From the category archives:

SEO

Here’s What I’m Reading This Weekend

by Bob Hazlett on January 23, 2010

Waiting on the NFL playoff games to start and need to kill a little time? Here are the articles I’m reading this weekend.

35 Beautiful and Effective E-commerce Sites. One of my predictions for 2010 is that “experience” will be the big web buzzword. Smashing Magazine has put together a set of attractive online stores that try to do just that by creating an eye-catching look and also focusing on usability.
Google SEO Resource for Beginners. Straight from the mouth of the 800lb gorilla, Google hands out SEO bananas for you to make your site leaner and meaner in 2010.
Posterous taps Post.ly to help share your media via Twitter. Attach photos, music, videos and docs to your tweets. Post.ly takes care of the rest.
Chris Guillebeau over at The Art of Non-Conformity kicks off his $100 business forum. The premise being to teach individuals to start small businesses on a budget of less than $100. I was lucky enough to get into the first class beginning in February. I’ll keep you updated on how it works out.
Microsoft makes learning Office fun (yes, you read that right). Microsoft turns learning Office into a game where participants score points for unlocking challenges and achievements. Badges can then be shown off via Facebook.
How to create custom YouTube, Twitter and MySpace backgrounds

If you’re interested in seeing more, check out my Google Reader Shared Items.

What are you reading this weekend? Let me know in the comments below.

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Get More Video Views With These Optimization Tips From YouTube

by Bob Hazlett on January 4, 2010

Mark Robertson of ReelSEO caught up with YouTube’s Matthew Liu to get some insight on best practices for optimizing your videos. Here’s what he had to say.

Content

Creative should be engaging and compelling enough for users to comment, rate and ultimately share.
Shorter videos (2-3 min) perform better than longer (~10 min) videos.
Learn from your video Insights. If your viewers are engaged better than other videos, you’re going to be rewarded in search rankings.

Community

Clear and concise tags, description and title. Use complete sentences when you can. Tags should be relevant, don’t try to play off of popular terms if your video isn’t related to that particular subject.
Keep embeds on, the more links or times your video is embedded on outside pages, the better ranking you’ll get.
Videos with more ratings, comments and views typically get better rankings.
Use annotations to link multiple videos together. Don’t forget to add date and location to your video’s description.

Found a YouTube tip that’s helped you achieve better rankings? Share it in the comments below.

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Integrating SEO Into Your E-Mail Marketing

by Bob Hazlett on September 9, 2009

SEOMoz did a great Whiteboard Friday video on using SEO to grow and expand your e-mail marketing list. Here’s the synopsis and corresponding video.

Step 1 – Attract the Right Audience
Target keyword searches in which users are looking to find out more or discover information related to your product or industry.

Step 2 – Deliver Compelling Landing Pages
Build your credibility right off the bat by providing guides, data points, reports and interesting blog posts directly related to the search terms the user found your site with.

Step 3 – Offer Something Awesome (and even Free)
Increase your signup rate by offering an extended report or content relevant to your user’s needs.

Step 4 – Deliver Non-commercial Messages First
Don’t try to sell the user something in their first e-mail message. Fulfill expectations, grow trust and build great relationships before anything.

Step 5 – Iterate
Repeat your actions. Keep getting better and improving on your results. Tweak and test.

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What is SEO 2.0?

by Bob Hazlett July 17, 2009

Tad tries to define this new shift in search engine optimization or what some are calling SEO 2.0 (which in my opinion is a lazy name). While many of the pros are still hatching out and evolving the definition, he gives it a go and says that SEO 2.0 is “not Google SEO, a Buzzword, [...]

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Non-Profits Kicking Butt, New SEO Best Practices, Web Design Checklists and Google Advertising Rumors

by Bob Hazlett July 7, 2009

Here are the interesting posts at the top of my reading list this week.
The fine folks at the Red Cross are working diligently on crafting a Social Media Policy Handbook. They’ve got a great start and are light years ahead of even most for-profit businesses. As it should, its available online for your viewing pleasure.
Staying [...]

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Basic Search Engine Optimization Tweaks and Tips

by Bob Hazlett February 28, 2009

Having an overall search engine optimization strategy is important, but sometimes you’re so far over your head that you just want a few quick wins to build a base and get you rolling. Here are 6 quick SEO tweaks you can make today to improve your site and rankings.

Focus on a small set of related [...]

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Basics

by Bob Hazlett February 4, 2008

No one knows for sure how search engines actually rank your site, but there are things that you can do to optimize your website for a better ranking. I’ve outline a list below of the 4 most important things anyone can do to understand search engine optimization and rank your site better.

1. Keywords – [...]