PALM BEACH, FL – I’ve been using Paypal for about 15 years now and while it’s a great and extremely simple way to except payments online, I dislike it as a single point of payment. While Paypal is very smooth and provides an easy and quick set up, many consumers avoid using Paypal from either: A) negative past experience or B) simply not sure if they can use it (confusion on whether or not users are required to have a Paypal account to use it). Imagine how many sales … [Read more...]
GrubHub’s Aggressive Customer Micro-Site Domain Strategy Makes Bad Situation Worse
PALM BEACH, FL – Most of the dust has now settled, but back in late June/early July of this year, restaurant ordering service GrubHub, found itself boiling in hot water when a domain name strategy of building ‘micro-sites’ or 'landing pages', using what you could call, confusingly similar domain names of its customers, was called out in media headlines far and wide across the Internet. Grubhub Inc. GRUB (NYSE) is a Chicago-based online and/or mobile food ordering service … [Read more...]
Search Optimization or Sponsored Search, Which One Is Better for My Business?
NEW YORK, NY – Whether a company embarks on typical optimization processes or just gives in and goes straight for Google’s recently re-branded “Google Ads” program is probably a question best answered only by someone who has been watching both of them evolve over the years, because both of them do work, and both can be used to grow your business exponentially, but figuring out which one works better or which will cost more is something the average business owner just has no … [Read more...]
Google Say’s Don’t Buy Domains for Past Rankings; Knows When They Change Hands
NEW YORK, NY – In an article that came out in Search Engine Roundtable the other day, long-time search marketing expert Barry Schwartz points out that a Google employee named Aaseesh, tasked with monitoring Google’s Webmaster Central Help Forum, posted a comment which suggests that Google zaps a domains ranking juice, not only when the domain expires (which most have already suspected), but also when the domain merely changes hands or is sold. This adds a new layer of … [Read more...]
LSIGraph: A Free, Yet Limited “Latent Semantic Indexing” Word Research Tool
NEW YORK, NY – You might be familiar with my list of online tools to run, market and manage your Internet business; or you might have just seen it for the first time today. I’m adding something new to the list. It’s called the LSIGraph, and it’s free for a limited number of searches. I’ll give you an example of how it works and how it might help your web pages rank better for online searches. For a quick visual on Latent Semantic Indexing, see this very old post. Note: … [Read more...]
Overstock.com Marketing Expenses Sour $40M After Google Algorithm Changes
NEW YORK – It sort of makes you cringe just hearing the title. According to BuzzFeed.com, the retailing giant Overstock told investors during an earnings call that the company has experienced serious difficulties with a Google Algorithm update it was hit with last year, calling it "very disruptive" to its business; the SEO Community called it "Fred". Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne said that sales and marketing expenses grew 105% to $77.2 million this quarter from $37.6 … [Read more...]
The Disappearing Act of the Web’s Best Web Directories; Where Are They Going?
NEW YORK, NY – Last week, news began to circulate the search optimization-spear that DMOZ.org, one of the oldest and most trusted web directories ever online, was discontinued forever (as of Mar 17, 2017). DMOZ was considered such an incredible resource, that Google itself mirrored it at directory.google.com, as did thousands of other sites across the net. However, Google discontinued the mirror on July 20, 2011, less than a year prior to announcing its “Google Penguin” … [Read more...]
More Than Great Start to Getting Handle on Google’s RankBrain Algorithm
The new Whiteboard Friday from Moz went over RankBrain, Google's new ‘algorithm’ to adjust, its ‘algorithm’. The concept discussed RankBrain being more designed to evaluate the actual query, while the normal algorithm we’re all used to is designed to evaluate the pages which are returned as results. This is why you can't just optimize your pages for keywords and key phrases like the good ole’ days; you need to first determine how "user intent" could effect a query, change … [Read more...]
The Google Conspiracy Theory: More Updates = More Revenue?
Back in June, the distinguished engineer Matt Cutts came out swinging to debunk the fact that many webmasters, particularly those considered to be in the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) space, suggest that Google loves flux in its search results because it increases pay-per-click revenues for Google. Cutts actually labeled this rumor a “Conspiracy Theory” noting that Google lost revenue when it first released Google Panda in February 2011. So how would Google loose … [Read more...]
Report: Social Media Deemed Least Effective by Online Marketers
How satisfied are you with the business value your company has achieved by using each of the following marketing channels? This was the question asked by Forrester Research, where social media advertising had measured up to be the least effective advertising medium when it comes to the opinion of ROI (return on investment) for online marketers when judging “business value” achieved among all online mediums used. The report, titled “Q3 2013 North American and U.K. … [Read more...]
Doing SEO to Your Site? Inquiring Minds at Google Want to Know
Out of all the posts and discussions on “SEO Profiling” through the years and with all sorts of opinions as well as speculation on what Google possibly wants or doesn’t want to know about someone’s SEO efforts, I believe there are finally some answers available for the taking as GOOG’s latest patent is sure to clear the air on some or all of these theories and misconceptions from both sides of the fence. A new Patent Application dated August 14, 2012 called “Ranking … [Read more...]
Two Different Google Penguin “Death Messages” from Webmaster Tools
Who knew a Penguin could be so deadly? Losing your traffic and search positioning on Google is bad, real bad. Showing up on Bing or Yahoo near the top of search is just sort of cool, but it doesn't really make much difference to your business. Sure it might make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside seeing you up at the top there, but even competitive terms, year over year, don’t seem to yield much traffic. Google, on the other hand, makes or breaks your business, … [Read more...]
Rich Snippets: The Absence of Star Ratings & Reviews In Google Search
Most Internet news agencies originally praised Google's decision to replace its local search business rating system with Zagat ratings. After all, the acquisition of Zagat data was a major business decision by the search engine giant who paid a hefty price for those scores, $125 million as originally reported by the Wall Street Journal (more recently reported by AP to be $151 million). However, it seems that business owners and local webmasters who run sites previously … [Read more...]
Google Unleashes Limitless Liability for Websites with Penguin Update
Never before has there been a negative factor when it comes to hypertext links, until now. On or around April 28th 2012, Google released its latest algorithm update dubbed “Penguin”. This update was specifically targeting web sites which have characteristics indicating they have used tactics to build what Google refers to as “artificial” or “unnatural links” pointing to them. Web sites which are deemed to be using methods of generating what Google feels are “unnatural” or … [Read more...]
Study: “Social Signals” Boost Organic Search Engine Rankings
Just over a year ago in February of 2011 I did a post on "social media" and "social signals" called Social Media 101 “Algorithmically Speaking”. The post detailed how social media was a necessary component of search marketing and how "social signals" likely effected search engine rankings, if not at that time, would soon thereafter. The idea, at least publicly, that social signals could or would influence rankings began a while back in 2010 but the buzz has grown … [Read more...]