Dragonfly Media Curacao

When you’re working on (the popularity of) a website there are a few moments that make you feel that all the work is worth it. One of these moments is when Google assigns the first pagerank to your website. It’s like seeing your kid walk for the first time!
If you don’t know what google pagerank is: follow this link to Google.

This weekend I was checking out some of the stuff we did for our clients and I also went by ekvandoorne.com. We have been doing off-site search engine optimization and analysis for them for some time and we are preparing on-site search engine optimization now as well. So, I thought I’d check out the current status of the website.

I always keep an eye on my search status plugin in FireFox so I glanced at it this time as well and got me a very pleasant surprise. Ekvandoorne.com jumped from an unassigned pagerank of 0 to the very decent pagerank of 4! This is the first we saw such a jump on one of the websites we maintain or made so you can imagine we’re very proud right now.

One of the main concepts of web 2.0 is the fact that the internet is/can be a platform just like windows/mac/linux are. Many sites/companies are very much in line with this concept when they create the tools you can find, and use, on-line. Just to clarify here: I’m not talking about the fact that you can (illegally) download software, music and all sorts of other stuff. I’m talking about tools like Google’s webmaster tools, personalised homepages and the likes.

To make our work a lot easier we use a lot of these tools to a) help our clients with the SEO of their website and b) to help us work more efficient. In this post I would like to share some of the tools we’re using and why we’re using them. (more…)

Marie Howell of Bruce Clay Europe attended a session at the SES NY (Search Engine Strategies New York) about big companies and how they need to organise their SEO internally. Apparently the session was more about how you manage an SEO campaign than actually doing it.

The article is clear, concise and very interesting. You can find it at: http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/archives/2007/04/organic_seo_wit.html.

In our work we have a lot of different kinds of relationships. No, we’re not promiscuous, we love our partners and would not dream of being unfaithful. I’m talking about relationships with our clients, the relationships with the visitors to our website and the relationships with our clients’ visitors. Every time we get a new client we need to build relationships with them and their visitors. That’s a whole lot of relationships, I can tell you that.

Luckily, the way of dealing with the clients, our visitors and their visitors can be very similar. In this post I want to look at what makes a good (on-line) relationship. (more…)

Today I came across an interesting article in which the author sums up why SEO is not only important for “the big boys”, but also for smaller companies. And, even more importantly, how an SEO strategy can help your business. “Obtain Increased and Higher Quality Sales”, “Brand Recognition”, “Enhanced Credibility and Legitimacy” are just a few of the benefits the author discusses. You can find the article on www.10e20.com.

The people that have to deal with the contents of a website invariably come across one of the most annoying dilemmas around.

On the one hand they need to write clear, concise and short texts because the people that visit the website in question want to know what’s going on in an instant. They don’t want to read pages and pages of text if they don’t have to. On the other hand; the search engines need text to be able to figure out what your website is about and the more text there is, the more they have to form their ‘opinion’ and the more words you might be found with. So, how do you deal with this.

The general way of dealing with this dilemma is to try to satisfy both parties and, even more importantly, not to ‘annoy’ either of the parties. Some content managers make very short pages with “read more” links and others create longer pages with a summary in the beginning and a longer explanation below. Both forms have something going for them, although we prefer the second way of handling content.

Besides this, it would be wise to consider the audience. If you cater your website to a specific group of people who are actually interested in what you have to say (as opposed to people you want to sell something to) you can make your texts longer because your audience will read what you write until the last syllable. If you want to sell something to a ‘casual’ passer-by on the other hand you need to grab his/her attention quickly and guide him/her in the right direction fast. So, for this group you need a short page or a catchy summary of what you want to say.

MSN adCenter has released a cool keyword forecasting tool.

Type in one or more keywords and you’ll get a breakdown as to the number of searches over the past year, and the forecasted number of searches for the next few months. It’s a great way to do more accurate projections on your traffic and sales volume for the near future.

As well, MSN will provide you with data about the demographics of the people who are searching for that particular keyword, namely age and gender.

No MSN adCenter account is required to use the tool.

Related Link: adlab.msn.com/ForecastV2/KeywordTrendsWeb.aspx

Source: Entireweb.com

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of methods aimed at improving the ranking of a website in search engine listings. (Wikipedia)

This definition of SEO sounds simple, but beware! Search engine optimization is a minefield, even for professionals, and although necessary to a business, should not be undertaken lightly. Below, is a brief look at the top 10 mistakes and how to correct them.

1. Non-Relevant Linkage.
External links to your site play a large part in most of the major search engine algorithms and can be considered an endorsement of your site. But if you are being linked to from sites that have no relevance to your content, then that is now considered a negative endorsement and will not raise your ranking in the search engines. Ensure all links to your pages are from relevant sites. Be wary of link builders who acquire links from gambling, pharmaceutical or adult themed sites, especially if your site is not of the same theme. Link building is as much a science as it is an art, one we take very seriously. (more…)

By Philippe Suchet, Philippe Suchet, Kefta

Every day, millions of people type keywords into a search engine, follow a link and land on a marketer’s Web site.
Most people will think I’m talking about pay-per-click campaigns, but did you know that 87 percent of commercial traffic comes from organic search? Though the majority of consumers come to your site from an organic search link, few marketers create a strategic organic search program. Last year, marketers spent eight times more money on paid search than they did on organic search. In essence, marketers spent nearly $6 billion on a minority of their search traffic while they nearly ignored the majority.
So far, most marketers who have taken on an organic search campaign view the strategy as quantity - they write content with a bunch of keywords and links on their site and hope crawlers rank it as high as possible. Improving these campaigns typically means boosting their site’s position in the rankings, instead of focusing on converting visitors who come from organic search links. But is this the right strategy?
(more…)

The search engine has laid down its rights to be depicted as one of the basics of the Internet. It has consolidated its power in terms of aiding surfers do their Internet-related activities. It has been found out that 9/10 Internet users utilize search engines to be able to look for the information that they need.

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