Organic SEO - Tips and Techniques
20 Feb 2008 at 18:31 by Joshua J. Steimle
All too often we take over search engine optimization efforts for a new client, only to find that the last SEO firm or SEO professional they were using did so many things wrong it's going to be a major effort just to clean up their mess, let alone start making progress (although I suppose cleaning up is a form of progress, but you know what I mean).
Case in point, we just took over doing SEO for a billion-dollar enterprise with a substantial website, and what do you know, the last SEO people working on it stuffed the site full of stuffed image alt tags, stuffed keyword meta tags, stuffed url title tags, etc. And they were very thorough with their work in that they didn't repeat the content of the various tags, they mixed it up in every case so they aren't the same and therefore you can't do a simple search and replace to find them all. The slow way to get things done would be to edit every page by hand, deleting the offending code, but thankfully Dreamweaver lets you do a wildcard search and replace that is a lifesaver.
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8 Jan 2008 at 08:56 by Joshua J. Steimle
To do a 301 redirect on JSP pages simple modify this code for your own purposes and place it on the page you want to redirect:
<%
response.setStatus(301);
response.setHeader( "Location", "http://www.new-url.com/" );
response.setHeader( "Connection", "close" );
%>
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29 Dec 2007 at 22:41 by Joshua J. Steimle
First of all, this only works on web servers running on Linux, like Apache. It's no good on a Windows server, which stinks, because I think this is the best way to do redirects because you can manage all the redirects on your entire site from one file, and you don't actually have to create files and directories or leave old ones in place in order for those urls to be redirected.
Here's the basic code you'll put in your .htaccess file, which either should already exist in the root directory of your website ("root directory" meaning the home directory of your website, where your homepage file is located) or which you'll need to create:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^directory/youroldpage.html$ http://www.yoursite.com/directory/yournewpage.html$1 [R=301]
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17 Dec 2007 at 12:34 by Joshua J. Steimle
<?
Header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );
Header( "Location: http://www.yoursite.com/new-page/" );
?>
Pretty straightforward. I just did it for a bed and breakfast client of ours.
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14 Dec 2007 at 00:43 by Joshua J. Steimle
I've had a lot of trouble finding code to do a 301 redirect in .NET, but I finally found some that works, courtesy of Keyvan.
<script runat="server">
Private Sub Page_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently"
Response.AddHeader("Location", "http://www.mwi.com/")
End Sub
</script>
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28 Nov 2007 at 21:20 by Joshua J. Steimle
Do you blog for business? Heck, that doesn't even matter. Do you want people to visit your blog, whether it's for business or it's personal? Then here's a simple tip that might seem obvious, but which the majority of bloggers ignore. Use keywords to title your blog posts. Here's how...
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20 Oct 2007 at 14:09 by Joshua J. Steimle
A post on my personal blog regarding the practice I observed of an SEO firm creating blogs for no other apparent purpose than search engine optimization has caused enough controversy (i.e. at least one person has a different person than my own) to motivate me to expound on the matter. And thus I give you my opinion on good, better, and the best content for SEO purposes.
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11 Oct 2007 at 15:00 by Joshua J. Steimle
The title tag is one of the primary means by which your website is categorized and ranked by search engines. It is one of the easiest things to change on your site and also nets some of the largest benefits and is therefore one of the first items you should look at when doing search engine optimization.
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28 May 2007 at 21:54 by Joshua J. Steimle
Utah web design company MWI is launching a new site at MyWebDesignCompany.com and in an effort to get the site ranking in Google quickly they're going to give away $500 to the owner of one of the incoming links to said site. In other words, you put a link to MyWebDesignCompany.com on your website, that link gets indexed by Google, MWI checks out the backlinks on September 10th, chooses one at random, and the owner gets a check for $500. The question is, how many incoming links are they going to get, and what will the quality of the links be?
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23 Mar 2007 at 11:47 by Eric Morgan
I am sure anyone involved with SEO has either bought text links or has at least considered doing it before. There are many methods of buying links online and some methods are more safe than others. Find out how to buy links safely and which methods to stay away from.
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20 Jan 2007 at 13:18 by Joshua J. Steimle
I gave a presentation to a group of about 30 the other day entitled "Top 10 SEO Tips Anyone Can Implement" although perhaps "anyone" is a stretch since there's always somebody who will claim they can't. If you would like to get more info I've posted the SEO presentation at WeLoveBlue.com, MWI's official blog.
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10 Jan 2007 at 10:38 by Eric Morgan
A 60 page PDF document that lists real advice from real people with real examples of marketing tips for the previous year. There are 100+ 'what I learned in marketing this year' comments from marketing professionals; a highly recommended read for anyone in the marketing industry.
You can download the marketing tips report yourself... enjoy.
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19 Dec 2006 at 14:00 by Joshua J. Steimle
Loren Baker has an excellent article at Search Engine Journal entitled 9 Ways To Get Banned by Search Engines.
I think the article is highly relevant because quite a few people, some of them purporting to be SEO experts, seem to assume these are accepted SEO techniques when in fact they can do great damage to your website's rankings.
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18 Dec 2006 at 09:42 by Joshua J. Steimle
If you want to increase your rankings by building links, focus on how human being work rather than search engines. Such is the advice included in a post on building link popularity on Google's webmaster blog where the author, Stefanie (a Google employee), goes so far as to call the practice of buying links a "risky and short-term option."
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30 Oct 2006 at 10:28 by Eric Morgan
An article by a friend of mine, Rob Zawrotny, about how web design can increase online profits.
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17 Oct 2006 at 12:09 by Joshua J. Steimle
The MWI website was recently redesigned, and as part of the redesign the site structure was changed such that pages that were once at a certain url are now at a different url. Rather than just leaving the old pages there or deleting them and delivering a 404 not found error, we used a 301 permanent redirect, which we coded in ASP since MWI is on a Windows server. Here's how it's done:
<%@ Language=VBScript %>
<%
Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently"
Response.AddHeader "Location", "http://www.mwi.com/newpage/"
%>
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19 Sep 2006 at 08:38 by Eric Morgan
Having an E-commerce website leads to additional SEO challenges. Here are a few tips to make the most of an E-commerce website.
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29 Jun 2006 at 07:24 by Eric Morgan
Does your website not live up to its fullest potential? Does it not deliver the leads or sales that you originally hoped for? Does it give an inaccurate representation of poor professionalism? Is it such a pain to update that you have almost given up on it?
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22 Jun 2006 at 10:45 by Eric Morgan
If possible try to avoid scripting languages on your website for SEO purposes.
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19 Jun 2006 at 11:55 by Eric Morgan
One way to gain a little more exposure to your blog is to submit it to blog directories. I am going to submit to Technorati today.
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12 Jun 2006 at 11:31 by Eric Morgan
Learn how to use title tags effectively for your website visitors and SEO.
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27 May 2006 at 14:07 by Eric Morgan
The MSN search engine will usually pick up changes on your website before Google or Yahoo; see how this can help you in your SEO process.
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21 Feb 2006 at 01:56 by Joshua J. Steimle
If you were searching for a search engine optimization (SEO) company what keyword search terms would you search for in a search engine? Could I use the word "search" once more?
Most people feel more comfortable dealing with businesses that located within the same geographic area. This is because it facilitates face-to-face interaction, and there's something comforting about being able to tell a service provider "Don't mess with me, I know where you live."
What geographic locales would you assume are producing the most interest in SEO firms and search engine optimization services? California? New York? Maybe you'd be surprised to find out. According to Overture's keyword selector tool, these are the ten most popular geographic terms accompanying the search term "seo" where the number on the left represen
ts the number of searches done through Overture's network (which does not include Google, so double the number if you want a closer to accurate idea of total searches being performed) during January 2006.
3075 indianapolis seo
2872 seo india
1638 seo uk
1556 virginia seo
1487 va seo
1395 seo cleveland
1373 firm seo utah
1275 india seo company
1251 seo utah
1102 seo canada
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4 Nov 2005 at 14:39 by Joshua J. Steimle
I like the MovableType platform for blogging, now that I've learned it. It sure was a pain to set up though. I wouldn't recommend it for people who aren't technically inclined. But now that I've learned it I can't use anything else because I've made this huge investment of time.
Anyway, I just learned something new today that may be of assistance to others with regards to the MT system and search engine optimization.
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