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16 Nov

Spam

Author: realmac  //  Category: Computing, SEO

Spam…One annoyance to running your own blog.  I recently enabled Akismet to cut back on the amount of spam I receive.  I was getting on average about 5-10 bogus comments to approve each week.  Most of them had major typographical errors or were intelligible.

“How does it work?

Each time a new comment, trackback, or pingback is added to your site it’s submitted to the Akismet web service which runs hundreds of tests on the comment and returns a thumbs up or thumbs down. As a result, you don’t have to waste your time sorting through and deleting spammy comments from your blog.”

A lot of these spammers are using blackhat SEO techniques in order to improve their rankings on the search engines.  Sounds to me like a lot of it is automated and very little human interaction is involved.  I do wonder what the return of investment is in writing a script that just spams blogs.

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26 Oct

Google Analytics

Author: realmac  //  Category: SEO, Uncategorized

I’m adding Google Analytics to my websites.  Google Analytics:

  • Allows site owners to track visitors from referrers such as search engines, pay-per-click networks, e-mail marketing and links within documents.
  • Allows you to see which pages / links are clicked the most.
  • Is very easy to install.  Several years ago I created a GMail account.  All I had to do is create a new website profile for this domain (http://therealmac.net) and tell the Google Analytics plug-in for WordPress to sync with that profile and instant monitoring.  Typically a piece of JavaScript is inserted into the HTML pages for a website.  For example : 
    <script type="text/javascript">

  var _gaq = _gaq || [];
  _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-10930373-3']);
  _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);

  (function() {
    var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
    ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
    var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
  })();

</script>
  • It’s free.  I didn’t pay a dollar to use the software and it’s extremely reliable.
  • Integration with Google AdWords and AdSense.

Screenshot of Google Analytics

It can be blocked easily too with browser plug-ins or other settings, so it’s not an end-all and be all for site tracking.

By being able to see where traffic is coming from, you can better optimize your online campaigns and determine what kind of content will attract more traffic.

As you can see by the Dashboard, there are lots of ways to measure your traffic using Google Analytics. It’s the tip of the iceberg but a tool I believe many webmasters should be utilizing.

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24 Oct

SEO Plans

Author: realmac  //  Category: Computing, SEO

The most effective projects begin with a plan in mind.  You don’t need to be a Project Management Professional or Digital Marketing Specialist to come up with strategies to be successful at SEO.  Modeling what others have done and tweaking their approach to meet your needs is the quickest way to achieve results without wasting valuable time.  Of course not everyone wants to learn and if this is not an option, hiring someone from the outside to handle SEO can offer a huge return on investment.

Tagging : Using Meta-Tags to describe pages and have crawlers recognize what the purpose of a site really is.  Title and description.

<HEAD>
<TITLE>Mac Geek with an MBA</TITLE>
<META name=”description” content=”Just random ramblings from a Mac Geek with an MBA, ranging from SEO strategies, to technology and automotive news”>

<META name=”keywords” content=”mac, geek, mba, seo, strategies, technology, automotive, news”>
</HEAD>

Content: Content should be new and applicable to your audience.  When content isn’t updated frequently, rankings on search engines will take a hit.

Links : Make sure links aren’t broken during site migrations or any kind of upgrades.  A broken link doesn’t rank well with search engines and for goof reason.  There are a few different strategies that can help create quality back links.  The primary one I would say is through writing articles and linking back to your website.

Map : We’ve heard of HTML (HyperText Markup Language), but what about XML?  XML (Extensible Markup Language) is similar but has different rules.  Without going into too much detail, creating an XML site map through a site like XML Sitemaps Generator, uploading the file to your site and submitting those to search engines can improve rankings.

sitemap google webmaster submission

My site, therealmac.net is built largely around WordPress, a great blogging platform but doesn’t make SEO particularly easy.  I found a solution in a plug-in called:

All in One SEO Pack

Remember whatever platform you’re using, there are tools that can make your life a lot easier.  Utilize them.

SEO is an ongoing process, just because your site has been optimized this month doesn’t mean 3-6 months down the road won’t have to be made.  Though I am not selling any type of product or service right now, I can firsthand that it’s incredibly easy to let content stay stagnant, let a domain name expire and have a domain name squatter take over.  Think about the business impact there if your customers are directed to a website promoting your company and all of a sudden the content is replaced by something offensive in nature.

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