The Vizion Search Engine Optimization Blog
- 2007Jun26Wordpress
By far, the most popular blogging platform with thousands of plugins, themes and modifications available
Wordpress
The WordPress Codex
The best resource for answers to the more complex side of Wordpress
WordPress Multi User
A powerful multiuser Version of Wordpress.- 2007Jun26Showcase Sites
Stylegala
One of the longest running and most resourceful CSS Showcase Websites
Design Shack
Offering inspiring CSS and Blog designs, to help spark some creativity
Liquid Designs
Liquid Designs is a gallery of websites designed with liquid layouts using XHTML and CSS.
CSS Remix
CSS-based website gallery. Showcasing only the best design.
CSS Mania
CSSmania, the most updated css showcase all over the globe
Light on Dark
gallery of sites that use a light colored text on a dark background
CSS Beauty- 2007Jun26Keyword Research Fundamentals
Mark’s latest article on Search Engine Watch covers some fundamental questions each person should ask themselves prior to keyword research. Their top level questions, but ones you should have the answer to before you begin. Strategy 85% of SEO. Implementation does take time and energy on some level, but it’s what you do and how you go about it that really makes the difference.
Some professional SEO firms obviously don’t consider some of these questions prior to research and implementation. Just read each company’s taglines and top level statements about SEO. If they promise #1 rankings, but fail to specify whether this applies to your most important keywords, you’re getting played. If all they ever mention is rankings, and fail to discuss traffic or conversions, you will know what to expect and what not to expect right off the bat.
The goal with every aspect of search engine optimization and any other arm of interactive marketing is to grow your business. If that is not the objective of your current agency of record, it’s time to shop around.
- 2007Jun18ORM Beginner’s Guide
Marketing Pilgrim provides a PDF version of their ORM Beginner’s Guide. An excellent starting point for any executive.
- 2007Jun18Google Alerts
Google Alerts helps you to monitor your reputation online. A very basic tool, but extremely helpful for beginners. Will provide more results than pertain to your specific company or term. Man-hours required to weed out useful info.
- 2007Jun18Reputation Advisor
ReputationAdvisor.com is one of the leading blogs on reputation management, discussing news, tips, and potential problems of corporate reputation management on the Web.
- 2007Jun16ICLS.NET Offers Retro SEO
In case you’re wondering, that is not a compliment. While retro may be hip and cool in the fashion and music industries, it’s sad and more than a little annoying in the SEO industry. Because I personally own several domains, I was just solicited via snailmail by icls.net (no link love for this one!). While they’re not asking for much ($35/yr, $60/2yrs, or $140/5yrs), they’re not offering much either.
SEO is my job. So when someone clutters my mailbox with an offer to “enhance their website exposure”, I find it worth responding to.
So what magical services will ICLS (Internet Corporation Listing Service) provide for my hard earned $35?
1) domain name submission to 14 established search engines
2) quarterly se position and ranking reports for 8 keyword phrases in 14 “major” search engines
Silly me! And here I thought there were only 4 major search engines (only 2 of which drive traffic worth mentioning)! With Ask.com providing less than 5% of search traffic to most websites, why would I worry about the 10 search engines providing less traffic than that?Not to mention that search engine submission died out as a relevant practice years ago! These days, a couple links to your site will get [...]
- 2007Jun14Reputation Institute
Reputation Institute – a private research and consulting organization dedicated to advancing knowledge about corporate reputations and creating economic value by implementing coherent reputing strategies.
- 2007May19Marketing Agencies Still Use FLASH Navigation?
As we draw towards the end of our website redesign, I found myself looking at several websites in comparison. It occurred to me that several of these well-known Dallas area agencies were still using FLASH navigation. Seriously? How have they managed to stay out of the loop for this long?
If I was a business owner or director of marketing looking for a web design and website promotion company in the Dallas / Fort Worth area, I would automatically eliminate any agency whose website or clients’ websites have FLASH navigations. It is an automatic sign that they don’t know the foundational principles of search engine optimization and website promotion.
Sure, FLASH can look fancy. That’s its only function. It allows you to easily put graphics and text in motion without resorting to video. The problem is that search engines like Google and Yahoo! and MSN cannot read FLASH. And if they cannot read your navigation, they cannot index your website. Sure, some companies claim that a Sitemap page containing links to all of your pages on the bottom of the page will settle that issue. Even when the search engine indexes all of your pages through the Sitemap, your rankings will suffer [...]
- 2007May2Yahoo Makes On-Page Optimization a Little More Interesting
Yahoo just made on-page optimization a little more interesting – or at least they gave us a new attribute to tinker with and test out for a while.
Search Engine Land broke the story earlier today that Yahoo will start to recognize a new attribute that allows you to tell Yahoo to ignore certain sections of a page. In other words, “Hello, ignorant search engine – THIS is the MAIN content of the page.” That has the ability to be really useful.
In the past, if you wanted to clear out the noise on a page liberal uses of javascript was the way to go. This new method introduced by Yahoo could potentially get rid of the limitations of this method while achieving the same results for your pages.
Sure it could be a maintenance nightmare, but at least yahoo stepped out and led the pack on this one.
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