy - you can upload your optimized page versions to a test area on your server or theirs and highlight the changes for them. Other clients will be happy for you to just edit their live site. But you should always make a backup of the old versions of their pages, just in case.

If you are serious about SEO, I strongly suggest you take up one of our SEO training courses which take you through the optimization of a site, step-by-step, with set assignments to test the practical side of your knowledge. You should also volunteer to work on some sites while you find your feet. Practical experience should help you decide how much you know about SEO and how much left there is to learn.

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Q and A: Has my domain glitch caused permanent de-ranking in Google?

Dear Kalena...

I let my domain www.visaplace.com expire, but I re-registered it within 24 hours. The site went black in the interim and it took about a 1/2 day to be repopulated online. However about a week to two weeks later I noticed that Google dropped my rankings for virtually all of my key words. I am totally invisible online now whereas I was well ranked before. I was told by my SEO person not to worry because once Google spiders my site again a few times I will get back up to my original positions.

My SEO person looked at my site and said nothing has changed and I was not blacklisted or anything. He said I should be back up within days to a few weeks. My question is: Is explanation credible? Is there another possible reason why I am de-ranked? I am really concerned.

Thanks so much
Michael

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Michael

Your SEO is right. What's probably happened is that Googlebot tried to index your site during the time the site was down and so dropped some/all of your previously cached pages. This can happen from time to time, especially with hosting outages etc. Obviously, if those pages were previously ranking well for certain search queries, but the pages have temporarily disappeared from Google's data store, those rankings will disappear too.

I see now that Google last cached your page on October 19 so all seems to be well again. I'm not sure how many pages were indexed before the domain problem, but Google shows 79 pages currently indexed.

To check if any site is listed in Google, you can use their Site Status Tool. If your SEO is worth his salt, he will have created a Google Webmaster Tools account for your site and uploaded an XML sitemap to Google Sitemaps on your behalf. This will tell Google how many pages your site has and what the URLs are so Googlebot can index it accurately. If you think Google has dropped some pages, be sure to have your SEO update the XML file and ping Google from within Webmaster Tools when it's uploaded.

If you want to keep close tabs on how/when Google indexes your site, ask your SEO to provide login access to your Webmaster Tools account or set one up for yourself.

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Search Industry Job of the Week: Coordinator Search Marketing

Job Title: Coordinator Search Marketing

Job Reference #: MD00000467
Position Type: full time
Name of employer: Macys.com
Location: San Francisco, California
Date Posted: 23 October 2007

Position description:

Organization Overview:

Macys.com is a division of Macy’s Inc. dedicated to creating an exciting e-commerce experience for our customers. With added conveniences, such as allowing merchandise exchanges and returns at all Macy’s department stores nationwide, macys.com is the leading department store presence on the Internet. As we continue to extend our selling floors into cyberspace, we attribute our successes to our uniquely talented and passionate people.

Overview of Position:

The Coordinator will serve as the secondary point of contact for matters related to paid search marketing on Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and other search engines for the macys.com search programs. Coordinator’s primary responsibilities include:

• Campaign Management & Optimization – Keywords
• Development and management of keywords. – Creatives
• Writing, editing and management of search copy. – URLs
• Assigning landing page URLs to each keyword and/or ad group. – Executional Bids
• Setting bids tied to budgeting for campaigns. • Coremetrics Search Marketing Tool – Tagging & Tracking
• Using Coremetrics to append MMC parameters to keywords submitted to search engines. – Reporting
• Using Coremetrics to pull various reports weekly, monthly, and ad hoc.
• Analyzing results and making recommendations, if necessary.
• Promotional Sales Calendar Management – Gathering monthly promotional calendars.

Skills Summary:

The ideal candidate must:

• Possess strong quantitative and qualitative analysis skills, and the ability to react upon them.
• Be tech-savvy and have the ability to learn new concepts and software applications quickly.
• Have strong attention to detail.
• Have strong verbal and written communication skills.
• Possess proven Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint skills. Proficiency in File Maker and MS Access a plus.
• Confidently handle multiple projects simultaneously and under deadlines.
• Have a passion for retail and an ability to keep on top of the latest trends a plus.

Experience:

Previous experience in paid search engine marketing preferred. BA/BS from a 4 year program. Degree in business or marketing-related major preferred but not required.

Macy’s is an Equal Opportunity Employer, committed to a diverse and inclusive work environment.

Salary range: low to mid 40s
Closing date: Unknown
More info from: [macysdirectjobs.wfrecruiter.com]
Contact: Send resumes to Alina Baugh: alina.baugh[at]macys.com

To view more search industry job vacancies or post a position vacant visit: Search Engine College Jobs Board.

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Spent the Day Yak Shaving

Familiar with the term "yak shaving"? It's my new favorite phrase. Seth Godin calls it the best phrase he's heard this year. I first heard it this month on Ian McAnerin's blog, but apparently the term was coined back in 2000 by Carlin Vieri of MIT after a poignant Ren & Stimpy episode.

So what exactly is yak shaving? The definition I prefer is:

"Any seemingly pointless activity which is actually necessary to solve a problem which solves a problem which, several levels of recursion later, solves the real problem you're working on."

And that's exactly what I've spent the day doing. You see, I received an invitation to advertise Search Engine College for free in a popular magazine, as long as I could provide a high resolution graphic of our ad in a particular size and color format. Not a problem, but when I went to create the image today, I realized that the image manipulation software I wanted to use was on a different computer.

So I booted up the other computer and then realized that the keyboard was missing because I had connected it to my laptop. So I disconnected the keyboard from the laptop and tried to plug it into the other computer, but all the USB drives were used up so I had to disconnect the digital camera. But that forced an error requiring me to reboot the computer so I rebooted, plugged in the keyboard and opened the image software. Only to realize that I had installed just the trial version on that computer and it had expired. And I needed the purchase key to activate it again. Which was on my laptop so I copied it from the laptop onto my flash drive and brought it over to the computer before remembering that there were no USB drives available.

So I copied the key down on paper and manually typed it into the software program. Thankfully it recognized it, but then informed me that the software version I was using was out of date and I had to download a priority update. Which was 200MB. So I decided to make a cup of coffee while I waited. When the download was at 97 percent, the electrician who was working on the flat downstairs blew a fuse in the building, the lights went out and all the computers switched off automatically. An hour later, the electricity was back up and I was able to start the software download again while drinking my cold cup of coffee.

I finally got the priority update installed and began working on the image I needed. But the color formatting didn't match the magazine specifications and my HEX to RGB converter didn't help. I really needed to print the image out to see if the logo color matched other magazine print ads I'd created. So I pressed print. And waited. And waited some more. Before realizing that our inkjet printer had run out of magenta ink and wasn't going to print anything at all until that magenta print cartridge was replaced.

So I got in the car and drove 30 minutes to the office supplies shop, only to find that it had been replaced by a Gloria Jeans coffee shop sometime in the last month. So I asked for directions to the printer repair shop 10 minutes further away who happened to have magenta cartridges on sale. Feeling pretty relieved I drove the 40 minutes home and pulled out the empty magenta cartridge from the printer. Only to realize that it didn't match the one on the box that I'd just bought. I'd bought the wrong cartridge!

So I did what I should have done in the first place and emailed the magazine publisher to take up their free offer to create the ad on our behalf. And then I poured myself a large glass of wine. I'd spent the whole day yak shaving. Aaarrrggghhhh!


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Top 20 Most Ingenious SEO Company Names

Think your company name is pretty clever? In my experience, the most inventive company names are devised by SEO and SEM companies. Here are my Top 20 favorites in reverse order:

20) Beyond Ink
19) eTraffic Jams
18) eMergent Marketing
17) GetToTheTop
16) Pure Visibility
15) Page One Results
14) Raise My Rank
13) We Build Pages
12) Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning
11) TopSpot Internet Marketing Solutions
10) FoundPages
9) High Rankings
8) Prominent Placement
7) Pole Position Marketing
6) 2B Interactive
5) Right Now Communications
4) Tidal Wave Media
3) Think Prospect
2) Haystack in a Needle

And my vote for the most ingenious SEO company name goes to... (drumroll please)

1) InnVisibility - a company offering what else but SEO services to inns, B&Bs and other accommodation providers.

Clever huh? These sure make my company name Jordan Consulting Group seem uninspiring!

Know some others that should be in the list? Add them to the comments on this post.

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Q and A: Is there a direct relationship between keyword conversions and KEI?

Dear Kalena...

Regarding the KEI (in Word Tracker): Is there a proven direct relationship between conversions and the KEI? It seems like it would be most effective to take the time up front to find words with a high KEI rating instead of using words from Google soley based on whether the competition bar was smaller than the average usage bar (thats how I decide which words make the cut). Have you found that to be the case?

Thanks,
Bill

Kalena's Answer:

Hi Bill

KEI was developed several years ago by Sumantra Roy of 1st Search Ranking, to provide a rational basis for keyword selection. Wordtracker provides a detailed explanation of the KEI formula on their site.

KEI is certainly a helpful indicator of the type of competition you face from other sites when targeting the same keywords. But many industry experts believe that KEI has outlived its usefulness and that it no longer provides accurate guidance on keyword selection. This is because KEI only looks at the title tags of competing sites and doesn't consider the content of the META tags or the anchor text of competing sites.

One way to help narrow down your keyword selections is to look at the top 20 SERPs for the keywords you are considering and see how well those sites are optimized to determine if you could outrank them if you targeted the same keyword/phrase.

Just like anything else in SEO, you should consider KEI as part of your keyword selection process, but don't rely on it as your sole indicator of good keyword choices.

Hope this helps!

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20 MORE Must-Have Search Engine Marketing Tools

Not satisfied with just 20 Must-Have Search Engine Marketing Tools? Never fear, I compiled a list of 20 MORE Must-Have Search Engine Marketing Tools over at SiteProNews this week.

Enjoy!

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Q and A #300: How do I create tailored META tags in Dreamweaver?

Dear Kalena...

Wow - my eyes ache from such great influx of advice - I just hope you can help me here too. We use Dreamweaver, with CSS, but after a little SEO, have found that the same description has come up for every page - no good, as you so rightly say in review of another visitors site: 'You use the same Title and META Tags on EVERY page of your site! You should create tailored Title and META tags for each and every page of your site, based on keyword relevant to the page content.' I couldn't agree more, but the template puts the same description across all pages, and when you add HTML descriptions in css based templates manually, the XHTML comes up with an error, which could potentially disrupt SE's scans. any suggestions please (please, please please!!!)

Liz

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Liz

First up - congratulations on submitting the 300th FAQ to be answered here on the blog! I have a special surprise for you at the end of this post for being our lucky number #300.

But first, let me answer your question. Yes, Dreamweaver creates duplicate META tags in your pages. But never fear - there is a solution. Simply go into the html source code of each page and manually add [!-- #BeginEditable "metatags" --] and [!-- #EndEditable --] just after the editable title tags (changing the square brackets to standard HTML open/close tags). You can see the correct code and insertion example here.

Now about that surprise. As the submitter of FAQ # 300, I have arranged a special prize: a free self-study course of your choice from Search Engine College - congratulations!


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Approaching 300 FAQs!

Can you believe it? My next post will take the number of FAQs I've answered in this blog to 300! I'm planning something a bit exciting for lucky question submitter #300 so watch this space in about 12 hours time.

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Search Industry Job Of The Week: SEO Specialist

Job Title: Search Engine Optimization Specialist
Job Reference #: Unknown
Position Type: full time
Name of employer: DigitalGrit
Location: New York/New Jersey Metro Area
Date Posted: 15 October 2007
Position description:

DigitalGrit is an innovative, cutting edge, fun and smart company extremely dedicated to our employees' and clients' satisfaction. We were named one of the Best Small and Medium Companies to Work for in America by SHRM in 2006. We've also been named among the top 5 Best Places to Work in New Jersey in 2005 and 2006. Plus, we've made Deloitte's Technology Fast 50 for New Jersey for the last two years, too. But we don't want to brag.

DigitalGrit Inc., is a leading full service interactive marketing company serving Fortune 500 clients, and part of a larger Digital Marketing Services and Technology company, Adverb Media. We are looking for highly motivated and experienced Search Engine Optimization Experts to join our growing and dynamic team. DigitalGrit offers a work environment that fosters and rewards innovation, creativity, and leadership. This fantastic career opportunity awaits the right candidate.

Job Responsibilities

• Translating the client's goals and objectives into overall strategies and then executing on those SEO Initiatives
  
  
• Keyword analysis and selection
  
  
• Site side analysis and recommendations
  
  
• Link analysis and recommendations (usually through the DG New Media team but not necessarily)
  
  
• Integration with New Media and SEM Reporting and analysis, client communication and presentation
  
  
• Program scope and management
  
  
• Meet or exceed client goals
  
  
• Maintaining client relations

Requirements Needed

• Extensive knowledge of the search engine marketing industry
  
  
• Expert in natural search engine listings and search algorithms (3+ years exp)
  
  
• Ability to reverse engineer Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask search algorithms
  
  
• Deep understanding of key factors, on-page and off-page, that influence organic search rankings (5 forces +)
  
  
• Up-to-date knowledge of events, trends, and changes in algorithmic search industry
  
  
• Strong knowledge in Internet and web development technologies: HTML, XHTML, Java, CSS, Flash, ASP, PHP, etc.
  
  
• Demonstrated results increasing site rankings and search traffic
  
  
• Ability to measure results and assess ongoing strategy
  
  
• Skill managing and consulting with Fortune 1000 level clients
  
  
• Adherence to the highest ethical standards

If you are looking for an opportunity to become a major player within a great company, then consider applying to DigitalGrit. New Jersey and New York applicants accepted. Tremendous career growth opportunities, a competitive salary, Fortune 500 level benefits package (including retirement savings accounts, dental and full medical coverage) await the right candidate.

Salary range: Unknown
Closing date: Unknown
More info from: [http://www.seoconsultants.com/jobs/digitalgrit/]
Contact: Send resumes with cover letter to: dgresume[at]digitalgrit.com

For more Search Industry jobs visit: Search Engine College Jobs Board


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Q and A: Is it better to have single words or phrases in the Title Tag?

Dear Kalena...

I am working on updating the title tag and description for the Cancer Council South Australia to make it more effective. Could you please tell me whether it is better to have single words or phrases in the title tag - I am unsure on the process of how search engines actually use the title tag?

With Thanks
Anne

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Anne

The content of the Title Tag (or Title Attribute to use the correct term) is considered to be one of the more important elements of a page taken into account by search engines when it comes to matching your web pages with search queries. Although there are over 100 different relevancy factors that make up a search algorithm like Google's, the Title tag is considered to be in the top 10.

Another reason why the Title Tag is important is that the content of the Title is generally displayed across the top of the browser AND used as the bookmark text when people add a page to their favorite's list. And finally, the content of the Title Tag is often what's chosen by search engines to display in search results pages to describe your site.

So taking all these factors into account, your Title Tag content should:

• Accurately reflect the page content it represents
  
• Be a readable sentence
  
• Include relevant keywords and phrases
  
• Work as logical bookmark text
• Be enticing enough to make searchers visit your page
  

Read more about how search engines treat Title and META tags.

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Q and A: How do I move my site without losing rankings?

Dear Kalena...

I am having trouble with my "advanced access" website. The customer service has become horrible. They are very rude. I am thinking of moving my site (of course, I would have to redesign because I am using their template) but I own the domain name. I have high rankings on google so I am afraid to lose ranking. Is there a way to change my website design and webmaster without losing ranking?

Teri

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Teri

I'm not familiar with "Advanced Access", but I'm assuming this is some type of hosted Content Management System you use to edit your site with? Looking briefly at your site, I believe it is. And it looks as though most of the content is actually hosted on the AA site and not on your own domain. Don't be afraid to move your site if you are getting lousy service.

In terms of ranking, I think you'd actually be better off by moving your site content and domain to full hosting elsewhere. Your new host should be able to advise on making the DNS switch etc. You'll need to download all your existing site content and any images or files that are hosted on AA but referenced in your site. Of if they own the template you are using, simply keep a copy of all the text content and pay someone else to create a simple design for you based on the same content.

Provided you keep the same page content, keywords, page titles, META tags etc, you shouldn't lose any Google rankings. In fact, your rankings might even improve as you'll be referencing all your images and files etc on your own domain instead of somebody else's. If your page URLs change during the redesign, you'll need to make sure that the old pages are redirected to the new ones via 301 redirects so you don't lose traffic or existing rankings for those pages. There are plenty of posts on this blog to help you with that - simply click on 301 redirects under the Q and A labels. Best of luck!


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20 Must-Have Search Engine Marketing Tools

One month in and I'm still really enjoying my gig as a blogger and writer for SiteProNews. My latest article has gone live on their site today: 20 Must-Have Search Engine Marketing Tools.

Because I found so many useful tools for search engine marketing, I couldn't fit them all into one article so the piece will be followed up next week with Part 2: 20 MORE Must-Have Search Engine Marketing Tools. Got any favorite tools that I missed? Share your favs via comments on this post.


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Q and A: Why isn't our site coming up on Google for "pages from Australia"?

Dear Kalena...

We have an Australian website and until now, we have been hosted in the US. Two days ago, we moved to an Australian server, but our site is not coming up on the Australian sites yet (even if you do a Google search for Cairns Unlimited). However, we have other domain names redirected to specific pages within our site, and these come up when you search for sites from Australia. The main reason we moved to an Australian web server was to ensure that our site comes up on Google search results even if readers search for sites only from Australia. Any idea what the problem is?

Thanks for your help
Maria

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Maria

You don't say, but I'm assuming you mean your site doesn't come up when searching on Google.com.au and restricting the search to "pages from Australia"?

I've checked and here's the score:

1) Conducting a search for "Cairns Unlimited" using Google.com brings up your site in first place.

2) Conducting a search for "Cairns Unlimited" using Google.com.au selecting results from "the web" brings up your site in first place.

3) Conducting a search for "Cairns Unlimited" using Google.com.au selecting "pages from Australia" doesn't bring up your site in the first 50 matches, but it does bring up links to your site from other sites.

There could be a couple of things influencing this:

a) It's only been a few days since you made the hosting switch. The DNS entries may not have propagated across the net yet or Googlebot may not have picked up the switch yet. Google datacenters may still be storing cached versions of your pages from your old server. You should give it some more time.

b) Your site has a Google Toolbar PageRank of zero, meaning it hasn't built up enough trust-rank yet to be shown for related search queries on Google, unless you search for very specific terms such as your brand. Things might change when your PageRank improves.

c) You may have switched your hosting company from one based in the US to one based in Australia, but are you SURE the server they use to host your site isn't based in the US? We also use an Australian host but they outsource their server rackspace to a larger company in the US.

d) Even if your site is now hosted in Australia, the domain you are promoting is still a dot com domain. Google takes several things into account when determining a site's origin with server location being only one factor. It is unlikely you'll be able to outrank any sites with AU domain extensions in the regional results with a dot com domain.

e) A site with an Australian domain extension always has a better chance of being included in the regionally-specific search results and out-ranking dot com domains. I see that you also own the .com.au version of your domain but Google isn't caching it as they have determined your dot com domain to be your *correct* one. Have you thought about setting your preferred domain to the .com.au version and parking your dot com domain to that one? Or using 301s to point pages on the dot com to the .com.au? You could then update your Sitemap in your Google Webmaster Tools account to reflect pages on the .com.au domain.

Keep in mind that doing this may improve your site's results in the regional search results, but it may have the opposite effect on your site's performance in Google.com.au "web results" and the wider search results shown on Google.com. You really should decide whether the Australian market is more important to you before you make this switch. You should also keep in mind that many Australian searchers still use Google.com or Google.com.au without selecting "pages from Australia".


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No posts today or tomorrow

I'm traveling for the next couple of days, attending a family funeral so no posts from me until next week. Catchya then!

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Q and A: Which type of page formatting is best for SEO purposes?

Dear Kalena...

For SEO and other purposes, in a simple medium sized site, using Dreamweaver - which method of formatting is best: using CSS, style, format or manually? Does it matter if a mixture is used, a result of having different people designing the site?

Thanks
Peter

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Peter

In terms of search engine compatibility, you should try to keep as much of your page formatting off the page as possible. The aim being to keep the HTML clean and reduce code bloat to ensure search robots can index it more easily.

So this means using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and external JavaScript files if you are using JavaScript menus. Need more info? Read this page about formatting web pages for better SEO.


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