Archive for “SEO Important”

The following entries were made in the “SEO Important” category.


The New Accessigooglability

Posted January 20th, 2008 by Mike Cherim

If you told someone they could lose weight if they quit smoking, would they be in the wrong or, worse, be a bad person, to quit smoking for the sole purpose of losing weight? Let’s examine: Losing excess weight is a good thing, and so is quitting smoking, right? So does their motivation leave something to be desired? I strongly suspect most of you wouldn’t care one way or the other. The net result will be the same, the benefits will be realized regardless of their reasoning, and nobody will be hurt by their choice. It’s seems that the motivation is actually sort of irrelevant.

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An Offset Content Penalty?

Posted June 14th, 2007 by Mike Cherim

I want to do the right thing regarding accessibility and usability, but I don’t want to be viewed as some unethical search whore in the process.

Google handles search abuse reports on sites by compiling the submitted and discovered data, then adjusting their search algorithms to counter the identified abuse method next time around. This is an effective method of dealing with abuse and violations it seems — the most practical method, anyway. As an example, abuse such as using the style sheet display property “none” to hide a slew of links was reported to or discovered by Google, and now their algorithms can identify this type of index-inducing violation and respond accordingly.

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Optimizing WordPress for Search Engines

Posted April 10th, 2007 by Mike Cherim

I’ve written about the natural marriage between WordPress and Search Engines and what to do to enhance it before, but I wanted to offer something a bit more definitive and specific this time around. I think I have finally tweaked my practices to the point I don’t think they can really be improved upon. I think so, anyway. I will provide copy-and-paste scriptlets in order of importance — especially useful to WordPress theme developers. But before I do, there are some things you need to know if you don’t already.

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Blogging and Business

Posted April 4th, 2007 by Mike Cherim

If you were to ask your typical business owner if they plan to add a web log or “blog” to their web site the last answer you’d probably get is an emphatic “yes.” Instead you might get a quizzical look, a frown and a scoff, or even an emphatic “no” instead. That’s a shame because a blog has the power to increase the main site’s traffic, page rank, and general appeal — it can even stand alone and be the site. Blogging is a powerful communication medium if the right software is used, it’s properly designed and maintained, and it’s put to use. Let’s take a closer look:

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Enhancing the WordPress Title Element

Posted February 5th, 2007 by Mike Cherim

I have written about page titles in WordPress before, but when I made my new theme I found another alternative. I feel this method provides slightly better results across a wider range of installations.

In the header.php file you need to look for the title element. It looks like this: <title></title>, but this is the element only, shown without its content. What you’ll probably see is this code (on one line):

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How to Write Content for the Web

Posted January 23rd, 2007 by Mike Cherim

Writing for the web is said to be different from writing for print; and writing for the web is said to be no different from writing for print. Yes, two contradictory points of view between which, I suspect, lies the real answer. It’s not that I’m undecided or trying to be democratic by taking the middle ground, but rather it’s what I’ve deduced. I’ve written for both media so I do have some experience, but of more importance is that I’ve read from both media. You see, the mystery can be solved I think by examining not the writing, but the reading.

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The Art of Brain Cell Domination

Posted January 5th, 2007 by Mike Cherim

In your head, right now, is a brain cell for each and every product and service in the entire world. Just one measly brain cell for each, but in a business’s marketing struggle, it’s a vitally important one. It’s the brain cell marketers want to capture, to trap, to win and own, to totally dominate. It’s a signature of their marketing success — or your marketing success if you’re in business for yourself and have your own product or service to purvey. To win over a consumer’s brain cell is to win in that market, or at least victory is imminent. This is next to the ultimate goal; the ultimate goal will be identified later in this article.

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WordPress Titles & Descriptions for SEO

Posted November 5th, 2006 by Mike Cherim

I recently made some modifications to this blog to help get its articles indexed more quickly (for SEO reasons), to help users identify one article or page from the next with greater ease, and to make it easier for people to Digg articles, mark them in Ma.gnolia, etc. If you see your browser’s title bar you’ll now notice that the individual article pages show the name of the article more clearly, and on the “blog pages” the position of the page name is better. You’ll also see I modified the title separators. These modification also apply to the META “description” as I tried to make them more distinctive as well (good article titles help). It was pretty simple. Here’s what I did and how can do it, too.

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Preparing a Website for SEO Success

Posted October 20th, 2006 by Mike Cherim

Building a website and wanting it to be found and indexed by search engines, like most things in life, requires a little preparation. In this article I will offer some suggestions on what developers need to consider and do. I’ll also offer some suggestions for the site’s owner/client. Getting to the top of Google, for instance, isn’t as difficult as, say, swimming the English Channel, and is really quite doable, but it won’t happen by itself. The developer needs to make sure the site is designed for this purpose — in addition to its primary roles — and the client needs to give it a little push in the right direction. In case you’re wondering, this doesn’t involve unethical or underhanded practices, nor does it involve magic or a small fortune. Preparation, sound practices, and a little dedication to the cause is all that’s required.

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