On Tuesday I made my speaking debut at SMX East 2011 on a panel with Lena Flanigan and Vanessa Fox. I unveiled a methodology that I think is potentially game changing. Now I want to share this breakthrough with the community that has helped me build a name for myself. Without further adieu ladies and gentlemen of the SEOmoz community I present to you Keyword Level Demographics.
It feels kind of negative to start a post with a warning, but you’re all busy people and I’d hate for you to waste your time – so here goes: Today I’ll be talking about the ethics of personalisation online, and the potential issues which might arise as a result. As such I won’t be offended if you decide this isn’t quite your cup of tea and decide not t...
SEOs have faced a dilemma in the past: AJAX is great for users, but not so good for search engine spiders. In this post, I'll show how you can use Google's 'Crawlable Ajax' proposal to allow Google to properly crawl your AJAX-enhanced website - and show examples of sites that are already using this.
One thing I like to think I've learned over the years is the subtle art of persuasion. Here are some tips on how to ask Yes/Yes questions (and almost always get a "Yes").
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Personally I hate SPAM with a passion and I’m sure many of you will agree that you hate it also. Some time ago, I had a client ask me if there was a way for us to eliminate the SPAM that was generated from his web form. I went to the usual places to see if I could find the answer and was a little let down with the solution, that was presented, CAPTCHA. I’m ...
The inspiration for this blog post came to me when I was lying on my sofa reading the Guardian newspaper over the weekend. I was at home and so didn't have any of the following to hand: * iphone * pen * regular phone * internet
Unnecessary clicks really put the "super" in "superfluous," yet we run into them all the time. Whether they're the fancy yet impractical creation by a site designer, a lazy workaround courtesy of an apathetic developer, or a misguided "I've been trying to architect this site for two months now and I can no longer see straight" decision by an SEO, these seemingly innocent clicks can have a negative impact on conversion rates or, simply put, they can irritate users. Below are a few examples of some clicks that cause me to grit my teeth and shake my fist.
As there haven't been any posts in the usability category of youmoz since March, I thought I write a short usability entry. You SEOs out there certainly know how a link should look like for search engines. But do you also know how they should look like for real people, I mean the ones visiting your page and spending money on your products?1. Links onlineLinks ...
TinyURL QurlyQ MemURL dwarfURL doiop Kurl.us dn.vc SnipURL ix.lt metamark.net TinyURL shorl.com w3t.org xaddr.com si9.org urlTea.com icanhaz.com turo.us rubyurl.com rurl.us RlinkR.com urlx.org is.gd tnij.org abbrr.com...
This short post looks at a Jakob Nielsen alertbox column entitled, How Little Do Users Read? Why a short post? Well, it would appear that we don't read long posts, so why bother? Nielsen examines a study from the ...
Who Makes an Effort? Well, it turns out that it depends on what make means:42 SEO Feeds, 126 posts reviewed: 0% mangled text, 65% of posts had a graphic or something visual55 News Feeds, 165 posts reviewed: 10% mangled text, 0% grapics (excepting posted videos)25 Political News Feeds, 75 posts reviewed: 25% mangled text, 0% graphics (excepting...
For SEM Tuesday I'm cheating a little and talking about forms and usability; however, if you have a sign up form or some sort of registration on your landing pages, this is sound advice that ties in well. In an attempt to be hardcore in 2008, I decided, at Christine's insistence, to sign up for the New Balance Half I...
It's no mystery that people in the SEO world have strong feelings about cloaking. The very mention of an off-white hat tactic in one of my YouMOZ posts earned me multiple thumbs down and accusations of cloaking. One comment in particular interested me, though: someone suggested that they consider cloaking to be virtually any tactic that treats search engines differently from end-users. As...
A few years ago a webmaster did not have many choices available to have a search solution for their websites. That has changed dramatically, but up to last year or so ago the free site searches provided by Yahoo and Google were less than ideal. They interrupted your visitors experience by taking them to a search results page that looked entirely different than the page they were on. ...