July 2008

How to use search to build visibility

Posted by Michael Martinez on July 31, 2008 in Intermediate SEO

One very underdeveloped skill in the SEO community is search. If you browse a random selection of SEO blogs, forums, and articles that discuss ways to use search engines, you’ll mostly find rehashes of advanced query operator functionality, special query tricks that reveal “secret” stuff, and queries that really don’t have any relevance to [...]

Search optimization and the keyword matrix

Posted by Michael Martinez on July 30, 2008 in Intermediate SEO

David Szetela wrote a post on Search Engine Watch that discusses a PPC keyword matrix technique he calls “personas and buckets”.
Ken McGaffin wrote about basic keyword matrix technique for WordTracker in 2006.
Keyword matrix techniques have been around for a long time. When you deal with a lot of query data, organizing your terms into [...]

Adding value to content through promotional links

Posted by Michael Martinez on July 28, 2008 in Link Theory

Last year I wrote about the three types of links that you can embed in your content. There are navigational links, body links, and promotional liniks. I defined them this way:
Navigational Links may be found in any zone but are most often placed in anchor margins and mastheads. Navigational links connect your pages [...]

Cuil takes on Google - can the link madness be stopped?

Posted by Michael Martinez on July 28, 2008 in SEO Theory

So CNN tells us that Cuil does not rely upon link analysis to order its search results the way Google does. Unfortunately, at the time of this writing Cuil’s philosophy page does not appear to exist, so I cannot review what they themselves have revealed of their technological approach.
My first few queries did provide [...]

Google shares new information about PageRank

Posted by Michael Martinez on July 25, 2008 in SEO Theory

Just when I thought it was safe to go on vacation, all Hell breaks loose across the Web. We’re having registration issues at SF-Fandom so they have been temporarily deactivated until someone with more savvy than me can look at the problem. In the mean time, people who want to register at SF-Fandom [...]

Architectural SEO - Website Navigation Principles

Posted by Michael Martinez on July 24, 2008 in Advanced SEO

In Optimzing Web Site Structure Through Architecture I mentioned five methods for internal site navigation.

Your “navigation menu”
Your HTML Sitemap page
Cross-promotional margin links
Links embedded in copy
Site search

That was not entirely complete. For example, I’ve visited some Web sites that use floating navigation tools to help people move around the site. Not very search friendly, [...]

Pros and Cons of Google Advanced Query Operators

Posted by Michael Martinez on July 24, 2008 in Advanced SEO

I noticed a link to SEO Theory from this nice roundup on Google advanced query operators by Lorna Li. Without meaning to steal her thunder, I’d like to offer some comments on popular query operators in a concise roundup of my own. This is something I’ve been thinking about doing for a while.
Preamble [...]

Why I No Longer Blog for SEOmoz

Posted by Michael Martinez on July 23, 2008 in General

There seems to be a growing misperception in the industry that I must have parted with Rand Fishkin on bad terms or something in 2006 after blogging for SEOmoz for almost a year. Nothing could be farther from the truth, and after seeing yet one more petty comment on the Web today that reinforces [...]

New User Email Issue

Posted by Michael Martinez on July 23, 2008 in Announcements

Just a quick note to let you know that we recently migrated to a new host and we are experiencing a minor issue with new registration emails. We are aware of the problem and expect to have it fixed within a day or so.

Thanks for your patience.

Architecting Web sites - Design from the SEO perspective

Posted by Michael Martinez on July 23, 2008 in Advanced SEO, Link Theory

Update (2008-07-25) Gary Lee took this article’s PageRank timeline and made a chart complete with appropriate and/or interesting graphics. Check it out! Thanks, Gary.
In March 2008 I wrote “You need to think in terms of sculpting Web sites, not PageRank”. Shari Thurow suggested to me that it might be better to say, [...]

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