I’m here at Search Engine Strategies Chicago, and today at the “Meet the Crawlers” session I asked the distinguished panel of representatives from the four major search engines the question: What is your current official position on simplifying the URLs selectively for bots like Googlebot, Yahoo Slurp, etc. by user-agent detection in order to drop […]

I get numerous calls and emails from really nice folks wanting help with SEO but who don’t have the budget to afford Netconcepts. I wish we could help all of them, but we are so full-on with client engagements we just can’t. So I do what I think will help them the most: I direct […]

No matter the size of the website, every SEO project should be broken down by task. This not only makes the project more manageable, but it also provides you with the ability to prioritize and set schedules. Organization within your SEO projects obviously helps keep the project moving; it also helps show the clients what […]

There are a lot of “social media experts” out there screaming that “YOU HAVE TO USE LINKBAIT!!! YOU HAVE TO SUBMIT TO SOCIAL MEDIA SITES!!!” Sure there are definite advantages to doing these things… quick traffic, a few new links, etc but… do you really have to? I am going to have to say that […]

When working with a client, an SEO needs to show them what’s been accomplished. In the early stages this is easy, since there are normally a number of dramatic on-page optimizations. The client can see the results of your work through optimized HTML coding/copy/titles/descriptions etc. This is very easy to report on: a list of […]

Sitemaps of the XML variety and the site maps of the HTML variety: two great tastes that taste great together! The XML sitemap is the one that you typically use an automated tool to generate (such as one of these) and to upload to your root directory. Humans never see this document and all it […]

Jill Whalen started a great conversation the other day on Sphinn titled “Have we run out of things to write about?” This same thought has gone through my head a few times as inspiration for great posts comes and goes. Every time I feel this way I remember one thing: I love everything SEO and […]

Keyword research is often overlooked by many new SEOs as being too basic, a waste of time. They do not understand why anyone would need a list of 10,000 words. What could anyone ever do with that? This is where many new SEOs are confused because as any experienced SEO knows – keyword research is […]

With Google taking a hard stance against paid links, some SEOs are getting creative with workarounds. One such “workaround” is the “pre-sell page.” First of all, what is a pre-sell page? Basically, it is a page that you craft with the titles/descriptions/text and most importantly – links to your site with the exact anchor text […]

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Matt Cutts, head of Google’s webspam team, for over a half hour last week at Pubcon. Stephan Spencer: I am with Matt Cutts here. I am Stephan Spencer, Founder and President of Netconcepts. Matt is Google engineer extraordinaire, head of the Webspam team at Google. Matt Cutts: […]