Hey, you’re new. We like you already! You obviously have great taste! If you like what you read here you’ll probably want to subscribe to our RSS feed (or the audio RSS feed). Stick around and be sure to speak up and post a comment or two! Here is an article by Aaron Wall about […]

Have you ever noticed how some websites have an icon to the left of their URL? For example, if you look in the address bar, you’ll notice the little “EMP” logo. Have you ever wondered how they do that?
More and more sites are putting their own logos, or “favicons” in the address bar. This helps […]

I found a great article written by Aaron Wall, on Page Rank and how it tends to be overemphasized these days .
When your site is new you will have a PageRank of 0. After you get a few links in about a month or two you will see your PageRank go up and it is […]

Shari Thurow has written an excellent article on When Content Isn’t King in SEO. Shari brings some excellent points to the table, namely arguing that any content is not always good content.
If I had my way, I’d change the mantra to “Unique, high-quality, un-duplicated content is king.” Not as catchy, I admit. But there […]

When designing your site, it might seem like a cool idea to be able to have your visitors be able to scroll the navigation and/or the main page via frames. Bad idea. Unless you don’t care about what the search engines think, frames are bad.
This is what a search engine sees when you are in […]

So there has been some rumors flying around about Google and the possible plans of a free Wi-Fi service.
“What if Google (GOOG) wanted to give Wi-Fi access to everyone in America? And what if it had technology capable of targeting advertising to a user’s precise location? The gatekeeper of the world’s information could […]

Ever been intersted in building a poor website? Here are eight things that are a must for a bad site. These hints are for both the visitor and the search engines. It’s good stuff… actually, it’s bad stuff.

So, with your onsite factors optimized to perfection, you now have to think about the offsite realm.
“To fully grasp how your competitors are ranking highly for your targeted phrases you will want to know a number of things about the links to their site including:
* How many links do they […]

I haven’t picked out an interview for a while, so I decided now was the time to do it. This time, it’s an interview with LotsO, an SEO veteran who isn’t afraid to be blunt.
” In the spring of 1998 I started working with my first paying SEO client. By 2000 I was overwhelmed with […]

I tried to find the most recent search engine rankings that I could. These are from August 18th of this year, so they’re pretty up-to-date.
“Shopping and classifieds receive the most downstream visits across the board. Google sends 10.68 percent of its traffic to the shopping and classifieds category, Yahoo! Search forwards 11.24 percent of traffic, […]

In an effort to “spur demand for broadband and close the gap between DSL and the more popular Internet access service from cable operators [broadband]”, Verizon is launching a scaled-down, less expensive internet service.
“The carrier is offering a DSL line with data speeds of 768 kilobits for downloads and 128 kilobits for uploads for $14.95 […]

This article by Dave Davies is the first part in a two-part lesson on analyzing the competition in terms of search engine rankings.
The first part explains onsite factors while the sencond part will explain offsite factors such as PageRank.
“Onsite factors of your website are the easiest to address as they are factors which are under […]

Wordtracker just released a keyword reasearch guide which is “a practical guide that features nine marketing experts as they advise a fictitious vegetarian dog food company.”
You can also download the whole report. It’s pretty interesting to read and there’s some tips on how to use Wordtracker and its advanced features. Check it out.

TheStreet.com has an interesting article about Google and the Power of Myth. It’s an interesting take on Google’s current power on the Internet. Mentioning PageRank as one of Google’s great innovations, the author, Kevin Kelleher, essentially asks, what has Google done lately.
Sure, we see mass launchings of new products, Google Earth, Mobil Search, Web Accelerator […]

Many SEOs and others who visit forums dedicated to this topic have noticed that more and more “a lack of civility towards other views and a decreasing level of common sense” has occured in the postings.
It used to be a place where people could discuss techniques and give and receive tips. Now, however, it’s […]

Many times, we forget to look at the actual business benefits of SEM such as cost-effectiveness, better outreach, etc.
“Not only are a vast majority of businesses online, but they derive significant value from that presence: reducing costs, generating leads and converting sales”
“Search is essential to business success. Search engine marketing has been validated repeatedly […]

This is probably the most in-depth article on the basics of SEO that I’ve read, at least in a while. If you are new to the world of SEO or just want to learn some more about it, go ahead and read this article.
“The race to attract search engine spiders, and thereby earn a high […]

When it comes to keywords and keyword optimization, there are 5 things to remember and consider. These might seem like no-brainers, but it’s amazing how many clients and optimizers forget these simple common-sense rules. So pack these away and never forget them.
1. Know your audience and think through your business goals.
2. Watch the broad search […]

I found it! The cheat sheet for successful paid-search advertising!
Actually, someone else wrote the article. I just found it on the ‘net. The top ten best practices for a successful paid-search advertising campaign.
Now don’t say I never did anything for you.

Everyone likes toys; kids, men, women, everyone. We just like different toys. Kids like video games and bikes and such. Men might like power tools and stereo equipment. Women might like certain cars and nice things, I really wouldn’t know…
Anyway, now days, they even have toys for people who like SEM. Programs, plugins and websites […]

Apparently, Google’s decision to add a third paid listing to the top of their commercial search has had an impact for marketers.
“For commercial queries, Google is now selectively displaying three paid ads at the top of the page in the sponsored links area. The increased real estate on the page for the highly popular commercial […]

It seems that (EMP) has been noticed by a few in the industry. See their opinion of this site here.

I admit it, our SEO services are pretty bad.
Speaking of bad, the Beatles couldn’t sing a tune, John Grisham has never written a decent novel, Dell makes crappy computers, TiVo’s and iPods suck, the Lord of the Rings movies lacked imagination and video killed the radio star. (OK, that last one might actually be true!)
Do […]

CodeMonitor is a new web tool for monitoring, notification, and comparing web page changes made by your web marketer, client, programmer, or a competitor. CodeMonitor checks web pages daily for changes and gives you a side-by-side code comparison.
Who Uses CodeMonitor?

webmasters
SEOs
SEO clients
web marketers
PPC account managers
Business competitors

Who Does Not Use CodeMonitor?

a dog
a cat
a mouse
[…]

HBO is releasing a FireFox theme, or “skin”, that is based on their upcoming new show, “Rome”.
Apparently FireFox is becoming more popular with television and movie companies in their advertising. Warner Bros. also released a FireFox theme earlier this year for the movie “Batman Returns”.
“In choosing Firefox, HBO is looking to tap its millions of […]

Remember not too long ago when Yahoo announced that it had twice as many documents indexed as Google? Well, there has been a recent study done by Matthew Cheney, Mike Perry, and Dr. Orville Vernon Burton of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications in which they have concluded that this claim is somewhat suspicious.
“It is […]

Many times, a site may be doing okay on its own, which is… okay. However, lots of times, when you redesign a site with the customers and search engines in mind, you may just find that not only your traffic, but your customers (new and returning) have increased. That’s what happened when Perfume.com redesigned their […]

Ian McAnerin has a great post about consenting to search engine’s TOS.
It’s really quite insightful and he lays out the case very effectively for how we give consent to the search engines, even if we don’t really feel like it.

Google Blog is touting a new toolbar for MS Word that allows Bloggers (Google’s blogging system, not bloggers in general) to create their blog posts in Word. This enables Bloggers to use Words spelling and grammatical checkers, as well as to write posts offline for later upload.
Pretty clever, I must say. When I was on […]

Both PC World and Forbes are reporting on a survey release by University of Michigan’s American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) regarding the customer satisfaction rate of the major search engines.
AskJeeves’s ACSI score has risen 16% since 2002, to 72. Its search queries in the second quarter have also surged 16%, while sales have doubled to […]

How do you get customers hooked with ads? By being persuasive of course. Either that or you promise them something for free, but that’s a different article. Right now, I’m talking about being persuasive in your ads while keeping them fairly short.
“Your ad text should be convincing. You praise your produce or your website. Why […]

You may have done this yourself or maybe you just know of someone who did; stuffing keywords in an ALT tag for a picture. That’s no good. “Why?” you might ask. Well, because new research has basically concluded that the top three search engines don’t consider ALT tags anymore, or at least they give very […]

SEOmoz has posted that Google has confirmed the existence to the sandbox. They may not call it a sandbox, but its real. No specifics as to what trips it have be provided, other than a mention that a filter must be tripped for a site to be sandboxed.
Now that the cat is out of the […]