SEO Kansas

I would have to say that I do not and will never have the balls to take on Google and announce that I do anything more or better than Google. The new search engine is named Cuil, after the Gaelic word for “wisdom.” Again, I don’t know, have or see the wisdom in confronting Google. The look of www.cuil.com is semi-cuil. The results page is almost disturbing to look at since we are all used to the norm. I cannot figure out where they are getting the thumbnails. Things that are normally number one on Google are sometimes not even on the first page of cuil. They seem to have adopted the look of www.blackle.com which is saving the world 1 pixel worth of energy at a time.

CUIL also stands for: Clave Única de Identificación Laboral and Common...

I get asked this question all of the time, and much to my surprise. I would assume that in this day and age this would be common knowledge. Anyhow. I Googled it and found a great article. There is no point in reinventing the wheel so here is the article: Why do you need a website?

Enjoy

Knowing your competition is one of the best practices or states of being for any business, online or off. I find that nearly every brick and mortar business knows their brick and mortar competition, but they don’t have a clue who their online competition is.

I recently had a medical facility give me their list of competitors. When I ran a competition analysis for their online competition, the list was completely different. All of their online competitors have physical locations in the same geographic area, thereby making them offline competitors as well.

Here are some things to consider with your online competitors:

1. Search a key phrase for your industry and see who comes up higher than you or with you on the search engine. For instance, I just Googled “burgers...
   
   

I just had a loyal customer come in and proudly announce he is moving product via his new website and that they Craigslist strategy we trained him on is working marvelously. However he noted that his online customers and his in store customers seem to be 2 different types of people. The people calling off of craigslist are not as eager and are not responding as well to his tried and true in person sales tactics. I believe there are some distinct reasons for this.

1. Expectations - If a customer walks into your store and asks a sales rep for help, they expect a conversation with a salesperson.  If a customer contacts you via the web they expect you to respond via the web and mirror typical online transactions.

2. Safety - In person is no where near as safe as online, or so...

Here are my notes from the blogging seminar called “Grilling up a Great Blog.” You will see that I don’t use many notes to speak, that is why attending is always more valueable. For those of you who did attend don’t forget to send Clay Belcher an email: clay@signsoflifebooks.com for allowing us to use his beautiful studio for free.

Notes

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What is a blog?

A blog is a website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order.

Who cares?

You, obviously. And about 150 million or so other bloggers. Some blogs are updated 5-10 times daily per writer with new content. Nearly every major news corporation, corporation, government entity, and teenager...

For most SEO professionals a conversion is closer to a click-through than it is a transaction. The whole purpose of SEO for most businesses is to increase business by increasing exposure. Exposure is the easy part. Business is not. I frequently have people contact me regarding SEO and tell me they have to have a PR of 5 or they need 10000 visitors a week or some unattached number and I usually ask, “why?” And…

there is a long pause…..

uh….I don’t know

That’s the usual answer. Go ahead…try googling “running shoes” www.runningshoes.com pops up first. It has a PR of 4.

“soy pillar candles” - www.pacificacandles.com - PR 4. Right below it is a PR 5.

“antique...

There will always be the debate about SEO and design. Pure SEO probably isn’t very sexy design and visa-versa. Please understand that I am only referring to what we call “on-page factors.” This would not include the design or optimization of the sites linking to you, but rather the actual pages on your site.

If you are a designer of web sites or are perceived as a designer or someone heard you once made a web page for a 10th grade project, then no doubt you have been contacted about “donating” your work to some local charity or not-for-profit. They are typically operating on a “small budget” and would like you to consider donating the work. Sometimes they say, “We don’t have much money, but how much would you charge for something like that?” For the 2 parties involved….

As of late, my clients and friends have been bombarded with reciprocal link requests by the dozens, daily. Here is a typical email.