I’m speaking at SES London 2009 on the Dynamic Websites: Beyond the Basics panel on February 19th.
The panel agenda as follows:
This session will cover all the SEO tactics possible for your dynamic site, including global site optimization tactics, page titles, metadata, page headings, content, keyword embedded URLs, page rank, sitemaps, feeds, and much more. But will this be enough? Is global site optimization enough to score a top ten ranking for a competitive term, or is something more specific required? What if you do all these things are in place and it’s still not enough to get a listing into the top 50 much less the top 5? Learn about specific instances where everything was done right, and yet more work had to be done.
Most SEO’s are familiar with content management systems like Wordpress or Joomla, but what happens when you’ve got a much larger, specialist project requiring more “brunt” out of the box? I’ve been reviewing a recruitment CMS package called dotVacancy3, a recruitment industry specific CMS platform from 4MAT.com
We’ve all seen content management systems that are pretty unfriendly to SEO’s, which is why the features of this CMS were a bit of a breath of fresh air. The folks at 4MAT were kind enough for me to take a few screenshots and blog about the features too!
Meta code manager
Here’s a useful tip for anyone who uses the wp-sphinnit plugin on a Wordpress blog that covers more than just SEO. Want to display the Sphinnit button on an SEO post but not on posts unrelated to SEO?
First of all, make sure you’ve set “align” to “none” in the Sphinnit options, or you’ll have two Sphinnit logos appear on every SEO post after implementing this code!
Next, you need to edit your single.php file and use a conditional tag before calling the wp-sphinnit plugin. You’ll need to insert the following code before “the_post”:
In my “Demand for SEO Jobs” post, I plotted keyword demand for the phrase “SEO Jobs” across 2008 based on Google keywords data. A few folks have asked me to explain how I did that, so without further ado:
How to calculate approximate traffic volume for the past 12 months in Google Keyword Tool
First of all you’re going to need the data. Go to Google’s keyword tool and select a few keywords you’re interested in.
Before you export data from the keyword tool, be sure to select “Show Search Volume Trends” in the “Choose columns to be displayed:” drop down list:
A recent thread at Sphinn became even more interesting when Matt Cutts dropped a comment that Google do not use bounce rates as a variable in their ranking algorithm. Here’s what he said:
Without reading the article, I’ll just say that bounce rates would be not only spammable but noisy. A search industry person recently sent me some questions about how bounce rate is done at Google and I was like “Dude, I have no idea about any things like bounce rate. Why don’t you talk to this nice Google Analytics evangelist who knows about things like bounce rate?” I just don’t even run into people talking about this in my day-to-day life.
Emerald is a 3D window decorator for compositing window managers such as Compiz in Ubuntu. Emerald has grown into a very complex window decorator for 3D desktops and supports a wide variety of settings and ways to develop your own themes easily. Emerald is a critical component of my current Ubuntu setup and a few folks have asked what they need to do if they want it to run at startup. Here’s how:
Run emerald at Startup
Google’s keyword research tool is probably one of the most powerful tools in your keyword research arsenal. Why? Because it gives you hard numbers, and monthly volume ratios for the past 12 months. I’ve been using some Google keyword tool data to look at the demand for the keyword “seo jobs“. (Excuse the obvious internal link…) Hopefully I’ll be able to provide some insight into what’s been going on in the SEO recruitment market in the UK throughout 2008.
SEO Jobs demand in 2008
Here’s a neat little tweak my friend Adrian showed me this week – how to tidy up your Firefox bookmarks toolbar:
Before:
After:
All you do is open up the properties for each bookmark, and clear out the “Name:” field:
Job done. You now have a tidied bookmarks toolbar with lots of extra space for more bookmarks.
I’m really enjoying using AWN (Avant Window Navigator) on my Ubuntu desktop at the moment. AWN is a great “productivity” tweak making it easier to access your favourite application by adding customisable buttons at the base of your screen. Using AWN means no more navigating through the Ubuntu applications menu for your commonly used apps and it gives you an easy way to make little shortcuts and generally tweak your desktop. Just to add a little extra fun AWN comes with a suite of widgets such as a quick window navigator launcher (hence the name..) and even a Last.fm app – the icon for which turns into the album cover of the track you’re listening to. Nice touch!
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