Archive for May, 2009

May28

Gord Hotchkiss

0

Conversations from Northwest Flight 033

“So, what is it you do?” 
Oh no! It was the question I dread. I froze. 
The question was posed by a very nice woman in her mid 50’s who was returning to Bellingham from a one-month trip over to Europe. She was my seatmate on yesterday’s flight back from Amsterdam.  
Since I got into search, I’ve hated that question, mainly because I don’t know how to answer it. I’ve tried several times, and it’s never been a terribly satisfying experience.
There was my mom, who was trying to understand what her eldest child did. I believe really, truly, she asked with the [...]

May21

Gord Hotchkiss

1

A Tale of Two Houses

A Tale of Two Houses 
Gian Fulgoni, Chairman of comScore, and I have a difference of opinion. Actually, it’s not so much a difference as a question of context. He believes there’s room for more visual branding on the search results page. I believe this is a potentially dangerous area that has to be handled very carefully on the part of the engines. This came out during the opening session of Day Two at the recent Search Insider Summit, when I posed a question  two different ways to the audience. First, as marketers, I asked them how many would like to [...]

May19

Jody Nimetz

3

The Importance of On-Page Optimization

Original Post: http://www.marketing-jive.com/2009/05/importance-of-on-page-optimization.html
Well this is something that sometimes online marketers tend to overlook.  On-Page optimization.  I have written about this on a number of occasions, but thought that the time was right to re-explore this topic.  We tend to receive a number of questions about on-page optimization, so it definitely needs further clarification.  We have received questions such as:

Would you know, or be able to find out, approximately how much lift in conversion/page views is usually experienced from optimizing <insert page type here>  pages? and
Do you have any high level data to share regarding the optimization of page content?
Is on-page optimization more [...]

May13

Jody Nimetz

2

7 Things to Know About the Canonical Tag

My previous post on "What is a Canonical URL?", mentioned the use of the recently released (February 2009) canonical tag. The tag itself is pretty easy to use, but we thought that we would share some additional pointers on using the canonical tag.

The canonical tag is applied to the duplicate content URLs.  It is to be placed in the <head> tag of the duplicate pages.  You are simply adding the preferred version of the URL.  You are instructing the engines that these URLs should direct to the preferred URL.
 
Google (and the other major search engines) will understand that [...]

May08

Jody Nimetz

6

What is a Canonical URL?

Lots of discussion about canonicalization and canonical URLs lately.  I’ve discussed URLs and URL structure a few times in the past.  We thought that we would help illustrate the idea of canonical URLs.  From an SEO point of view here is the definition of a canonical URL:
Canonical URL: the search engine friendly URL that you want the search engines to treat as authoritative.  In other words, a canonical URL is the URL that you want visitors to see.
Quite often canonical URLs were used to describe the homepage.  The typical example used is that most people treat the following URLs as the same:
www.example.com
example.com
www.example.com/index.html
example.com/home.asp
The [...]

May07

Gord Hotchkiss

0

Live from Captiva: The Digital Divide

Gian Fulgoni has a better view of the online landscape than most of us. As the CEO of comScore, he has access to a massive database that captures every click of online activity from over 2,000,000 panel members. So when it comes to spotting trends, Gian’s got a pretty good vantage point.
Online Branding for CPG
 
As you’re reading this, Gian’s giving the opening keynote at the Search Insider Summit on Captiva Island in Florida. I’m not sure what Gian will be covering, but he did share a few slides with me and I’m sure they’ll make their way into his keynote. They’re the [...]

May05

Karl Hourigan

0

This article brought to you by…

I’ve read a lot about ads; ads for mobile, ads for Twitter, ads in Facebook, ads on TV, display ads, text ads, ads here, your ad there. Ads are seen as a way – the way – to monetize these media.  
Selling ads is great if you’re in the media bubble. You can sell lots of ads to sellers who want to reach buyers. This marketing trinity is a tried and true win-win arrangement, and I don’t see it going away anytime soon.
 
But let’s set aside the media interests for a minute and consider the other two players in this [...]