Latest Articles

Explain SEO to your parents (and their friends)

July 29, 2011 By korbodo

Last weekend I had dinner with my folks and they had some friends over.

“What do you do?” they asked.

“I help people’s websites show up in Google and other search engines,” I said.

“So how do you make that happen?”

I’ll spare you what I ACTUALLY said, and instead give you this little deck to send family members and friends who are still trying to understand what the heck you do hunched in front of the glow of the monitor every day. Enjoy!

Can’t see the video? Try THIS.

When On-Page SEO Doesn’t Matter

January 18, 2011 By korbodo

Gerry McGovern’s article “How Google fails at SEO, and why it doesn’t matter” contrasts the on-page SEO of Google’s homepage to that of Yahoo’s, and makes the good point that Google’s success is not just about on-page SEO. Providing value to the searcher and answering their questions is more likely to help you attract, convert and retain a loyal following. But it got us thinking of some of the other factors we look at in SEO, and how Google stacks up to Yahoo and Bing on those fronts.

Google vs. Yahoo vs. Bing: Inbound Links
One measure is counting the number of roads that lead to Rome, or the inbound links. Using a few measures such as Yahoo’s Site Explorer, SeoMoz’s Open Site Explorer and Blekko’s /seo slashtag, we can see that Google completely crushes the competition.

Rankings for Search Engine Keywords
Another measure is to see how these sites rank for keyword phrases that people might use to find them. Using WebPosition Reporter, we created a keyword ranking report (use “rank#1″ as the password to view the details) that shows how the major search engines perform. Here is a summary:

Now, low ranks for “top search engine” could be because the searcher is looking for an article or review and not an actual engine, and that article would most likely link to the engines, but it’s interesting nonetheless. We’ll run this report again to see if the results change, and let us know if there are other keyword phrases you’d like us to add in when we do!

Link Diversity: The Spice of Link Building

November 19, 2010 By Sue Spiker

We all know about the importance of building inbound links, but link diversity is just as important as generating the links themselves.  And for good reason.

Better Search Rankings
Imagine that a job candidate’s references were all family members.  Wouldn’t the candidate’s references carry more weight if they were a mix of colleagues and supervisors?  The same goes for your natural link portfolio.  Inbound links are essentially ‘votes’ for your site, and a diverse link portfolio indicates authority and trustworthiness, which search engines are often happy to reward accordingly.

Conversely, search engine algorithms can tell if a significant portion of your inbound links come from one single site…and penalize your search rankings for it.

Protection For Your Efforts
As with monetary investments, putting all of your eggs in one basket is not usually the best idea.  But diversifying your link portfolio can help protect your site against search algorithm updates, the closing of sites that have linked to yours and other changes that can derail your link building efforts.

Increased Web Traffic
If your inbound links stem from a limited source, you can pump only so much water out of that proverbial well.  By varying your inbound links, your site will be exposed to a broader audience, which creates more opportunity to generate high-quality inbound links and reach potential customers.

Building quality inbound and outbound links can be challenging enough, but putting in the extra time and effort to create a natural link portfolio that consists of diverse inbound links can pay off in your search engine ranking.  In an upcoming post, we’ll go into more detail about what constitutes link diversity and how to achieve it, so stay tuned.