Search Engine Marketing Specialist Dan Cristo

Google’s Bringing Social Networking To The Masses

I was really impressed to learn about Google’s new Friend Connect product!

In short, friend connect is taking some cool things people do on social networks (upload photos, message friends, leave reviews, ratings, comments, etc) and is making them available for use on any web site. Now you might be thinking, “yeah, but I can already add that functionality through site add-on’s and widgets”. But what you can’t easily add is your FRIENDS! See, the exciting part is this, social networks like Facebook and MySpace are making their data accessible, so your friends can use your site as a social networking site, without having to recreate a new profile. Read the rest of this entry »

Google Successfully Indexing Flash Files

I was surprised to find out that Google has no problem indexing, reading text and following links in flash files.

Now I’m sure this isn’t new information to some of you, but others may require a bit more proof.

For the proof, go to google and type in: seo” filetype:swf
What this is doing is searching for the term, “seo” and restricting the results to only .swf file types.
Notice the term [FLASH] next to the results page listing indicating it’s a flash document.

Notice how Google pulls the first few words out of the flash file to generate the title.

Now I haven’t really seen flash files rank well in the SERP when thrown in with web pages, but it is proof that Google can read text and follow links in flash files.

Go ahead and do some testing. Let me know how well your flash files are getting indexed.

Google’s Adwords Professional Certification

Overview:
I wanted to write up a quick post about Google’s adwords Professional Certification program.

Let me start off by giving a quick overview of what the program is. Basically Google has a ton of helpful information online about how to use their Adwords Pay Per Click marketing platform. The information explains the fundamentals of the system, terminology, rules, etc. - view the Adwords Learning Center information for free here.

You read through (or watch a presentation if that suits your learning style) and take a test at the end of the course. The test is a timed test, Read the rest of this entry »

Search Engine Marketing with Social Media

Search Engine Marketing with Social Media

Let’s start from the beginning… What is social media?
To understand where social media is today, we need to understand how it started. Long before there were web sites (pre-1994/HTML), the Internet consisted of bulletin boards; the predecessor to the modern day forum. Bulletin boards were threaded discussions that people could post messages too.

After that we saw News Groups emerge. News groups were largely unregulated gatherings of people who shared common interests; such as Ford Mustangs or Gas Prices?. News groups were structured by keywords and sorted by dates, so visitors could view the most recent posts. Viewers also had the ability to respond to posts, much like the modern day forum or blog. One of the major differences between early news groups and modern forums were the lack of moderators. There was no one there to keep the posts on topic, or administer the group. The lack of regulation, coupled with the openness for anyone to contribute resulted in a lot of lengthy, heated arguments between users. Read the rest of this entry »

Marketing Your New Blog

One of the most annoying things about optimizing a web site is building links. As it turns out, link building is also one of the most important elements of getting your site to show up in the Search Engine Result Pages. The other thing that makes link building a pain is that most of it has to be done by hand. Sure there are automated tools, but no webmaster likes receive those annoying, “Let’s trade links” emails, and search engines devalue reciprocal links anyway. So it all comes back to rolling up your sleeves and getting knee deep in links.

Your first step:
The very first thing you should do when marketing a new blog, or any website for that matter, is stop by DMOZ.org and submit your site there. Sure it’ll take some time to get your site listed, Read the rest of this entry »

Should We Worry About Keyword Density?

I hear a lot of speculation about the proper density of keywords on a web site. I plan to set the record straight in this short post.

For those new to SEO, Keyword Density is the % of times a keyword is mentioned on a page in relation to the rest of the text. In other words… If I have a web page with 10 words, and 1 of those 10 words is a keyword I’m optimizing for, the keyword density for that keyword is 10%.

The problem with finding “the perfect” keyword density ratio is two part. Read the rest of this entry »

Search Engine Marketing through Blogs

Search Engine Marketing through Blogs
What’s the difference between a web site and a blog? Well, web sites are usually geared towards marketing or sales. Blogs on the other hand are more conversational. They’re usually less formal then a web site, updated more often, and are written in a more conversational manner. Blogs also have something special called RSS. RSS stands for Really Simply Syndication, and it basically gives a way for visitors to subscribe to the content of the blog. This way, when a post is added to a blog, people who’ve subscribed to the blog’s RSS feed can see that update and read the post. RSS feeds also have the added benefit of allowing subscribers to see the post through their email or mobile phone.

How can blogs help your web sites SEO?
Well, blogs are a great source of fresh content. And who loves fresh content??? Search engines! The fresher the content, the more frequent the search engines will come back and crawl your site. This frequent crawling will help the less frequently updated portions of your site get crawled as well. This means that any changes you make to that less frequently updated pages will get into the search engines results pages faster, allowing you to do more SEO testing.

Another great benefit Read the rest of this entry »

Key Learnings from Search Engine Strategies 2008 - New York

Key Learnings from Search Engine Strategies 2008

Overview:
The difference between SES and other conferences is the depth of information presented. SES does an excellent job of focusing only on the search industry, which means more time is spent focusing on the advanced optimization techniques, as opposed to SEO/PPC 101 sessions. The speakers of the sessions I attended were credible sources, including well known industry pro’s, top executives and employees of the major engines. Read the rest of this entry »