Search Engine Optimisation articles is a place for my Search Engine Optimisation musings. Where the seminars tell you how success is achieved with all the detail, the SEO articles give you peeks at the detail. The SEO Articles show you glimpses of the Search Engine World Domination you could achieve for your websites niche.
Search Engine Optimisation Articles (or for the American spellers Search Engine Optimization articles) - Case studies, latest Search Engine Happenings, and insights into the world of SEO.
The post dates go back to 2007, when Michael started SearchMasters. He cut his teeth in SEO when starting an online restaurant booking business in 2002. Jonathan now shares his musings here.
Bee Hive Rental Whanganui – Higher Rankings With infonews
The hive rental pages on Canaan Honey started their life as 8th on Google with the existing strength of the website and proper onpage optimisation. We wanted to get the rankings higher, and so on the 5 May 2018, added…
How to 301 Redirect A Domain Without Hosting
SearchMasters hold over ten domain names that are variations of our name, to protect our namespace. I used to redirect the domain names via my cPanel and Windows Host Manager, however, I prefer to keep the DNS separate from hosting…
Google Reviews Best Practice - Are Reviews Important In Ranking on Google Local?
I am often asked about whether Google My Business reviews will help improve the ranking of a business in Google’s local results. By local results, I am referring to the businesses that appear in a special box at the top…
SearchMasters Website Rebuild with Jekyll
If you have browsed our website before, you would have noticed that the website has been refreshed. Behind the scenes, not only has it been refreshed but we removed the content management system. That’s right, this website does not have…
How to Safely Add Sitewide 301 Redirects
SearchMasters built a tool to crawl the variations that homepage URLs often have, and provide advice based on the results. It has since been taken down, but the advice is still of great use. Potential variations of a domain include…
Check Localised Google Search Results with Google's Ad Preview Tool
SearchMasters’ search engine rank tracking setup consists of a virtual desktop running Advanced Web Ranking (AWR) so that we can make the most of the low subscription fee of AWR desktop vs AWR cloud. For most clients, we run monthly…
SEO Review of Neighbourly Business Directory Listings
Neighbourly launched its business platform in 2015, allowing business to create a listing in the local directory. The directory focuses on connecting local residents to the business by means of the local directory, however, the listings are crawlable by Google…
How to create a Bootstrap exit popup and time delay popup
Over the last few weeks I have been asked by two clients, who each sell the same product but in a different country, to build a popup as a tool to improve conversion on their website. I have built two…
Passionate Young People, Changemakers Tribe at Sort it Expo 2016
Today I was lucky enough to hold a stand at Sort It Expo Palmerston North, to represent Palmy Changemakers Tribe, whom are a part of the National Changemakers Tribe. Changemakers Tribe is all about connecting like minded young people so…
Google Tag Manager Ecommerce Tracking
Analytics ecommerce tracking used to be comparatively easy. Now, Google Tag Manager ecommerce tracking has a vast range of options available and its very easy to get it wrong. This article looks at installation of the code for recording transaction…
Choosing SEO Keywords - Using Google's Keyword Planner
When I first look at a website to potentially optimise, some of the questions I ask myself are “are they specifically targeting a keyword with a page?”, “Are they ranking as expected for that phrase” and “is the phrase ideal…
Heat Pumps Auckland
There is a new entrant to the Heat Pumps Auckland and New Zealand market. Heat Pump Masters heatpump.org.nz is operated by SearchMaster’s Michael Brandon and is a lead generating website for New Zealand heat pump installers. img]/images/heat-pump-masters-auckland.jpg/img] The journey to…
Updating a Godaddy Certificate on cPanel
How do you go about updating a Godaddy certificate on cPanel? I like to have secure email for clients on my servers - secure pop and smtp via mail.smhost.co.nz. So I have a secure certificate with Godaddy that I have…
index.php to root redirects
As well as non www to www redirects, there is a need for redirects from index.php or index.html to the root of a domain. See the redirect check for a customised recommendation for your website. The general rule In SEO,…
Variable Dump - echo all variables in a script
When de-bugging, it is good to know what variables are available at any one part of the script. So I often echo out the variables, sometimes having them showing as html comments on the source of the page so as…
SSH - du - Finding large files
du command to identify the largest folders If you are running a server for multiple sites, you may find you are running out of disk space. One good way to find out what files are large is via ssh root…
Non www to www 301 redirects
With SEO, you need to make sure that you only have one domain with the content of your site. All other domains need to have 301 redirects to the initial domain. Therefore you need Non www to www 301 redirects…
Multiple Robots.txt files
How do you have several sites coming into the one hosting space, and have one with different robots.txt file. Correct usage of the .htaccess file enables multiple robots files. Logic - if accessing via domainb.com/robots.txt, then show the robotsfff.txt file,…
Ionic Isapi Rewriter
Keen for a free ISAPI rewriter? Do you have php on a windows server rather than apache? Then check out this Free Windows ASAPI rewriter - https://archive.codeplex.com/?p=iirf It handles RewriteCond as well as Rewrite, and is great at rewriting url’s…
Getting Google Postcards to Business Addresses
Part of SEO is getting the Google local listing/Google Plus for business active. Many business addresses are shown on the NZ Post address finder page as no postal delivery to that address. There is no obvious way to be able…
Are links on BOTW.org worth it?
Are links on BOTW.org worth it? Based on the poor PR distribution from the BOTW homepage, we do not consider a link from BOTW is worthwhile. Websites need links into their pages. With the demise of article linking as a…
Usernumbers showing in cPanel ResourceMonitor top users reports
I have just moved all my client sites to a new faster dedicated server, and moved from using DirectAdmin, to cPanel. In DirectAdmin, you are able to have longer username’s than the max 8 character usernames in cPanel. I have…
Sharedspace SEO Presentation
I presented SEO101 at a Sharedspace/muli mobile Express Marketing Series presentation this morning 7 June 2013. Three Simple Secrets of Search Engine Optimisation, three starters in the process of properly SEO’ing a website. Alexy Kojevnikov (muli mobile) “A huge thanks…
H1 Heading tags on web pages
Duane Forrester of Bing spoke at the SMX West 2013 SEO Conference. He mentioned an interesting thing about how they treat H1 heading tags, especially in HTML5 documents where you are able to have multiple H1’s. I suggest that Google…
.kiwi.nz Domains Accepted as Domains by Google
In the last week 1-8 February 2013, .kiwi.nz domains have been accepted as domains by Google rather than as subdomains. Rankings on Google that had been suffering are now greatly improving, giving a welcome traffic boost. The acceptance has been…
How popular is Bing in New Zealand
A client asked the question of whether we should be focusing on the Microsoft search engine Bing. So just how popular is Bing in New Zealand? There have been Hitwise search engine market share figures in the past that have…
Wordpress rel=prev / rel=next
I have noticed on my clients wordpress websites, that wordpress as core code is using rel=’prev’ and rel=’next’ on real pages, not just paginated pages. The clients website was not ranking so well and I have wondered whether this was…
What is the best spread for link text
With Google looking so closely at the linking strategies for websites, we need to check what links current top ranking websites have coming into their websites. What is the best spread for link text on incoming links to a website?…
Google Address Verification for Google Plus
Is there NZ Post delivery to your business street address? To get Google Address Verification for Google Plus, they need to send a postcard to your physical address. SearchMasters are moving from our home office to our first commercial premises…
Essential Adds to pages - Google+ and FaceBook
Search Engine Optimisation gets you found in the first place. But social media then tells friends of friends about you, and this can result in far more traffic than SEO alone. If you use Search Engine Optimisation to target a…
Google updates
Google started the year with a bang, issuing webmaster tools notices to hundreds of thousands of websites in January and February 2012. I needed a place to record the exact dates of the updates, so I can better check traffic…
Personalised Search Results on Google
Are you suffering from ‘Personalised Search Results on Google’? Many clients complain about their search results, only to find that their search results have been personalised to rank their competitors higher because they are checking up on their competitors so…
Google places rankings more tied to organic
Google places rankings are being more tied to organic placement than previously with one of the many ongoing changes in Google’s algorithm. Per pagetrafficbuzz Google confirms panda 3.3 Quoting Google, Improvements to ranking for local search results. [launch codename Venice?]…
What search engine do Chinese use?
I have a number of clients that are wanting to target Chinese in China on the search engines. I have therefore needed to know “what search engine do Chinese use” If you go to google.cn, you get a page that…
Should you keep a domain name?
I have just written an email reply to a client where they asked “whether they should keep a domain name. If a domain name is parked, or you have changed brands and have no further need for it, should you…
Best Google Analytics Setup Strategy
I often get asked what is the best Google Analytics setup Strategy. Or I see that web developers have setup Google analytics for their clients using their own web developer account. Google analytics The new Google asynchronous code is able…
Google places address verification issues
There are Google places address verification issues when it comes to commercial addresses. When you first sign up directly with Google places for commercial addresses, Google sends a post card to that address to help verify that the address is…
Nameserver issues
One of my website hosts moved their servers, and in doing so, messed up the ns1/ns2 name servers for a number of domains. When I tried to access the domain in New Zealand, the browser reported that the name server…
How soon can you transfer a domain
How soon are you able to transfer a domain after purchasing it? I have been purchasing a few domains recently, and then wanting to transfer them to another register shortly after initial purchase. I like to have all my domains…
WordCamp Wellington 2011 - Sunday
Sundays presentations at Wellington WordCamp 2011 Te Papa. Jason, Miraz & Jo - Inside WP ? Intro & refresher Remember the Screen Options on edit post/page. You can select which items show on the screen. Yoast has some great plugins…
Speed of CafeNet - outstanding
Wow, CafeNET is outstandingly fast! I am at WordCamp 2011 Te Papa, Wellington and enjoying the outstandingly fast internet connection that CafeNET is providing as part of its sponsorship of the conference. I did a speedtest, and got the following…
Better Google Places rankings
Consider the following for getting better Google Places rankings: fill in all the details on your google places account make sure you have a finda.co.nz listing, and have filled in all the fields (New Zealand) - or the equivalent for…
WordCamp 2011
class=left][images/w640/articles/michael-brandon-searchmasters.jpg lightbox]img]images/w200/articles/michael-brandon-searchmasters.jpg/img])/class]class=left][images/w427/articles/michael-brandon-searchmasters-2.jpg lightbox]img]images/w200/articles/michael-brandon-searchmasters-2.jpg/img])/class] A moment by moment blogging of the speakers and my thoughts at the WordCamp Wellington 2011. I am one of the speakers Speaker Photos on Flickr Notes of Day one The twitter wordcamp 2011 list The finale…
MakeItYourRing Diamond Engagement Rings
The Diamond Engagement Ring search phrase is rather competitive internationally. There are millions to be made from ranking top of Google.com seen from the USA. One company shireeodiz.com is trying to rank higher by sponsoring a well funded international SEO…
SearchMasters wins NZ Search Engine Optimisation Competition
SearchMasters has won New Zealand’s first Search Engine Optimisation challenge. After three months hard effort getting other websites to link to the competition entry, my efforts have proven to be better than over 50 other competitors. The competition has been…
My first phone call from Google
A phone call from Google????!!!! Wow!!! I operate Time2Dine, online restaurant booking, and Google phoned me a moment ago so they could get photos of my “restaurant”. They are updating Google places and including photos of restaurants. Congratulations Google. Well…
Outing websites for hidden links
When you log into webmaster tools, you are able to “out websites for hidden links” and other black hat spam. This has the potential of getting sites that contain hidden links to be removed from the search results. Hiding text…
Tracking Linking Strategies
What are the tools for tracking linking strategies of competitors? Google’s searches show the latest pages added to its index with the following qualifiers: Any time Latest Past 24 hours Past 2 days Past week Past month Past year Custom…
QuadraCentifiable
SearchMasters has won the inaugural New Zealand Search Engine Competition for the phrase “QuadraCentifiable”. The competition ran from 19 August to 28 November 2010. As at 31 August 2010, I wrote the following The battle lines are drawn as to…
NZ SEO Competition
Who is the best at SEO in New Zealand. An NZ SEO Competition has started today, and I have started a new domain NZ http://www.nzseochallenge.co.nz/ for the competition. Actually, it’s not who is the best, but rather who is the…
WordCamp Auckland
Live Blog of WordCamp auckland This page was updated throughout the day. I have been part of the WordCamp Auckland August 2010 Business Time and Developer sessions. I had a slot in the day talking about three simple secrets of…
I am Found
Feeling lost, let God find you. A music video from my friend Craig Thompson. In the business of SEO and web development you come across all sorts. I have worked with Craig Thompson in the USA for a number of…
Technical Interview with Matt Cutts - Crawling and Indexing
I have a lot of respect for Eric Enge and he has put together a great summary of a technical interview with Matt Cutts about Crawling and Indexing. Interview is no longer available at original source (checked March 2018). I…
Country bias in Google Search Results
What bias is there in Google search results to the country you are searching from? My findings are that there is not only a country bias in Google search results, but there is a regional bias. In New Zealand results…
Fickle Google
Fickle Google! Competitive search phrases are not easy to maintain high rankings for given the fickleness of Google. Basic SEO is easy. Just get the right words onto the page, and have the website SEO friendly with plenty of links…
Wellington Wedding Photographer - Haran
Haran Photography last cache date 10 Feb, Google recached on 16 feb, but only showed that cache on the 24 Feb Went from 16th to 13th once it had recached. Looking forward to seeing it steadily increase as the information…
Backlinks can go stale
Matt Cutts says that backlinks can go stale. quote=Matt Cutts]”In order to prevent things from becoming stale, we tend to use the current link graph, rather than a link graph of all of time,” Matt Cutts (Google employee and unofficial…
'Paid Links' can reduce Google PR
Paid links can reduce Google PR. Removal of paid links followed by a reinclusion request can get PR back to what it should be - all within 7 days!. Case Study - SLAMXHYPE I recently consulted with SLAMXHYPE for SEO…
Google Personalised Search
How well does your websites pages rank on Google? Google Personalised Search has gone the next step, introducing personalised search results even for not logged on users. When you are manually checking your websites rankings on Google, if you often…
Christchurch Motels - 162 Kings of Riccarton - SEO Case Study
The hotel industry is intensely competitive, and it is not easy to get websites ranked high for Motel/Hotel related phrases. An SEO case study for 162 Kings of Riccarton Motel. 162 Kings of Riccarton Christchurch Motels - an upmarket Christchurch…
SEO of News websites - BBC makes changes
SEO of news websites is interesting. Headlines and intros need to be catchy and short for readers, yet they are generally too short, and don’t properly include search phrases. The BBC has acknowledged the issue, and has made changes to…
Google Side Wiki
Google side wiki - Did you know that people can publicly comment in html enabled notes attached to your website? When you have the latest Google toolbar installed, you can click to see publicly available notes attached to each and…
Public Relations Agency - ImpactPR - SEO Case Study
Impact PR is an Auckland Public Relations agency whose aim is to utilise the press to bring clients to the mind of their target consumer. Part of that exercise is to bring their own Impact PR website to the mind…
Public Relations Agency, Alexander Communications, SEO Case Study
Alexander Communications is an Auckland Public Relations Agency (no longer in business, checked March 2018) right in the middle of the web 2.0 movement. Reputation management has become ever so much more, how you manage your interaction with media, and…
Maten Floral Design - Auckland Florists - SEO Case Study
Maten Floral Design is a leading Auckland Florist. In a Consumer Magazine survey of a number of online (http://www.consumer.org.nz/reports/florists/florists-we-assessed](Florists) (April 2009), Maten rated the highest 95%. I like Search Engine Optimising websites of businesses that are leaders in their field,…
More international sites in country top ten
I have noticed more international results in the top ten of Google.co.nz recently. I have surmised that Google has been reducing the country bias on Google country searches. I have noticed that for instance, a Google.co.nz for Search Engine Optimisation…
The Elliott Hotel - SEO Case Study
Experience the olde charm of The Elliott Hotel - Auckland Hotels. The Elliott Hotel sits in the heart of the Auckland CBD, right next to the Civic Theatre, SkyCity, and The Edge Aotea Centre. With a refit that has kept…
Link changes
June 2009 is the month for cat out of the bag with use of rel=nofollow on page links. Link changes were made over a year ago in the algo, but not specifically talked about till now by Google. Matt Cutts…
Howick Ltd - SEO Case Study
Howick Ltd is a manufacturer of specialised roll forming machines used for producing steel frames, sidings and roofs for buildings. Their previous web site was a Joomla 1.0 site based on the main built-in template (rhuk_solarflare_ii). Howick came to SearchMasters…
Jooma SEO Case Study
Joomla SEO Case Study - The yesIdo website that we based this on is no longer, but the article about what we did with it is still a good read. The site was built with the Joomla package, and I…
Business Development - yBC - SEO Case Study
yourBusinessChannel have amassed a vast number of Worldwide Business Development experts and put together a world class Business Television channel site featuring short and long video segments. SearchMasters has been honored to be able to SEO a website that itself…
Why have xml sitemaps?
I was asked by a client - Why have an xml sitemap? What advantage is there in having an xml sitemap? So I thought I would point them to a blog post rather than just email them the information. Please…
Metropolitan Christchurch Motel SEO Case Study
The Metropolitan Motel is a luxury executive Christchurch Motel Apartment complex. Built in 2008 it was designed by award winning Architects DDArchitects. From studio rooms with king size beds and spa baths, to one and two bedroom apartments, it is…
Loans 2 Go Case Study
Loans 2 Go is a Christchurch based personal loans, and business loans company servicing most of the South Island. If you are looking for a car loan, or some debt consolidation and live on “mainland” New Zealand, how about giving…
Google titbits Feb 2009
Matt Cutts presented a state of the Index - things done in 2008 at PubCon Vegas. Some of the things that I found interesting from the talk: Better machine translation - I enjoy Google Translate for both pages, and text….
Jekz Shoes SEO Case Study
The Shoe Business Jekz shoes sell the Earth Shoes branded products - womens shoes and mens shoes. Earth Shoes have some fascinating technology. The sole slopes backwards 3.7 degrees, meaning that the toe is slightly higher than the heel. The…
Bounces can be Good - Google should repent for its half story
Google has released an article entitled “Stop Bouncing, Tips for Website Success”. However, they fail to mention that bounces can be good!!! A bounce as measured on a website statistics package like Google Analytics, is where someone only visits one…
Website Geographic Targeting
How does website geographic targeting on Google work? Google has a strong country bias in results that it shows on Google.co.nz, a slightly weaker country bias in results shown on Google.com as seen from New Zealand, and of course, no…
Clearing Apache Log Files
Apache log files can get large. Manually clearing apache log files become essential if there is no automatic clearing as part of the hosting environment. I have a client hosted on their own vps server that was running out of…
Affiliate Marketing Programs
SearchMasters is not just interested in Search Engine Optimising websites. We are interested in getting clients more sales. One way of obtaining more sales is via affiliate marketing programs. Before you get other people to promote your business, make sure…
Econergy Heat Pump Water Heaters SEO Case Study
Econergy? heat pump water heaters heat hot water using heat transferred from the air via a refrigeration cycle. As it does not have to create this heat it is remarkably efficient. Heating hot water electrically usually accounts for the largest…
Healthaire Heat Pumps SEO Case Study
Healthaire is an Auckland/Christchurch based heat pump manufacturer and installer. I like working with businesses that consider themselves best in their business. The owner Curtis has all the facts and figures as to why their home ventilation system has better…
mysql - CREATE VIEW command denied to user
I am transferring my clients sites from a shared hosting to vps, and had the following MySQL 5.0.51a database error: CREATE VIEW command denied to user A quick Google told me that there are issues with permissions and upgrading between…
Revize Corneal Refractive Therapy - SEO Case Study
Rather than Laser Eye Surgery, consider Corneal Refractive Therapy from Revize. Corneal Refractive Therapy involves wearing specially customised contact lenses while you sleep. These reshape your eye and after a few nights of wearing them, you are able to achieve…
Septic Tanks - Dave Miller SEO Case Study
In need of an independent Septic Tank specialist? Dave Miller Environmental Engineers specialise in [http://www.davemiller.co.nz]Septic Tanks) and other sewage and wastewater treatment systems. With any Search Engine Optimisation job, there is the question of how much work you should do…
To the top is not instantaneous - be patient
Goal - SearchMasters Top Ten on Google.co.nz for “Marketing” SearchMasters will rank top ten for “Marketing” on Google.co.nz by 31/12/08 and as at 16/10/08, I am THIRD. Out of all the marketing and PR companies of New Zealand, out of…
7 SEO Basics
I have just been asked “What are the SEO Basics?”. What are the basic things that must be done to get a web page listed on the search engines? The following is my email reply to them. I thought it…
Deer Velvet - Canes Deer Products - SEO Case Study
Canes Deer Farm produces and retails quality Deer Antler Velvet from their Central North Island Farm. Like many business owners, they are passionate about their product, and have added a lot of research material onto their website. When I was…
SEO for Affiliate Schemes
How do you SEO for Affiliate Schemes? SEO of websites that have links to ClickBank, Amazon, eBay, Template Monster etc. Part 2 in the Series, about how Search Engine Optimisation Practitioners need experience. I started the series with discussion about…
SEO - what you learn from experience
class=articlex]*Can you trust an SEO who has only been in the profession 6 months? Can you trust an SEO who has only optimised a handful of websites? SEO - What you learn from experience. * Michael Brandon of SearchMasters. “I…
Pulse IT - SEO Case Study
Pulse IT are Computer Support specialists based in Auckland and servicing clients nationwide. They are the computer services and outsourced IT department of many leading New Zealand companies. I have enjoyed working with Ryan Balemi (Pulse IT founder and Managing…
Organic Skin Care - SEO Case Study BeeWild
The Davidson’s are beekeepers offering Organic Skin Care and Natural Remedies based on their innovations and research into honey bees. The business is of special interest to me given that my Father is also a passionate beekeeper, as was our…
New Zealand Engineering Jobs - SEO Case Study - Refocus
Refocus Recruitment are New Zealand Engineering jobs specialists. They are a top class Auckland agency that we have enjoyed working with. We were presented with an old looking website that was not well SEO’ed, and the jobs available were not…
Catamaran - ArrowCat Power Catamarans
Cruising with the ArrowCat Power Catamaran. And looking forward to seeing them cruising up the search results for boats for sale and other phrases once Google recaches the pages. The ArrowCat Power Catamaran is a dream boat - sleeps up…
Sites disappearing from Google
Meta description copied 17 timesSite 12th to 93rd. Well SEO’ed sites are continuing to disappear from Google - Sites disappearing from Google when other websites copy meta descriptions and words on pages. Clients sites are moving from good rankings to…
Architectural Design - Tarzan Design - SEO Client
Saturday afternoon at a friends place, I could not not help myself. Yes, I know, I can be sad. A fellow self employed professional mate Ian Shere but with a website that didn’t have the SEO pedantics applied to it….
Arrowfield Arrowtown Apartments-SEO Case Study
Arrowfield Apartments are luxury Arrowtown Accommodation within a few minutes drive of the tourist mecca of Queenstown New Zealand. The importance of Search Phrase Selection I was asked to SEO the website, and my first thought was - “Why” -…
The definition of an SEO - Team!
The definition of an SEO - “There is no ‘I’ in Team, nor in SEO” - SEO is an orchestra. Please click through and read. I subscribe to SEO Articles from ientry and every so often comes a gem! Please…
Google keywords tools updated
Google keywords tools updated 8 July 2008. Yippeee. We now have approximate traffic numbers on the Google Keywords Tools that we use for our Search Phrase Selection. Official notification was per the Google blog Keyword tool updated with search volume…
Develop the skills of the ICT practitioner-David Cunliffe
David Cunliffe says New Zealand needs to “Develop the skills of the the ICT practitioner”. I whole heartedly agree, and add my specific flavour, that one of those skills is that ICT professionals internet marketing abilities need to be further…
eBay Sniping Tools - Hotsniper SEO Case Study
New Zealanders take on the world - the Hotsniper eBay Sniping Tools are the dreamchild of Daniel Feenstra. Frustrated by losing out on eBay auctions by moments, he created a system that bids at the last moment on eBay, and…
Three Way Linking Strategies
How do you get safe inbound links? Three way linking strategies are one way of safely getting inbound links. I am working with a number of clients that have done the basics right, but are in competitive industries. They need…
International Shipping Companies - SEO Case Study
class=right]img]downloads/articles/Europac.jpg/img] img]downloads/articles/Ausmove.jpg/img] img]downloads/articles/britishshipping.jpg/img]/class]Euro Pacific, Ausmove and British Shipping are International Shipping Companies specialising in moving people to Australia, the UK and Europe. A great way of targeting different markets is to have separate websites for each market. Its also a…
Linking strategies - Dan Thies
Quote from link building class week 2 ? Aggressive ? 60-70% general, 30-40% text links ? Conservative ? 10-20% text, 80-90% general links Very interested that there is only 30-40% text links. That is real low. ? Analyze the competition…
Carbon Fiber Manufacturer - Rivers Carbon - SEO Case Study
Looking for a carbon fiber manufacturer - try RiversCarbon of New Zealand. RiversCarbon do a large amount of research and development into carbon fiber applications, then manufacture with their large autoclave. RiversCarbon work for many industries including the automotive industry,…
SEO analysis of Interest.co.nz
A free SEO analysis of Interest.co.nz - Bernard Hickey was the first speaker at the Interactive Marketing Summit. His mantra was Google Google Google. So lets see how well the SEO has been done on Interest.co.nz. Ranking for interest rates…
Relative power of Zoomin v Finda v SearchMasters
We have recently SEO’ed Riverglade Bed and Breakfast in Hamilton for the phrase including “Hamilton Bed and Breakfast”, and listed them on Zoomin for and Finda. All the listings were around 8 May 2008. It is rather interesting to see…
Interactive Marketing Summit 26-5-08
Brightstar Interactive Marketing Summit - Hyatt Regency Auckland Blogging notes as I hear and digest it at the Interactive Marketing Summit, and now edited the day after. My conference fee has been sponsored by the conference chair Simon Young of…
Google snippets for blogs
Google sometimes uses post dates for its Google snippets for blogs. Yes, its been around for a while, but I had thought that Google was just creating a snippet because I had no meta descriptions. I saw a comment come…
What is an SEO - Programming, HTML, Marketing, Management
http://www.webproworld.com/search-engine-optimization-forum/69174-where-place-search-engine-optimization-profession.html
Hamilton Bed and Breakfast - Riverglade - SEO Case Study
bed and breakfast closed may 2010 Hamilton Bed and Breakfast). This riverside Hamilton B&B has the Waikato river in its back yard. The house is a restored 1926 Homestead, with 5 luxury furnished rooms, all with ensuites. The phrases around…
Press Release - SEO Seminars
Press release as reported in Business to Business - http://www.btob.co.nz/article/mastering-search Mastering the Search So how can you Master Search Engine Optimisation? Come to the seminars/ on 19 May, and the SEO workshop 20 May and learn how you can get…
Online Backup Software - File Vault - SEO Case Study
File Vault is automated online backup software for your personal computer. I have enjoyed SEO’ing the website, and trialling the service. My Trial of the Backup Software I have an ongoing trial of the FileVault service and quite enjoy it….
SEO Training Seminars - countdown to 19 May 2008
The seminars/ countdown to 19 May - Learn more about Search Engine Optimisation at a SearchMasters seminar on 19 May and put your learning into action at an SEO workshop on the following day. We even have an Australian and…
Online Yellow Pages Listing - is it worthwhile?
So just how successful has a Gold Priority online Yellow Pages listing been for SearchMasters? I didn’t need the business, but I was keen to try a listing on the online Yellow Pages. I wanted to know for my clients…
Childrens Toys - Out to Shop - SEO Case Study
This article was updated on the 9th of September, 2015 The Out to Shop websites are a group of osCommerce Children’s Toys, Kids Toys and Educational Toys shops. The business has been around since 1999 and the site has had…
Contact Lenses Online - SEO Case Study - Contacts2Go
Contacts2Go is an online contact lens retailer offering a wide range of non prescription and prescription contact lenses. Some of these include Coloured Contact Lenses, Bifocal Contact Lenses, Disposable Contact Lenses. With some changes to wording on the pages, and…
Debt Consolidation - SEO Case Study - The Lending Room
The Lending Room is a brokering company for Debt Consolidation and Refinancing Loans, Car Loans, Boat Loans and personal loans. The website is being a real challenge to get ranked high on Google given that the search phrases are ones…
Auckland Optometrists - Carlisle Mason - SEO Case Study
The power of words! Just by adding the phrases Auckland Optometrists, and the locations of each of the Carlisle Mason Optometrist clinics, we were able to get some top 10 rankings on Google. Strength of index page While we have…
Google Webmaster Central Live Chat
Sadly I missed the first ever Google Webmaster Central Live Chat (transcript). At 5am on Saturday morning NZT after I had just got home from a school camp… However, there is a good transcript of the 1 hour session on…
Auckland Storage - Space Station Storage - SEO Case Study
With over 900 units, Auckland Storage company Space Station Storage is one of the largest self storage facility in New Zealand. They have Auckland Safe Deposit Boxes and an Auckland Document Management Service, as well as general, car and boat…
Digital Hearing Aids - Bay Audiology - SEO Case Study
Bay Audiology has over 45 Hearing Clinics around New Zealand. Many clients choose digital hearing aids to improve their hearing. Being a large group, they are able to have a central office to help with recruitment and management, and are…
Matt Cutts -banning sites
Matt Cutts Said, November 19, 2007 @ 12:54 am Thanks for weighing in, everyone. I especially appreciate the well-thought-out comments. Lots of people say that they don’t mind snark, but a lot of commenters also urged me not to get…
Dallas Jazz Bands - Big T Music - SEO Client
BigT-Music.com had plenty of inbound links, but no onpage SEO. It needed to rank for the following phrases: Dallas Jazz Bands, Dallas Party Bands … So just how effective is onpage SEO - actually adding the phrases to the pages,…
Optimizing for Google Local Search
With the advent of Google Local Search, optimizing for top ten on the organic search engine results is no longer enough. Google Local has just started appearing on a number of the Google search results, especially when a location name…
Social Bookmarking for Links and Traffic
I have been considering the use of Social Bookmarking for links and traffic. It is becoming hard to obtain links. And there is not necessarily that much traffic through Google for any one group of search phrases. What other methods…
Holiday Homes in New Zealand - SEO Case Study
When you next plan for a holiday, consider Holiday Homes in New Zealand rather than a hotel or camping ground. In fact, I am planning a midyear holiday and might just use the site for obtaining some accommodation. ##An impressive…
Google Hates Paid Links
Original post 8 Sep 07-Updated 12 Feb 08-see posted reply Google hates paid links - per the Paid Link Search Engine Strategy presentation by Matt Cutts San Jose Aug 21, 2007 class=> * Buying paid links that pass PageRank violates…
JOJO VARIABLES
$page->getValue(‘pageid’)
or
[$page->page’pageid’]
In Smarty, these are all available as is eg
{$pageid}
How to write for SEO? Learn more
class=right]img]images/default/thesearchmasterssecrets.gif/img]/class]How to write for SEO - three simple secrets I run an SEO course SEO101, where I teach Three Simple Secrets of SEO: Search Phrase Selection Search phrases added to the Head of an html page Search phrases added to…
Writing for SEO - change your pages wording frequently!
Writing for SEO - I am getting annoyed! Websites are copying my websites text, and my clients websites are being dropped by Google. It is making it very hard to have good writing for SEO. You have to do your…
How popular is Google???
class=right]img=Googles search dominance]images/default/graph-of-googles-search-dominance.gif/img]/class]Just how popular is Google??? Google’s popularity as the worlds search engine of choice, continues to climb. (Updated based on November 2007 results compared to my May 2007 article that reported on April 2007 results) For USA users,…
Ladder Accessories - Stabilad - SEO Case Study
How do you market a new innovative Ladder Accessories product? The Stabilad is a simple but effective add-on to the top of an aluminium ladder. It transforms the safety and ease of using extension ladders. Click through to find out…
SEO interview questions
SearchMasters is likely to expand in the new year, so finding some SEO interview questions is all good, or is it? My problem with such SEO interview questions, is that I am unlikely to find ANYONE who is good enough…
Auckland Renovations Experts-Beacon Construction-SEO Client
Part of my job is training other Web Developers. Beacon Construction is an Auckland renovations specialist. An Auckland Building Company specialising in http://www.beaconconstruction.co.nz/ homes on the North Shore Auckland. Etienne Le Sueur of Jet-age.co.nz had been asked to optimise the…
Supplemental Results no More
Google supplemental results are no more. Google announced on its Webmaster Central Blog 20/12/07- The ultimate fate of supplemental results, that they are now searching the whole index for each query. There used to be a separate “supplemental index” and…
SEO of Subdomains v Domains
An algo change has occurred with the SEO of Subdomains v Domains. Matt Cutts posted 10 December 2007 that http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/subdomains-and-subdirectories/ were less likely to show up for a search where they were competing for the same search phrase as its…
What does SearchMasters Look Like???
What does SearchMasters look like? What will it look like a year from now? I have been sitting on this article for several months. Since its now the end of the year, its an appropriate time to do some future…
Queenstown Accommodation - LakeRidge Condos SEO Client
Lake Ridge Condos are Luxury Queenstown Apartments. They getting good traffic from Google Adwords advertising, but had little traffic from the organic results on Google. With a view over the lake and mountains of Queenstown, LakeRidge Condos are the Luxury…
Duplicate Content Experiment
I wrote an article in August about How to Kick a website out of Google. The SearchMasters page has been top of Google for that phrase. As a duplicate content experiment, I have now created a copy of that article…
Google Geographic Targeting - new tool
How does Google Geographic Targeting work??? There is a new Google webmaster tool that allows you to Geographically target your website to users of a particular country, or area within that country. Google - Geographic Target Tool, and locations within…
Production Services New Zealand - SEO Client
How easy is it to rank for Production Services New Zealand on Google? How easy is it to rank for the other orientation - New Zealand Production Services??? With a few tweaks on the home page we were able to…
Google Lowers Page Rank on Many Websites
Google is lowering the Green Bar on websites that are selling links - or so that seems to be the reason. The SEO blogging world is buzzing with the news. 26 October 2007]. And the official Google Blog post about…
Google Sitelinks
Webmasters now have more control over the Google Sitelinks that appear on top results for some websites (18 Oct 2007). While we are not able to tell Google what links we would like there (completely automated), we are able to…
How Good is your Onpage SEO?
Just how good is your onpage SEO for a search phrase? Google has introduced some analysis tools for Adwords. There is a quality indicator as part of the Adwords algorithm. If your page is defined as relevant for the search…
Rowan Simpson - ex Trademe - WDANZ Auckland Conference
Leverage the strengths of the web How did trademe get so big not advertising like Ferrit (unsuccessful) viral - ie the Tana Umunga handbag make something that people like - and will tell others Be remarkable - has to be…
Paul Webster - Google - WDANZ Conference
Paul Webster, Google NZ rep “Senior Sales manager” - focus on Google Adwords/Adsense But he did give a broad picture of Google Talking about Google Gadget ads - very cool ideas can track mouse overs igoogle - personalised search page…
New Zealand Arts & Craft Shops - CraftyArts - SEO
Want a Sunday outing? Check out the New Zealand Arts and Craft Shops listed on Crafty Arts. Another fun client. The SEO was that much easier given that it was in the JoJo http://www.jojocms.org. So what were the search phrases?…
Matt Cutts interview- Links, Robots.txt,s, noindex
If there ever was a groundbreaking tell all interview about links, robots.txt,s and noindex, then this one by Eric Enge with Matt Cutts is one! Have a good read, and re read. Matt Cutts and Eric Enge- 24 Sep 2007…
New Zealand Immigration Medicals - NZimed
NZimed is an innovative fast track online New Zealand Immigration Medical service. While they will get substantial business from being a Government approved service, search engine rankings will also bring substantial traffic. So what does it take to get to…
Auckland Apartments - City Sales - SEO
City Sales specialises in Auckland Apartments - Auckland Apartment Sale, Auction and Rental. They are New Zealand’s largest Apartment real estate company. class=right]img=Auckland Apartments - City Sales]downloads/articles/auckland-apartments-city-sales.jpg/img]/class]When Telecom decided to have some fun with emails, the Telecom hosted mailing script…
Google Page Rank Update-Sept 07-When will it happen?
When will Google next update the toolbar Google Page Rank??? The Google Toolbar record of page rank is normally updated every three months. Internally, it is said to be continually recalculating it. However, the three month cycle was due 21…
Do 302 redirects pass Google PR???
If there ever was uncertainty about it, it must now be clear. Do 302 redirects pass Google PR? No. Matt Cutts in his Search Engine Strategies San Jose Aug 21 2007 conference speech mentioned: Clear disclosure to machines - won’t…
Search Engine Optimisation Resources
Web wanderings help find Search Engine Optimisation Resources. The following are pages that I have come across around the web recently. The old favorite Matt Cutts, the Google anti spam employee and Google Guy who is one of the unoffical…
How many characters in the title?
*Just how many characters in the title does Google show? Is it 70 or 71? * Google has been playing around with the number of characters that it shows in the title on search results. I have recently seen that…
How to kick a website out of Google
If you had been to my seminars you would have heard it - “How to kick a website out of Google” - this is big news that is just hitting the blogzone. But please read the following article on how…
The Google Benefits of a Press Release
class=right]img=Press Releases - PRWe**images/default/prweb_logo.gif/img]/class]So what are the Google Benefits of a Press release? Links links and more links get you to the top of the Search Engines. Press releases like PRWeb.com are an interesting way of being able to get…
Different sandbox period on Google.com
There seems to be a different sandbox period on Google.com. A classic case in point is the rankings of SearchMasters for the phrase “Search Engine Optimisation”. On Google.co.nz I rank third, but on Google.com, I rank below my NZ competitors….
Top Schools - SEO Client
The Top Schools in America. Well, its a range of Top Schools that I can get affiliate income on. SEO companies should be having their own $ websites. If we are good, then we might as well do it for…
NoCowboys - SEO Client
NowCoyboys have a large review site written as a custom-built PHP application. They had been getting SEO services from a large SEO firm, but the focus had been more on Google adwords. There were many opportunities available for essential tweaks…
Ongoing SEO education-Matt Cutts at Wordcamp
How to we get ongoing SEO education? By every word that comes from the lips of Matt Cutts - Google Employee/SEO spokesperson! Reading between the lines, hearing reports of his seminars, reading his Matt Cutts blog. And before you get…
Cpanel Freetype2 installation
With a new Cpanel/WHM VPS, there are a few things to work through. One is Cpanel Freetype2 installation. I have a captcha code on a number of my pages, and they were not working. Yes, I had GD graphics installed,…
New Zealand Hosting
New Zealand Hosting - its faster for NZ access, and the easiest way to get a .com shown high google.co.nz. SearchMasters recommends Hosting Direct. They have New Zealand shared hosting, reseller, New Zealand VPS hosting, and dedicated. Note that Freeparking…
ALGIM Rotorua Conference 2007
I was honoured to be invited to attend the Association Of Local Government Information Management Inc (http://www.algim.org.nz/) Web Symposium at Rotorua 16 June 2007. I presented my SEO101 Three Simple Secrets seminar, customised to local Government. Very well received. Day…
Building Website traffic
How do you build website traffic and make a website pay its way? I have just read an excellent article on SEO and Blogging Success Story : Diabetes Blog Earns $40K per Year. It is full of interesting tips on…
Redirecting index.php to Root using htaccess
How to redirect index.php to root… One of the ground rules for successful SEO is to have only one url for each page. We need to combine all the Google PR and link power into one url. Typically, the index…
Boat propeller design - SEO client
New boat propeller design. Our client in Timaru has come up with a way to make the traditional boat propeller a whole lot more efficient, meaning faster boat speed, better fuel efficiency and less noise. We would love to see…
Google Collateral Damage
Is there Google collateral damage with the ever changing Google Algorithm? The New York Times was let into the inner sanctum of Google and reported back in their article Google Keeps Tweaking its Search Algorithms. As always, tweaking and quality…
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy HBOT prolonged the life of Wayne Reynolds following complications with his fight against leukaemia. He lives on through the work of the Wayne Reynolds Trust. They are seeking donations to enable others to benefit from HBOT treatment….
Google Humour
The funnies go around in the emails. There are some questions that can’t be answered by Google caught my eye. I am both a Google fanatic and believer in God. Google can’t save the soul, although I have used it…
Clicking on Adsense Ads
Ahhh!!!! Clicking on Adsense Ads when they are your own is a no no. What’s going to happen? Are you going to get banned from the Google Adsense program? Maybe you better tell them so they don’t ban you? The…
'Legal' positioning of Adsense Ads
Positioning of Adsense ads is a tricky one. Adsense ads need to be prominently seen and on clickable locations on the page. But they should not be located where users get confused that its part of that sites content. Google…
Search Engine Room Conference Mar 07
SearchMasters took the plunge across the ditch and went to the Search Engine Room March 2007 two day conference. What did I learn: that many other web developers have issues with getting the larger corporates to actually do SEO -…
Flash SEO
Another client, another type of site to SEO. Flash websites are interesting in that they often only have one url for the search engines. Flash SEO is a challenge with some interesting solutions. SEO for Flash How about getting all…
XML Sitemaps
Rand Fishkin interviews Vanessa Fox of Google’s Webmaster Central - SearchMasters highlights Vanessa’s mention of XML Sitemaps. What are XML Sitemaps, and how can XML Sitemaps be used to help search engines spidering of your websites. XML Sitemaps The main…
Transferring a website to a new domain name
So your business name has changed or for some reason you need to transfer a website to a new domain name. So what is the best way to transfer your website? What are the issues involved with such a transfer?###…
Page Rank Hoarding
Google Webmaster Tools and Page Rank HoardingGoogle’s Vanessa Fox was interviewed by Rand Fishkin 12 April 2007. One of the items mentioned regarded Page Rank Hoarding and how the Google Webmaster tools showed incoming links. So what is Page Rank…
WebSites in turmoil
Is your website in turmoil??? A number of websites are not ranking well. Traffic way down, earnings down. This is mainly due to many pages being in Google’s supplemental index and so the sites not getting the long tail of…
Matt Cutts site hacked???
Has the Google antispam search employee Matt Cutts site been hacked or is is just an elaborate April Fools day prank??? Update 3rd April - Actually - it was an elaborate April fools day prank. April 1st is an ideal…
How to be seen as an SEO Expert
SearchMasters is a relatively new business and we are learning “How to be seen as an SEO expert”. So while leafing through my emails, the following article took my interest - 5 Principles for SEO Success by Eric Enge of…
Travel.com.au - Bad SEO Case Study?
Travel.com.au was one of the case studies at the Search Engine Room Search Engine Optimisation Conference in Sydney 20-21 March 2007. They say that they have boosted their unique visits by more than 30%. Now a search engine conference should…
What does an SEO consultant do?
So just what are some of the many tasks that SEO Consultants do??? Yes, getting clients sites higher on the search engines. Yes, picking search phrases, rewording pages, reprogramming sites for SEO friendliness, getting links…. training clients so that they…
Search Personalisation
One of the latest additions to the SearchMasters training has been regarding Search Personalisation. Gord Hotchkiss interviewed Matt Cutts about Search Personalisation 2 Mar 07. With SEO it is hard to know what we are trying to get to the…
How best to SEO a clients existing site
A client has approached you to SEO their website. The question - How best to SEO a clients existing website. You know the theory, but with the 1000 pages on their website, how do you go about making the changes…