I'm Jeremy Morgan, a Web Developer / SEO from Portland Oregon. For the last 15 years I've developed websites for everything from one person garage businesses to Fortune 100 corporations. I share what I've learned over the years to help other web professionals be successful on the web.
Having a fast website has tons of advantages. Besides being better for SEO and getting crawled by search engines, it’s without a doubt better for your visitors. So here I will give a list that will explore some free ways to make your website faster.
This is a simple introduction to XSLT, or eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformation. This is an easy way to apply styles and formatting to XML files.
A couple weeks ago I wrote about Google changing it’s algorithm to combat “content farms”, and it’s arguably the most talked about news in the SEO industry this year. It’s effects are being felt, from actual content farms to ordinary legitimate sites. This brings up an important question: should we be relying on SEO for revenue at all?
If you haven’t heard or read the name “Charlie Sheen” last week, congratulations on managing to seal yourself away from all media. His very public breakdown has been all everyone is talking about. His all out, reckless self promotion is working great, but is it a good business approach?
Yesterday Google announced a significant update to their algorithm, which they say will affect 11.8% of their queries. The update is designed to “reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful.” Basically it looks like they’re taking aim at “content farms”. So what does this update mean for you? It could be good news.
While there may be a sucker born every minute, there’s also a scamming SEO company born every minute. These companies pop up everywhere and usually end up emailing you or calling you on the phone. They look up domain registry information and contact people every day, and some of them are very good. Good at ripping you off that is.
What’s the perfect domain name for your site? Chances are it’s already been taken. The great domain names were taken up in the 90s, and a few gold mines were found in the last 10 years, but not many. So people have all kinds of silly domain name ideas, and I’m going to offer some quick advice on it.
“Everything that can be invented has been invented” -Charles Duell, Commissioner of US Patent Office, 1899
Surely you’ve ran across this quote before, and probably had a laugh about it. And since he likely didn’t tweet this from his iPhone while driving his Smart Car, he was also wrong. But his quote has some truth to it today. Everything we realistically want and need is here. Of course there will be some breakthrough products that change the way we do things, but for the most part we’re a pretty satisfied bunch. Succeeding in business is tougher than ever, because everything we need is already here, for the most part. So how to we move forward?
It’s been confirmed by Bing and Google that Twitter and Facebook can help your search rankings. This is something SEOs have speculated about and known for quite some time. But how does it really affect your rankings?
If you’ve ever posted a link to Facebook, you know that it brings up a thumbnail image for that page (sometimes) and it chooses them from random images on the page. Sometimes you’ll only have one to choose from, sometimes hundreds. But you may want a specific image to show when you post that link, and Facebook has provided a way to do that. But if you’re using WordPress it’s not simple HTML hack like with other pages, but it’s still really easy. I’ll show you how.
You stroll into a restaurant, get seated at your table, chatting with friends. You bring up your mobile phone and load up Foursquare, GoWalla, or Facebook Places and “Check in”. Now all your contacts on these networks and/or your Facebook friends know you are enjoying a nice orange chicken at P.F. Chang’s. But does anyone really care? And as a marketer, do you really care about the people who are doing this?
Many of you likely read the “Decor my Eyes” horror story earlier this week. And I’m guessing most if not all of you read that and got upset. Gaming the search engines is for nefarious purposes is bad enough, but gaming the search engine by using nefarious tactics is even worse. So that’s why I’m thrilled to post the happy ending to this story.
People email me frequently and ask the same question over and over again. How can I make social media work for my business? It’s a great question without a really solid answer. I can’t give you the exact formula for success, but I can tell you how to fail with Social Media. The formula for that is simple.
Lately I’ve been talking a lot with a couple friends about SEO. Both are really smart guys who are trying to break in the web development biz. And naturally they want some help with SEO and getting friends to their site. And both have mentioned how hard it is to find good information on the [...]
Ever wanted to know the secret to getting people to notice you online? How can you get more people reading your blog, following your tweets, or subscribing to your newsletter? How do you position yourself to attract the crowds? The answer might surprise you.
