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. But its also about Google including other language pages in its search results, and showing a translation of them. More significant for non English searches. Better voice recognition - indexing of videos? Improving personalisation and...
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 shoes are more comfortable when standing and walking/running long periods. Your posture is better with the shoes, leading to better muscle development and back alignment. Why SEO Jekz spent up large on a fantastic looking...
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 page on your website before going to another website. If you have a directory website, and people find what they are looking for on that one page ranked top of Google, then they don’t need...
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 country bias when looking at Google.com as seen from the USA via a proxy. The same is obviously true for any country searches. If your website is a non country domain (ie .com, .org, .info,...
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 disk space. I used the ssh command via putty: du -sh * showed a summary, in human-readable form, of total disk space used for each file and directory in the current directory, including subdirectories. I...
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 that your own website is properly optimised. You do not want affiliates to be outranking you on Google for your own search phrases. Or maybe you would like a cheap way of search engine optimising...
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 portion of the household electricity bill so it is here that the largest savings can be achieved. Heat pump water heaters are a form of solar heating as the sun heats the air. They generally...
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 air flow, better pumps, air filters… Click through and find out why you need one of the HealthAire Heat pumps installed in your home! The competitors in the market place have big franchises and marketing...
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 MySQL versions. The solution: use putty to ssh to your vps/dedicated server Don’t try connecting to the MySQL database, just issue the following command at the normal ssh command line: mysql_upgrade Presto, I tried the...
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 20/20 vision. Carlisle Mason have two Revize clinics in Auckland - Mt Roskill and St Heliers. Check out their Corneal Refractive Therapy Revize website now. SEO’ing the CMS SearchMasters had already worked with better SEO’ing...
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 on a website? On a 38+ page website, do you optimise every page? If the titles are the same on most pages, do you make them all unique? Do you fix all the html validation...
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 all the web development and SEO businesses in New Zealand, SearchMasters is top ten (and this article may create more competition for ourselves). This is not so much a brag, as a case study 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 might be easier in the future to have a post I could just refer people to… These are the REAL basics. I could write for hours on the more complicated stuff. So here goes: 7...
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 first approached, business owner Kathy Cane explained how a number of search engine optimisation quotes for the website involved moving the website totally from the existing content management system. That is totally not how SearchMasters...
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 how you can’t trust an SEO practitioner who has had only 6 months experience. I have been in the industry for 6 years - since September 2002. Article one talked about my experiences with the...