Feed: Mad Fish SEO Blog - AggScore: 83.6

How to Move a Website

For any number of reasons it can sometimes become necessary to move a website to a new domain. When done correctly, moving to a new domain can be simple and flawless.  Unfortunately, there is only one way to do it right, and a million paths for getting it wrong.

Read more on How To Move a Website without Losing Your Search Rankings…

When making a website SEO friendly, one of the first orders of business is analyzing the URL structure.  If the website utilizes the proper keywords in the URL filenames, then the next step is to make sure that search engines (and users) are only able to view one version of each page.

Read more on Advanced SEO URLs in Apache and IIS…

The crew at Mad Fish SEO has been swimming in projects the last few months, launching new web sites, growing marketing campaigns and creating a few handy tools for ourselves.  It is no wonder September kind of blew past us.  Can it be October already?  At least we spent that time putting together some great projects that we are pretty excited about.

Read more on Mad Fish SEO Quarterly Update…

In the recent Search engine ranking report from SEOmoz, the number ten (out of 24) ranking factor was “Keyword Use in the Page Name URL (i.e. madfishseo.com/folder/keyword.html).

It appears that it is becoming more important to make URLs descriptive, accurately describing a web page’s content. After the SEOmoz report was released, I racked my brain as to why something so exploitable could be such a huge factor. It seems that spammers could easily exploit this factor, and create poor quality websites with keyword rich URLs much like they did prior to 2004-2005. In 2005 Google appeared to be cracking down on this type of website spamming and those websites still appear to mostly be filtered lower in the results.

Read more on Keyword Importance in URLs…

Every quality SEO campaign setup should start with a thorough analysis of the website’s code.  The reason for the code analysis is two fold: 1.) make sure a search engine crawler can make it through the page and find the pertinent content, and 2.) make sure that a search engine crawler best understands the pertinent keywords of each page.

Read more on Do Search Engines Understand Your Site?…

A client recently asked how much effort should really be put into Twitter. Their understanding was that it was just a platform for voyeurism at its finest, where kids and adults can share intimate or inane details to people who may or may not care. As someone who has been following Twitter for quite some time and who has seen it evolve heavily just in the last year, I was a bit surprised by this assessment. I quickly realized that the benefits that Twitter can have for a business, if used correctly, are not on the surface obvious, especially for those still thinking about marketing in the most traditional sense. Twitter can be used to promote and spread the word about traditional marketing campaigns. But it can also be a great venue for less structured, more grass roots, marketing (think scrappy marketing).

Read more on Twitter for Business…

Zillions of blogs – that’s what I feel the internet is cram-packed with.  There are so many wonderfully written blogs worth reading and following; I have blog-reader guilt weekly because I have no time to read them all.  But, there are a lot of garbage blogs out there as well streaming pointless content for the sake of making noise in cyberspace.  I have written blog content for a number of companies and groups and have found that if I can answer yes to four pointed questions about any topic for any blog, then I can feel good about putting it out to the world.

Read more on 4 Questions I Ask When Writing a Blog Post…

From ChannelWeb Today article “Google Accidentally Broke The Internet“

Over the weekend something strange happened to Google search results. For almost an hour on January 31, every site that Google returned in a search result was tagged with the message, “This site may harm your computer.” In fact, most of those sites wouldn’t harm a user’s computer. Instead an inadvertent keystroke deemed any Web site with “/” in the URL as potentially malicious. More

Read more on Google Makes Mistake, Calling Sites Harmful…

Mad Fish SEO is now looking to hire a part-time entry Level Web Developer to help us grow our SEO and Web Development business in 2009.  Check out the job posting for more details on requirements and job responsibilities.

Read more on Now Hiring – Entry Level Web Developer…

Microsoft announced yesterday that it will offer consumers cash back incentives for using their search engine, Live search. The way the program is designed, consumers will be rewarded for searching and buying products using Microsoft’s SE by receiving a percentage rebate after the transaction is completed.  That rebate equates to a cost per action fee Microsoft charges its merchants, which include online stores like eBay, Barnes & Noble and Overstock.com. 

Read more on Microsoft Launches New CashBack Program – Will It Work?…

Client’s are often amazed at how their search engine results fluctuate month to month, especially in the early stages of an SEO campaign. As SEO specialists, we understand the constant changes search engines make to improve the accuracy and usefulness of their results. Explaining the volatility of search results is easy when you consider that, like any quality company, these search engines are attempting to improve their business, and stay ahead of the curve when it comes to the constant increase in content on the web. Ultimately, we all hope these changes will result in better ways to get quality sites at the top of results and push down the noise. In an interview with Udi Manber in Popular Mechanics we learn that Google made roughly 450 changes to its engine algorithm last year. You can read more of the interview with the Google Vice President by following the link below.

Read more on Google Makes 450 Algorithm Mods in 2007…

We’ve been putting together several SEO strategies for new and existing clients this past couple of weeks.  As we work through each client’s needs and targets, we incorporate our recommendations into three clear segments. No matter what the client’s goal, whether it is increasing revenue or improving membership numbers, a good campaign strategy requires an expert assessment of keywords and existing searches, evaluation of a site’s on-page coding and recommendations for off-page link building.

Read more on The SEO Strategy | Summary of SEO Goals Statement…

Some light-hearted Friday Night SEO entertainment for the masses:

The web developers at Mad Fish are in agreement that the Poetic Prophet raps the truth.

So, the buzz word this weekend for me was “Twitter.”  I was at a spectacular bunko birthday party for a friend where a colleague in the industry asked if “I Twittered.” Afraid that I may have had a few more Heinekens than I originally tallied, I asked for some clarification where I was than introduced to the twitters he had been receiving over the course of the evening.  The next day, my previous boss and dear friend, instant messaged my husband asking if we knew what twitter was.  That was the last straw. I jumped in and have been playing around with the thing and generally obsessed with it for the last 72 hours.

Read more on Is Twitter an SEO Strategy?…

I’ve been working with a few different blog writers lately and I’m finding that the one thing that makes the good ones stand out is something, unfortunately, you just can’t teach.  There are bloggers out there that say they can write, say they can be topical, say they can project an interesting voice. But frankly, few are truly capable.  Blogging takes a certain amount of radio-announcer wit and charisma to truly make an impact. 

Read more on That Thing About Bloggers…