Here’s a theoretical question: what happens when a (very expensive) web design and development shop is ignorant of search engine optimization (SEO)? Answer: they seriously hurt their client’s online business. Or even worse, they kill it (temporarily, let’s hope). Okay, maybe that’s overstated a bit. But then again, maybe not. Read on… This post outlines [...]

A lone soldier who fought in search, slaving away hours over tools others besmirched. And pouring over data, nay – piercing through the tangle, of the analytics labyrinth looking for a market angle. He was dismissed by coders scoffed at by naysayers, ignored by deciders sought solace in relevance prayers. He sat in the meetings [...]

RKG will be speaking at SMX Advanced 2009 in Seattle, WA. Drop us a line if you’d like to meet up at the show.

Feedburner users: we recommend delaying migrating to Google Accounts as long as possible, as the current process is broken.

Here’s my new favorite response to the friends-and-family question, “so, how do I get my website to show up higher on Google?”

Many retailers will spend the next week or two studying the results from Q4 hoping to find action items for early Q1. A word of caution: don’t yank the rudder too quickly.

I’ve recently noticed Chrome’s “Destination Search” doesn’t work for sites with unconventional search-form HTML. Perhaps there’s a broader lesson there.

Yesterday Google announced SearchWiki, allowing Google users to customize their search results.

Allowing inbound links to fail on nonexistent pages is a marketing crime.

We recently had a small batch of t-shirts made and sent them out to our SEO friends. Here are some of the pictures we got back! The t-shirt was accompanied with a letter asking for a photo of the recipient wearing it. Not everyone replied, but here are the ones that did. Want an SEO [...]

Does the history of search engine optimization (SEO) even matter? I believe it does. In an industry that suffers from lack of structure and standardization, having a fuzzy history only turns the blinds another notch dimmer. Without having a clear frame of reference for where we originated, it makes it more difficult to chart progress [...]

A big public “Thank You!” to all our clients who made our Client Summit a smashing success!

… okay maybe not dirty, but you get the idea :) Moderating email discussion lists – be they business-to-business, tech- or consumer-oriented – takes a great deal of skill, patience, and tact. Light touch is the goal with moderating, but it sometimes takes a heavy touch to steer the ship. Balancing that line is the [...]

Harry Joiner shares his insights on hiring top-notch online talent, and how he uses online marketing techniques himself to grow his recruiting practice.

A cornerstone of search engine optimization is the analysis of server log files. Analytical tools are essential, but we need direct access to the raw logs in order to study bot behaviour and spot errors, patterns and potential crawling issues GUI analytics can’t give us. We use a number of tools to diagnose crawling and [...]

Google’s Ad Preview Tool (APT) provides you more information about your search campaigns than you’d have otherwise. But some advertisers mistakenly believe APT reveals more than it actually does.

Like glancing at page one headlines of the newspaper, Addictomatic gives a one page summary for your specific search term, right now, across 18 leading sites.

Once upon a time, I wanted to be a doctor. Not a real doctor mind you, but an alternative doctor – I wanted to heal with botanicals and homeopathy, with nutrition and philosophy. I was all about naturopathic medicine (to the great bewilderment of my parents). Once I came to my senses, realizing that 12 [...]

Interesting news items from SEL, TechCrunch, and SearchEngineJournal: screenshots of internal Google pricing metrics slipping out onto public SERPs. Stale news, perhaps fake, but interesting!

More thoughts on Microsoft Jellyfish CashBack.

Forrester’s Carrie Johnson speaking on the idea, “Search Is.”

I recorded my NEMOA presentation and posted video.

Is there an interchange between search engine optimization (more accurately, internet marketing) and usability? That’s the question veteran SEO Grant Crowell asked Jared Spool, a veteran usability engineer, in a twenty minute phone interview. Grant Crowell of Grantastic Designs enaged Jared Spool on the topic in late November of 2007, and shared it with the [...]

Pagerank sculpting: something SEO-savvy retailers might want to consider.

Yesterday on SearchEngineLand we announced the opensourcing of RKG Duck, a powerful tool which lets you run filters on the Windows clipboard.